The Zero Game

“I was…” He grabbed his funny bone, holding it in pain. “Aaah… I was wondering the same about you.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’ve been waiting for almost an hour. He finally got up and left.”

“He was already here?”

“And gone,” Lowell replied. “Where were you?”

Janos’s forehead wrinkled in anger. “You said ten o’clock,” he insisted.

“I said nine.”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“I swear, I said nine.”

“I heard you say-” Janos cut himself off. He studied Lowell carefully. The sting from the funny bone was long past, but Lowell was still crouched over, cradling his elbow and refusing to make eye contact. If Janos could see Lowell’s expression, he’d also see the panic on Lowell’s face. Lowell may be weak, but he wasn’t an asshole. Harris was still a friend.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Janos warned.

Lowell quickly looked up, his eyes wide with fear. “Never… I’d never do that…”

Janos narrowed his glance, studying him carefully.

“I swear to you,” Lowell added.

Janos continued to stare. A second passed. Then two.

Janos’s arm sprang out like a wildcat, palming Lowell by the face and slamming his head back into the driver’s-side window. Refusing to let go, Janos pulled back and smashed him against the glass again. Lowell grabbed Janos’s wrist, fighting to break his grip. Janos didn’t stop. With a final shove, he put all his weight behind it. The window finally cracked from the impact, leaving a jagged vein zigzagging across the glass.

Slumped down in his seat, Lowell held his head from the pain. He felt a trickle of blood skating down the back of his neck. “A-Are you nuts?”

Without saying a word, Janos opened the door and stepped into the warm night air.

It took Lowell twenty minutes to get his bearings. When he got home, he told his wife some kid on Sixteenth Street threw a rock at the car.

16

“THERE – HE’S DOING it again,” Viv Parker said Monday afternoon, pointing to the elderly Senator from Illinois.

“Where?”

“Right there...”

Across the Floor of the Senate, in the third row of antique desks, the senior Senator from Illinois looked down, away from Viv.

“Sorry, still don’t see it,” Devin whispered as the gavel banged behind them.

As pages for the United States Senate, Viv and Devin sat on the small carpeted steps on the side of the rostrum, literally waiting for the phone to blink. It never took long. Within a minute, a low buzz erupted from the phone, and a small orange light hiccuped to life. But neither Viv nor Devin picked it up.

“Floor, this is Thomas,” a blond-headed page with a Virginia twang answered as he shot to his feet. Viv wasn’t sure why he stood up for every call. When she asked Thomas, he said it was part for decorum, part to be prepared in case he had to spot a passing Senator. Personally, Viv thought there was only one “part” that really mattered: to show off the fact that he was head page. Even at the bottom of the totem pole, hierarchy was king.

“Yep – I’m on it,” the head page said into the receiver. As he hung up the phone, he looked over to Viv and Devin. “They need one,” he explained.

Nodding, Devin stood from his seat at the rostrum and dashed off toward the cloakroom.

Still on the rostrum, Viv glanced over at the Senator from Illinois, who again raised his head and leveled a leering glare directly at her. Viv tried to look away, but she couldn’t ignore it. It was as if he were squinting straight through her chest. Fidgeting with the Senate ID around her neck, she wondered if that’s what he was staring at. It wouldn’t surprise her. The ID was her ticket in. From day one, she was worried someone would step in and snatch it back. Or maybe he was staring at her cheap navy suit… or the fact that she was black… or that she was taller than most pages, including the boys. Five feet ten and a half inches – and that was without her beat-up shoes and the close-cropped Afro that she wore just like her mom’s.

The phone buzzed quietly behind her. “Floor, this is Thomas,” the head page said as he shot to his feet. “Yep – I’m on it.” He turned to Viv as he hung up the phone. “They need one…”

Nodding, Viv stood from her seat but carefully stared down at the blue-carpeted floor in a final attempt to avoid the glance of the Senator from Illinois. Her skin color, she could handle. Same with her height – like her mom taught, don’t apologize for what God gave you. But if it was her suit, as stupid as it sounded, well… some things hit home. Since the day they started, all twenty-nine of her fellow pages loved to complain about the uniform requirement. Every Senate page bitched about it. Everyone but Viv. As she knew from her school back in Michigan, the only people who moan about required uniforms are the ones who can compete in the fashion show.

“Move it, Viv – they need someone now,” the head page called out from the rostrum.