Zero Game (23 page)

“I can barely see . . . !”

“Your eyes’ll adjust!”

“The ceiling—!” she screams. Her voice gets cut off.

I give her a second, but nothing comes back.

“Viv, everything okay?”

No response.

“Viv . . . ? Are you there?!”

Dead silence.

“VIV!"
I shout at the top of my lungs, just to make sure she hears it.

Still nothing.

My jaw tightens, the silence sinks in, and for the first time since I left, I start wondering if we’re the only ones down here. If Janos caught a different flight—

“Just keep talking, Harris!” her voice finally rings through the air. She must’ve entered the main stretch of tunnel. Her voice is clearer . . . less of an echo.

“Are you—?”

“Just keep talking!” she shouts, stuttering slightly. Something’s definitely wrong. I tell myself it’s just her fear of being trapped underground, but as the silence once again descends, I can’t help but think it’s something worse. “Tell me about work . . . your parents . . . anything . . .” she begs. Whatever else is going on, she needs something to take her mind off it.

“M-My first day in the Senate,” I begin, “I was riding the metro to work, and as I got on board, there was an ad—I forget what it was for—but the ad said,
Reach Beyond
Yourself
. I remember staring at it the entire—”

“Don’t give me locker room speeches—I saw
Rudy
!” she shouts. “Tell me something real!”

It’s a simple request, but I’m surprised how long it takes me to come up with an answer.

“Harris . . . !”

“I make breakfast for Senator Stevens every morning!” I blurt. “When we’re in session, I have to pick him up at his house at seven
A.M
., go inside, and make him Cracklin’ Oat Bran with fresh blueberries . . .”

There’s a short pause.

“You serious?” Viv asks. She’s still wavering, but I hear the laughter in the back of her throat.

I smile to myself. “The man’s so insecure, he makes me walk him to every vote on the Floor, just in case he’s cornered by another Member. And he’s so cheap, he doesn’t even go to dinner anymore without bringing a lobbyist. That way, he doesn’t have to pick up the bill . . .”

After the pause, I hear a single word from Viv: “More . . .”

“Last month, Stevens turned sixty-three . . . We threw four different birthday parties for him—each one a thousand-dollar-a-plate fundraiser—and at each one, we told the invitees it was the only party he was having. We spent fifty-nine thousand on salmon and some birthday cake—we raked in over two hundred grand . . .” I sit up on my knees, shouting into the darkness. “In his office, there’s a homerun baseball from when the Atlanta Braves won the World Series a few years back. It’s even signed by Jimmy Carter—but the Senator was never meant to keep it. They asked him to sign it, and he never gave it back.”

“You making that up . . . ?”

“Two years ago, at a fundraiser, a lobbyist handed me a check for the Senator—I handed it back and said,
‘Not enough.’
Right to his face.”

I hear her laugh. That one she likes.

“When I finished college, I was such an idealist, I started and quickly dropped out of a graduate theological program. Even Matthew didn’t know that. I wanted to help people, but the God part kept getting in the way . . .”

From the silence, I know I’ve got her attention. I just have to bring her in. “I helped redraft the bankruptcy law, but since I’m still paying back my Duke loans, I have five different MasterCards,” I tell her. “My most distinctive memory from childhood is catching my dad crying in the boys’ department of Kmart because he couldn’t afford to buy me a three-pack of white Fruit of the Loom undershirts and had to buy the Kmart label instead . . .” My voice starts to sag. “I spend too much time worrying what other people think of me . . .”

“Everyone does,” Viv calls back.

“When I was in college, I worked in an ice-cream store, and when customers would snap their fingers to get my attention, I’d break off the bottom of their cone with a flick of my pinky, so when they were a block or two away, their ice cream would drip all over them . . .”

“Harris . . .”

“My real name is
Harold
, in high school they called me
Harry
, and when I got to college, I changed it to
Harris
because I thought it’d make me sound more like a leader . . . Next month—if I still have a job—even though I’m not supposed to, I’ll probably leak the name of the new Supreme Court nominee to the
Washington Post
just to prove I’m part of the loop . . . And for the past week, despite my best efforts to ignore it, I’m really feeling the fact that with Matthew and Pasternak gone, after ten years on Capitol Hill, there’s no one . . . I don’t have any real friends . . .”

