The Zero Game

The door slams with a bang, and Harris yanks the envelope from my hands. If we were in college, I’d tackle him and grab it back. Not anymore. Today, the games are bigger.

Harris slides his finger along the flap and casually flips it open. I don’t know how he keeps his composure. My blond hair is already damp with sweat; his black locks are dry as hay.

Searching for calm, I turn toward the Grand Canyon photo on the wall. The first time my parents took me there, I was fifteen years old – and already six feet tall. Staring down from the south rim of the canyon was the first time in my life I felt small. I feel the same way next to Harris.

“What’s it say?” I demand.

He peeks inside and stays totally silent. If the bet’s been raised, there’ll be a new receipt inside. If we’re top dog, our old slip of paper is the only thing we’ll find. I try to read his face. I don’t have a prayer. He’s been in politics too long. The crease in his forehead doesn’t twitch. His eyes barely blink.

“I don’t believe it,” he finally says. He pulls out the taxi receipt and cups it in the palm of his hand.

“What?” I ask. “Did he raise it? He raised it, didn’t he? We’re dead…”

“Actually,” Harris begins, looking up to face me and slowly raising an excited eyebrow, “I’d say we’re very much alive.” In his hand he flashes the taxi receipt like a police badge. It’s my handwriting. Our old bet. For six thousand dollars.

I laugh out loud the moment I see it.

“It’s payday, Matthew. Now, you ready to name that tune…?”

5

“MORNING, ROXANNE,” I call out as I enter the office the following day. “We all set?”

“Just like you asked,” she replies without looking up.

Crossing into the back room, I find Dinah, Connor, and Roy in their usual positions at their desks, already lost in paperwork and Conference notes. This time of year, that’s all we do – build the twenty-one-billion-dollar Rosemary’s Baby.

“They’re waiting for you in the hearing room,” Dinah points out.

“Thanks,” I say as I snatch my notebooks from my desk and head for the oversized beige door that leads next door.

It’s one thing to bet on the fact that I can sneak this item past the Senate folks and into the bill. It’s entirely another to make it happen.

“Nice to be on time,” Trish scolds as I enter the room.

I’m the last of the four horsemen to arrive. It’s intentional. Let ’ em think I ’m not anxious about the agenda. As usual, Ezra’s on my side of the oval table; Trish and Georgia, our Senate counterparts, are on the other. On the right-hand wall, there’s a black-and-white Ansel Adams photograph of Yosemite National Park. The photo shows the clear glass surface of the Merced River dominated by the snow-covered mountain peak of Half Dome overhead. Some people need coffee; I need the outdoors. Like the Grand Canyon picture in my office, the image brings instant calm.

“So, anything new?” Trish asks, wondering what I’ve got up my sleeve.

“Nope,” I reply, wondering the same about her. We both know the pre-Conference tango. Every day, there’s a new project that one of our bosses “forgot” to put in the bill. Last week, I gave her three hundred thousand dollars for manatee protection in Florida; she returned the favor by giving me four hundred thousand to fund a University of Michigan study of toxic mold. As a result, the Senator from Florida and the Congressman from Michigan now have something to brag about during the elections. Around here, the projects are known as “immaculate conceptions.” Political favors that – poof – appear right out of thin air.

I’ve got a mental list of every project – including the gold mine – that I need to squeeze in by the time pre-Conference is done. Trish has the same. Neither of us wants to show our hand first. So for two hours, we stick to the script.

“FDR’s presidential library,” Trish begins. “Senate gave it six million. You gave it four million.”

“Compromise at five mil?” I ask.

“Done.”

“Over to Philadelphia,” I say. “What about the new walkways for Independence Hall? We gave it nine hundred thousand; the Senate, for some reason, zeroed it out.”

“That was just to teach Senator Didio to keep his mouth shut. He took a crack at my boss in Newsweek. We’re not gonna stand for that.”

“Do you have any idea how vindictive and childish that is?”

“Not half as vindictive as what they do in Transpo. When one of the Senators from North Carolina pissed off that subcommittee Chairman, they cut Amtrak’s funding so the trains wouldn’t stop in Greensboro.”

I shake my head. Gotta love appropriators. “So you’ll give full funding to the Liberty Bell?”

“Of course,” Trish says. “Let freedom ring.”

By noon, Trish is looking at her watch, ready for lunch. If she’s got a project in her pants, she’s playing it extra cool – which is why, for the first time today, I start wondering if I should put mine out there first.

“Meet back here at one?” she asks. I nod and slam my three-ring binder shut. “By the way,” she adds as I head back to my office, “there’s one other thing I almost forgot…”