“Is it much further?” she asked.
Now it was Milgrim’s turn, on the Biedermeier vanity stool, the remains of Ajay’s luxuriant top-curls darkly littering the spread towels. Ajay himself was in Hollis’s huge scary shower, ridding himself of the aerosol product Chandra had applied to the sides of his head. Staunchly unwilling to see her cousin naked, she faced away from the shower as she used an electric clipper on Milgrim’s back and sides. Milgrim, seeing Ajay naked, thought he looked like a professional dancer. He was all muscles, but none of the bulgy kind.
The idea, now that Chandra had had a good look at Milgrim, and at his hair as it had been the day before, was to give him a different cut. He found himself imagining a Milgrim wig for Ajay, something he was sure he’d never imagined before.
It was getting steamy, but he heard Ajay crank the shower down, then off. Soon he appeared beside Milgrim in a white robe with corded trim, carefully knotting its belt. The top of his head was now Chandra’s initial approximation of Milgrim’s previous look, though it was black, and damp. Milgrim’s own indeterminately brownish hair was falling on the towels.
“I’ll have to trust,” Ajay said to Chandra, “that that wasn’t a joke.”
“For the sort of retainer your friend has me on,” Chandra said, over the burr of the clipper, “you’ll get no jokes at all. I’d never tried it before. Seen an instructional video. I’ll do better next time. Keep your chin down.” This last to Milgrim. “Really it’s to cover bald spots. Up top. Going that heavy on the sides may be pushing the envelope a bit.” She shut the clipper off.
“Pushing the envelope,” said Ajay, “is what we’re about. High speed, low drag.” He toweled his head.
“Do these people know you’re a perfect idiot?” asked Chandra.
“Ajay,” said Garreth, through the door.
Ajay flung the towel in a corner and went out, closing the door behind him.
“He was always like that,” said Chandra, Milgrim not knowing how that was supposed to have been. “It wasn’t entirely the army.” She gave the hair on top of his head a few brisk snips with her scissors, then removed the towel she’d draped around his neck. “Stand up. Have a look.”
Milgrim stood. A different Milgrim, oddly military, perhaps younger, looked back at him from the wall of fogged mirror above the twin sinks. He’d buttoned the collar of his new shirt, to keep hair from getting inside, and this contributed to the unfamiliarity. A stranger, in an air tie. “That’s good,” said Milgrim. And it was. “I wouldn’t have thought to do that. Thank you.”
“Thank your friend on the bed,” said Chandra. “Most expensive cut you’ll have had. Easily.”
Ajay opened the door. He was wearing Milgrim’s wrinkled cotton jacket. His shoulders were slightly too wide for it, Milgrim thought. “Your shoes are a bit too long,” Ajay said, “but I can put something in the toes.”
“Milgrim,” said Garreth, from the bed, “come and sit. Fiona here tells me you’re a natural with the balloons.”
“I have good hand-eye coordination,” Milgrim volunteered. “They told me in Basel.”
69. THE GIFTING SUITE
Here?” She recognized the nameless denim shop in Upper James Street. Dark, faintly candlelit. A pulsing glow, almost invisible.
“They’re hosting a pop-up,” said Meredith.
“Won’t start for an hour,” said Clammy, who struck Hollis as uncharacteristically cheery. “But I’m first.”
“It’s a gifting suite, as far as you’re concerned,” Meredith told him. “Then we’re even. But no questions. And no bothering Bo later. Ever. Go there again, she won’t know you.”
“Perfect,” said Clammy, drumming a signal of pleased anticipation on the steering wheel.
“Who’s Bo?”
“You’ve met her,” said Meredith. “Come on. Out with you. They’re waiting.” She opened the little wagon’s passenger-side door, pulled herself out and up, tipped the passenger seat forward. Hollis struggled out. “You’ll have a little time before we arrive,” said Meredith, and got back in. She closed the door and Clammy pulled away, rain beading on the enamel of the wagon’s low roof.
The handsome graying woman opened the door as Hollis reached it, gestured her in, then closed and locked it.
“You’re Bo,” said Hollis. The woman nodded. “I’m Hollis.”
“Yes,” said the woman.
It smelled of vanilla and something else, masking jungle indigo. Candles pulsed in retail twilight, along the massive slab of polished wood that Hollis remembered from her previous visit. Aromatherapy candles, their complicated tallow poured into expensive-looking glasses with vertical sides, their wicks paper-thin slabs of wood, crackled softly as their flames pulsed. Faintly sandblasted on each glass, she saw, the Hounds logo. Between the candles were a folded pair of jeans, a folded pair of khaki pants, a folded chambray shirt, and a black ankle-boot. The boot’s smooth leather caught the candlelight. She touched it with a fingertip.
“Next year,” said Bo. “Also an oxford, brown, but samples not ready.”
Hollis picked up the folded jeans. They were black as ink, unusually heavy. She turned them over and saw the baby-headed dog, dimly branded into a leather patch on the waistband. “They’re for sale? Tonight?”
“Friends will come. When you were here, I could not help you. I hope you understand.”
“I do,” said Hollis, not sure that she did.
“In rear, please. Come.”
Hollis followed her, ducking through a doorway partially concealed by a dark noren decorated with white fish. There was no white Ikea desk here, no decrease in the shop’s simple elegance at all. It was a smaller space, but as cleanly uncluttered, with the same sanded, unstained floor, the same candles. A woman was seated on one of two old, paint-scarred, mismatched wooden kitchen chairs, stroking the screen of an iPhone. She looked up, smiled, stood. “Hello, Hollis. I-”
Hollis raised her hand. “Don’t tell me.”
The woman raised her eyebrows. Her hair was dark brown, glossy in candlelight, nicely cut, but mussed.
“Deniability,” Hollis said. “I could figure it out, from what Meredith told me. Or I could just ask Reg. But if you don’t tell me, and I don’t do either of those things, I can continue to tell Hubertus that I don’t know your name.” She looked around, saw that Bo was gone. She turned back to the woman. “I’m not good at lying.”
“Neither am I. Good at hiding, not at lying. Please, sit down. Would you like some wine? We have some.”
Hollis took the other chair. “No, thank you.”
She was wearing jeans that Hollis took to be the ones she’d seen on the table. That same absolute black. A blue shirt, rumpled and untucked. A very worn pair of black Converse sneakers, their rubber sides abraded and discolored.