Zero history

“Soho. Clammy has a car.”

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Which was Japanese, minute, and appeared to have been fathered by a Citroen Deux Chevaux, its mother of less distinctive lineage but obviously having attended design school. It had virtually no rear seat, so Hollis was folded in sideways now, behind Meredith and Clammy, watching a determined little rear wiper squeegee rain. Nothing could have been less like the Hilux. A tiny retro-wagon, devoid of armor. Everything, in traffic, was larger than they were, including motorcycles. Clammy had bought it used, through a broker in Japan, and imported it, the only way to get one here. It was the dark glossy gray of an old-fashioned electric fan, a shade Inchmale liked to refer to as “a crushed mouse,” which meant a gray with some red in it. She hoped other drivers could see them. Though not if they were Foley’s crew, whom she’d started to worry about when Clammy was turning into Oxford Street. Garreth’s instruction to not leave the hotel had suddenly made a different sort of sense. She hadn’t been taking all that very seriously. She’d felt like an observer, a helper, or a woefully unskilled nurse. But now, she realized, in this new economy of kidnapping, she herself could probably be quite valuable. If they had her, they’d have Garreth. Though they didn’t, as far as she knew, know about Garreth. Though that depended, she imagined, on everyone in Bigend’s tiny immediate crew remaining loyal. Who was Fiona? She knew nothing about Fiona, really. Except that she kept an eye on Milgrim, an oddly personal one, Hollis thought. Actually, now that Hollis thought about it, as though she fancied him.

“Is it much further?” she asked.

Now it was Milgrim’s turn, on the Biedermeier vanity stool, the remains of Ajay’s luxuriant top-curls darkly littering the spread towels. Ajay himself was in Hollis’s huge scary shower, ridding himself of the aerosol product Chandra had applied to the sides of his head. Staunchly unwilling to see her cousin naked, she faced away from the shower as she used an electric clipper on Milgrim’s back and sides. Milgrim, seeing Ajay naked, thought he looked like a professional dancer. He was all muscles, but none of the bulgy kind.

The idea, now that Chandra had had a good look at Milgrim, and at his hair as it had been the day before, was to give him a different cut. He found himself imagining a Milgrim wig for Ajay, something he was sure he’d never imagined before.

It was getting steamy, but he heard Ajay crank the shower down, then off. Soon he appeared beside Milgrim in a white robe with corded trim, carefully knotting its belt. The top of his head was now Chandra’s initial approximation of Milgrim’s previous look, though it was black, and damp. Milgrim’s own indeterminately brownish hair was falling on the towels.

“I’ll have to trust,” Ajay said to Chandra, “that that wasn’t a joke.”

“For the sort of retainer your friend has me on,” Chandra said, over the burr of the clipper, “you’ll get no jokes at all. I’d never tried it before. Seen an instructional video. I’ll do better next time. Keep your chin down.” This last to Milgrim. “Really it’s to cover bald spots. Up top. Going that heavy on the sides may be pushing the envelope a bit.” She shut the clipper off.

“Pushing the envelope,” said Ajay, “is what we’re about. High speed, low drag.” He toweled his head.

“Do these people know you’re a perfect idiot?” asked Chandra.

“Ajay,” said Garreth, through the door.

Ajay flung the towel in a corner and went out, closing the door behind him.

“He was always like that,” said Chandra, Milgrim not knowing how that was supposed to have been. “It wasn’t entirely the army.” She gave the hair on top of his head a few brisk snips with her scissors, then removed the towel she’d draped around his neck. “Stand up. Have a look.”

Milgrim stood. A different Milgrim, oddly military, perhaps younger, looked back at him from the wall of fogged mirror above the twin sinks. He’d buttoned the collar of his new shirt, to keep hair from getting inside, and this contributed to the unfamiliarity. A stranger, in an air tie. “That’s good,” said Milgrim. And it was. “I wouldn’t have thought to do that. Thank you.”

“Thank your friend on the bed,” said Chandra. “Most expensive cut you’ll have had. Easily.”

Ajay opened the door. He was wearing Milgrim’s wrinkled cotton jacket. His shoulders were slightly too wide for it, Milgrim thought. “Your shoes are a bit too long,” Ajay said, “but I can put something in the toes.”

“Milgrim,” said Garreth, from the bed, “come and sit. Fiona here tells me you’re a natural with the balloons.”

“I have good hand-eye coordination,” Milgrim volunteered. “They told me in Basel.”