As I say the words, I’m on my knees, cradling my stomach and curling down toward the floor. My head sinks so low, I feel the tips of the rocks press against my forehead. A sharp one digs in just under my hairline, but there’s no pain. There’s no anything. As the realization hits, I’m completely numb—as hollow as I’ve been since the day they unveiled my mom’s headstone. Right next to my dad’s.

“Harris . . .” Viv calls out.

“I’m sorry, Viv—that’s all I’ve got,” I reply. “Just follow the sound.”

“I’m trying,” she insists. But unlike before, her voice doesn’t boomerang through the room. It’s coming directly from my right. Picking up my head, I trace the noise just as the darkness cracks. Up ahead, the neck of the tunnel blinks into existence with the faint glow of light—like a lighthouse turning on in the midst of an ocean. I have to squint to adjust.

From the depths of the tunnel, the light turns my way, glowing at me.

I look away just long enough to collect my thoughts. By the time I turn back, I’ve got a smile pressed into place. But the way Viv’s light shines directly at me, I know what she sees.

“Harris, I’m really sorry . . .”

“I’m fine,” I insist.

“I didn’t ask how you were.” Her tone is soft and reassuring. There’s not an ounce of judgment in it.

I look up at her. The light’s glowing from the top of her head.

“What, you ain’t never seen a guardian angel with an Afro before? There’s like, fourteen of us up in Heaven.”

She turns her head so the light no longer blinds me. It’s the first time we make eye contact. I can’t help but grin. “Sweet Mocha . . .”

“. . . to the rescue,” she says, completing my thought. Standing over me, she lifts her arms like a bodybuilder, flexing her muscles. It’s not just the pose. Her shoulders are square. Her feet are planted deep. I couldn’t knock her over with a wrecking ball. Forget reserves—the well’s overflowing. “Now who’s ready to get down to Viv-ness?” she asks.

Extending a hand, she offers to pull me up. I’ve never been averse to accepting someone’s help, but as she wiggles her fingers and waits for me to take her up on it, I’m done worrying about every possible consequence.
What do I owe her? What does she need? What’s this gonna cost me?
After ten years in Washington, I’ve gotten to the point where I look suspiciously at the supermarket cashier when she offers
paper or plastic.
On the Hill, an offer for help is always about something else. I look up at Viv’s open hand. Not anymore.

Without hesitation, I reach upward. Viv grabs my hand in her own and gives me a hard tug to get me back on my feet. It’s exactly what I needed.

“I’ll never tell anyone, Harris.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

She thinks about it for a moment.

“Did you really do that thing with the ice-cream cones?”

“Only to the real jerk-offs.”

“So . . . uh . . . hypothetically, if I was working at some unnamed burger place, and some woman with a bad fake tan and some trendy haircut she saw in
Cosmo
came in and ripped my head off, telling me I’d be working there for the rest of my life—just because her food was taking too long—if I went in the back and theoretically hocked a back-of-the-throat loogie into her Diet Coke, then mixed it in with a bendy straw, would that make me a bad person?”

“Hypothetically? I’d say you get points for the bendy straw, but it’s still pretty darn gross.”

“Yeah,” she says proudly. “It was.” Looking at me, she adds, “Nobody’s perfect, Harris. Even if everyone else thinks you are.”

I nod, continuing to hold her hand. There’s only one light between us, but as long as we stay together, it’s more than enough. “So you ready to see what they’re digging for down here?” I ask.

“Do I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice.”

As she shoves her shoulders back, there’s a new confidence in her silhouette. Not from what she did for me—what she did for herself. She looks out toward the tunnel on my left, her mine light carving through the dark. “Just hurry up before I change my mind.”

I plow forward along the rocks, deeper into the cavern. “Thank you, Viv—I mean it . . . thanks.”

“Yeah, yeah, and more yeah.”

“I’m serious,” I add. “You won’t regret it.”

