The Zero

“Goddamn it, Edgar. Where are you?” If there was something he wanted to tell the boy, then goddamn it, he was going to tell him. He could feel his face flushing. And just then he felt powerful enough to simply decide to throw off this strange jerking life, whatever it was – hallucinations or an illness or just the way life was lived now. A life is made up of actions, and if he wanted the world to be different, then he only needed to act differently. Every minute of every day was an opportunity to do the right things, to make something of this mess. He didn’t need to be unfaithful to his girlfriend. He didn’t need to be involved in some shady investigation that may have hurt i

THIS TIME, Remy didn’t bother protesting, or asking what had happened, or taking his medication, or even pleading with her to leave him alone. His skin was covered with a slick sheen of sweat, not all of it his own, and even though he couldn’t quite remember exactly what had preceded this moment, as he watched Nicole climb out of the big king-size bed and pad off to the bathroom, he knew it was too late. “Whew,” Nicole said. “You do understand that the root of quickie is supposed to be quick, right?”

The sheets were twisted around his ankles. He looked around the room, apparently Nicole’s bedroom: in each corner was a four-foot-tall Asian pot with a burst of dead sticks and flowers coming from it. On the wall in front of him was a triptych of abstract paintings, all with smears of pink on them. Next to that was a family photo of Nicole, her husband, and their son. When he heard the shower come on, Remy rose and slid into his pants, put on his shirt and his socks and his shoes, pulled his jacket off a chair, and slinked out of Nicole’s apartment. He took the elevator with a woman holding a terrier. The dog sniffed at him and then looked up at the woman as if to confirm her suspicions. On the first floor, the doorman was reading the Daily News, but he looked up in time to wink. Remy hurried past him, out the door.

On the street he saw a car that looked like Guterak’s, but it sped away from the curb. Remy watched cabs slide down the avenue toward midtown, and wondered if he had enough cash for one. He pulled his wallet out to see how much money he had, and he saw the edge of his “Don’t Hurt Anyone/Grow Up” card. He slid the card out, read it, and slid it back into his wallet. And that was the first time it crossed his mind that there might be another way to consider this problem, that there might, in some way, be two Remys, one he knew and the other he didn’t, and that these two men might be as different as-

HE WAITED as the old man was helped off the bus, which bore lettering on its side reading Englewood Senior Services. The driver, who had a shelf of long hair in back, nodded and spoke to the man in his loud senior citizen voice. “How’d you do today, Mr. Addich? You win all that money?”

“I always win all the money,” the old man said. He was small and impeccably dressed, in a suit without a tie. He clung to a black day pla

“What about them old ladies? You hittin’ any of those ladies, Mr. Addich?”

“I would never hit a lady. Unless she hit me first.” The old man winked.

This made the driver laugh as he got back on the bus. The doors closed, the bus began to pull away, and Mr. Addich made his way toward his son’s suburban house.

“Mr. Addich?” Remy climbed out of his car and hurried across the street. “Excuse me. Are you Gerald Addich?”

The old man turned slowly and looked at Remy without recognition. “Yes. Who are you?” The old man was all ears, two big handles divided by a spit of gray curly hair that lapped onto his forehead. His mouth was a pinched hole. He spoke with a gravelly third-generation Irish borough accent. “What can I do for you?”

Remy walked up to the man. “Do you know me?”

He took a moment. “I don’t believe so, no. But if I had to guess I’d say you look like a cop.”

“I’m the guy who found your pla

“Oh, thank you,” he said. “That was nice of you to return it. I’d be lost without this thing.” He turned back toward his house.

“Your son said you weren’t downtown that day…”

The old man turned back and cocked his head, as if he didn’t understand.

“So I was wondering how it got down there.”

The old man said nothing.

“See,” Remy said and he tried to laugh nonchalantly, “the fu

Addich looked down at the pla

“Remy. Brian Remy.”

“I’ve never heard of you,” the man said. “So I don’t know how I could have had a meeting with you-”

“Could I just look in there?” Remy asked, pointing to the pla

“In here?” Mr. Addich held up his day pla

Just then, the door opened and Tony Addich came out, in suit pants, a white tank top and socks. “Come on, Dad. It’s almost di

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” Gerald Addich said to Remy. “We’re having fish.” He stared at Remy for a moment before moving toward the house.

Tony Addich came out and helped the old man up the sidewalk. “Leave him alone,” he said over his shoulder, through gritted teeth. “He can’t help you.”

REMY STOOD on the second floor of what appeared to be an old warehouse, in front of a heavy door, a kind of roughed metal, brushed and polished until it gleamed like a rocket. He looked around, then opened the door and stepped in the entryway of a huge loft apartment, unfurnished and mostly unfinished: exposed bricks and beams, joists and pipes hanging above stained wood floors, the whole thing feeling cold and exposed, lacking the civility and cover provided by basic drywall and carpet. “Hello?” he called out. “Anyone here?”

“In here,” came a man’s voice. Remy made his way through a long narrow living room, rough brick on the opposite wall and two big windows at the far end of the room. A small kitchen was on the right, with an angled slate counter lined with corrugated aluminum and a metal hood resting above a gas stove and oven. A young couple was standing next to the stairs, the man in faded jeans and a ski cap, the woman in form-fitting black pants. They both had the kind of windswept blond hair that made Remy think of places in Colorado he’d never actually seen.

“ – not that I think holding out for a six-burner is worth losing this place,” the woman was saying. Then she and her husband both looked up at Remy.

“Oh, hey,” the windswept man said. “She’s up there.”

“Up there?” Remy asked, looking at the open staircase.

“Yeah, man,” he said, “she was showing us this apartment and she got a phone call about something and she just lost it, man.”

“She didn’t seem right even before that,” the woman said to her husband.

“She was fine,” the man snapped, as if they’d been arguing the point. “But after the phone call she seemed really… spooked.”

“She locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out,” the woman said.

“We didn’t know what to do,” said the husband. “We told her through the door that we were going to call the agency, and that’s when she said she was going to call someone else instead. I’m assuming that was you?”

“I assume so,” Remy said. He started up the staircase, which was lined with cast iron poles topped with what looked like bowling pins. Remy stepped closer and looked upstairs, where he saw a mural painted on the ceiling, a kind of sunspot, dark in the center with yellow drips of flame leading away.