Zero history

13. MUSKRAT

They ate muskrat,” Heidi said as they walked in gritty sunlight to Selfridges, for her appointment with Hollis’s stylist, “but only on Fridays.”

“Who?”

“Belgians. Got the church to say it was okay, because muskrats live in the water. Like fish.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s in the Larousse Gastronomique,” said Heidi. “Look it up. Or just look at your boy. You can see he’s had some.”

Hollis’s iPhone rang as they were nearing Oxford Street. She looked at the screen. Blue Ant.

“Hello?”

“Hubertus.”

“You eat muskrat, Fridays?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m defending you from a racial slur.”

“Where are you?”

“On my way to Selfridges with a friend. She’s getting her hair cut.” Getting Heidi the last-minute appointment had required epic stylist-suckery, but Hollis was a firm believer in the therapeutic power of the right haircut. And Heidi, for her part, now seemed neither hungover nor jet-lagged.

“What are you doing while she does that?” asked Bigend.

Hollis debated telling Bigend she was getting a cut herself, but it didn’t seem worth it. “What do you have in mind?”

“The friend we had tapas with,” he said. “I want you two to talk.”

The translator, the one who liked dogs. “Why?”

“That will emerge. Talk while your friend has her hair cut. I’ll have Aldous run him over now. Where shall he meet you?”

“The food hall, I suppose,” said Hollis. “Patisserie.”

He hung up.

“Shit,” said Hollis.

“Muskrat,” said Heidi, pulling Hollis in beside her and taking on the remorseless afternoon pedestrian-flow of Oxford Street like a broad-shouldered icebreaker, homing on Selfridges. “You really are working for him.”

›››

“Hollis?”

She looked up. “Milgrim,” she said, remembering his name, which Bigend had been unwilling to use over the phone. He’d shaved, and looked rested. “I’m having a salad. Would you like something?”

“Do they have croissants?”

“I’m sure they do.” There was something she found deeply peculiar about his affect, even in this brief an exchange. He seemed genuinely mild, amiable, but also singularly alert, in some skewed way, as if there were something else looking out, around corners, swift and peripheral.

“I think I’ll have one,” he said, quite seriously, and she watched him walk to the nearby counter. He wore darker trousers today, the same thin cotton sportscoat.

He returned with his white tray. A croissant, a small rectangular slice of some compacted meat product in a pastry shell, and a cup of black coffee.

“You’re a Russian translator, Mr. Milgrim?” she asked as he put down the tray and took a seat.

“Just Milgrim,” he said. “I’m not Russian.”

“But a translator of Russian?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you do that for Hubertus? For Blue Ant?”

“I’m not a Blue Ant employee. I suppose I’m freelance. I’ve done some translation for Hubertus. Mostly literary.” He looked hungrily at his tray.

“Please,” she said, picking up her salad fork. “Go ahead. We can talk afterward.”

“I missed lunch,” he said. “I have to eat, with my medication.”

“Hubertus mentioned you were recovering from something.”

“Drugs,” he said. “I’m an addict. Recovering.” And the peripheral thing was right there, peering around some inner angle, taking her measure.

“Which ones?”

“Prescription tranquillizers. That sounds respectable, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does,” she said, “although I don’t imagine it makes it any easier.”

“It doesn’t,” he said, “but I hadn’t had a prescription for anything for quite a long time. I was a street addict.” He cut a neat slice from one end of his cold meat tart.

“I had a friend who was a heroin addict,” she said. “He died.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He began to eat.

“It was years ago.” She picked at her salad.

“What do you do for Hubertus?” he asked

“I’m freelance as well,” she said. “But I’m not sure what I do. Not yet.”

“He’s like that,” he said. Something caught his attention, across the hall. “Foliage green, those pants.”

“Whose?”

“He’s gone. Do you know coyote brown?”

“Who?”

“It was the fashionable shade in U.S. military equipment. Foliage green is newer, trending. Alpha green was up briefly, but foliage green is on top now.”

“U.S. military equipment comes in fashion shades?”

“It certainly does,” said Milgrim. “Hubertus doesn’t talk with you about that?”

“No.”

He was still trying to find the pants he’d glimpsed, in the distance. “It’s not a shade you’ll see much of this year, commercially. Next year, probably. I don’t even know the Pantone number.” He brought his attention back to his meat tart. Quickly finished it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not very good with new people. At first.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You get right down to things, it seems to me.”

“That’s what he says,” said Milgrim, blinking, and she guessed he meant Bigend. “I saw your picture,” he said. “A poster of you. I think on St. Mark’s Place. A used record store.”

“That’s a very old picture.”

Milgrim nodded, tore his croissant in half, began to butter it.

“Does he talk to you about denim?”

Milgrim looked up, mouth full of croissant, shook his head.

“Gabriel Hounds?”

Milgrim swallowed. “Who?”

“It’s a very secretive jeans line. That seems to be what I do, for Hubertus.”

“But what do you do?”

“I investigate it. I try to find out where it comes from. Who makes it. Why people like it.”

“Why do people like it?”

“Possibly because it’s almost impossible to find.”

“Is that it?” asked Milgrim, looking at her jacket.

“Yes.”

“Well made. But it’s not military.”

“Not that I know of. Why is he interested in fashion, now?”

“He isn’t. In any ordinary sense. That I know of.” And the obliquely-looking-out thing was there again, around that interior corner, and she felt its intelligence. “Do you know there’s a trade show specifically for manufacturers who hope to produce equipment for the Marine Corps?”

“I didn’t. Have you been?”

“No,” said Milgrim, “I missed it. It’s in South Carolina. I was just there. In South Carolina.”

“What is it, exactly, that you do, for Hubertus, around clothing? Are you a designer? A marketer?”

“No,” said Milgrim. “I notice things. I’m good with detail. I didn’t know that. It was something he pointed out to me, in Vancouver.”

“Did you stay with him? In that penthouse?”

Milgrim nodded.

“In the room with the maglev bed?”

“No,” Milgrim said, “I had a small room. I needed… focus.” He finished the last of his croissant, took a sip of coffee. “I was, I think the word is ‘institutionalized’? I wasn’t comfortable with too much space. Too many options. Then he sent me to Basel.”

“Switzerland?”

“To begin my recovery. If you don’t mind me asking, why are you working for him now?”

“I ask myself that,” she said. “It’s not the first time, and after the first time, I certainly didn’t want there to be a second time. But it proved weirdly lucrative, that first time, in a very roundabout way, a way that had nothing to do with what I was supposedly doing for him. Then I lost a lot of that money in the crash, hadn’t found anything else I wanted to do, and suddenly he was insisting I do this. I’m not entirely comfortable with it.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“I can tell,” said Milgrim.

“Why are you working for him?”

“I need a job,” said Milgrim. “And because… he paid for the clinic, in Basel. My recovery.”

“He sent you to detox?”

“It was very expensive,” he said. “More than an armored truck. Cartel grade.” He straightened his knife and fork on the white plate, amid crumbs. “It’s confusing,” he said. “Now he wants me to work with you.” He looked up from the plate, both elements of his oddly fragmented self seeming for the first time to see her simultaneously. “Why don’t you sing?”

“Because I don’t sing,” she said.

“But you were famous. You must have been. There was a poster.”

“That’s not really what it’s about,” she said.

“It just seems it might be easier. For you, I mean.”

“It wouldn’t,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.