62. WAKING

Milgrim woke with a leg over both of his, bent sharply at the knee, Fiona’s inner thigh and calf across the front of both his thighs. She’d turned on her side, facing him, and was no longer snoring, though he could feel, he discovered, her breath on his shoulder. She was still asleep.

How long, he wondered, if he remained perfectly still, might she remain in this extraordinary position? He only knew that he was prepared to find out.

A spidery, simultaneously sinuous and scratchy guitar chord filled the high-ceilinged twilight of Bigend’s Vegas cube, afloat on rainlike finger-drums. Milgrim winced. It died away. Came again.

Fiona moaned, threw her arm across his chest, snuggled closer. The chord returned, like surf, relentless. “Bugger,” said Fiona, but didn’t move until the scratching, writhing chord returned again. She rolled away from Milgrim, reaching for something. “Hullo?”

Milgrim imagined that the foam was a raft. Made the walls recede, horizon-deep. But it was a raft on which Fiona was taking calls.

“Wilson? Okay. Yes? Understood. Put him on.” She sat cross-legged now, at the very edge of the slab. “Hullo. Yes.” Silence. “I’d need to dress for it, the chartreuse vest, reflective stripes.” Silence. “Kawasaki. GT550. Bit tatty for the job, but if the box is new, should do. Benny can bolt anything on. Have the manufacturer’s URL? I could measure it for you, otherwise. I’ve already put it together. Haven’t tested it.” A longer silence. “Organ transplants, plasma? Autopsy bits?” Silence. “Send over enough of that precut foam from a camera shop, the throw-away-the-bits kind. I doubt vibration would do it much good at all, but Benny and I can sort that. Yes. I will. Thank you. Could you put Hubertus back on, please? Thanks.” She cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, “we do seem very busy, suddenly. Benny can bodge your box on, but I’ll need new dampers. This drone won’t travel as nicely, I don’t think. Different sort of moving parts. Yes. He did. He was very clear. Bye, then.”

“Hubertus?”

“And someone called Wilson. Something’s up.”

“What?”

“Wilson wants my bike outfitted like a medical courier, professional-looking box over the pillion, extra reflectors, safety gear. Our new drone goes in there.”

“Who’s Wilson?”

“No idea. Hubertus says do what he says, to the letter. When Hubertus delegates, he delegates.” He felt her shrug. “Good kip, though.” She yawned, stretched. “You?”

“Yes,” said Milgrim, keeping it at that.

She stood, went to where she’d left her armored pants. He heard her pull them on. The zip going up. He restrained a sigh. “Coffee,” she said. “I’ll have Benny get some in. White?”

“White,” said Milgrim, “sugar.” He groped under the foam for his socks. “What was that music, on your phone?”

“I’ve forgotten his name. Brilliant. Saharan.” She was pulling on her boots. “He heard Jimi and James Brown on the shortwave, when he was little. Carved extra frets into a guitar.” She went out without turning the Italian umbrella back up. Grayish sunlight. Then she closed the door behind her.

63. CURLY STAYS, SLOW FOOD

With Garreth and Pep, the Catalan car thief, deep in electric hub motors for bicycles, she’d been glad of Inchmale’s call. She barely knew what hub motors were, but Pep wanted two, for extra speed, while Garreth insisted that two were too many. If one of them were to go out, Garreth argued, the extra weight, plus the generator drag, would negate the advantage of the first one. But if there was only one, and it failed, Pep could peddle as best he could, while not expending energy on the extra weight. The clarity with which she retained this, while having no knowledge of what any of it was really about, surprised her.

Pep looked as though someone had made an apple doll out of Gerard Depardieu, soaking the apple in salted lemon juice and baking it, then leaving it in a cool, dark place to harden, hoping it wouldn’t mold. He’d avoided molding, by the look of him, but had gotten much smaller. Impossible to judge his age. From certain angles, the world’s most weathered teenager; from others, shockingly old. There was a dragon tattooed on the back of his right hand, bat-winged and suggestively phallic, that looked less like a tattoo than a medieval woodcut. His fingernails, which were almost perfectly square, were freshly manicured, polished to a high sheen. Garreth seemed glad to see him, but he made her uncomfortable.

Inchmale had phoned from the sitting room, where she could hear, in the background, the early phases of the evening’s drinking. “Are you pregnant?” he’d asked.

“Are you mad?”

“The doorman referred to you as ‘they.’ I noted the sudden plurality.”

“I’ll be down. In the singular.”

She’d left Garreth chiding Pep for having ordered something, called a Hetchins frame, for a bike that might have to be tossed in the Thames after a few hours’ use. Pep’s position, as she was closing the door behind her, was that it might not have to be tossed at all, and that “curly stays” were in any case a lovely thing. She saw Pep look at his fingernails, that gesture she associated with manicured men.

She found Heidi and Inchmale established beneath the narwhale tusks. Inchmale was pouring tea from one of the vintage Bunnykins services that were a Cabinet trademark.

“Good evening,” he said. “We’re discussing the recent shit, a variety of possible fans, your place in same, plus the possibility of your having found a viable and ongoing relationship.”

“What would one of those constitute, for me, in your opinion?” she asked, taking a seat.

“Having someone to have one with, to begin with,” said Inchmale, putting down the teapot. “But you know I thought he was a good chap before.”

“That was what you said about Phil Spector.”

“Allowance for age,” said Inchmale, “misfortune. Genius. Lemon?” He proffered a wedge of cut lemon in an ornate silver squeezer.

“No lemon. What are ‘curly stays’?”

“Corsetry.”

“I just heard a Catalan car thief use the phrase.”

“Did he speak English? Perhaps he was trying to describe a permanent wave.”

“No. Part of a bicycle.”

“My money’s on corsetry. Do you know that Heidi’s stuck a man with a Rhenish dart?”

“Rhenium,” corrected Heidi.

“Rhennish is the hock, yes, and I might well ask for some, shortly. But you,” he said to Hollis, “you appear to have signed on to a firm in transition.”

“And on whose recommendation?”

“Am I prescient? Have you known me to be prescient?” He tried his tea. Returned his cup to the saucer. Added a second lump. “Angelina tells me that the London PR community are behaving like dogs before an earthquake, and somehow everyone knows, without knowing how, that it’s about Bigend.”

“There’s something going on in Blue Ant,” Hollis said carefully, “but I couldn’t tell you exactly what. I mean, I don’t know exactly what. But Hubertus doesn’t seem to be taking it that seriously.”

“Whatever that was in the City last night, he doesn’t take that that seriously?”

“I don’t think that’s the same thing, exactly. But I can’t talk about it.”

“Of course not. That oath you swore, when you joined the agency. The ritual with Geronimo’s skull. But the tonality Angelina’s picking up isn’t that he’s in trouble, or that Blue Ant is trouble. It’s that he’s about to become exponentially bigger. PR people know these things.”

“Bigger?”

“Whole orders of magnitude. Things are shifting, in anticipation. Things are getting ready to jump on the Bigend boat.”

“Things?”

“The ones that go bump, darling. Like tectonic plates, colliding, in this city of ancient night.” He sighed. Tried his tea again. Smiled.