Below Zero

“Sit down on the bed, Alex,” Stenko said. To her: “I have a gun.”

“He has a gun,” Alex repeated, bumping into her bed clumsily, then turning and sitting down hard. She barely moved her leg in time to avoid the weight of him.

“What’s this about?” she asked Alex. “I can’t believe you brought a man in here with you.”

“Keep your voice down, please,” Stenko said. “I don’t want either one of you to get hurt.”

“Hurt?” she asked. “What does he want, Alex?”

“He’ll tell you,” Alex said.

She wanted Alex to stand up and protect her, to charge Stenko, to knock him down to the floor. But Alex just sat there, heavy, his head down and his shoulders slumped more than usual and his hands between his knees.

There was so little light from the bathroom that she could barely make out Stenko as he grabbed a chair from the desk, turned it backward, and sat down with his legs spread. Stenko rested his arms on the back of the chair and leaned forward, putting his chin on his forearms. He held a long-barreled pistol in a big fist, but it was pointed away from them.

“What do you want?” she asked Stenko directly.

“You’re not going to believe it,” Alex said, slowly shaking his head from side to side. He smelled of alcohol and cigar smoke. “We met in the bar.”

“Obviously,” she said, anger starting to replace fear.

Stenko said, “I need you to listen carefully to what I have to say.”

She reached out from beneath the covers and hit Alex in the shoulder with her open palm. “Alex, do something!”

Alex didn’t move.

But Stenko sighed and swung the pistol over, pointed it vaguely at both of them. She saw a smudge of white thumb in the murk and heard him cock the revolver.

“I said listen,” Stenko said in a whisper.

She found Alex’s biceps, squeezed it hard and not affectionately.

Stenko said, “With the size of the wedding, the number of guests, how far they’re all traveling here . . . Wow. It’s quite a big operation.”

She shook her head, puzzled.

Stenko said, “When I got married—the first time, I mean—we did it before Judge Komicek at the courthouse. Marie’s parents and her best friend, Julie, were there, and I had my mom and all three of the Talich Brothers. That’s all—less than ten guests. This was Chicago. The whole thing was over in fifteen minutes. No big deal. Then we moved into a little two-bedroom bungalow off Division Street. And when it was over, we were just as married as you two will be. But it was simple. No impact.”

After a beat, she asked, “So?”

“Marie is the mother of my son, Robert, by the way. I’ve had other wives and other kids, but Marie, Robert, and my daughter Carmen were my first and best family. Marie knew what I did, but she didn’t want to know any details, and now that I think about it, that was the happiest time in my life. We were struggling, Marie was pregnant with Carmen, and I was happy but I just didn’t realize it at the time. I was too damned impatient.”

She cleared her throat. “What does that have to do with us?”

“I’m getting there,” Stenko said. “Alex, does she always talk this much? It doesn’t bode well, if you ask me.”

“No one asked you,” she snapped.

“Here’s the deal,” Stenko said, ignoring her. His voice was soft but flat, midwestern. “Here’s the deal. I was a hard-charger. Ambitious, ruthless, I guess. I had a certain affinity for Chicago politics and business, and all the guys I grew up with went into one or the other. Except for the ones who became cops, but they’re still friends of mine. So what I did those first few years after marrying Marie was I bulldozed anyone in my path. I fuckin’ ran over ’em, is what I’m saying. I was a force of nature: Stenko. No one was safe unless they were on my side helping me get what I wanted. I figured there were two kinds of people—those who supported me and those that needed to be bulldozed.

“But then I got the word from my docs. And I looked up and thought, Where is Marie? Where is Carmen? Where is Robert? Hell, I liked Marie. She’d sing to me and she was pretty good. Robert, he was always a little too melodramatic, but he was my first. So when I got the word from my docs, I thought, What a selfish bastard I am. Like you two. I took and I took and I never gave anything back. I consumed. Now I’ve got this deficit I’m trying to pay down. I’m trying to get below zero, but I’m in a time crunch and my friends and associates all cheated me, kicked me when I was down. So the reason I’m here is to help us both out.”

She said, “Below zero?”

“You can do it, too,” Stenko said. “This is your chance. If only I’d had this opportunity early in life. If only somebody would have shown me how to do it.”

Stenko sighed and got quiet. As the seconds went on, her fear returned.

“Anyway,” Stenko said finally, his voice still hushed, “that’s why I’m here. My son figured it all out. That’s what he does. He cares. Eight grand—that’s how much you owe the planet, and I’m here to collect. Let’s start with the eight grand to offset the carbon produced by all the people attending this wedding.”

She dug her nails into Alex’s arm until he winced and pulled away. She said to Stenko, “What right do you have to say that? This is extortion. You’re insane.”

Stenko said, “I’m only getting started, Patty. The average American produces twenty tons of carbon a year. I