Zero History

“The food?”
“What they managed to do with you in Basel. I’m really very impressed. I see now that
it’s all taken a while to gel.”
“That reminds me,” said Milgrim.
“Of what?”
“I’m starving.”
“Sandwiches,” said Bigend, indicating a brown paper bag on the desk. “Chicken and
bacon. Seedy bread. I’ll be in touch tomorrow, when the travel’s been arranged. You’ll
be locked in here. The alarm system will be activated. Please don’t try to leave. Jun will
be in at ten thirty or so. Good night.”
When Bigend had gone, Milgrim ate the two sandwiches, carefully wiped his fingers,
then removed his new shoes, examined the Tanky & Tojo logo stamped into the orange
leather insoles, smelled them, and put them on the white desk. The gray vinyl floor was
cold through his socks. The door to the front of the shop, which Bigend had closed
behind him, looked cheap, hollow-core. He’d once watched a dealer called Fish chisel the
thin wooden skin from one side of a door like that. It had been filled with plastic bags of
counterfeit Mexican Valium. Now he pressed his ear against this one, held his breath.
Nothing.
Was the urine-sample man still sitting out there with his umbrella? He doubted it, but he
wanted to be sure. He found the light switch, pressed it. Stood for a moment in darkness,
then opened the door.
The shop was lit, but dimly, by wonky columnar lanterns of white paper, floor lamps.
The display window, from here, looked like one of those big Cibachromes in an art
gallery: photograph of a blank brick wall across the street, faint ghost of graffiti.
Suddenly someone passed, in a black hoodie. Milgrim swallowed. Closed the door.
Turned the lights back on.
He went to the rear, no longer bothering to be quiet, opened a similar but smaller door,
finding a clean little room with a very new toilet and corner sink. No other doors. No rear
entrance. The neighborhood, like much of London, he guessed, not having alleys in the
American sense.
He found a virginal white slab of foam, five inches thick, double-wide, rolled into a
thick upright cylinder. It was secured with three bands of transparent packing tape, the
Blue Ant logo repeated along them at regular intervals. Beside it was a fat, surprisingly
small sausage of what appeared to be a darkly iridescent silk, and a plastic liter bottle of
still spring water, from Scotland.
The desk’s top drawer contained its Ikea assembly instructions and a pair of scissors
with colorless transparent handles. The other two drawers were empty. He used the
scissors to cut the tape, releasing the foam, which remained slightly bent, in the direction
in which it had been rolled. He put the concave side down, on the cold vinyl, and picked
up the silken sausage. mont-bell was embroidered on one side. He fumbled with the