Zero history

43. ICHINOMIYA

Thanks for meeting on such short notice,” said Meredith Overton, seated in the armchair directly beneath the rack of narwhale tusks. She wore a tweed jacket that might have come from Tanky amp; Tojo, if they cut things for women. She’d phoned on Hollis’s way back from her meeting with Bigend, in the strange, high, surgically clean silver pickup driven by Aldous, one of the tall black minders.

“It’s perfect timing,” Hollis said. “I’ve just seen him. He’d be delighted to have a team of Blue Ant researchers look for your shoes.”

“Provided I give him the identity of the Gabriel Hounds designer.”

“Yes,” said Hollis.

“I can’t,” said Meredith. “That’s why I’m here.”

“You can’t?”

“Sorry. Attack of conscience. Well, not an attack. My conscience is in fairly decent shape. That’s the problem. I was trying to do a run around it, because I want my shoes. George and I were up all night, discussing it, and it became apparent that it’s just not something I’m willing to do. George agrees, of course. As much as he wants your advice about working with Inchmale.”

“He has that,” Hollis said. “I thought I’d made that clear, in Paris. I’m a one-woman sisterhood that way. Counseling the stricken.”

Meredith smiled. The Italian girl arrived with coffee. It was something like the cocktail hour now, Hollis supposed, and the room, while not crowded, was filling with a peculiar murmur, leaning by undetectable increments toward the later evening’s full rout. “That’s kind of you,” Meredith said. “Do you know Japan?”

“Tokyo, mainly. We played there. Huge venues.”

“I went there when I was putting my second season together. The first season, all the shoes had been leather. I was more comfortable with that. For the second season, I wanted to do some in fabric. A classic summer sneaker. I needed some kind of artisanal canvas. Dense, long-wearing, but a great hand. Special.”

“Hand?”

“How it feels, to the touch. Someone had suggested I talk to this couple in Nagoya. They had an atelier there, above a little warehouse on the outskirts of a place called Ichinomiya. I can tell you that because they’re no longer there. They were making jeans there, in deadstock fabric from a mill in Okayama. Depending on the length of the roll, they might get three pairs of jeans, they might get twenty, and once the roll was gone, it was gone. I’d heard they’d also been buying canvas from that same mill, Sixties stuff. I wanted to see it and, if it was good, talk them into selling me a few rolls. They’d tried it for jeans, but it was too heavy. They were lovely people. There were stacks of samples of their jeans. Old photographs of American men in workwear. All of their machines were vintage, except the one they used for riveting. They had a German Union Special chain-stitching machine. A 1920s belt-loop machine.” She smiled. “Designers become machine nerds. Machines define what you can do. That and finding the right operators for them.” She added sugar to her black coffee, stirred it. “So I’m up in the loft, very top of the building, where they had these rolls of canvas, on shelves, lots of them. They’re all different, the light’s not great, and I realize I’m not alone. The Japanese couple are downstairs, on the second floor, making jeans, and they haven’t said anything about anyone else being there. I can hear the machines they’re using. Below them, there’s a place that makes cardboard cartons. They have machines too, a sort of distant thumping undertone. But I can hear a woman singing, like she’s singing to herself. Not loud. But close. From toward the back of the building. Up in the loft, with me. The jeans people haven’t said anything about anybody else, but they barely speak English. Absolute focus on their work. They make two or three pairs a day, just the two of them. Self-taught. So I put the roll I’m looking at back on the shelf. Old metal shelves, about four feet deep, and I follow the sound of her singing.” She took a sip of her coffee. “And at the very back of the loft, there’s light, good light, over a table. Actually it’s a hollow-core door, on a couple of big cardboard cartons. She’s working on a pattern. Big sheets of tissue, pencils. Singing. Black jeans, a black T-shirt, and one of those jackets you’re wearing. She looks up, sees me, stops singing. Dark hair, but she’s not Japanese. Sorry, I say, I didn’t know anyone was here. That’s okay, she says, American accent. Asks me who I am. I tell her, and tell her I’m there to look at canvas. What for? Shoes, I tell her. Are you a designer? Yes, I say, and show her the ones I’m wearing. Which are my shoes, from the first season, cowhide, from the Horween factory, Chicago, big white vulcanization, like deck shoes, but really they’re like the very first skate shoes, the ones the first Vans took off from. And she smiles at me, and steps out from behind the table, so I can see she’s wearing them, the same shoes, my shoes, but in the black. And she tells me her name.”

Hollis was holding her coffee with both hands, leaning forward in her chair, across the low table.

“Which I now know I can’t tell you,” Meredith said. “And if you go there, the couple aren’t there, and neither is she.”

“She liked your shoes.”

“She really got them. I’m not sure anyone else ever did, to the same extent. She got what I was trying to get away from. The seasons, the bullshit, the stuff that wore out, fell apart, wasn’t real. I’d been that girl, walking across Paris, to the next shoot, no money for a Metro card, and I’d imagined those shoes. And when you imagine something like that, you imagine a world. You imagine the world those shoes come from, and you wonder if they could happen here, in this world, the one with all the bullshit. And sometimes they can. For a season or two.”

Hollis put her cup down. “I want you to know,” she said, “that it’s okay not to tell me any more. I’ll understand.”

Meredith shook her head. “We wound up having dinner, drinking sake, in this little place down the street. All the sake cups were different, used, old, like someone had chosen them from a charity shop. That was after she’d helped me choose my canvas. That was the Hounds designer. She doesn’t need anyone like your Mr. Bigend.”

“He’s not my Mr. Bigend.”

“Of all the people in the world, she doesn’t need that.”

“Okay.”

“And that’s why I can’t trade her name for my shoes. As much as I want my shoes.”

“If I tell him you won’t tell me, he’ll try to find those shoes himself. And when he has them, he’ll send someone else, to negotiate. Or come himself.”

“I’ve thought of that. It’s my own fault, really. For having considered betraying a friend.” She looked at Hollis. “I haven’t seen her since. Or been in touch, really. Just those e-mails announcing drops. I sent her a pair of the shoes she helped choose the canvas for. To the place in Ichinomiya. So I just can’t do it.”

“I wouldn’t either,” Hollis said. “Look, this is just a job for me, one I wish I didn’t have. Not even a job. Just Bigend bribing me to do something for him. The best thing, for you, would be for me not to tell him we’ve had this conversation. You’ve stopped returning my calls. Have George tell Reg to tell Bigend to leave you alone.”

“Would that work?”

“It might,” said Hollis. “Bigend values Reg’s take on certain things. Reg advises him on music. I think Reg actually likes him. If he thinks Bigend’s unsettling you, which in turn unsettles George, jeopardizing the next Bollards album, he’ll do everything he can to get Bigend to back off. But that’s not only my best plan, it’s my only one.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll tell him I’ve been unable to contact you.”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Meredith. “Will you still be looking for her?”

“That’s a good question,” said Hollis.