The Zero

He ran back and pitched the ringing cell phone into a garbage can.

THEY UNDRESSED quietly, and began making love, and at first Remy found himself hurrying, afraid that he would lose track before they finished. “Hey, hey,” she whispered. “Slow down. I’m not going anywhere.” And indeed, there was a syrupy languor in this hotel room in the late afternoon that caused him to believe her, and they fell into a rhythm that seemed to go on all afternoon, until Remy found himself experiencing a kind of overwhelming sentience that was disco

“Well,” she gasped when he fell off her. “That was certainly… a lot of sex.” She rubbed his belly and pulled a sheet across her own midsection as they lay on the big king-size bed, breathing deeply. She put her head on Remy’s chest. “What’s the opposite of premature?” she asked. “Postmature?”

“Sorry,” he said, and he remembered Nicole, and squeezed his eyes shut to make her go away, lost in the swirl of failing tissue.

“Were you going for some kind of endurance record? Or just seeing if you could make me taller?”

“I was distracted,” he said. “Sorry.”

“No, it was nice,” she said. “I always wondered what it would be like to have sex with an oil derrick.”

Remy stood next to the bed.

“Go get me a wheelchair and we’ll go to di

He walked to the window and looked outside. The sidewalks were full of people with briefcases, making their way down the city’s hills, leaning back as they walked, as if they were being sucked down into the creases of the city, as if they were winding down a drain.

“Every man has the same ass,” April said, leaning up in bed. “When you’re young they’re all different, but by the time you get to a certain age… same ass. So why is that? There are a thousand varieties of women’s asses, but you all have the same one.”

Remy came back to bed. April had gotten a little bottle of wine from the minibar, and she drank from it with one hand while she held the remote in the other, ru

“I can’t see anything,” he said. “What are you watching?”

“Electrons,” she said.

So he watched electrons with her, the screen flickering with transient images, and every once in a while he caught one, but they all seemed like pictures from an older America: a woman drove a farm truck; someone ran on a soccer field; a house burned; a couple was married; and then there were the faces, thousands of faces that failed to register anything but the idea of a single shifting face. Aside from the speed, there was something hypnotic and familiar, something intoxicating in this view of life, something that he recalled knowing. But finally the fluttering television was too much like the disorder in his eyes and Remy had to turn away. He reached for the room service menu. “Want to get a real bottle of wine?”

“That,” she said, patting him on the thigh, “is exactly what I want.”

Remy was flipping past the di

“We have to leave.” Remy got up and began dressing, the menu open on the bed below him to the di

AT NIGHT the homeless in San Francisco operate like cabbies, she explained to him as they hurried down the block. “Trust me, I know this city. If you make eye contact, they’ll offer to give you directions or walk with you to where you’re going. There’s a whole underground city of the homeless and they come up at night to get money for wine and slices of pizza. And there is always one willing to show you to your hotel for a buck or two, or take you to the best club or restaurant. They all know each other and they wave at each other when they pass, and sometimes roll their eyes, just like cabbies with bad fares. I think there’s even a union,” April said, “like the Five-One-Six or something, the international brotherhood of the homeless and indigent.”

She talked as they hustled down the street with only their carry-on bags, Remy occasionally looking back over his shoulder. He saw what looked like a flash of Markham’s Hawaiian shirt a block back, in a crush of people waiting to cross Geary. Remy and April walked two blocks to Sutter, doubled back, and ducked into a dark corner hotel, the lobby bustling with a Japanese tour group waiting to go to di

“We should go with them,” April said. “Pretend we don’t speak English. Take pictures of everything. Buy postcards and snow globes.”

Remy pulled her through the lobby and out a side door, where they were met by a black man in torn jeans and an engineer’s cap. His teeth were gray and placed at random, a handful on top, fewer on bottom.

“You folks need directions?” the man asked. “I know this city better’n you know your wife’s poodum.”

“We’ll need to see your union card,” April laughed.

The man ignored her as Remy fumbled in his pocket for cash. He handed the man a five-dollar bill. “There’s a white guy in a Hawaiian shirt. Brown hair, really young looking. If he comes this way, I need you to stall him. Ask him for money, knock him down, anything.”

They kept moving, zigging up streets and down their crosses as April turned and read the marquees of theaters and the names of stores and bars. Finally, Remy pulled her into a hotel lounge and they sank low into a table in the corner. “We’ll just sit here for a while and then I’ll go check in,” Remy said.

“That sounds nice,” said April sweetly, drunkenly. “We can wear wigs and grow mustaches so no one recognizes us. And I’ll learn to sew. I’ll sew all our food. We’ll live off the grid, in a cabin built from empty wine bottles.” When the waitress came he ordered whiskey for himself and a glass of red wine for April. Remy looked back over his shoulder to the street outside. Faces moved past like the flickering images on the TV.

April rubbed her foot against his leg. “We could take off all our clothes and crawl under the table,” April said. “They’ll never think to look for us there.”

The waitress brought their drinks and Remy drained his whiskey and gestured for another.

April raised her wineglass. “Just for the record, Mr. Remy, I am having the time of my life.”

Remy smiled. “Good.” But then he had a troubling thought. He picked up his menu and leafed through it quickly, ru