Washington, D.C. · June 24, 2230 · Before noon into afternoon · A parallel street story
Orin Pike found the shortcut because a sheet blew into his face.
He was looking for the old paving behind a row of workshops. One moment he could see a gap between two walls; the next he could see somebody's best linen at intimate distance.
“Left,” a voice said.
He stepped left, became more thoroughly entangled, and heard the voice sigh.
“My left. Stand still.”
A woman freed him. Beyond her, a paved passage joined the two lanes he had spent the morning walking between. No stair, no sharp slope, a drain cover almost flush with the stones. He could feel his noon map becoming more valuable.
“Can people go through here?”
“People do.”
“How wide at the far end?”
“Depends what they're carrying.”
Her name was Vessa. She went back to the linen. Orin measured the gap with the marked cord he kept in his pocket, walked the passage, counted the paces saved, and drew a neat little bend on his working sheet.
He did not draw Vessa's bucket.
By noon he had sold seven copies of a foot-route sheet. Each carried slope marks, the hour walked, and a warning that the passage was too narrow for carts. He was careful about carts. People accused map sellers of inventing level ground; he had never knowingly sold a stair as a road.
At the eighth sale, Vessa appeared holding one of the seven.
“You've put an arrow through my laundry.”
“The paving goes through.”
“So does a needle. You don't live in the hole.”
Three small households used the passage for washing because the front lane had no drain. They laid boards over the shallow runnel to carry the buckets. Orin had crossed during the few minutes when the boards were up and the first line was being hung. His beautiful unobstructed road had been the interval between two jobs.
He remembered asking whether people could go through. He repeated her answer.
“My sister. The person with our charcoal. Somebody asking. People.”
“All people are somebody's somebody.”
“You sell very short routes to very long conversations.”
She had come because a man carrying stacked picture frames refused to turn around. He had bought Orin's map. He believed a purchased arrow included permission. Vessa had left her neighbor guarding the sheets while she came to fetch the author.
Orin tucked the unsold copies beneath a stone. He asked the next customer to return later. The customer said that a map seller uncertain of his own opening hours was an interesting investment.
At the passage, the picture frames occupied the precise width Orin had admired. Their carrier stood between two wet sheets with the expression of someone being charged twice for the same annoyance.
“I don't need a cart,” he told Orin. “I read the warning.”
“I see that.”
“Then I fit.”
“Not past the linen.”
“Move the linen.”
The neighbor, a quiet man named Udel, showed them a muddy rectangle on a washed coverlet. The bottom frame had swung against it. He had already rinsed that coverlet once. There was enough water left in his bucket to rinse the mark, but not enough time before his afternoon work to hang it all again.
Orin offered to carry the frames back to the front lane. The carrier wanted his map money returned. Orin gave it to him. Then the carrier wanted compensation for the longer walk.
“The longer walk was there before I drew the shorter one.”
“So was the laundry.”
That was a good answer. Orin disliked it.
They turned the frames sideways together and got them out without striking anything else. The carrier took the long lane. Orin went back for his map stone, his unsold copies and the coin tin. He had a little confidence that if he remained near the mistake people would accuse him less freely of fleeing it. This confidence lasted until Vessa told him where to put the bucket.
Udel went to work. Orin rinsed the coverlet under Vessa's direction. A corner fell into the runnel. They rinsed it again.
“You walk for a living?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Very fortunate. You aren't good at standing.”
Afterward she made tea. This surprised him. He had begun assigning her the solid red boundary he used for an impassable wall.
She told him that people sometimes needed the passage badly. An older neighbor could not manage the extra hill. A charcoal carrier brought their loads through it. In rain, someone carrying a child might reasonably choose a roofed stretch over a principle about frontage.
“I don't want a lock,” she said. “I don't want twenty strangers every time your paper is cheap.”
Orin looked at the seven little arrows he had already sold. One buyer had left the market. Two were drivers buying for household errands. He knew where their carts stood. The others might never come back.
He could tell the next seven buyers the truth. He could not put it into the pockets of the first seven by wanting to.
He drew the houses this time. The drain. The laundry bars. A foot opening joined the lanes, but he put no through arrow on it. Beside the opening he wrote shared washing court; not a recommended through route. The ordinary lane went around, gaining back every step he had advertised away.
Vessa watched. “You're making it disappear.”
“Only as a route I sell.”
“Keep the houses.”
“I did.”
She looked again. There were three doors, not one anonymous block.
They agreed nothing about who owned the paving. That was an older dispute involving a workshop wall and two people currently away. Vessa could refuse an uninvited parade without supplying Orin a final property judgment. He could stop sending it without proving every future visitor was a trespasser.
He found two buyers at their carts and corrected their copies. A third returned voluntarily to complain that the picture-frame man was telling everyone the maps contained laundry. Orin amended that copy too.
Four remained out.
In the afternoon he sold the revised map for the same price. A customer held it beside an older copy and asked why the new edition was longer.
“Three households,” Orin said.
The customer took the cheaper-looking walk with the more expensive number of steps. He did not thank Orin for discovering the people between them.
Back in the washing court, the coverlet was drying badly where Orin had doubled it. Vessa spread the fold. On the other line she hung his marked measuring cord, washed free of soap and mud. He would need to fetch it before he could measure another opening.
She had not put it where a map could collect it for him.