The Zero Read Online Free PDF Page B

china. About six months before the divorce, Carla had declared that she needed to start living my life or else go crazy, and the next day she’d opened the big oak cabinet and begun using their good wedding china for every meal; that morning, Remy came downstairs to find little Edgar eating Cap’n Crunch in a shallow, hand-painted bone bowl. Six months later, Remy and Carla were separated.
    Steve pried his lips from the rim of a Bud Light. “Personally? I don’t see that it matters who we bomb, long as we do it while we still got the upper hand. Line ’em up. Clean house. But I don’t need to tell you that, right?”
    “No. You don’t.” Remy looked up at a triptych of school portraits above the mantle: brilliant Edgar at six, at ten, and now at sixteen, long black hair parted on the side and swooped in a spit over the front of his lineless forehead. He was wearing a rugby shirt and sticking his bottom lip out in this latest picture, not defiant, but like someone contemplating the workings of the camera. He didn’t look much like Remy anymore, not like when he was little, when Remy would look at Edgar and fight the urge to feel for the pieces that had been taken from him to make the boy.
    “See, we’re never going to have a better excuse,” Steve continued. “I’d use the Times as my guide. Go to the UN and say, ‘Let’s make a deal. If your country shows up on the front page of the Times for anything other than a travel feature, you’re toast.’ We should’ve had the Stealth bombers in the air before the smoke cleared.”
    “The smoke hasn’t cleared,” Remy said quietly.
    “My point exactly!” Steve swallowed a big mouthful and pointed the neck of the beer bottle at Remy. “See? You know what I’m talkin’ about. Don’t waste time separating guilty from innocent. Let them sort it through later.”
    Remy cleared his throat— start living my life or else go crazy —and leaned forward. “Steve? Do you think you could tell me what I’m doing here?”
    “That’s exactly what I mean!” Steve sat back on the couch. “If we ain’t gonna make the assholes pay…what are any of us doin’ here?”
    “I mean…could you tell me where Carla is?”
    “Well…I think she agrees with me on this, but you know how women are, Brian. A little squishy when it comes to actually pulling the trigger.”
    “I mean where she is physically, Steve. And Edgar?”
    Steve laughed. “That’s good. You’re so funny, man. I tell people that. You’re hilarious. I tell people, if I was Carla, I might’ve stayed with you. You’re a hell of a lot funnier than me. You could even make an argument that you’re better looking, although, classically, I’d probably be considered more handsome. And younger. Obviously. And I make more money.” He waved his hand around the house. “I’m taller…more of a man’s man, probably, athletically…although you, being a former cop and all, could probably kick my ass if you wanted…at least back in the day…are you losing weight?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “What size pants you wear?”
    “I don’t know…thirty-two.”
    “What about the length?”
    Remy looked down. “Thirty-three?”
    “Thirty-two, thirty-three? No shit?” Steve stood up and lifted his shirt, patted a wide stomach. “I’m a thirty-five, thirty-four now. That’s when it starts getting messed up for guys, when our waists get bigger than our inseams. No shit, right?”
    Remy took a drink of coffee and closed his eyes, wondering if he could induce a gap, open his eyes and find himself somewhere else. He watched the marionettes dance behind his lids for a while, tracking their drift across the vitreous. When Remy opened his eyes, Steve was still there, watching him intently.
    Remy heard footsteps on the stairs and nearly cried out in relief asCarla came up the stairs, lips drawn tight, followed closely by the loping Edgar. Carla wore thin, tight, low-waisted teenager jeans, a big, wide-necked