The Zero

Remy shifted uncomfortably.

One of the state senators, the fat one, his suit pants tucked into his work boots, was coming toward them. He had been struggling all morning, beet-faced and breathless. Twice he had started crying and his eyes and nose were lined with gray. He walked over to Paul and Remy and removed his surgical mask, red-eyed and nauseous. It was clear he’d been vomiting. “This is very difficult for me.”

“Yeah,” Guterak said. “We really feel for you.”

“I didn’t expect everything to be so…”

“Raw,” Guterak said.

“Yes,” the senator said.

“You see the chin?”

“No,” the senator said.

“Got a head yesterday. Biggest single chunk I’ve seen.”

“Really?” The senator looked around, uncomfortable.

“Still, there aren’t enough pieces,” Guterak said, “for how many are still missing. Not even close.”

The senator nodded and looked back at the space-suited workers. “I feel like they want me to say something,” he said. “Like I should know what to say. But I don’t have any idea.”

“Tell them they’re doing a good job,” Paul said.

The state senator nodded, took several breaths, wiped his brow, and said, “Thanks.” He pulled his mask back up. Remy and Guterak watched him walk away, trip on a tangle of something, fall forward, and recoil when his hands hit the debris. He got back up and picked his way over the piles of steel and rubble.

“Go fugg yourself, fat boy,” Guterak said quietly, almost gently, when the senator was gone.

Afterward, they drove back in silence. At the bridge Remy looked back, beyond the exhausted senators, the island receding behind them. At the toll plaza, Paul pressed his E-Z Pass against the window. Somewhere, accounts were tabulated, identities recorded, order inferred, and they passed easily over to the other side.

“These things can read your thoughts now, when you come over the bridge,” Paul told the senators, although Remy had the feeling Paul was talking to him. “It’s new. Top secret. Very hush-hush. They just started it.”

The senators exchanged a glance.

“It doesn’t work very well, yet. Staffing is tough, from what I hear… All those fuggin’ thoughts of all those people crossing in and out of the city. You can’t keep up with it, all the shitty things that people think. They got six big rooms with agents sitting on wires, watching what people think as they drive on and off the island. Got translators and psychiatrists and charts and espresso machines, but it’s still too much. The burnout alone… they can’t keep up. Every day they fall further behind.”

“Paul,” Remy said.

“Aw, I’m just fuggin’ with the senators,” Guterak said. “They know I’m screwin’ around, right, fellas? Right?” He smiled at them in the rearview mirror so long that Remy had to fight the urge to grab the wheel. Finally, Paul looked back at the road. “Just fuggin’ with ’em.”

They dropped the senators off at their hotel in midtown. But Paul didn’t drive right away. He turned in the driver’s seat to face Remy. “Listen,” he said. “This meeting with The Boss tomorrow. Be careful. Think of it like a session with IA, or with Psych on a shooting review. You with me? And Jesus, Bri, don’t say anything about me. For God’s sake. If he doesn’t ask about me, don’t volunteer a fuggin’ word about it. And if he asks how I’m doin’, you just say fine. Nothin’ else. I don’t want no problems. Tell ’em you haven’t seen any weird behavior, no mention of nightmares, nothing like that.” Paul took a moment to reconsider this, like chewing the last bite of sandwich. He raised a finger. “Unless… you know… they think it’s weird that I’m not having nightmares. Then tell ’em I’m totally fugged up… can’t sleep… cryin’ all the time. And Jesus, that shit I was sayin’ the other day?”

“About the Nextels?” Remy asked.

“The Nextels? No. Fugg the phones, Brian. I mean that shit about bein’ happy. About this bein’ a good time? The funerals and all that? You gotta forget that shit, okay?”

“Okay,” Remy said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“I mean… I was just talkin’ out my asshole there. I just wanted a be fu

“It’s okay,” Remy said. “I’ve already forgotten it.”

“But it’s not that I’m unhappy. If they want to know that.”

“Sure.”

“I’m just fine. Fine. But not happy. At least not unreasonably.” Paul chewed his thumbnail and looked over his shoulder, then started driving.

Traffic lurched and halted, the cabs pulsing like blood cells. Guterak was too distracted to blow the siren. A white passenger van pulled up beside them and the passengers pressed their faces against the windows, waving and giving them the thumbs-up, but Paul had lost his feel for even this and he drove in silence, without acknowledging the waves from the vehicle next door.

Remy closed his eyes and watched the wallpaper peeling down his lids, strips of fiber drifting down in the jelly. Soup ofhis own… Sometimes it was calming. He opened his eyes and saw Guterak chewing his thumbnail as he pushed the Excursion through muddy traffic.

“Relax,” Remy said. “I’m sure this has nothing to do with you, Paul. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah.” Guterak nodded uneasily and glanced out the window, at the people lining the street, desperately cheering the cars going into The Zero. He pulled the E-Z Pass clip off his visor and tossed it in back. “Still.”

They pulled up to the entry point on the West and the same cop stepped forward.

“Hey, boss. How’s it goin’?”

“Goddamn tough duty, you know?”

“Fuckin’ raghead motherfuckers.”

“Yeah. That’s right. That’s right.”

Remy fell back in his seat and smelled-

SMOKE WAFTED across forests of dusted steel. “Hey. You okay?” The guy in front of Remy lowered his ventilator. His cheeks were pink beneath the mask; above it, his eyes were banded with soot. He was wearing heavy coveralls and thick gloves, the kind a welder might wear, and holding out a yellow five-gallon bucket for Brian to take.

“Oh. Sorry.” Remy looked away from the cloud and took the bucket by the handle – light, this one, just a few twisted pieces of aluminum, maybe ductwork, gray and bent – and passed it back to the pair of hands behind him, co

More heavy pails passed, and then the buckets stopped and Remy took a minute to look around. There were tents everywhere now; he wondered when they’d arrived, some new team every few minutes, search and rescue from Ohio, Missouri, Maine, new volunteers seemed to spring from the cracks and crevices, people asking if he wanted energy bars or bottled water or socks. There were so many socks. Had there been a call for socks? Did he need socks?

In line, the guys edged forward and peered around one another like kids waiting for recess, trying to see why the buckets had stopped. Their boots crackled on the surface of the debris, tiny shifts like the warm pack on a deep snowfall. Remy stepped around the snaking line of men to see what was ahead. And, as was happening to him more and more, even though he didn’t exactly remember, he knew: the buckets only stopped for one reason. As if on cue, in place of a bucket, a question slowly made its way back.

“Cops? Any cops? Any cops on this line?”

Remy stepped out of line and raised his hand. He made his way carefully over the shards, each step tentative and sharp, bent steel and aluminum giving beneath his feet. As he passed the others on line, they nodded or touched him on the back. It was hot. Remy’s breath buzzed in his mask. It was a strange feeling – humbling and horrifying – to be called forward. At the front, the line took a sharp turn upward and dropped into a steaming crevasse. Halfway down, a burly ironworker had made a ledge for himself on a blackened piece of steel. He removed his ventilator and held up a bucket for Remy to see. There was something gray in there, curled and flat, and at first Remy saw a snake in the process of swallowing a rat, but then he realized what he was looking at. It was a holster. A dust-covered belt and flashlight holster. A cop’s belt and holster.