As others say......forget the 1009s. MUCH better gaskets available these days. While that deck is not super clean, it looks smooth enough for Cometics. Install them as Cometic says. Clean the decks, take them out of the pack, put them on and forget it.

As for "zero" decking your block, how they gonna do that? They need the crank, rods and pistons to do that accurately. Anything less is a guess. Sure, they can deck it to 10.720, but unless all the parts and measurements are perfect, it won't be zero deck. Sounds as though they just parallel decked it to the crank centerline, which IS the proper procedure. Final deck numbers are set after a mock up of parts you are using.