Chapter 1 – Zone Calling

Steamer had only taken two bites of his morning timed toast when he said it, not looking up, as if the question were just another part of the morning’s mechanical sequence. “You have enough to last you the rest of the week?”

His wife, Emma didn’t answer immediately. She folded her napkin, unfolded it, then folded it again, the way she did when she was deciding whether to humor him or confront him. Finally she said; “The Zone is calling?” She didn’t say it with accusation. She said it the way one might ask whether the garbage truck had already come by; a fact of the household, mildly inconvenient, not worth dramatizing.

Steamer frowned. “You skipped a sentence. Good. It’s not only that. I more or less promised. You should understand that.”

Emma blinked. “Which sentence.”

“The one where you pretend you don’t already know the answer. You sound more like one of those politicos on some committee asking one of those fake question statements. I must complement you however, as your dialogue didn’t go on forever.”

She sighed, not theatrically, just the long exhale of someone who has lived with a man who believes in rules even when he’s the only one who remembers writing them. “Fine. I have enough. Is the Zone calling?”

“Good.” He nodded once, as if she had finally aligned with the correct procedural order. “Yes, but it’s not only that.” He pushed his plate slightly forward, the universal sign in their house that he was done eating even though he wasn’t. His fork lay diagonally across the plate like a compass needle pointing toward whatever obligation he was about to name. “I more or less promised,” he said.

Emma raised an eyebrow. “Promised who.”

“You should understand that.”

“I understand many things,” she said, reaching for her coffee. “But I don’t understand why you can’t answer a direct question at breakfast like a normal person.”

Steamer rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s not a matter of normal. It’s a matter of sequence.”

“Sequence,” she repeated, as if tasting the word for defects. “You mean you promised someone, but you won’t say who, because in your mind the order of disclosure is more important than the content.”

He didn’t deny it. That was the irritating part.

Emma set her cup down with the soft, deliberate clink of someone choosing diplomacy over escalation. “Let me guess. Crocker.”

Steamer didn’t move.

“Or Ledbetter,” she added. “Though he never asks directly. He just ..... implies.”

Still nothing.

“Or Mairin.”

He did what he could to squint and pretend that he didn’t understand. She wasn’t supposed to say or know that possibility, and he tried to play stupid, which was largely ineffective this time. He said; “I don’t know any Mary.”

It may have worked, more or less, probably didn’t, as she perhaps deflected the deflection continuing on with,; “Or the Zone itself,” which she said with a finality, with the resigned tone of someone naming the least reasonable option while knowing it was the incorrect, but most expedient and least contentious one.

Steamer shifted in his chair. “It’s not a call. It’s more like… a pressure. A reminder. A kind of ..... unfinished business.”

Emma stared at him for a long moment. “You know, when people talk about their work, they usually mean coworkers, deadlines, maybe a supervisor. You talk like you’re negotiating with a weather system.”

“It’s not weather.”

“I didn’t say it was. I said you talk like it is.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again, as if trying to find the least inaccurate version of the truth.

“There’s a rhythm to it,” he said. “A cycle. If I ignore it too long, things get ..... out of alignment.”

Emma folded her napkin again. “And if you go, things get back in alignment.”

“Yes. At least for the moment”

“And if you don’t go, you feel like you’ve broken some unwritten contract.”

“Yes.”

“And this contract is with ..... the Zone.”

He hesitated. “With myself,” he said. “But the Zone keeps the ledger.”

Emma stared at him, then let out a small, humorless laugh. “You know, you could have just said ‘I need to go.’ That would have been enough.”

“It wouldn’t have been accurate.”

“Of course not,” she said. “A false rendition of accuracy above all.” She stood, gathered the plates, and carried them to the sink. “Go then. Before the ledger gets backed up.”

Steamer rose slowly, as if the act of standing required him to pass through several internal checkpoints. “You’ll be all right.”

“I always am.”

“You have enough to last you the week.”

“You already asked me that.”

“Just attempting to be sure.”

Emma turned, drying her hands on the towel. “Yes, Steamer. I have enough. I always have enough. That’s the part you never need to worry about.”

