“In Chicago?” asked Milgrim.

“It hasn’t been Chicago for years,” she said, opening her eyes, “has it? Dubai.” She poured milk into her coffee, her movements determinedly businesslike now, precise.

“How is he?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Flown to a hospital in Singapore. His leg. A car hit him. I don’t know where he is.”

“You said he jumped off a building,” said Milgrim, sounding accusing, though he hadn’t intended to.

“He glided down, then opened a chute. Came down in traffic.”

“Why?” Milgrim shifted uneasily in his seat, knowing he was somehow off-script now.

“He’d need somewhere clear, flat, no wires.”

“I mean, why did he jump?”

She frowned. Sipped some coffee. “He says it’s like walking through walls. Nobody can, but if you could, he says, it would feel like that. He says the wall is inside, though, and you do have to walk through it.”

“I’m afraid of heights.”

“So’s he. He says. Said. I haven’t seen him for a while.”

“Was he your boyfriend?” Milgrim had no idea where this came from, but his therapist had had a lot to say about his relative inability to trust certain kinds of instinct.

She looked at him. “Yes,” she said.

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“Do you know how to get in touch with him?”

“I have a number,” she said, “but I’m only supposed to call it if I’m in trouble.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’m unhappy now. Anxious. Sad. That’s not the same.”

“But do you want to stay that way?” Milgrim felt as though he’d become his therapist, in some weird role-flip, or rather Hollis’s. “How can you expect to feel better if you don’t find out how he is?”

“You should eat that,” Hollis said, sharply, indicating his croissant. “We have a cab coming.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling suddenly miserable. “It’s none of my business.” He fumbled with the paper seal on the lid of the tiny jam jar.

“No, I’m sorry. You’re just trying to help. It’s complicated, for me. And I haven’t slept. And I’d been managing not to think about him, for quite a while.”

“You were good, last night, with Meredith,” Milgrim said, tearing his croissant in half and troweling butter and jam inside both pieces. He bit into one of the halves.

“Now I don’t know whether I can go on with that. I have to find him.”

“Call him. Not knowing is affecting your work. That’s trouble.”

“I’m afraid. Afraid that might not work. Afraid he might not want to hear from me.”

“Use Hubertus,” Milgrim said, around a mouthful of croissant, covering his mouth with his hand. “He can find anyone.”

Her eyebrows rose.

“Like Meredith’s sneakers,” he said. “The price of admission.”

“Meredith’s sneakers wouldn’t be unhappy to be found by Hubertus. My friend would be unhappy to be found by anyone.”

“Would he have to know?”

“Did you learn to think this way from Bigend?”

“I learned it being an addict. Constantly requiring something I wasn’t legally allowed to possess, and which I couldn’t afford. I learned leverage. What you did last night, with Meredith. You could do that with Hubertus, and find your friend.”

She frowned.

“There was someone here, last night,” he said. “From Hubertus. After you went up.”

“Who?”

“Fiona. A girl on a motorcycle. Not someone I’d seen at Blue Ant. Well, I’d seen her. On her motorcycle. Delivering something for Pamela. But I didn’t know she was a girl.”

“Why was she here?”

“So that I could speak with Hubertus, on her phone. He told me that Sleight is either working for or with someone else. He told me that I should regard everyone other than Pamela, and Fiona, as suspect. And you. He said you didn’t know about it. But you do now.”

“How did he seem to be taking that?”

“He seemed… interested? He wants you to take a cab to your hotel when we arrive. Fiona will take me to meet him then.”

“Isn’t she in Paris?”

“She’ll be on the train we take.”

“He cultivates this stuff,” she said. “Makes sure it’s in the mix. Hires people who’ll go off the reservation, lead him somewhere new. Harnessing chaos, Garreth said.”

“Who’s Garreth?”

“My friend. He enjoyed hearing about Hubertus. I think Hubertus made a lot of sense to him. I thought it might be the jumping-off thing. That Hubertus erects his life, and his business, in a way guaranteed to continually take him over the edge. Guaranteed to produce a new edge he’ll have to go over.”

“He believes that stasis is the real enemy,” Milgrim said, glad to put any space at all between himself and Hollis’s moment of crossness. “Stability’s the beginning of the end. We only walk by continually beginning to fall forward. He told me,” remembering, “that that would be the problem with being able to perceive the order flow. The potential for stasis.”

“The what?’

“The order flow. He was talking about secrets, once. In Vancouver, when I first met him. He loves secrets.”

“I know,” said Hollis.

“But not all secrets are information people are trying to conceal. Some secrets are information that’s there, but people can’t have it.”

“There where?”

“It just is, in the world. I’d asked him what piece of information he’d most want to have, that he didn’t have, if he could learn any secret. And he said that he’d want something nobody had ever been able to have.”

“Yes?’

“The next day’s order flow. Or really the next hour’s, or the next minute’s.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s the aggregate of all the orders in the market. Everything anyone is about to buy or sell, all of it. Stocks, bonds, gold, anything. If I understood him, that information exists, at any given moment, but there’s no aggregator. It exists, constantly, but is unknowable. If someone were able to aggregate that, the market would cease to be real.”

“Why?” She looked out the window, over the taut black wire supporting its gray linen curtain. “Our cab’s here.”

“Because the market is the inability to aggregate the order flow at any given moment.” He pushed his chair back, stood, and popped the last of the croissant into his mouth. Chewing, he bent and picked up his bag. He swallowed, then drank off what was left of his coffee. “I’ll give you your computer on the train.”

She was leaving some change on the tablecloth. “You can have it, if you need it.”

“But it’s yours.”

“I bought it three months ago, thinking I might start another book,” she said, standing. “I’ve opened it about three times. I have a little e-mail on it, but I’ll put that on a thumb drive. If I need a computer, Blue Ant can pay for it.” She started for the desk, where she’d left her bag.

Milgrim followed, order flow forgotten in his surprise at being offered such a gift. Since he’d been with Hubertus, he’d been provided with things, but they all felt like equipment. It wasn’t personal. Hollis was offering him something that he’d thought of as hers.

And she’d already given him her art book, he remembered. He could read more of it on the train to London.

They gave their keys to the man at the desk, and went out to the waiting cab.