Zero history

32. POST-ACUTE

The waitress was departing with orders, taking the hardbound menus with her, when a disturbance broke out at a table on the opposite side of the room.

Raised voices. A tall, broad-shouldered, black-clad young man, pale features grimly set, suddenly standing, knocking over his chair. Milgrim watched as this one swept for the door, slamming out of Les Editeurs. To be met by a tide of electronic flash, flinging up his arm to protect his eyes or hide his face.

“That didn’t take long,” said George, who was buttering a round of sliced baguette. He had elegantly hairy hands, like some expensive Austrian stuffed animal. He bit off half of the buttered bread with his large white teeth.

“All he could stand,” said Meredith, someone whose intelligence protruded through her beauty, Milgrim felt, like the outline of unforgiving machinery pressing against a taut silk scarf.

Craning his neck, Milgrim made out one of the Dottirs, silver hair unmistakable, at the table the young man had deserted. After the liquid metal penguin, this didn’t seem so odd. He felt as though he were on some kind of roll today. She was collecting her things, he saw. She checked the dial of her enormous gold wristwatch. “Saw them,” he said, “the Dottirs. On the river. In a video.” He turned back to George. “I saw you, too.”

“It’s about an album launch,” said George. “They have a new release. We don’t, but share a label.”

“Who was that who left?”

“Bram,” said Hollis, “the singer from the Stokers.”

“Don’t know him,” said Milgrim, picking up one of the rounds of bread in order to give his hands something to do.

“You aren’t thirteen,” said Meredith, “are you?”

“No,” agreed Milgrim, putting the slice of bread, whole, into his mouth. Oral, his therapist called that. She’d said he was very lucky to never have taken up smoking. The bread was firm, springy. He held it there a moment before he began to chew. Meredith was staring at him. He looked back at the Brandsdottir table, where someone was holding whichever Dottir’s chair as she rose.

That person was Rausch, he saw, and almost spat out the bread.

Desperately, he found Hollis’s eye. She winked, the sort of effortless wink that involves no other features, a wink that Milgrim himself could never have managed, and took a sip of wine. “George is in a band, Milgrim,” she said, and he knew that she spoke to calm him. “The Bollards. Reg Inchmale, who was the guitarist in the Curfew with me, is producing their new album.”

Milgrim, chewing and swallowing the suddenly dry bread, nodded. Took a sip of water. Coughed into his crisp cloth napkin. What was Rausch doing here? He glanced back, but didn’t see Rausch. The Dottir, reaching the door, triggered a second wave of strobing, a raggedly cumulative brilliance, the color of her hair. He looked back to Hollis. She nodded, almost invisibly.

George and Meredith, he guessed, were unaware of her connection with Blue Ant or, for that matter, of his own. The Dottirs, he knew, were Blue Ant clients. Or, rather, their father, whom Milgrim had never seen, was some kind of major Bigend project. Possibly even partner. Some people, Rausch included, assumed Bigend’s interest in the sisters was sexual. But Milgrim, from his intermittently privileged position as Bigend’s conversational foil, guessed that not to be the case. Bigend cheerfully squired the twins through London as though they were a pair of tedious but astronomically valuable dogs, the property of someone he wished above most things to favorably impress.

“The Stokers are on a different label,” explained George, “but one owned by the same firm. The publicists have set up a fake romance, between Bram and Fridrika, but have also floated the rumor that Bram and Eydis are involved.”

“It’s a very old tactic,” said Meredith, “and particularly obvious with identical twins.”

“Though new to their audience, and Bram’s,” said George, “who as you point out are thirteen years old.”

Milgrim looked at Hollis. She looked back. Smiled. Telling Milgrim that this was not the time to ask questions. She shrugged out of her Hounds jacket, leaving it draped stiffly across the back of her chair. She was wearing a dress the color of weathered coal, a gray that was almost black. A clingy knit. He looked at Meredith’s dress for the first time. It was black, a thick shiny fabric, the detailing sewn like an antique workshirt. He didn’t understand women’s clothing, but he thought he recognized something. “Your dress,” he said to Meredith, “it’s very nice.”

“Thank you.”

“Is it Gabriel Hounds?”

Meredith’s eyebrows rose, fractionally. She looked from Milgrim to Hollis, then back to Milgrim. “Yes,” she said, “it is.”

“It’s lovely,” said Hollis. “This season’s?”

“They don’t do seasons.”

“But recent?” Hollis looking very seriously at Meredith over the rim of her upraised wineglass.

“Dropped last month.”

“Melbourne?”

“Tokyo.”

“Another art fair?” Hollis finished the wine in her glass. George poured for her. Pointed the neck of the bottle questioningly at Milgrim, then saw Milgrim’s inverted glass.

“A bar. Tibetan-themed micro-bistro. I never quite grasped where. Basement of an office building. Owner sleeps up above the fake rafters he put in, though that’s a secret. Hounds haven’t often done things specifically for women. A knit skirt that nobody’s ever been able to copy, though everyone tries. Your jacket’s unisex, though you’d never know it, on. Something to do with those elastic straps in the shoulders.” She looked annoyed, Milgrim thought, but very much in control.

