Zero history

Her gaze was drawn back to the brand of the hound, with its almost featureless kewpie head.

›››

“Twenty-ounce,” the handsomely graying professor of denim pronounced, the Gabriel Hounds jacket spread before her on a foot-thick slab of polished hardwood, atop what Hollis guessed had been the cast-iron legs of a factory lathe. “Slubby.”

“Slubby?”

Running her hand lightly over the jacket’s sleeve. “This roughness. In the weave.”

“Is this Japanese denim?”

The woman raised her eyebrows. She was dressed, today, in a tweed that looked as if the brambles had been left in, khaki laundered so often as to be of no particular color, oxford cloth so coarse it seemed handloomed, and at least two tattered paisley cravats of peculiar but differing widths. “Americans forget how to make denim like this. Maybe loomed in Japan. Maybe not. Where did you find it?”

“It belongs to a friend.”

“You like it?”

“I haven’t tried it on.”

“No?” The woman moved behind Hollis, helping her remove her coat. She picked up the jacket and helped Hollis into it.

Hollis saw herself in the mirror. Straightened. Smiled. “That’s not bad,” she said. She turned up the collar. “I haven’t worn one of these for at least twenty years.”

“Fit is very good,” the woman said. She touched Hollis’s back with both hands, just below her shoulders. “By-swing shoulders. Inside, elastic ribbons, pull it into shape. This detail is from HD Lee mechanic jacket, early Fifties.”

“If the fabric is Japanese, would it have to have been made in Japan?”

“Possible. Build-quality, detailing, are best, but… Japan? Tunisia? Even California.”

“You don’t know where I could find another like it? Or more of this brand?” She didn’t, somehow, want to name it.

Their eyes met, in the mirror. “You know ‘secret brand’? You understand?”

“I think so,” she said, doubtfully.

“This is very secret brand,” the woman said. “I cannot help you.”

“But you have,” Hollis said, “thank you,” suddenly wanting to be out of the beautifully spare little shop, the musky pong of indigo, “thank you very much.” She pulled her coat on, over the Gabriel Hounds jacket. “Thank you. Goodbye.”

Outside, in Upper James Street, a boy was hurrying past, a hemisphere of thin black wool pulled down level with his eyes. All black, save for his white, blotchily unshaven face and the pavement-smudged white sole-edges of his black shoes.

“Clammy,” she said, reflexively, as he passed her.

“Fucking hell,” hissed Clammy, in his recently and somewhat oddly acquired West Hollywood American, and shuddered, as if from some sudden massive release of coiled tension. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for denim,” she said, then had to point back at the shop, having no idea what it was called, discovering simultaneously that it apparently had no sign. “Gabriel Hounds. They don’t have any.”

Clammy’s eyebrows might have gone up, beneath his black beanie.

“Like this,” she said, tugging at the unbuttoned denim jacket beneath her coat.

His eyes narrowed. “Where’d you get that?”

“A friend.”

“Next to fucking impossible to find,” pronounced Clammy, gravely. As if suddenly taking her, to her amazement and for the first time, seriously.

“Time for a coffee?”

Clammy shivered. “I’m fucking ill,” he said, and sniffled noisily. “Had to get out of the studio.”

“Herbal tea. And something I have for your immune system.”

“Were you Reg’s girl, in the band? My mate says you were.”

“Never,” she said, firmly. “Neither symbolically nor biblically.”

Blank.

“They always think the singer must be fucking the guitarist,” she clarified.

Clammy smirked, through his cold. “Tabloids said that about me ’n’ Arfur.”

“Exactly,” she said. “A Canadian-made, ginseng-based patent medicine. Herbal tea chaser. Can’t hurt.”