Zero History

of a susurrus, the sea of London traffic. The fingers of her free hand on the scrimshawed
walrus-ivory of the Piblokto Madness bed. “And?”
“The others, they figured we were hooking up. ’Cept George. He knew her.”
“Where from?”
“Cordwainers. London College of Fashion. She’d studied shoe design. Had two seasons
of her own line. Went back to Melbourne after that, making belts and purses. Serious girl,
George said.”
“He was at Cordwainers?”
“Fucking Oxford, George. Seeing another Cordwainers girl, friend of hers.”
Hollis realized that she was framing all of this, visualizing it, in a Melbourne that had
almost nothing to do with any actual city. They’d played Melbourne and Sydney twice
each, touring, and each time she’d been so jet-lagged, and so embroiled with band
politics, that she’d scarcely registered either place. Her Melbourne was a collage, a mashup,
like a Canadianized Los Angeles, Anglo-Colonial Victorian amid a terraformed sprawl
of suburbs. All of the larger trees in Los Angeles, Inchmale had told her, were Australian.
She supposed the ones in Melbourne were as well. The city in which she was imagining
Clammy now wasn’t real. A stand-in, something patched together from what little she had
available. She felt a sudden, intense urge to go there. Not to whatever the real Melbourne
might be, but to this sunny and approximate sham. “And she got them for you?” she
asked Clammy.
“Came in the morning. Drove me to Brunswick Street. Eggs and bacon in a vegan
lesbian café bar.”
“Vegan bacon?”
“Open-minded. We talked about Hounds. I got the idea she’d met someone here,
London, when she’d been at Cordwainers, who was in on the start of Hounds.”
“It started here?”
“Didn’t say that. But someone here had known something about it, early stages.”
The bottom of the cage was perfectly dark now, the insectoid wallpaper dimly floral.
“We have a deal,” she reminded him.
“We do,” he agreed, “but there may be less to it than you’re expecting, now I’ve had
time to think about it.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“So breakfast, and we talk, then we hit the market. I’d thought it would be more like
the clothes end of Portobello, or Camden Lock. But it was more artists, craftsy stuff.
Japanese prints, paintings, jewelry. Things the sellers had made.”
“When was this?”
“Last March. Still hot. People had been lining up, for Hounds, while we ate. Market’s
not very big. Mere leads me straight to this queue, inside, I’d say twenty people, more
after us. Out in a yard. I’m thinking, That’s not for us, but she says it is, we have to queue
too.”