Zero History

48. SHOTGUN
You’re shotgun,” Heidi said to Milgrim as they neared the truck. Milgrim saw the pink
Mossberg-Taser collaboration in Bigend’s gloved hands, in the office at Blue Ant, and
almost said that he didn’t have one. “Hollis and I need a talk,” she said, clarifying things.
He’d be in front with Aldous, his accustomed seat.
Aldous, alerted to their exit, had the motor running. Locks clunked open for them.
Milgrim and Heidi hauled their respective doors open. He scrambled up while Heidi
helped Hollis. He managed to close his door before Heidi had closed hers. The locks
clunked solidly into place. Aldous had proudly pointed out the narrowness, the extreme
evenness, of the gaps between the doors and the bodywork. These were too narrow for
the insertion of any pry bar, he’d said, too narrow even for “the jaws of life,” an
expression Milgrim was unfamiliar with, but which he took to be Jamaican, some potent
icon of existential dread.
He fastened his seat belt, a bulky, complicated thing, and sat back, taking stock. Where,
exactly, was he now, vis à vis the snapping jaws of life? Bigend had seemed to have
virtually no reaction at all to the news of Milgrim having a federal agent in his life, or for
that matter to Winnie’s alert regarding Gracie. Milgrim’s panic attack, only his second in
recovery, not counting his initial reaction to having been photographed by Winnie in the
Caffè Nero, had been for naught. As indeed had been every other panic attack he’d ever
suffered, his therapist had repeatedly pointed out. His limbic mind was grooved by
irrational fear, a sort of permanent roller coaster, always ready for a ride. “Don’t tell
yourself that you’re afraid,” she’d advised him, “but that you have fear. Otherwise, you
believe that you are fear.”
“You didn’t quit,” said Heidi, behind him.
“No,” said Hollis. “It wasn’t the right time.”
“You’ve got to try those balloons. They fucking rock.”
They were rolling now, the run-flats juddering over City tarmac, not so much old as
recently resurfaced, piecemeal, in the course of much building.
Milgrim sighed reflexively and let himself settle forward, slightly, into the seat belt
harness. Let go of the tension, he told himself. Be, as his therapist said, in the moment.
In the moment, a shiny black car, coming in the opposite direction, swerved diagonally
into their path. Aldous instantly swinging right, into a much narrower street, the City
equivalent of an alley, dark windowless walls of stone or concrete. Behind them, tires
squealed. Milgrim glanced back, saw headlights plunging after them. “Look sharp,”
advised Aldous, speeding up. Threads burst in the straps across Milgrim’s lap and chest,
black shapes birthing instantly, a conjurer’s trick, hauling him upright.
“Motherfuck,” observed Heidi, from the back seat, as Aldous continued to accelerate.