The Zero

by Jess Walter

  Groups of people moved along the sidewalks and into the courtyard at the center of the mall. A car honked and Remy got out of its way. He stepped up onto the sidewalk. “Edgar!”

  He walked gingerly down the business storefronts, peering in each one: A futon store. A tax preparation business. Maternity clothes. Party supplies. A chiropractor. Rattan imports, golf supplies, tanning beds. He didn’t see his son anywhere, and honestly couldn’t imagine him in any of the stores. “Edgar! Where are you?” Stone ice cream and bagels, Army recruiting and guitar sales and cell phones and…

  Remy stopped and stared at the stores he’d passed. He thought about Edgar’s haircut. He walked carefully toward the narrow Army recruiting office. It was a shallow storefront, and it looked as if most of the space was behind a single door. A sergeant with disquieting blue eyes, a thin mustache, and a fading chin was sitting at a desk, talking on the phone. Remy went inside. The sergeant looked up and ended the call.

  “Good day, sir,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  Remy looked around. This part of the office was like a false front, a small space with a door leading deeper inside, or maybe to a back exit. “Did my kid come in here?”

  “I’m sorry…?” the sergeant said.

  “Edgar Remy.” Remy pointed to the door leading to the back of the office. A poster on the door showed the face of a rugged young man wearing fatigues, with smears of black eye paint as if he were simply going to play football. The poster read, ARE YOU READY? “Is Edgar back there?”

  The man spoke calmly, reassuringly. “Sir, I’m not at liberty to say who is or isn’t here, except to immediate family.”

  “I am immediate family,” Remy said. He moved for the door, but the soldier moved quickly in front of him. They were a few feet apart. “Look, you don’t want him,” Remy said. “He’s just a kid.”

  The soldier smiled warmly. “That’s a common reaction when a young man volunteers. It’s hard to acknowledge when a child becomes a man.”

  “He’s only sixteen,” Remy said.

  The sergeant seemed genuinely amused. “You can rest assured, sir, we’re not going to let a sixteen-year-old enlist.”

  This didn’t make Remy feel better. Could Edgar be eighteen? He knew that time had passed, but Edgar wasn’t old enough to join the Army. Was he? “This is a mistake. He’s not supposed to be here. He hasn’t signed anything, has he?”

  The soldier took Remy’s arm. “Listen. As I said, I can’t say who’s here and who isn’t. But when a young man makes a decision like this, there is no turning back. And if that young man happens to be someone who lost his father, and wants to do something to avenge that good man, I find it hard to see how anyone who really cares for him could possibly call it a mistake.”

  “I’m his father,” Remy said weakly.

  “His stepfather?” the sergeant said.

  “No. His father.”

  The sergeant smiled patiently. “Look, call yourself whatever you want. I’m sure it’s not easy to raise another man’s child. A selfless job. I can see that—”

  “Listen to me—”

  “No.” He spoke so quietly that Remy had to lean in to hear him. “You listen. I’ve kept my patience, sir. But I’m not going to sit here while you dishonor the young men and women who put on this uniform.” The man tilted his earnest head and implored Remy with those electric blue eyes. “If you’re not going to respect and support this young soldier’s decision, I’m going to have to ask you to leave…before you disgrace the cherished memory of his father.”

  Remy laughed; the noise struck him as slightly psychotic. He wondered—If I ran, could I make it past the soldier to the door?—but the recruiter seemed to anticipate this and slid over a step. After a moment, Remy backed out of the office. Through the closed glass door, the recruiting officer stood with his arms crossed.

  Remy turned onto the sidewalk, staring first in one direction, then the other. There was something about being presented with choices that he didn’t entirely trust, so he hesitated, then began to walk away.

  “Hey.”

  Remy turned. Edgar was standing in the doorway of the recruiting office, staring at his shoes as the recruiter watched nervously through the window, waiting to pounce if Remy did anything suspicious. Edgar stepped outside, the glass door swinging closed behind him. His black hair, which he’d always worn moppy, was too short to part now, just a thin buzz that wasn’t enough to cover the pink of his scalp. “I just want you to know,” Edgar began, “that I understand how you feel.” He continued to stare at the ground. “I do. It’s just…” He stared off to his left, a pose so familiar that Remy ached to see his boy again, wondered what this buzz-headed young man had done with him.

