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and voices harsh as gulls rising from the other side of the brick wall that separated the canal path from the street.
    At Camden Lock she had to fight her way through the market. There were tens of thousands of tourists, swarming from the maze of shops to pick their way between scores of vendors selling old and new clothes, bootleg CDs, cheap silver jewelry, kilims, feather boas, handcuffs, cellphones, mass-produced furniture and puppets from Indonesia, Morocco, Guyana,Wales . The fug of burning incense and cheap candles choked her; she hurried to where a young woman was turning samosas in a vat of sputtering oil, and dug into her pocket for a handful of change, standing so that the smells of hot grease and scorched chickpea batter cancelled out patchouli and Caribbean Nights.
    “Two, please,” Jane shouted.
    She ate and almost immediately felt better, then walked a few steps to where a spike-haired girl sat behind a table covered with cheap clothes made of ripstock fabric in Jell-O shades.
    “Everything five pounds,” the girl announced. She stood, smiling helpfully as Jane began to sort through pairs of hugely baggy pants. They were cross-seamed with velcro and deep zippered pockets. Jane held up a pair, frowning as the legs billowed, lavender and green, in the wind.
    “It’s so you can make them into shorts,” the girl explained. She stepped around the table and took the pants from Jane, deftly tugging at the legs so that they detached. “See? Or a skirt.” The girl replaced the pants, picked up another pair, screaming orange with black trim, and a matching windbreaker. “This color would look nice on you.”
    “Okay.” Jane paid for them, waited for the girl to put the clothes in a plastic bag. “Thanks.”
    “Bye now.”
    She went out into High Street. Shopkeepers stood guard over the tables spilling out from their storefronts, heaped with leather clothes and souvenir T-shirts: MIND THE GAP, LONDON UNDERGROUND, shirts emblazoned with the Cat in the Hat toking on a cheroot. THE CAT IN THE HAT SMOKES BLACK. Every three or four feet someone had set up a boom box, deafening sound-bites of salsa, techno, “The Hustle,” Bob Marley, “Anarchy in the UK,” Radiohead. On the corner of Inverness and High Street a few punks squatted in a doorway, looking over the postcards they’d bought. A sign in the smoked-glass window said ALL HAIRCUTS TEN POUNDS, MEN WOMEN CHILDREN.
    “Sorry,” one of the punks said, as Jane stepped over them and into the shop.
    The barber was sitting in an old-fashioned chair, his back to her, reading the Sun . At the sound of her footsteps he turned, smiling automatically. “Can I help you?”
    “Yes please. I’d like my hair cut. All of it.”
    He nodded, gesturing to the chair . “Please.”
    Jane had thought she might have to convince him that she was serious. She had beautiful hair, well below her shoulders—the kind of hair people would kill for, she’d been hearing that her whole life. But t he barber just hummed and chopped it off, the snick snick of his shears interspersed with kindly questions about whether she was enjoying her visit and his account of a vacation to Disney World ten years earlier.
    “Dear, do we want it shaved or buzz-cut?”
    In the mirror a huge-eyed creature gazed at Jane, like a tarsier or one of the owlish caligo moths. She stared at it, entranced, then nodded.
    “Shaved. Please.”
    When he was finished she got out of the chair, dazed, and ran her hand across her scalp. It was smooth and cool as an apple . There were a few tiny nicks that stung beneath her fingers. She paid the barber, tipping him two pounds. He smiled and held the door open for her.
    “Now when you want a touchup, you come see us, dear. Only five pounds for a touchup.”
    She went next to find new shoes. There were more shoe shops in Camden Town than she had ever seen anywhere in her life; she checked out four of them on one block before deciding on a discounted pair of