He nodded, relieved but not reassured, because reassurance was not a category he recognized. He almost didn’t say it, but did; “Try to understand. I’ve never been in the innermost room. When I went to the Zone in youth, I was afraid to enter. In adulthood, I was precluded from entering because I was paid to take others there.”

“You could have entered if you wanted to.”

“Yes, and I would have been killed.”

“Who says?”

“Crocker. Maybe Ledbetter too; I’m not sure.”

“I think we’re back where the circle started.” She watched him put on his jacket; the one he only wore when he was going to the Zone, the denim one, the one that smelled faintly of metal and pine and something older than either. “Try not to promise anything else while you’re there,” she said.

“I don’t promise,” he said. “I acknowledge.”

“Even worse,” she muttered. “You have any paying guests lined up after that?”

“No. I got one reply from a D’Andre Jefferson. But, I refused.”

“Refused? You think we’re Bezos, Amazon or something?”

“Come on. Of course not. But there is no amount of money that can induce me to spend time with those people.”

“That’s not allowed anymore.”

“That’s highly debatable and what he said too, adding that he was going to sue me for discrimination. Haha. Retard doesn’t know that a contract, verbal or written, to do something illegal is legally non-existent.”

Emma sighed.

“Look. Have I ever asked you to do something that was repugnant to your very nature?”

“You sure you want to get an honest answer to that?”

“No.”

They both laughed.

Steamer says; “I want to tell Zarry myself.” He climbs the stairs the way a man does when he’s already halfway in the place he’s going. Not hurried, not hesitant; just moving through the house like it’s a corridor between two obligations.

Zarry’s door is cracked. A thin line of morning light cuts across the carpet. Inside, the boy is on the floor with his blocks, building something that looks like a bridge until you look closer and realize it’s actually a gate. He always builds gates.

Steamer stands in the doorway a moment, letting the scene settle. Zarry doesn’t look up; he knows his father is there, the way small children know weather before it arrives.

“Hey, Zarry.”

The boy answers without turning. “Hi, Dad.”

Steamer steps in, lowers himself to the floor with the slow, joint conscious care of a man who’s been to the Zone too many times. He picks up a block, turns it in his fingers, sets it down again.

“I’m heading out for a bit,” he says.

Zarry finally looks up. His eyes are wide but not frightened; just taking inventory. “Where?”

“You know where.”

“The Zone?”

“Yeah.”

Zarry nods once, like he’s checking off a box on a list only he can see. “Are you going with Prof88 and Journa14?”

“Not this time. No paying guests. Just me.”

Another nod. He processes that. Four year olds don’t understand danger, but they understand difference. A solitary trip is different.

“Why?”

Steamer considers lying, or softening, or redirecting. But Zarry is the kind of child who hears the shape of a sentence more than the words in it.

“I promised someone I’d check on something,” Steamer says. “And it’s easier if I go alone. The Zone doesn’t take to money well.”

Zarry thinks about this. Then he days; “Will you be back before dinner?”

“Probably not.”

“Before sleep?”

“Probably not.”

“Before tomorrow night sleep?”

“Yeah; probably before tomorrow night sleep.”

Zarry accepts this immediately. Sleep is the boundary he understands. You can skip one, but anything that returns before near term sleep is safe enough. He picks up one of the blocks and hands it to Steamer. “You can take this.”

Steamer looks at it. It’s just a block; blue, chipped at one corner, but Zarry is offering it with the solemnity of a man handing over a key.

“You sure?” Steamer asks.

“It’s for the gate,” Zarry says. “In case it’s stuck.”

Steamer pockets it. “Thanks. That’ll help.”

Zarry leans forward and presses his forehead briefly against Steamer’s arm. Not a hug; Zarry doesn’t do traditional hugs, but a small, precise contact, like he’s marking his father for safe return.

“When you come back,” Zarry says, “can you tell me what the Zone said?”

Steamer smiles. “If it says anything worth repeating.”

Zarry accepts that too. Then he goes back to his blocks, already rebuilding the gate, already preparing for the next version of whatever the world will be when his father returns.

Steamer stands, watches him for a moment, and leaves the room quietly, carrying the blue block like a passport.