When he’d gone, leaving thickly bound menus, Meredith said, “We could have been across the street, at Comptoir. That would have distracted us thoroughly.”
“Sorry,” said George. “The food here is rather good. Unfortunately, it looks like poor Bram’s the main course.”
“You know him?”
“To speak to. He’s talented. There but for fortune, I suppose.”
“Studio time with Reg not looking quite so dire?”
“Not since our conversation this afternoon, really.” Big solid teeth appearing again. She could certainly see why Meredith liked him. Indeed, she could see that Meredith very definitely did. They gave off that contact-pleasantness she expected from couples who liked one another in some genuine but nonmanic way. She wondered if she’d ever been half of one of those. “Your friend is with Fridrika Brandsdottir,” she said, the name coming back.
“Evidently,” George agreed.
“Not in any biblical sense, I hope,” said Meredith, peering over her open menu at the Bram/Brandsdottir table.
“None whatever,” said George. “He’s gay.”
“That must make it even more embarrassing,” said Hollis, opening her menu.
“He’ll do what he has to,” said George. “He’s looking for a way out of the vampire thing. Tricky.”
Milgrim appeared, his hair looking damp, the maitre d’ fussing officiously behind him.
“Hello, Milgrim,” Hollis said, “have a seat.”
Assured that Milgrim was meant to be there, though clearly none too pleased to have him there, the maitre d’ retreated. Milgrim unslung his shoulder bag, lowered it to the floor by its strap, beside the remaining chair, and seated himself.
“This is my colleague, Milgrim,” Hollis said. “Milgrim, Meredith Overton and George. Like you, George has only the one name.”
“Hello,” said Milgrim. “I saw you at the clothing show.”
“Hello,” said George. Meredith looked at Hollis.
“Milgrim and I,” Hollis said to Meredith, “are both interested in Gabriel Hounds.”
“Unidentified flying objects,” Milgrim said, to George. “Do you believe in them?”
George’s eyes narrowed beneath his unibrow. “I believe that what appear to be objects, flying, sometimes appear to be seen. And may be unknown.”
“You haven’t seen one?” Milgrim leaned sideways and down, to scoot his bag farther under his chair. He looked up, from very close to the tablecloth, at George. “Yourself?”
“No,” said George, with careful neutrality. “Have you?”
Milgrim straightened up. Nodded in the affirmative.
“Let’s order, shall we,” said Hollis, quickly, hugely grateful for the arrival of their waitress.
32. POST-ACUTE
The waitress was departing with orders, taking the hardbound menus with her, when a disturbance broke out at a table on the opposite side of the room.
Raised voices. A tall, broad-shouldered, black-clad young man, pale features grimly set, suddenly standing, knocking over his chair. Milgrim watched as this one swept for the door, slamming out of Les Editeurs. To be met by a tide of electronic flash, flinging up his arm to protect his eyes or hide his face.
“That didn’t take long,” said George, who was buttering a round of sliced baguette. He had elegantly hairy hands, like some expensive Austrian stuffed animal. He bit off half of the buttered bread with his large white teeth.
“All he could stand,” said Meredith, someone whose intelligence protruded through her beauty, Milgrim felt, like the outline of unforgiving machinery pressing against a taut silk scarf.
Craning his neck, Milgrim made out one of the Dottirs, silver hair unmistakable, at the table the young man had deserted. After the liquid metal penguin, this didn’t seem so odd. He felt as though he were on some kind of roll today. She was collecting her things, he saw. She checked the dial of her enormous gold wristwatch. “Saw them,” he said, “the Dottirs. On the river. In a video.” He turned back to George. “I saw you, too.”
“It’s about an album launch,” said George. “They have a new release. We don’t, but share a label.”
“Who was that who left?”
“Bram,” said Hollis, “the singer from the Stokers.”
“Don’t know him,” said Milgrim, picking up one of the rounds of bread in order to give his hands something to do.
“You aren’t thirteen,” said Meredith, “are you?”
“No,” agreed Milgrim, putting the slice of bread, whole, into his mouth. Oral, his therapist called that. She’d said he was very lucky to never have taken up smoking. The bread was firm, springy. He held it there a moment before he began to chew. Meredith was staring at him. He looked back at the Brandsdottir table, where someone was holding whichever Dottir’s chair as she rose.
That person was Rausch, he saw, and almost spat out the bread.
Desperately, he found Hollis’s eye. She winked, the sort of effortless wink that involves no other features, a wink that Milgrim himself could never have managed, and took a sip of wine. “George is in a band, Milgrim,” she said, and he knew that she spoke to calm him. “The Bollards. Reg Inchmale, who was the guitarist in the Curfew with me, is producing their new album.”
Milgrim, chewing and swallowing the suddenly dry bread, nodded. Took a sip of water. Coughed into his crisp cloth napkin. What was Rausch doing here? He glanced back, but didn’t see Rausch. The Dottir, reaching the door, triggered a second wave of strobing, a raggedly cumulative brilliance, the color of her hair. He looked back to Hollis. She nodded, almost invisibly.
George and Meredith, he guessed, were unaware of her connection with Blue Ant or, for that matter, of his own. The Dottirs, he knew, were Blue Ant clients. Or, rather, their father, whom Milgrim had never seen, was some kind of major Bigend project. Possibly even partner. Some people, Rausch included, assumed Bigend’s interest in the sisters was sexual. But Milgrim, from his intermittently privileged position as Bigend’s conversational foil, guessed that not to be the case. Bigend cheerfully squired the twins through London as though they were a pair of tedious but astronomically valuable dogs, the property of someone he wished above most things to favorably impress.
“The Stokers are on a different label,” explained George, “but one owned by the same firm. The publicists have set up a fake romance, between Bram and Fridrika, but have also floated the rumor that Bram and Eydis are involved.”
“It’s a very old tactic,” said Meredith, “and particularly obvious with identical twins.”
“Though new to their audience, and Bram’s,” said George, “who as you point out are thirteen years old.”
Milgrim looked at Hollis. She looked back. Smiled. Telling Milgrim that this was not the time to ask questions. She shrugged out of her Hounds jacket, leaving it draped stiffly across the back of her chair. She was wearing a dress the color of weathered coal, a gray that was almost black. A clingy knit. He looked at Meredith’s dress for the first time. It was black, a thick shiny fabric, the detailing sewn like an antique workshirt. He didn’t understand women’s clothing, but he thought he recognized something. “Your dress,” he said to Meredith, “it’s very nice.”
“Thank you.”
“Is it Gabriel Hounds?”
Meredith’s eyebrows rose, fractionally. She looked from Milgrim to Hollis, then back to Milgrim. “Yes,” she said, “it is.”
“It’s lovely,” said Hollis. “This season’s?”
“They don’t do seasons.”
“But recent?” Hollis looking very seriously at Meredith over the rim of her upraised wineglass.
“Dropped last month.”
“Melbourne?”
“Tokyo.”
“Another art fair?” Hollis finished the wine in her glass. George poured for her. Pointed the neck of the bottle questioningly at Milgrim, then saw Milgrim’s inverted glass.