Zero History

43. ICHINOMIYA
Thanks for meeting on such short notice,” said Meredith Overton, seated in the armchair
directly beneath the rack of narwhale tusks. She wore a tweed jacket that might have
come from Tanky & Tojo, if they cut things for women. She’d phoned on Hollis’s way
back from her meeting with Bigend, in the strange, high, surgically clean silver pickup
driven by Aldous, one of the tall black minders.
“It’s perfect timing,” Hollis said. “I’ve just seen him. He’d be delighted to have a team
of Blue Ant researchers look for your shoes.”
“Provided I give him the identity of the Gabriel Hounds designer.”
“Yes,” said Hollis.
“I can’t,” said Meredith. “That’s why I’m here.”
“You can’t?”
“Sorry. Attack of conscience. Well, not an attack. My conscience is in fairly decent
shape. That’s the problem. I was trying to do a run around it, because I want my shoes.
George and I were up all night, discussing it, and it became apparent that it’s just not
something I’m willing to do. George agrees, of course. As much as he wants your advice
about working with Inchmale.”
“He has that,” Hollis said. “I thought I’d made that clear, in Paris. I’m a one-woman
sisterhood that way. Counseling the stricken.”
Meredith smiled. The Italian girl arrived with coffee. It was something like the cocktail
hour now, Hollis supposed, and the room, while not crowded, was filling with a peculiar
murmur, leaning by undetectable increments toward the later evening’s full rout. “That’s
kind of you,” Meredith said. “Do you know Japan?”
“Tokyo, mainly. We played there. Huge venues.”
“I went there when I was putting my second season together. The first season, all the
shoes had been leather. I was more comfortable with that. For the second season, I
wanted to do some in fabric. A classic summer sneaker. I needed some kind of artisanal
canvas. Dense, long-wearing, but a great hand. Special.”
“Hand?”
“How it feels, to the touch. Someone had suggested I talk to this couple in Nagoya.
They had an atelier there, above a little warehouse on the outskirts of a place called
Ichinomiya. I can tell you that because they’re no longer there. They were making jeans
there, in deadstock fabric from a mill in Okayama. Depending on the length of the roll,
they might get three pairs of jeans, they might get twenty, and once the roll was gone, it
was gone. I’d heard they’d also been buying canvas from that same mill, Sixties stuff. I
wanted to see it and, if it was good, talk them into selling me a few rolls. They’d tried it
for jeans, but it was too heavy. They were lovely people. There were stacks of samples of