Zero history

11. UNPACKING

Heidi’s room looked like the aftermath of a not-very-successful airplane bombing. Something that blew open every suitcase in the luggage compartment without bringing the plane down. Hollis had seen this many times before, touring with the Curfew, and took it to be a survival mechanism, a means of denying the soulless suction of sequential hotel rooms. She’d never actually seen Heidi distribute her things, nest-build. She guessed it was unconscious, accomplished in the course of an instinctive trance, like a dog walking tight circles in grass before it lay down to sleep. She was impressed now, to see how effectively Heidi had created her own space, pushing back whatever it was that Cabinet’s designers had intended the room to express.

“Fuck,” said Heidi, ponderously, apparently having slept, or passed out, in her Israeli army bra. Hollis, who had taken the key with her when she’d left, saw that there was barely a finger of whiskey left in the decanter. Heidi didn’t drink often, but when she did, she did. She lay now under a wrinkled pile of laundry, including, Hollis saw, several magenta linen table napkins and a cheap Mexican beach towel striped like a serape. Apparently Heidi had dumped the contents of the laundry hopper at Chez Fuckstick into one of her bags, departing, then pulled it out here. It was this she’d slept under, not Cabinet’s bedclothes.

“Breakfast?” Hollis began picking up and sorting the things on the bed. There was a large freezer-bag full of small, sharp-looking tools, fine-tipped brushes, tiny tins of paint, bits of white plastic. As if Heidi had adopted a twelve-year-old boy. “What’s this?”

“Therapy,” Heidi croaked, then made a sound like a vulture about to bring up something too putrid to digest, but Hollis had heard it before. She thought she remembered who Heidi had learned it from, a supernaturally pale German keyboardist with prematurely aged tattoos, their outlines blurred like felt pen on toilet paper. She put the bag and its mysterious contents on the dresser and picked up the phone, French, early twentieth century, but covered entirely in garishly reptilian Moroccan beading, like the business end of a hookah in the Grand Bazaar. “Pot of coffee, black, two cups,” she said to the room service voice, “rack of dry toast, large orange juice. Thanks.” She removed an ancient Ramones T-shirt from what was then revealed as a foot-tall white china reflexology model, an ear, complexly mapped in red. She put the T-shirt back, arranging it so that the band’s logo was optimally displayed.

“What about you?” asked Heidi, from beneath her laundry.

“What about me?”

“Men,” said Heidi.

“None,” said Hollis.

“What about the performance artist. Jumped off skyscrapers wearing that flying-squirrel suit. He was okay. Hot, too. Darrell?”

“Garreth,” said Hollis, probably for the first time in over a year, not wanting to.

“Is that why you’re here? He was English.”

“No,” said Hollis. “I mean yes, he was, but that’s not why I’m here.”

“You met him in Canada. Bigend introduce you? I didn’t meet him till later.”

“No,” Hollis said, dreading Heidi’s skill at this other, more painful unpacking. “They never met.”

“You don’t do jocks,” said Heidi.

“He was different,” said Hollis.

“They all are,” said Heidi.

“Was fuckstick?”

“No,” said Heidi. “Not that way. That was me, trying to be different. He was as undifferent as you can get, but he was somebody else’s undifferent. I just had this feeling that I could step into somebody else’s shoes. Put all the tour stuff in boxes. Shop at malls. Drive a car I’d never have thought of driving. Get a fucking break, you know? Time-out.”

“You didn’t seem very happy with it, when I saw you in L.A.”

“He turned out to be a closet creative. I married a tax lawyer. He started trying to produce. Indie stuff. He was starting to mention directing.”

“And he’s in jail now?”

“No bond. We had the FBI in the office. Wearing those jackets with ‘FBI’ on the back. They looked really good. Great look for a small production. But he couldn’t be on the set.”

“But you’re okay, legally?”

“I had Inchmale’s lawyer, in New York. I won’t even lose the share of his legitimate property I’m entitled to as the ex. Should they leave him any, which is unlikely. But seriously, fuck it.”

Breakfast arrived, Hollis taking the tray from the Italian girl at the door, with a wink. Tip her later.