“Would it be out of line to ask how you knew to be there?”

Their first courses arrived, and Meredith waited for the waitress to leave before answering. When she did, she seemed more relaxed. “I’m not directly connected,” she said to Hollis. “I’ve been out of touch with that friend I told you about, the one I knew at Cordwainers, for a few years now. But he’d introduced me to someone else. I’m not in touch with them either, and don’t know how to contact them. But they put me on a mailing list. I get an e-mail, if there’s going to be a drop. I don’t know that I get them for every drop, but there’s no way of knowing that. They aren’t frequent. Since I took Clammy to buy his jeans, in Melbourne, there’ve only been two e-mails. Prague, and Tokyo. I happened to be in Tokyo. Well, Osaka. I went along.”

“What were they offering?”

“Let’s eat,” said Meredith, “shall we?”

“Of course,” said Hollis.

Milgrim’s was salmon, and very good. The waitress had let him order from an English translation of the menu. He looked around, trying to spot Rausch again, but didn’t see him. A shift in clientele was still under way as people who’d actually only been there, he guessed, for Bram’s exit, signaled for their bills and departed, some leaving untouched food. Tables were being quickly cleared, reset, and reseated. The noise level was going up.

“I wouldn’t want either of you to think I’ll be any less willing to help you with Inchmale,” said Hollis, “regardless of what you may or may not be able to tell me about Hounds.”

Milgrim saw George glance quickly at Meredith. “We appreciate that,” George said, though Milgrim wasn’t sure that Meredith did. Perhaps George was using the band “we.”

“All you really need with Inchmale is someone to tell you where you are in his process,” Hollis said. “And that’s all I can do, anyway. You can’t change the process, and if you try hard enough, long enough, he’ll leave. So far, you’re right on track.”

None of this meaning anything to Milgrim, who was enjoying the salmon, in some light chilled sauce.

“I’m sorry,” Meredith said, “but you’re going to have to tell us who you’re working for.”

“If I were better at this sort of thing,” said Hollis, “I’d start by telling you about my book. It’s about locative art.”

“I don’t know the term,” Meredith said.

“It’s what they’re calling augmented reality now,” said Hollis, “but art. It’s been around since before the iPhone started to become the default platform. That was when I wrote about it. But I meant that if I were going to lie to you, I’d tell you about that, then tell you that I was writing another, on esoteric denim, or mad marketing strategies. But I won’t. I’m working for Hubertus Bigend.”

The last bite of salmon caught in Milgrim’s throat. He drank water, coughed into his napkin.

“Are you choking?” asked George, who looked as though he could perform a really optimal Heimlich maneuver.

“No, thanks,” said Milgrim.

“Blue Ant?” asked Meredith.

“No,” said Hollis. “We’re freelance. Bigend wants to know who’s behind Gabriel Hounds.”

“Why?” Meredith had put down her fork.

“Possibly because he thinks someone’s outdoing him at something he considers to have been his own game. Or so he suggested. Do you know him?”

“Only by reputation,” said Meredith.

“Is Blue Ant doing your band’s publicity?” Milgrim asked George, after some more water.

“Not that I know of,” said George. “Too small a world already.”

“I’m not a Blue Ant employee,” said Hollis. “Bigend’s hired me to look into Gabriel Hounds. He wants to know who designs it, how their antimarketing scheme works. I’m only prepared to go so far. I’m not prepared to lie to you about it.”

“How about you?” Meredith asked Milgrim.

“I don’t have a badge,” Milgrim said.

“What do you mean?”

“To open the door,” Milgrim said. “At Blue Ant. Employees have those badges. I’m not on salary.”

First-course dishes were removed. Second courses arrived. Milgrim’s was pork tenderloin, stacked like a corpulent chess piece, a rook of pork. It toppled as he began to eat it.

“How badly does Bigend want to know?” Meredith’s knife and fork were poised.

“He wants to know everything, basically,” said Hollis, “all the time. Right now, he wants to know this quite badly. Next month? Maybe not so much.”

“He must have a lot of resources. For information.” Meredith cut into her roundel of beef.

“Prides himself on it,” Hollis said.

“I mentioned that I believe most of my last season of shoes are in a warehouse in Seattle. Tacoma, possibly.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know where. Can’t find them. The lawyers say they could make a very convincing case for my ownership, if we could locate them. We’re fairly certain they haven’t been sold off, otherwise at least a few would have surfaced on eBay. None have. Could Bigend find them for me?”

“I don’t know,” said Hollis. “But if he couldn’t, I don’t know who could.”

“I don’t know what I could find out for you,” said Meredith, “but assuming I found something, I’d consider an exchange. Otherwise, not.”

Milgrim looked from Meredith to Hollis, back.

“I’m not authorized to make that sort of deal,” said Hollis, “but I can certainly take him the proposal.”

This reminded Milgrim of the closing rhythm of certain very backstage drug deals, the kind in which one party may know of someone with an Aerostar van, full of some precursor chemical, while another is aware of the approximate whereabouts of a really efficient pill-pressing machine.