Zero History Part 43

"I've never seen anything decorated this way." He looked around at the contents of Number Four.

"Me neither."

"Is it all real?"

"Yes, though there are some period reproductions. There's a catalog for each room."

"May I see that?"

Her iPhone rang. "Yes?"

"Meredith. I'm in the lobby. I need to see you."

"I have guests-"

"Alone," said Meredith. "Bring a jacket. She wants to meet you."

"I-"

"Not my idea," interrupted Meredith. "Hers. When I told her what you said."

Hollis looked at Garreth, who was deep into it with Fiona.

The bathroom door opened. Ajay stood there, the sides of his head spa.r.s.ely covered with some kind of synthetic nonhair, randomly directional. "Not very good, is it?"

"It's like the pubic hair of some huge, anatomically correct toy animal," said Garreth, delighted.

"It's the wrong texture, but I have another that should do," said Chandra. "And I'll do a better job of application, next time."

"I'll be down in a minute," said Hollis, to the iPhone. "Meredith," she said to Garreth. "I'm going down to see her."

"Don't leave the hotel," Garreth said, and went back to whatever he was explaining to Fiona.

Hollis opened her mouth, shut it, found Number Four's leather-bound curiosity catalog for Milgrim, then collected the Hounds jacket, her purse, and left, closing the door behind her.

Avoiding the watercolors, she made her way through the green maze, and found the lift waiting, clicking softly to itself. As it descended the black cage, she tried to make sense of what Meredith had said. The logical "she" was the Hounds designer, but if that was the case, had Meredith been lying to her, yesterday?

Pa.s.sing the ferret, she emerged into the sound of the lounge, evidently in full route now, that bounced so effectively down the marble stairs. Meredith was waiting near the door, where Robert ordinarily stood, though he was nowhere in sight. She wore a translucently ancient waxed cotton jacket over the tweed Hollis remembered from yesterday, more holes than fabric, the platonic opposite of Inchmale's j.a.panese Gore-Tex.

"You told me you didn't know how to contact her," Hollis said. "And you certainly didn't indicate that she was in London."

"I didn't know, either one," Meredith said. "Inchmale. Clammy was giving me the gears, at the studio, because you'd promised to get him fresh kit if he helped you find her."

Hollis had forgotten about that. "I did," she said.

"Inchmale was working on one of those charts he makes, the ones around the bottom of a paper coffee cup, for each song. Is that simply more of his rubbish, or is it real?"

"Real."

"And of course he was concentrating, or pretending to. And suddenly he said, 'I know her husband.' Said he was another producer, very good, based in Chicago. He'd worked with him. Said a name."

"What name?"

Meredith looked her even more firmly in the eye. "I'd have to let her tell you that."

"What else did Reg say?"

"Nothing. Not a word. Went back to his colored felts and his paper cup. But as soon as I got my hands on a computer, I Googled the name. There he was. Image search, three pages in, there she was, with him. That was only a few hours after I saw you, here."

"That turned into quite an evening," said Hollis.

"Did you quit?"

"I didn't get a chance, but my position on quitting remains the same. Stronger, if anything. I'm right off Bigend, if you could say I was ever on him. A lot's happened."

"I've mostly been on the phone, myself. Trying to reach her, through her husband. Couldn't reach him. Threw myself on Inchmale's mercy. Had George put it to him, actually."

"And?"

"She called me. She's here. She's been here for a few weeks. East Midlands, Northampton, looking at shoe factories. Doing a boot," and suddenly Meredith was smiling, then not. "On her way back now."

Hollis was about to ask where to, but didn't.

"I can take you to her now," Meredith said. "That's what she wants."

"Why would-"

"Better she tells you. Are you coming or not? She's leaving tomorrow."

"Is it far?"

"Soho. Clammy has a car."