  “It’s just what?” Remy asked.

  “Well,” Edgar shrugged. “I’ve made so much progress.”

  “Progress,” Remy repeated.

  “It’s not just me. Mom thinks so, too. And my therapist.” He leaned in. “I’ve been through all the stages of grief. You can’t want me to go back. What, to denial? Or…or anger?” He shook his head. “Anyway, I don’t think I can go back. Not now. Not after I’ve finally accepted your death.” Edgar looked up. He was as tall as his father now. But so different. “And really…someday, you are going to die. Right?”

  Yes, Remy thought. Someday.

  They stood on the mini-mall sidewalk, staring at the ground in front of each other. Edgar opened his mouth to say something else, but he shrugged instead. Then he pushed on the glass door of the recruiting office. And before Remy could say anything, or think of anything to say, the boy disappeared again behind—

  THE DOOR was open a crack, and April leaned against it, her eyes red. “Please, Brian. You’re torturing me every time you do this.”

  He was outside her apartment again, pleading through the tight chain. He closed his eyes, trying to shake the feeling that he’d already lived this moment. “April. I don’t know what I did wrong. You have to believe me. I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t remember leaving me in a hotel room in San Francisco?”

  “Did I do that?” He winced. “I’m sorry, April. See, my retina detached.” He touched the patch. “My eye is—”

  But she wouldn’t look up. “And you don’t remember leaving a note that said you couldn’t be with someone who was in love with a ghost?”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” Remy closed his good eye. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean that. Please.” He looked again at the moving boxes, which were stacked by the door. “At least tell me where you’re moving?”

  She stared past him. “I gave the money away.”

  “What are you talking about? What money?”

  “The settlement. The money you convinced me to get. I gave it all away. The lawyer got some. I gave some to Derek’s parents. And I donated the rest. In case that’s what you’re here for.”

  “What?” Remy leaned against the door frame. “No, April. I don’t care about the money. I never cared about the money. Look, I don’t know what I did…but I’m sorry. I know I’ve been acting crazy, but I need you.”

  “You need me.”

  Remy was stunned by the flatness of her voice. He’d never seen this side of her. “Let’s forget this craziness and just…go somewhere. We’ll live in a hotel and…buy new clothes every day. Change our names—”

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  “Please. I’ll do anything to get you back.” He took her hand. “Isn’t there something I can do?”

  “Well.” April pulled her hand away from his. Her eyes remained half-lidded, as if she were about to fall asleep. With those deep-set eyes, the effect was cool, intentional. “I suppose,” April said, “you could stop fucking my boss.” And then she gently closed the door in his face.

  Remy stood there for a moment and then his head fell forward against—

  THE DOOR of another apartment. He could h
ear laughter behind it. Remy lifted his head. He didn’t know whose door it was. He felt dizzy, like someone bobbing on the ocean, looking around for anything to cling to. He could hear footsteps approaching, and although he didn’t remember knocking, the door swung open, and there was Guterak, his hair neatly trimmed, a bottle of imported beer in his hand. “Hey, I knew you’d make it!” He turned and announced to McIntyre and Carey—“What’d I say? Didn’t I just say this fugger would never miss my premiere. Now this is a friend. Pay attention, you ungrateful freeloaders. Hey. Come in, man.”

  Guterak looked thinner, mostly in the shoulders and chest, like he’d lost weight in all the wrong places, like a smaller version of the same bowling pin. His hair was different, too, styled and gelled into one of those intentional messes. A reed-thin woman with short black hair, also casually mussed, was setting up trays of food—seven-layer nachos and bread with spinach dip—on Guterak’s coffee table, in front of Carey and McIntyre, who sat next to each other on the couch, working their own beer bottles. They looked over their shoulders and nodded at Remy.

