The Zero

THE DOOR of another apartment. He could hear 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 a

Guterak looked thi

“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 go

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 pa

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 De

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 De

“Jesus, Paul,” Remy began.

“Shhh,” said Tara.

The detective asked De

“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 su

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