45

K
ICKING THROUGH THE
gravel of the Homestead mine’s parking lot, Janos counted two motorcycles and a total of seventeen cars, most of them pickup trucks. Chevrolet . . . Ford . . . Chevrolet . . . GMC . . . All of them American-made. Janos shook his head. He understood the allegiance to a car, but not to a country. If the Germans bought the rights to build the Shelby Series One and moved the factory to Munich, the car would still be the car. A work of art.

Stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jean jacket and taking another hard glance at the trucks in the lot, he slowly sifted through the details: mud-covered wheel wells . . . dented rear quarter panels . . . beat-up front clips. Even on the trucks that were in the best shape, stripped wheel nuts betrayed the wear and tear. Out of the whole lot, only two trucks looked like they had ever met a car wash: the Explorer that Janos drove . . . and the jet black Suburban parked in the far corner.

Janos slowly made his way toward the truck. South Dakota plates like everyone else’s. But from what he could tell, the locals didn’t buy their trucks in black. The beating from the sun was always too much of a paint risk. Executive cars, however, were an entirely different story. The President always rode in black. So did the VP and the Secret Service. And sometimes, if they were big enough names, so did a few Senators. And their staffs.

Janos lightly put his hand on the driver’s-side door, caressing the polished finish. His own reflection bounced back at him from the shine in the window, but from what he could tell, no one was inside. Behind him, he heard a crush of loose gravel and, in an eye blink, spun to follow the sound.

“Whoa, sorry—didn’t mean to surprise you,” the man in the
Spring Break ’94
T-shirt said. “Just wanted to know if you needed some help.”

“I’m looking for my coworkers,” Janos said. “One’s about my height . . .”

“With the black girl—yeah, of course—I sent ’em inside,” Spring Break said. “So you’re from Wendell, too?”

“Inside where?” Janos asked, his voice as calm as ever.

“The dry,” the man said, pointing with his chin at the red brick building. “Follow the path—you can’t miss it.”

Waving good-bye with a salute from his mining helmet, the man headed back toward the construction trailers. And Janos marched straight toward the red brick building.

46

R
ETRACING MY STEPS,
I take Viv on the quick tour to catch her up to date.

“They can run a phone line down here, but they can’t build an outhouse?” she asks as we pass the red wagon. With each step, she tries to maintain the brave face, but the way her sweaty hand is gripping my own . . . the way she’s always at least a half-step or so behind me, it’s clear adrenaline fades fast. When she picks up the oxygen detector from the floor and looks down at the readout, I expect her to stop dead in her tracks. She doesn’t. But she does slow down.

“18.8?” she asks. “What happened to the 19.6 from the elevator?”

“The cage connects to the surface—it has to be higher up there. Believe me, Viv, I’m not going anywhere that’ll put us in danger.”

“Really?” she challenges. She’s done taking my word for it. “So where we are right now—this is no different than strolling by the Jefferson Memorial, taking photos with the cherry blossoms?”

“If it makes you feel better, the cherry blossoms don’t bloom until April.”

She looks around at the dark, mossy walls that’re splattered with mud. Then she shines the light in my face. I decide not to push back. For five minutes, we continue to weave slowly through the darkness. The ground slants slightly downward. As the never-ending hole takes us even deeper, the temperature keeps getting hotter. Viv’s behind me, trying to stay silent, but between the heat and the sticky air, she’s once again breathing heavy.

“You sure you’re . . . ?”

“Just keep going,” she insists.

For the next two hundred or so feet, I don’t say a word. It’s even hotter than when we started, but Viv doesn’t complain. “You okay back there?” I finally ask.

She nods behind me, and her light stretches out in front of us, bouncing up and down with the movements of her head. On the wall is another red spray-painted sign marked
Lift,
with an arrow pointing to a tunnel on our right.

“You sure we’re not going in circles?” she asks.

“The ground keeps going down,” I tell her. “I think most of these places are required to have a second elevator as a precaution—that way, if something goes wrong with one, no one gets trapped down here.”

It’s a nice theory, but it doesn’t slow Viv’s breathing. Before I can say another word, there’s a familiar tinkle in the distance.

“Leaky faucet?” Viv whispers.

“No question, it’s running water . . .” The sound’s too faint to trace. “I think it’s coming from up there,” I add as she points her light in the distance.

