Zero History

around the sides, and across the short, loose sleeves. Pep leered at her, or perhaps only
looked at her, and pulled the strap of a dark green messenger bag over his head, tucking
what she recognized as Garreth’s other party favor into it.
“Don’t forget to take that bag off,” Garreth said. He was seated in a black workstation
chair that appeared to have been taped to the shiny aubergine floor. “Queer the visuals,
otherwise.”
Pep leered, or perhaps smiled, in reply, then stepped past her, through the open zip in
the second scrim of black canvas. She saw the same hideous features repeated on the
back of the shirt. He bent, picked up her bag, deposited it inside, then ran the zipper
down, vanishing. She heard the other zipper being opened, then closed, then the sound of
the door being closed.
She turned to Garreth, but saw that he was mounting his black laptop in a sort of clasp
that extended from a framework of black plastic pipe. The pipe, like a geometric model of
a rectangular solid, almost filled the interior of the van. Like Garreth’s chair, it was held
in place with that nonreflective black tape that kept film sets together. There were things
mounted on the framework: two plasma screens, one above the other, cables, boxes and
bits the cables plugged into, and several very stylish-looking LED lamps.
“Where we going?” asked Heidi, sounding oddly subdued, seated on the floor at the
front, her back against another centrally zippered sheet of black canvas.
“Should know shortly,” Garreth said as he finished locking his computer in place, so
that it sat before him on an invisible desk.
“Where’s Ajay gone?”
“Wherever we’re going,” Garreth said, “but with Charlie.”
It all smelled of pipe cement, new electronics, lighting.
“Sit down beside Heidi,” Garreth said as Hollis heard the driver’s door slam shut.
“There’s foam.”
Hollis did.
“Crazy,” said Heidi, eyes wide, looking from Hollis to the rig that surrounded them.
“Claustrophobia.”
“What about it?” Hollis asked.
“I’ve got it,” said Heidi.
The driver started the engine. The van was moving away from Cabinet.
Deal, said Hollis, silently, to the ferret, though she hadn’t really been aware of making
one.
“I’ve never heard you say anything about claustrophobia,” Hollis said.
“Fujiwara says it was being married to fuckstick. Why I went to him in the first place. I
thought it was just wanting to beat the living fuck out of somebody, y’know?”
“You don’t think it was?”
“When he got me calmed down, building models, I could see that it was not wanting to
feel trapped.”