Heidi batted her way out of the laundry pile. Sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on an enormous hockey jersey which Hollis, born without the gene for following team sports, recalled as having belonged to someone quite famous. Heidi definitely did jocks, though only if they were sufficiently crazy. Drumming for the Curfew, she’d had a spectacularly bad string of boxers, however good it might have been for publicity. She’d put one of them out cold with a single punch, at a pre-Oscars party. Very frequently now, Hollis was grateful for having had a pre-YouTube career.

“I never got what he did, Garret,” said Heidi, pouring herself half a cup of coffee, then topping it up with what remained in the whiskey decanter.

“Garreth. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

Heidi shrugged, her shoulders almost lost within the jersey. “You know me. Get this down and I’m good for six months of mineral water. Actually what I need now’s a gym. Serious one. What did he do?”

“I’m not sure I could explain that,” Hollis said, pouring her own coffee. “But I made a very firm agreement never to try.”

“Crook?”

“No,” said Hollis, “though some of what he did involved breaking laws. You know Banksy, the graffiti artist?”

“Yeah?”

“He liked Banksy. Identified with him. They’re both from Bristol.”

“But he wasn’t a graffiti artist.”

“I think he thought he was. Just not with paint.”

“With what?”

“History,” said Hollis.

Heidi looked unconvinced.

“He worked with an older man, someone with a lot of resources. The old man decided what should be done, what the gesture would be, then Garreth worked out the best way to do it. And not get caught. Dramaturge to the old man’s playwright, sort of, but sometimes actor as well.”

“So what was the problem?”

“Scary. Not that I didn’t approve of what they were doing. But it was scarier than Bigend’s stuff. I need the world to have a surface, the same surface everyone sees. I don’t like feeling like I’m always about to fall through, into something else. Look what happened to you.”

Heidi picked up a triangle of dry toast, considering it the way a potential suicide might consider a razor. “You said they weren’t crooks.”

“They broke laws, but they weren’t crooks. But by the very nature of what they did, they constantly made enemies. He came to L.A., we hung out. I was starting the book. He went back to Europe. Saw him again when I was over here to sign the car contract.”

“I got a proxy.” Biting off a corner of toast, chewing it dubiously.

“I wanted to be here.” Hollis smiled. “Then he came back with me, to New York. He wasn’t working. But then they were gearing up again. It was the run-up to Obama’s election. They were getting ready to do something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. If I did, and kept my promise, I couldn’t tell you anyway. I just got really busy with the book. He wasn’t around as much. Then he just wasn’t around.”

“Miss him?”

Hollis shrugged.

“You’re a difficult fit, you know that?”

Hollis nodded.

“Must make it harder.” Heidi got up, carried her whiskey and coffee into the bathroom, and splashed it into the sink. She came back and poured herself more coffee. “Feel like you’re on hold?”

“Definitely.”

“No good,” said Heidi. “Call him. See what’s up. Work through it.”

“No.”

“Got a number?”

“For emergencies. Only.”

“What kind?”

“Only if having known them ever got me into trouble.”

“Use it anyway.”

“No.”

“Pathetic,” said Heidi. “What the fuck is that?” She was staring into the bathroom.

“Your shower.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Wait’ll you see mine. What’s in those two boxes?” Pointing, where she’d put them down after taking them from Robert the night before. Hoping to change the topic. “A pair of concrete blocks?”

“Ashes,” Heidi said, “cremains.”

“Whose?”

“Jimmy’s.” The Curfew’s bass player. “There was nobody to claim them. He always said he wanted to be buried in Cornwall, remember?”

“No,” said Hollis. “Why Cornwall?”

“Fuck if I know. Maybe he’d decided it was the opposite of Kansas.”

“That’s a lot of ashes.”

“My mom’s too.”

“Your mother’s?”

“I never got around to doing anything with them. They were in the basement, with my tour stuff. I couldn’t leave ’em there with fuckstick, could I? I’ll take ’em both to Cornwall. Jimmy never had a mother anyway.”

“Okay,” said Hollis, unable to think of anything else to say.

“Where the fuck is Cornwall?”

“I can show you. On a map.”

“I need a fucking shower,” said Heidi.