Which was j.a.panese, minute, and appeared to have been fathered by a Citroen Deux Chevaux, its mother of less distinctive lineage but obviously having attended design school. It had virtually no rear seat, so Hollis was folded in sideways now, behind Meredith and Clammy, watching a determined little rear wiper squeegee rain. Nothing could have been less like the Hilux. A tiny retro-wagon, devoid of armor. Everything, in traffic, was larger than they were, including motorcycles. Clammy had bought it used, through a broker in j.a.pan, and imported it, the only way to get one here. It was the dark glossy gray of an old-fas.h.i.+oned electric fan, a shade Inchmale liked to refer to as "a crushed mouse," which meant a gray with some red in it. She hoped other drivers could see them. Though not if they were Foley's crew, whom she'd started to worry about when Clammy was turning into Oxford Street. Garreth's instruction to not leave the hotel had suddenly made a different sort of sense. She hadn't been taking all that very seriously. She'd felt like an observer, a helper, or a woefully unskilled nurse. But now, she realized, in this new economy of kidnapping, she herself could probably be quite valuable. If they had her, they'd have Garreth. Though they didn't, as far as she knew, know about Garreth. Though that depended, she imagined, on everyone in Bigend's tiny immediate crew remaining loyal. Who was Fiona? She knew nothing about Fiona, really. Except that she kept an eye on Milgrim, an oddly personal one, Hollis thought. Actually, now that Hollis thought about it, as though she fancied him.

"Is it much further?" she asked.

68. HAND-EYE

Now it was Milgrim's turn, on the Biedermeier vanity stool, the remains of Ajay's luxuriant top-curls darkly littering the spread towels. Ajay himself was in Hollis's huge scary shower, ridding himself of the aerosol product Chandra had applied to the sides of his head. Staunchly unwilling to see her cousin naked, she faced away from the shower as she used an electric clipper on Milgrim's back and sides. Milgrim, seeing Ajay naked, thought he looked like a professional dancer. He was all muscles, but none of the bulgy kind.

The idea, now that Chandra had had a good look at Milgrim, and at his hair as it had been the day before, was to give him a different cut. He found himself imagining a Milgrim wig for Ajay, something he was sure he'd never imagined before.

It was getting steamy, but he heard Ajay crank the shower down, then off. Soon he appeared beside Milgrim in a white robe with corded trim, carefully knotting its belt. The top of his head was now Chandra's initial approximation of Milgrim's previous look, though it was black, and damp. Milgrim's own indeterminately brownish hair was falling on the towels.

"I'll have to trust," Ajay said to Chandra, "that that wasn't a joke."

"For the sort of retainer your friend has me on," Chandra said, over the burr of the clipper, "you'll get no jokes at all. I'd never tried it before. Seen an instructional video. I'll do better next time. Keep your chin down." This last to Milgrim. "Really it's to cover bald spots. Up top. Going that heavy on the sides may be pus.h.i.+ng the envelope a bit." She shut the clipper off.

"Pus.h.i.+ng the envelope," said Ajay, "is what we're about. High speed, low drag." He toweled his head.

"Do these people know you're a perfect idiot?" asked Chandra.

"Ajay," said Garreth, through the door.

Ajay flung the towel in a corner and went out, closing the door behind him.

"He was always like that," said Chandra, Milgrim not knowing how that was supposed to have been. "It wasn't entirely the army." She gave the hair on top of his head a few brisk snips with her scissors, then removed the towel she'd draped around his neck. "Stand up. Have a look."

Milgrim stood. A different Milgrim, oddly military, perhaps younger, looked back at him from the wall of fogged mirror above the twin sinks. He'd b.u.t.toned the collar of his new s.h.i.+rt, to keep hair from getting inside, and this contributed to the unfamiliarity. A stranger, in an air tie. "That's good," said Milgrim. And it was. "I wouldn't have thought to do that. Thank you."

"Thank your friend on the bed," said Chandra. "Most expensive cut you'll have had. Easily."

Ajay opened the door. He was wearing Milgrim's wrinkled cotton jacket. His shoulders were slightly too wide for it, Milgrim thought. "Your shoes are a bit too long," Ajay said, "but I can put something in the toes."

"Milgrim," said Garreth, from the bed, "come and sit. Fiona here tells me you're a natural with the balloons."

"I have good hand-eye coordination," Milgrim volunteered. "They told me in Basel."

69. THE GIFTING SUITE

Here?" She recognized the nameless denim shop in Upper James Street. Dark, faintly candlelit. A pulsing glow, almost invisible.

"They're hosting a pop-up," said Meredith.

"Won't start for an hour," said Clammy, who struck Hollis as uncharacteristically cheery. "But I'm first."

