Zero History

their jeans. Old photographs of American men in workwear. All of their machines were
vintage, except the one they used for riveting. They had a German Union Special chainstitching
machine. A 1920s belt-loop machine.” She smiled. “Designers become machine
nerds. Machines define what you can do. That and finding the right operators for them.”
She added sugar to her black coffee, stirred it. “So I’m up in the loft, very top of the
building, where they had these rolls of canvas, on shelves, lots of them. They’re all
different, the light’s not great, and I realize I’m not alone. The Japanese couple are
downstairs, on the second floor, making jeans, and they haven’t said anything about
anyone else being there. I can hear the machines they’re using. Below them, there’s a
place that makes cardboard cartons. They have machines too, a sort of distant thumping
undertone. But I can hear a woman singing, like she’s singing to herself. Not loud. But
close. From toward the back of the building. Up in the loft, with me. The jeans people
haven’t said anything about anybody else, but they barely speak English. Absolute focus
on their work. They make two or three pairs a day, just the two of them. Self-taught. So I
put the roll I’m looking at back on the shelf. Old metal shelves, about four feet deep, and
I follow the sound of her singing.” She took a sip of her coffee. “And at the very back of
the loft, there’s light, good light, over a table. Actually it’s a hollow-core door, on a
couple of big cardboard cartons. She’s working on a pattern. Big sheets of tissue, pencils.
Singing. Black jeans, a black T-shirt, and one of those jackets you’re wearing. She looks
up, sees me, stops singing. Dark hair, but she’s not Japanese. Sorry, I say, I didn’t know
anyone was here. That’s okay, she says, American accent. Asks me who I am. I tell her,
and tell her I’m there to look at canvas. What for? Shoes, I tell her. Are you a designer?
Yes, I say, and show her the ones I’m wearing. Which are my shoes, from the first
season, cowhide, from the Horween factory, Chicago, big white vulcanization, like deck
shoes, but really they’re like the very first skate shoes, the ones the first Vans took off
from. And she smiles at me, and steps out from behind the table, so I can see she’s
wearing them, the same shoes, my shoes, but in the black. And she tells me her name.”
Hollis was holding her coffee with both hands, leaning forward in her chair, across the
low table.
“Which I now know I can’t tell you,” Meredith said. “And if you go there, the couple
aren’t there, and neither is she.”
“She liked your shoes.”
“She really got them. I’m not sure anyone else ever did, to the same extent. She got
what I was trying to get away from. The seasons, the bullshit, the stuff that wore out, fell
apart, wasn’t real. I’d been that girl, walking across Paris, to the next shoot, no money for
a Métro card, and I’d imagined those shoes. And when you imagine something like that,
you imagine a world. You imagine the world those shoes come from, and you wonder if
they could happen here, in this world, the one with all the bullshit. And sometimes they
can. For a season or two.”
Hollis put her cup down. “I want you to know,” she said, “that it’s okay not to tell me