Zero History

22. FOLEY
Milgrim, with Hollis’s laptop clamped firmly under his arm, bag over the other shoulder,
walked rapidly along a smaller street, away from the one where her vintage clothing fair
was being held.
He needed wifi. He regretted not borrowing the red dongle.
Now he neared a place called Bless, at first mistaking it for a bar. No, a place that sold
clothing, he saw. There might be someone in there, he supposed, glancing in the window,
who would either know about or pretend to know about Hollis’s phantom jeans line.
He kept walking, simultaneously conducting an imaginary exchange with his therapist,
one in which they sorted out what he was feeling. Having worked very hard to avoid
feeling much of anything, for most of his adult life, recognizing even the simplest of his
emotions could require remedial effort.
Angry, he decided. He was angry, though he didn’t yet know who or what at. If Winnie
Tung Whitaker, Special Agent, had sent the man in the foliage green pants, and hadn’t
told him, he thought he’d be angry with her. Disappointed, anyway. That wouldn’t be
getting off on the right foot, in what he thought of as a new professional relationship. Or
perhaps, his therapist suggested, he was angry with himself. That would be more
complicated, less amenable to self-analysis, but more familiar.
Better to be angry with the man in the foliage green pants, he thought. Mr. Foliage
Green. Foley. He didn’t feel kindly disposed toward Foley. Though he had absolutely no
idea who Foley might be, what he was up to, or whether Foley was following him, Hollis,
or the both of them. If Foley wasn’t working for or with Winnie, he might be working for
Blue Ant, or for Bigend more privately, or, given Bigend’s apparent new attitude toward
Sleight, for Sleight. Or none of the above. He might be some entirely new part of the
equation.
“But is there an equation?” he asked himself, or his therapist. Though she now seemed
not to be answering.
Rue du Temple, a wall plaque informed him at the corner, on a building looking as
though it had been drawn by Dr. Seuss. A larger street, Temple. He turned right. Past an
ornate, Victorian-looking Chinese restaurant. Discovering a smoke shop that also offered
coffee, its official, spindle-shaped, red-lit Tabac sign presenting nicotine-lack as a medical
emergency. Without slowing, he entered.
“Wifi?”
“Oui.”
“Espresso, please.” Taking a place at the authentically nonreflective zinc counter. There
was a faint but definite smell of cigarette smoke, though no one was smoking. Indeed, he
was the only customer here.