Zero History

which she’d dreamed of as a child, and which retained, even at this stage of supposed
adulthood, a certain small sharp sense of disappointment. Though perhaps game was
afoot in Paris, she thought, and now merely a rather long subway ride from here.
In the traffic of Marylebone Road, stopping and starting, she kept noticing a dispatch
rider, armored in samurai plastics, the back of his yellow helmet scarred as if something
feline and huge had swatted him and almost missed, his clumsy-looking fiberglass fairing
mended with peeling silver tape. He seemed to keep passing them, somehow, rolling
forward between lanes. She’d never understood how that worked here.
“I hope I can find Milgrim at the station.”
“No fear,” said Jacob. “They’ll bring him to you.”
>>>
Sky-blue steel-girdered vastness. Towering volume of sound. Pigeons looking
unconfused, about their pigeon business. Nobody did train stations like the Europeans,
and the British, she thought, best of all. Faith in infrastructure, coupled with a necessitydriven
gift for retrofitting.
One of Bigend’s lanky, elegant drivers, hand to earpiece, hove toward her steadily
through the crowd, Milgrim in tow like a Sunday rowboat. Gazing around like a child,
Milgrim, his face lit with a boy’s delight in the blue-girdered drama, the Dinky Toy
grandeur of the great station.
One of the wheels of her roll-aboard began to click as she headed in their direction.