Zero history

49. GREAT MARLBOROUGH

All was forward, turn, forward, turn again, and a sharp smell of hairspray.

Her body remembering to lean into the turns, hugging what she took to be a strong thin girl, definitely breasts in there, through layers of armored Cordura. Very little she could see, past the smudged plastic of the visor, under wing-beat strobings of streetlight. Ahead, the yellow of the rider’s helmet, scratched diagonally, as by something with three large claws. To either side a blur of abstracted London texture, as free of meaning as sampled skins in a graphics program. The awning of a Pret A Manger, brick, possibly the green round of a Starbucks sign, more brick, something in that one official shade of red. And most of it, she guessed, in the service of evasion, a route no car could follow. At least there seemed to be relatively little traffic now.

And then they slowed, stopped, the rider reversing into a parking place. When the ignition was cut, London was instantly, strangely quiet. The rider was removing her yellow helmet, so Hollis released her, then reached up and removed her own, which she now saw was black.

“You might need the loo,” said the girl, twenty-something, fox-faced, pale brown hair mussed by the helmet. The hairspray wouldn’t have been hers.

“Loo?”

“Downstairs,” the girl said, indicating a sign: women. “Clean. Open till two. Free.” She looked very serious.

“Thank you,” said Hollis.

“Fiona,” said the girl, over her shoulder.

“Hollis.”

“I know. Hurry, please. I’ll check my messages.” Hollis dismounted, watched as Fiona did the same. Fiona frowned. “Please,” she said, “hurry.”

“I’m sorry,” said Hollis, “my head’s not working.”

“Don’t worry,” said Fiona, who sounded neither British nor anything else in particular. “If you’re not right back up, I’ll come and find you.”

“Good,” said Hollis, and took the stairs, her knees behaving oddly, down into bright cheap light, white tile, the smell of some very modern disinfectant.

Seated in a stall, the door shut, she briefly considered screaming. She tried to remember if she’d hit her head on anything, because her brain felt too large for it, but she didn’t think she had. It wouldn’t have been possible, with what Aldous had made the seat belts do, which she recalled as having involved a sort of neck brace, as well as some biomorphically triangular cushion across her chest. If you were going to be bashing into cars, she supposed, you’d want that.

“My God,” she said, remembering, “that was Foley.” Milgrim’s Foley, from the blue-lit grotto beneath the Salon du Vintage, simultaneously looking the worse for wear and somehow like a scarily adult version of that Diane Arbus photograph of the emotionally disturbed boy, the one with the grenade. Bandaged, as from a head injury.

They had startlingly slick toilet paper here. In a club, she’d have assumed it was deliberately retro.

Upstairs, on the small concrete island that she guessed might be a tiny public square, though it wasn’t square, the girl called Fiona stood near her motorcycle, pinching at pixels on her iPhone’s screen. The half-dozen other bikes parked there were all equally large and rough-looking. A pair of couriers stood on the tarmac, smoking, past the end of the row of bikes, like knights in smudged primary colors, serrated plates of carbon fiber giving their backs a Jurassic look. Shapeless hair and beards, like extras in a Robin Hood movie. Beyond them, she recognized the mock Tudor facade of Liberty. Great Marlborough Street. Not so far from Portman Square. It felt like days since she’d left there.

“Ready,” said Fiona, behind her.

She turned as Fiona was slipping her phone into a pocket on the front of her black coat. “Where are Heidi and Milgrim?”

“My next job,” Fiona said, “after I run you to your hotel.”

“You know where they are?”

“We can find them,” Fiona said, throwing her leg over her bike. She wore knee-high black boots, side-buckled from top to bottom, their toes abraded to a pale gray. She held out the helmet.

“It’s giving me a headache,” she said.

“Sorry,” said Fiona, “it’s Mrs. Benny’s. Borrowed it.”

Hollis put it on and climbed on behind her, without waiting for further explanation.