“You sure?” she asks, checking behind us.

“It’s definitely up there,” I say, rushing forward and trying to follow the sound.

“Harris, wait . . . !”

I start to run. A series of ear-splitting chirps rips through the air. The sound is deafening, like a nuclear assault warning. I freeze and look around. If we tripped an alarm . . .

Deeper down the tunnel, a bright headlight ignites, and an engine rumbles to life. It was down here all along, hidden in the dark. Before we can even react, it barrels toward us like an oncoming freight train.

Viv tries to take off. I tug her back by the wrist. The thing’s moving so fast, we’ll never outrun it. Better that we not look guilty.

The metal brakes grind to a halt a few feet in front of us. I follow Viv’s light as it shines across the side of the banged-up yellow car and the man who’s sitting inside it. The car looks like a miniature train engine without the roof. There’s a large spotlight attached to the hood. Behind the wheel is a bearded middle-aged man in a ratty old pair of overalls. He shuts the engine, and the chirping finally stops.

“Sorry about the heat—we’ll have it fixed up in the next few hours,” he offers.

“Fixed?”

“You think we like it like this?” he asks, using his mine light to circle the walls and ceiling. “We’re a belch shy of a hundred and thirty degrees . . .” He laughs to himself. “Even for eight thousand, that’s hot.” I quickly recognize the flat South Dakota accent of the man who came down in the cage before us. Garth, I think. Definitely Garth. But what catches my attention isn’t his name—it’s the tone in his voice. He’s not attacking. He’s apologizing. “Don’t worry,” he adds. “We got this at the top of the list.”

“Th-That’s great,” I reply.

“And now that the air conditioner and exhaust’s in place, we’ll have you seeing your breath in no time. You won’t be sweating like that anymore,” he adds, motioning to our soaked shirts.

“Thanks,” I laugh back, anxious to change the subject.

“No,
thank you
—if it weren’t for you guys, this place woulda still been boarded up. Once the gold was plucked, we didn’t think we had a shot.”

“Yeah, well . . . happy to help, Garth.” I throw in his name to get his attention—and to keep him from staring at Viv. As always, it does the trick. “So how’s it look otherwise?” I ask as he turns back to me.

“Right on time. You’ll see when you get down there. Everything’s in place,” he explains. “I should really get back, though . . . We got another shipment coming in. I just wanted to make sure we had the space ready.”

With a wave, he gets back in the man-car and starts the engine. The shrill scream of the chirping pierces the entire tunnel. Just a warning system as he drives through the dark—like the beeping sound when a big truck goes in reverse. As he races past us, the chirping fades just as fast.

“Whattya think?” Viv asks as I watch him disappear in the darkness.

“No idea. But from the sound of it, there’s no gold left down here.”

Nodding, Viv heads deeper into the mine. I stay with the man-car, making sure it’s gone.

“By the way, how’d you remember his name?” she adds.

“I don’t know—I’m just good with names.”

“See, nobody likes people like that.”

Behind me, I hear her feet crunching against the rocks. I’m still focused on the man-car. It’s almost gone.

“Hey, Harris . . .” she calls out.

“Hold on, I want to make sure he’s—”

“Harris, I think you should take a look at this . . .”

“C’mon, Viv—just gimme a second.”

Her voice is dry and flat. “Harris, I think you should take a look at this
now . . .”

I turn around, rolling my eyes. If she’s still worried about the—

Oh, jeez.

Up ahead . . . at the very end of the tunnel . . . I have to squint to make sure I’m seeing it right. The man-car was blocking it before, but now that it’s gone, we’ve got a clear view. Down at the lowest part of the tunnel, two brand-new shiny steel doors gleam in the distance. There’s a circular glass window cut into each one, and while we’re too far to see through them, there’s no mistaking the bright white glow that seeps out through the glass. Two pinholes in the darkness—like the fiery white eyes of the Cheshire cat.

“C’mon . . .” Viv calls out, dashing toward the doors.

“Wait!” I call out. It’s already too late. Her mine light bounces as she runs, and I chase behind the lightning bug as she weaves deeper into the cave.

The truth is, I don’t want to stop her. This is what we came for. The actual light at the end of the tunnel.