Zero History

“I’m not that far away. Heading for the general vicinity now.”
“Goodbye,” Milgrim said to the phone, though she was already gone. He sighed.
He’d forgotten to return Hollis’s red dongle, but he didn’t need it here. He’d give it back
to her the next time he saw her.
He closed the laptop and put it in his bag, which he’d unpacked on arrival. Bigend had
wanted the memory card with the pictures of Foley, and he didn’t have another, so he
wouldn’t bother taking the camera.
Walking from his room to the elevator, he wondered why they had decided to build a
Holiday Inn here, beside this canal.
In the lobby, he waited at the concierge desk while two young American men received
directions to the Victoria and Albert. He looked at them the way he imagined Blue Ant’s
young French fashion analyst might. Everything they were wearing, he decided, qualified
as what she’d call “iconic,” but had originally become that way through its ability to
gracefully patinate. She was big on patination. That was how quality wore in, she said, as
opposed to out. Distressing, on the other hand, was the faking of patination, and was
actually a way of concealing a lack of quality. Until he’d found himself in Bigend’s
apparel-design push, he hadn’t known that anyone thought about clothing that way. He
didn’t imagine that anything these two wore was liable to acquire any patina, except under
different and later ownership.
When they’d moved on, he asked for directions to Voytek’s Biro Shack, explaining
where he’d been told it was.
“I don’t see it listed, sir,” said the concierge, clicking his mouse, “but you aren’t far, if
it’s where they told you it would be.” He ballpointed a map in a colored brochure and
handed it to Milgrim.
“Thanks.”
Outside, the air smelled differently of exhaust. More diesel? The neighborhood felt
theme-parky but downscale, a little like a state fairground before the evening crowds
arrive. He passed two Japanese girls eating what seemed to be corn dogs, which
heightened the effect.
He was keeping an eye out for Winnie, but if she’d arrived he didn’t see her.
Following the ballpoint line on the concierge’s map, he found himself in a brick-arched
under-mall, some Victorian retrofit, stocked mostly with merchandise that reminded him
of St. Mark’s Place, though with an odd, semi-Japanese feel, perhaps an appeal to foreign
youth-tourism. Further back in this, glassed behind half a brick archway, floridly
Victorian gilt lettering announced BIROSHAK & SON. A surname, then. As he entered, a bell tinked,
bouncing on a long Art Nouveau lily stem of brass, attached to the door.
The shop was densely but tidily packed with small, largely featureless boxes, like oldfashioned
TV-top cable units, arrayed on glass shelves. A tall, balding man, about
Milgrim’s age, turned and nodded. “You are Milgrim,” he said. “I am Voytek.” There was
a battered plastic pennant behind the counter: AMSTRAD, both the name and the logo