Below Zero

spent a lot of time with my pal Alex tonight and he filled me in on both of you. According to your fiancee, between the two of you, you’ll have three homes and an extravagant lifestyle. I got all the particulars from Alex and fed them to my son, Robert. It’s pretty amazing. With the homes, the travel you people do on commercial and private jets, your fleet of vehicles at each place, you two will produce seven thousand tons of carbon a year. Robert says there are entire villages in Africa that won’t produce that much over a decade. To offset that, it would cost over thirty-five K per year helping the environment.

“My God,” Patty said. “This is ridiculous. My family contributes to all kinds of environmental causes. My mother hosts the Think Green fund-raiser in San Diego every year! Have you ever heard of Think Green?”

Stenko said, “No, I haven’t. Robert didn’t say anything about that. But he did figure that with your seven tons a year and a life expectancy of sixty more years for Patty and fifty more for Alex, that you two alone will do $2.1 million in damage in your lifetime. That’s more than some pissant countries,” he said. “I can’t remember which ones. They have goofy names I never heard of. Sierra Leone? Burma? Maybe—hell, I don’t know which countries. Robert’s the expert, not me.”

“What is your point?” she asked. “I mean, if you’re here to make us buy some of those carbon credit things, I’m sure we can. Will you go away and leave us alone if we do?”

She could see his smile in the light of the bathroom. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly why I’m here.”

“We’ll do it,” she said. “We’ll pay the eight thousand for the wedding tomorrow. I swear. Now would you please go away?”

“You’ll do it now,” Stenko said, his voice hardening. “And you’ll have to do the entire amount. Alex has the paper with the wire transfer numbers on it. You can use the phone and call it in.”

She shook her auburn hair and rubbed her eyes. “Alex,” she said, “Send the money.”

“From my account?” Alex said, hurt.

“For Christ’s sake,” she said, “you have eight thousand fucking dollars you can part with if it’ll make him go away.”

Alex stared at her. “He wants the whole $2.1 million.”

“My God,” she said, closing her eyes tightly as if it would make it all go away. “He told you already, Alex? And when he told you, you brought him to my room?”

Stenko said, “The place you’re sending the money is a legitimate enterprise. From what Robert tells me, they’ll use the cash to buy up rain forest, plant trees and shit. And take farmland out of production. They invest in windmills and solar panels. Things like that. It’s a wonderful investment in the future of our planet. It’s the best thing you could possibly do for yourselves, for me, for all of us.”

“You’re not kidding, are you?” she said, eyeing him, looking at a ghost in the dark. But one with a gun. And he raised it, straightened his arm, and pointed it at her eyes. The black muzzle was rimmed with silver.

He shook his head. “You owe us,” Stenko said. “You owe the world.”

“You’re crazy,” she said.

“Worse than that,” Stenko said, “I’m desperate.” Was that the glint of tears in his eyes?

“What if we did it in payments?” she asked.

“I don’t have the time.”

“That’s too much,” she said with finality.

“Tell that to all of those Third Worlders who died in that tsunami caused by global warming,” Stenko said, speaking the words as if by rote, “or those poor stupid polar bears clinging to their last piece of melting ice. What are their lives worth?

“I’ll tell you what Robert tells me,” Stenko said. “It isn’t about you. It’s about all of us. We all have to do what we can, not what we want to do.”

“But we do so much,” Patty said, tears in her eyes. “I told you about Think Green. We recycle, don’t we, Alex? And we replaced all of our lightbulbs. You know, with the ones that don’t work very well? And one of my cars is a Prius. It’s not like I don’t care.”

“Then show me how much you care,” Stenko said. “You’ve got two minutes to make the wire transfer.”

They stared at each other in silence for the first minute. She wanted Alex to help her, to agree with her out loud. To stomp the living shit out of this Stenko.

“Do something,” she said to Alex.

He sighed.

Through gritted teeth, she said, “Send the goddamn money, Alex. You’ve got it. It’s not like you won’t get more.”

She leaned forward until her lips brushed Alex’s ear, whispered, “Do it. There have to be ways of canceling a wire transfer after its been made. We’ll call the police and my dad and get it canceled.”

Alex snorted, looked away.

“Alex, you’ve got the money,” she said.

“So do you,” Alex said, sullen.

She was shocked, and she sat back and glared at the side of Alex’s head, thinking that perhaps she hated him.

“I don’t care which of you does it,” Stenko said, “we’re running out of time.”

“It’ll have to be you,” Alex said to her.