"It's a gifting suite, as far as you're concerned," Meredith told him. "Then we're even. But no questions. And no bothering Bo later. Ever. Go there again, she won't know you."

"Perfect," said Clammy, drumming a signal of pleased antic.i.p.ation on the steering wheel.

"Who's Bo?"

"You've met her," said Meredith. "Come on. Out with you. They're waiting." She opened the little wagon's pa.s.senger-side door, pulled herself out and up, tipped the pa.s.senger seat forward. Hollis struggled out. "You'll have a little time before we arrive," said Meredith, and got back in. She closed the door and Clammy pulled away, rain beading on the enamel of the wagon's low roof.

The handsome graying woman opened the door as Hollis reached it, gestured her in, then closed and locked it.

"You're Bo," said Hollis. The woman nodded. "I'm Hollis."

"Yes," said the woman.

It smelled of vanilla and something else, masking jungle indigo. Candles pulsed in retail twilight, along the ma.s.sive slab of polished wood that Hollis remembered from her previous visit. Aromatherapy candles, their complicated tallow poured into expensive-looking gla.s.ses with vertical sides, their wicks paper-thin slabs of wood, crackled softly as their flames pulsed. Faintly sandblasted on each gla.s.s, she saw, the Hounds logo. Between the candles were a folded pair of jeans, a folded pair of khaki pants, a folded chambray s.h.i.+rt, and a black ankle-boot. The boot's smooth leather caught the candlelight. She touched it with a fingertip.

"Next year," said Bo. "Also an oxford, brown, but samples not ready."

Hollis picked up the folded jeans. They were black as ink, unusually heavy. She turned them over and saw the baby-headed dog, dimly branded into a leather patch on the waistband. "They're for sale? Tonight?"

"Friends will come. When you were here, I could not help you. I hope you understand."

"I do," said Hollis, not sure that she did.

"In rear, please. Come."

Hollis followed her, ducking through a doorway partially concealed by a dark noren noren decorated with white fish. There was no white Ikea desk here, no decrease in the shop's simple elegance at all. It was a smaller s.p.a.ce, but as cleanly uncluttered, with the same sanded, unstained floor, the same candles. A woman was seated on one of two old, paint-scarred, mismatched wooden kitchen chairs, stroking the screen of an iPhone. She looked up, smiled, stood. "h.e.l.lo, Hollis. I-" decorated with white fish. There was no white Ikea desk here, no decrease in the shop's simple elegance at all. It was a smaller s.p.a.ce, but as cleanly uncluttered, with the same sanded, unstained floor, the same candles. A woman was seated on one of two old, paint-scarred, mismatched wooden kitchen chairs, stroking the screen of an iPhone. She looked up, smiled, stood. "h.e.l.lo, Hollis. I-"

Hollis raised her hand. "Don't tell me."

The woman raised her eyebrows. Her hair was dark brown, glossy in candlelight, nicely cut, but mussed.

"Deniability," Hollis said. "I could figure it out, from what Meredith told me. Or I could just ask Reg. But if you don't tell me, and I don't do either of those things, I can continue to tell Hubertus that I don't know your name." She looked around, saw that Bo was gone. She turned back to the woman. "I'm not good at lying."

"Neither am I. Good at hiding, not at lying. Please, sit down. Would you like some wine? We have some."

Hollis took the other chair. "No, thank you."

She was wearing jeans that Hollis took to be the ones she'd seen on the table. That same absolute black. A blue s.h.i.+rt, rumpled and untucked. A very worn pair of black Converse sneakers, their rubber sides abraded and discolored.

"I don't understand why you'd want to see me," Hollis said. "Under the circ.u.mstances."

The woman smiled. "I was a huge fan of the Curfew, by the way, though that's not it." She sat. Glanced down at the iPhone's glowing screen, then looked at Hollis. "I think it was my sense of once having been where you are."

"Which is ... ?"

"I worked for Bigend myself. Identical arrangement, from what Mere tells me. There was something he wanted, the missing piece of a puzzle, and he talked me into finding it for him."

"Did you?"

"I did. Though it wasn't at all what he'd imagined. Eventually he did do something, repurposing aspects of what I'd helped him learn. Something ghastly, in marketing. I used to be in marketing myself, but then I wasn't, after him."

"What did you do, in marketing?"