William Gibson - Zero history

“I had a friend who was a heroin addict,” she said. “He died.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He began to eat.

“It was years ago.” She picked at her salad.

“What do you do for Hubertus?” he asked

“I’m freelance as well,” she said. “But I’m not sure what I do. Not yet.”

“He’s like that,” he said. Something caught his attention, across the hall. “Foliage green, those pants.”

“Whose?”

“He’s gone. Do you know coyote brown?”

“Who?”

“It was the fashionable shade in U.S. military equipment. Foliage green is newer, trending. Alpha green was up briefly, but foliage green is on top now.”

“U.S. military equipment comes in fashion shades?”

“It certainly does,” said Milgrim. “Hubertus doesn’t talk with you about that?”

“No.”

He was still trying to find the pants he’d glimpsed, in the distance. “It’s not a shade you’ll see much of this year, commercially. Next year, probably. I don’t even know the Pantone number.” He brought his attention back to his meat tart. Quickly finished it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not very good with new people. At first.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You get right down to things, it seems to me.”

“That’s what he says,” said Milgrim, blinking, and she guessed he meant Bigend. “I saw your picture,” he said. “A poster of you. I think on St. Mark’s Place. A used record store.”

“That’s a very old picture.”

Milgrim nodded, tore his croissant in half, began to butter it.

“Does he talk to you about denim?”

Milgrim looked up, mouth full of croissant, shook his head.

“Gabriel Hounds?”

Milgrim swallowed. “Who?”

“It’s a very secretive jeans line. That seems to be what I do, for Hubertus.”

“But what do you do?”

“I investigate it. I try to find out where it comes from. Who makes it. Why people like it.”

“Why do people like it?”

“Possibly because it’s almost impossible to find.”

“Is that it?” asked Milgrim, looking at her jacket.

“Yes.”

“Well made. But it’s not military.”

“Not that I know of. Why is he interested in fashion, now?”

“He isn’t. In any ordinary sense. That I know of.” And the obliquely-looking-out thing was there again, around that interior corner, and she felt its intelligence. “Do you know there’s a trade show specifically for manufacturers who hope to produce equipment for the Marine Corps?”

“I didn’t. Have you been?”

“No,” said Milgrim, “I missed it. It’s in South Carolina. I was just there. In South Carolina.”

“What is it, exactly, that you do, for Hubertus, around clothing? Are you a designer? A marketer?”

“No,” said Milgrim. “I notice things. I’m good with detail. I didn’t know that. It was something he pointed out to me, in Vancouver.”

“Did you stay with him? In that penthouse?”

Milgrim nodded.

“In the room with the maglev bed?”

“No,” Milgrim said, “I had a small room. I needed… focus.” He finished the last of his croissant, took a sip of coffee. “I was, I think the word is ‘institutionalized’? I wasn’t comfortable with too much space. Too many options. Then he sent me to Basel.”

“Switzerland?”

“To begin my recovery. If you don’t mind me asking, why are you working for him now?”

“I ask myself that,” she said. “It’s not the first time, and after the first time, I certainly didn’t want there to be a second time. But it proved weirdly lucrative, that first time, in a very roundabout way, a way that had nothing to do with what I was supposedly doing for him. Then I lost a lot of that money in the crash, hadn’t found anything else I wanted to do, and suddenly he was insisting I do this. I’m not entirely comfortable with it.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“I can tell,” said Milgrim.

“Why are you working for him?”

“I need a job,” said Milgrim. “And because… he paid for the clinic, in Basel. My recovery.”

“He sent you to detox?”

“It was very expensive,” he said. “More than an armored truck. Cartel grade.” He straightened his knife and fork on the white plate, amid crumbs. “It’s confusing,” he said. “Now he wants me to work with you.” He looked up from the plate, both elements of his oddly fragmented self seeming for the first time to see her simultaneously. “Why don’t you sing?”

“Because I don’t sing,” she said.

“But you were famous. You must have been. There was a poster.”

“That’s not really what it’s about,” she said.

“It just seems it might be easier. For you, I mean.”

“It wouldn’t,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

In Shaftsbury Avenue, on the way back to Milgrim’s hotel, through light rain, a dispatch rider on a dirty gray motorcycle caught up with the Hilux at a pedestrian crossing. Aldous powered down the window on the passenger side, squeegeeing raindrops from the bulletproof glass, as the helmeted rider took an envelope from his jacket and passed it to Milgrim, his glove like a Kevlar-armored robot hand. The window slid back up as the bike pulled away between the lanes of traffic ahead of them, the rider’s yellow helmet dwindling steadily. The back of it was marred, as if mauled by the swipe of some great paw, revealing a white substrate.

He looked down at the envelope. MILGRIM, centered, in a cartoonist’s loose caps, pm lower right. Pamela. It felt empty, or almost so, as he opened it. A limp transparent ring-binder sleeve, containing the inkjet image of his cop from Caffe Nero. Though not in Caffe Nero, here. Behind her, nicely in focus, Gay Dolphin Gift Cove’s dog-headed angels. And there the sweatshirt had been red, though he could make out the same white moon-and-palm logo. A different colorway. Had Sleight taken this? It appeared to be a candid shot. He imagined her sleeping, back in the coach compartment of his British Midlands flight.

The cab filled with the opening chords of Toots and the Maytals’ “Draw Your Brakes.” “Aldous,” said Aldous, to his iPhone. “Certainly.” He passed it to Milgrim.

“You see,” said Bigend.

“That’s her,” said Milgrim. “When I was there?”

Remembering Bigend’s advice about telephones, he didn’t ask where the image had been found, or how. “More or less,” said Bigend, and hung up, Milgrim returning the iPhone to Aldous’s large, waiting, beautifully manicured hand.

Fitzroy,” Clammy said, on her iPhone. She was staring up at the round bottom of Number Four’s birdcage, having left a freshly coiffed Heidi in Selfridges, preparing to test for residual viability in several of fuckstick’s credit cards.

“Fitzroy?”

“This neighborhood,” Clammy said, “Melbourne. ’Round Brunswick Street. Rose Street, off Brunswick. Rose Street’s got this artists’ market. Mere took me. Meredith. Ol’ George knew her.”

That would be “Olduvai” George, the Bollards’ brilliant, virtually forehead-free keyboardist, whom Inchmale said had more brains in his little finger than the rest of them put together. An even No. 2 crop that looked like a very tight fur hat. Like one of Clammy’s black cashmere beanies, except he couldn’t take it off. Massive jaw and cheekbones, permanent glossy black stubble, huge deep-set intelligent eyes.

“First thing I saw was her Hounds, girls’ Hounds,” Clammy continued.

“Looked good?”

“Hit it in a minute.”

Meaning, she thought, that he hadn’t, but would’ve. In theory at least. “And you had Hounds in common?”