Chapter 9: Live Map

"Big Walrus is sleeping," Jens told her. "Just for a little while."

Tova looked at the papers in his hand.

Then she looked at me, because I was the one who knew about the city.

"Is this because of the pancake trucks?"

"Yes," I said.

She thought about that.

"Then we have to tell more people about the pancake trucks."

She went off to school.

Jens sat down on the bottom stair with the envelope on his knee.

I'd never seen him sit like that, folded up, with his elbows on his knees.

"Two million dollars," he said. "I've got eleven thousand in savings and a duplex with a mustard carpet."

"They don't want two million. They want you quiet."

"I know what they want."

"And the union?"

"The union's lawyer says it's garbage. Truth's a defense." He rubbed his face. "It's still a year of my life and no paycheck."

I sat down on the stair above him.

My knees were by his shoulders.

"This is my fault."

"I put my name on it. Don't take my thing." He looked up at me. "You're doing a face. What's the face?"

"I'm thinking."

"I've heard you think on the radio. It always ends with me driving somewhere at three in the morning."

"Not this time," I said. "This time everybody drives."

The thing I know how to build is a map.

I've drawn the map of this city every winter for five years.

Every street, every grade, every bus stop and hospital and school, in order of who needs it first.

For five years only the city got to see it.

Now I wanted everybody to.

I built it on Jens's kitchen table in four days, on my laptop, on a free map service and the union's credit card.

Two layers.

The first was what the city was billed for.

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