Down in the Zero

'Yes. They said to tell you— it triggers off a sensor when anyone goes in there.'

I rung off. Pulled out the cellular, dialed.

'Hello?' Sonny answered.

'It's me,' I said. 'Where are you?'

'At the diner. Remember where— '

I could hear the noise in the background. 'Yeah. You headed back to the house?'

'No, not for a while. We were gonna— '

'Do that. Whatever. Understand? Can you stay past midnight, stay away from the house?'

'Sure.'

'Okay, champ. See you tomorrow morning.'

By the time Fancy came back with her arms full of take–out, I was watching her through the windshield of the Lexus.

It was dark when we got back. I sent Fancy over to the big house, told her what to do. I went upstairs to the apartment, turned on the radio and a couple of lights. Then I came back out, walked over to the house. No lights on in the kitchen. I kept going through to the living room. Fancy had the floor set up like a picnic, the glow from some candles casting murky shadows.

'It looks great,' I said, sitting down on the floor.

'How come you didn't want any lights, honey?'

'Don't talk with your mouth full,' I told her.

'But my mouth isn't full. I didn't start to eat— I waited for you.'

'Now I'm here,' I said, helping myself to what looked like a deli plate: chunky tuna, potato salad, cole slaw.

We ate quietly, in companionable silence. I complimented Fancy on her choice of food, listened with half an ear as she ran through all the mall choices she'd had to make, why she settled on deli instead of Chinese, how it wasn't good to eat a heavy meal so late, something about cholesterol…

It was nearing ten o'clock by the time we finished the meal and cleaned it up. Fancy insisted on wrapping whatever we didn't eat, putting it away in the refrigerator. 'Maybe Sonny'll want a snack when he comes home,' she said.

While she was bustling around, I looked under the pillows in the living room couch. I found the videocassette, turned on the VCR, shoved in the cassette, started it running and hit the Pause button. The screen was all visual static, like dirty snow.

Fancy came back in. 'Blow out the candles and come over here, girl.'

She did it quick enough, sitting next to me expectantly.

'What, honey?'

'Watch,' I said.

I hit the Play button on the remote. A brief flicker and it snapped into life. Fancy walking across the threshold of the white room.

'Burke! What is this? Where— ?'

'Just watch for a minute,' I said, holding her hand tight.

The whole scene played out from a few hours ago. Now that I knew how it worked, I could see the camera shots were mechanical, the zooms unplanned. The tape ran back into gray trailer right after we exited the room. Fancy burst into sobs, trying to pull away from me.

'Oh God! Why did you do that? You…who was there? How could you? I would have…if you'd just asked…'

'Come here, girl. Listen to me.'

'No! You filthy bastard!'

'Fancy, it's all on tape. It's got nothing to do with me.'

'I don't believe you. If you didn't set it up— '

'Stay here,' I told her. 'Don't move.' I walked over to the VCR, popped out the cassette, shoved in the copy I'd had made from the video I'd lifted from Cherry's safe. I hit the Play button again, walked back over to the couch. As soon as Fancy saw herself facing the camera, unzipping her skirt as the man on the bed behind her watched, she broke.

'That was over a year ago, that tape,' she said, later. She was sitting on the floor in front of the couch, her back between my legs, my hands on her shoulders.

'There'll be a whole lot of them, Fancy. Every time you went into that room. The camera setup works automatically— it doesn't need an operator.'

'I'll kill her.'

'Who?'

'Cherry.'

'It wasn't her, baby.'