Zero History

33. BURJ
She got the iPhone out of her purse in the little bronze elevator, hit Heidi’s cell number as
she stepped out. It was ringing as she walked along the hallway, doors to her right, weird
twisted brown medieval timbers to her left. Heidi picked up as she was fiddling the key
into the lock.
“Fuck—” Against a wash of what sounded to Hollis like exclusively male pub ruckus.
“Tell me what’s happened to Garreth. Now.” She opened the door. Saw white towels
where she’d left them on the bed, the Blue Ant figurine on the built-in bedside table, big
crazy gold fake Chinese scribbles on the blood-red walls. It was like stepping into a lifesize
Barbie’s Shanghai Brothel kit.
“Hold on. Get the fuck over! Not you. Had to get out of that bench thing.”
“I thought you weren’t drinking.”
“Red Bull. Cutting it with ginger ale.”
“Tell me. Now.”
“Don’t look on YouTube.”
“At what, on YouTube?”
“Burj Khalifa world-championship base jump.”
“That hotel? Looks like an Arabian Nights sailboat? What happened?”
“That’s Burj Al Arab. Burj Khalifa’s the world’s tallest building—”
“Shit—”
“The jump on YouTube, that wasn’t him. That was earlier. That guy high-pulled, they
say here. That’s when—”
“What happened to Garreth?”
“The guy on YouTube holds the world’s record now for jumping out of a building.
Your boy figured a way to get in and go off it higher up. They still hadn’t finished closing
all the windows at the top. There was this crane—”
“Oh God—”
“And the security had of course gotten lots tighter, since YouTube guy did his, but your
boy’s an expert at—”
“Tell me!”
“He was on the way up, however he was managing that, and they got onto him. He got
up to the point where the windows weren’t installed, and went off from there. Actually a
little lower than YouTube guy—
“Heidi!”
“Did the bat-suit thing. Took it really far out, really low, probably pissed that he’d
jumped from below the record point. Trying for points on style.”
Hollis was crying now.