  “Tara,” Guterak said. “You gotta come over and meet this guy. This is Brian Remy I was telling you about. We used to be in a car, me and him. Worked The Boss’s detail together before this fugger went and got a desk job, and then went and got himself a sweet disability. We went through some harrowing shit together that day.”

  “Yes, you’ve told me,” she said, and Remy thought he caught just a trace of irritation in her voice. She came over, younger than Guterak by at least fifteen years, a girl on the border between cute and hard: laser green eyes and a stud in her right nostril.

  “Remy,” Guterak said, with as much formality as he could muster, “this is Tara. She works for the production company I signed with, and apparently she has an unhealthy attraction to old cops.”

  They shook hands.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said.

  When she let go of his hand, Remy self-consciously touched his eye patch. He wondered why no one mentioned his eye.

  “So how’s early retirement, you lazy mutt?” asked McIntyre. He sat with a beer on Guterak’s futon.

  “Your back can’t be too bad,” Carey said, as a pile of dip fell from a tortilla chip into his thick hand. “You’re still walking upright.”

  “My back’s fine,” Remy said quietly.

  “Come on. I’ll get you a beer.” Guterak led Remy into the kitchen.

  Remy looked around the kitchen of Guterak’s apartment, and at the pictures of his kids on the small refrigerator. He took the beer and managed a long swallow. He leaned against the kitchen table. “Listen, Paul…I need your help. I’m wrapped up in something here…I don’t know…there’s some crazy stuff happening and…I might be on the wrong side of it.”

  “Yeah, you really fugged up, man. I talked to April. She told me you slept with her boss. What were you thinking?”

  “You talked to April?”

  Guterak leaned in close. “Who’d have thought we’d get these young women, huh? Like we got a fuggin’ sex mulligan, ain’t it? Tradin’ our old broads for these babes. No, you should definitely go back. On your hands and fuggin’ knees, man.”

  “No, it’s more than just April,” Remy said. “I’m losing track of everything, Paul…. I do things I don’t remember. It’s almost like there are two of me.” He leaned in closer. “There was this thing in Miami, and then I went to San Francisco…there’s this pecan dish and this duck, and this old Arab guy in a wool coat…and Jesus, I’m starting to think”—as the words formed in his throat, Remy knew the truth of this particular thought—“I’m starting to think that…this bad thing is going to happen no matter what I do.”

  “I’ll call April tomorrow. I’ll talk to her.”

  “This is not about April!”

  “Paul!” Tara called from the other room. “It’s on.”

  “Come on, man. You’re gonna want to see this.” Guterak walked into the living room and after a minute alone in the kitchen, Remy followed. He stood in the back of the room.

  On TV was the cop show that was always shouting about being ripped from the headlines. The music played—duh-Duh—and then the first scene: A deliveryman was pushing a handcart with a big-screen television on it, when he came across a dead body. In the next scene, the two regular detectives were crouched over the body. Remy knew the ritual: the body always came first, and then the detectives’ job was to go to locations around the city and interview people quickly, asking one or two questions before moving on to the next interview, to make sure they caught the killer before the trial began in the second half of the show. The camera panned down to show the victim: a young Arab man splayed out on a sidewalk. The camera looked up to the window from which he’d tumbled, accidentally or, no doubt, otherwise.

  Remy looked at Guterak, but he showed no reaction.

  The show tramped along. The cops interviewed their witnesses; one, a social worker who lived in the building, told the detectives that she recognized someone on the sidewalk right after the man fell out of the window—a retired cop named Bruce Denny, who’d recently left the force because of back problems. The lab also had a footprint from a shoe at the scene and they wanted to compare the print to Bruce Denny’s shoe.

  Remy covered his mouth. He looked around, but no one else seemed to see anything strange in what they were watching.

  Duh-Duh. One of the detectives picked Bruce Denny up at the airport to question him. On the show, Bruce Denny wore an eye patch. Remy touched his eye patch again.

  “Jesus, Paul,” Remy began.

  “Shhh,” said Tara.

  The detective asked Denny his shoe size. It was twelve—the same size as the footprint at the murder scene, the same size Remy wore. Then Bruce Denny asked if he could confide in the detective. He may have been at the scene, Denny confided, but he couldn’t remember. He said he was having some kind of problem with his memory, that he was having “gaps.” And he asked the detective to follow him.

  “Follow you?” the detective asked.

  “Yeah. Follow me.”

  “Like…keep track of what you’re saying?”

  “No. Tail me. I think I’m involved in something and I want to find out what it is.”

  That’s when the first commercial break came.

  Remy looked down at Guterak in disbelief. “Jesus, Paul, did you…”

  “Shhh—” Guterak raised a hand and pointed at the TV. “Here it comes.”

  The TV cut to commercial and Remy saw how seamlessly this happened, one world to another and the detectives were gone and two kids were standing in a clean suburban living room—just like Carla and Steve’s house, Remy thought—staring out a window as emergency lights rolled across their faces. “Cool!” one of them said. As the rousing music swelled behind them, the camera moved outside to settle on a firefighter and a cop standing in the street, talking and gesturing toward some unseen emergency, a blur of police tape and swirling lights. The cop was Guterak. He and the firefighter turned to the camera, shot and lit from below, like superheroes.

  “When trouble comes—” said the firefighter.

  “And it will—” said Guterak.

  And then they both pointed to the camera and said in unison: “You need to have a hearty breakfast! The breakfast of heroes.”

  And cut to a sunny breakfast table. On the table were two boxes of cereal, at perfect angles; behind them were the kids in soft focus, devouring their cereal as if they hadn’t eaten in months. Each box looked like an American flag; the firefighter was on one, Guterak on the other, looking serious, staring off into space. Through the magic of television, both men winked from their boxes of cereal.

  The camera returned to the photogenic kids, their spoons overflowing with hearty oat goodness.

  “I got the flakes!” said one, and Remy thought he sensed just the slightest disappointment in this boy, who also had slices of bananas in his cereal.

  “I got marshmallows!” said the
other kid, with no reservations.

  And then the deep-voiced narrator said: “First Responder. The cereal of heroes.”

  When it was over, McIntyre, Carey, and Tara applauded. Remy didn’t know what to do.

  “Baby,” said Tara, “you’re a star.”

  “So what do you think, Brian?” Guterak asked nervously.

  But before Remy could answer, he felt the moment slipping and—

  AT DAWN, joggers circled the kidney-shaped lawn. Their footfalls echoed softly against the retaining walls surrounding the edge of the park. Remy sat on the steps leading to the park, above the dewy grass. He had an open book in his hands, but he was staring past it toward the damp field. He was getting used to seeing out of one eye, to seeing around corners. In some ways, he wondered if this wasn’t a more accurate view of the world, without the gap between his eyes, that little bit of distance that the brain corrected and covered. And he wondered about blind spots, if there weren’t things that only he could see now, things the binocular missed.

  In the park, a woman walking a little dog looked both ways before allowing the animal to shit in the bark surrounding the red jungle gym. Closer, a homeless man slept at the edge of the grass, parting the flow of runners as smoothly as a rock in a river. Remy counted six joggers in a lap, five men and a woman, and in the next lap it was seven, and then nine, and twelve, as if he were seeing in crackled time-lapse. Sunlight began to wash over the park. Nearly all the joggers wore tiny headphones, listening to music only they could hear, as alone in the world at that moment as it was possible to be. Soon the first commuters joined the joggers, slowly making their way across the park toward the financial district, like blood cells to a wound.

  Women in dark pantyhose and tennis shoes carried huge bags; men in suits strode purposefully, barking into cell phones. Remy thought of that other morning, distant, urgent, end of summer, a glimpse of cool fall, primary day, people stopping to vote, dropping kids at schools and daycares, just getting to their offices, sitting at desks, arranging photos, looking through call sheets, and he imagined April, her recently returned husband gone to work, humming around the house, thinking that her life was back to some semblance of normal, then finding his cell phone, listening to the message and calling her sister at work, and March, crying at her desk—both of them believing that morning was the worst of their lives, no idea, until a low roar cleaved the morning air—