The National Mall · June 24, 2230 · Between the morning work and afternoon preparations
Lil found Joshua behind the platform eating bread over a bucket.
“Very grand,” she said.
“It's to catch the crumbs.”
“I assumed the bucket had paid for a better view.”
He moved his feet to make room. She did not sit. She had come by the Mall to check a delivery question and had seen his coat through a gap in the canvas. The question was answered; the empty carrier was gone. Remaining was now a choice she could not put on the account.
He held out half the bread.
She took it and sat on the low timber, leaving enough space between them for someone else's expectations.
Beyond the canvas a hammer struck twice, stopped, and struck again from a new angle. There was no public address underway. Workers were moving equipment around the ground where a crowd could later make everyone invisible except Joshua. At the blue-rag table, Neri had her book open. Lil could see its edge, not its entries.
“You owe me breakfast,” Joshua said.
“I brought breakfast.”
“Once.”
“It was a very good breakfast.”
They both remembered the road, although neither supplied its name. He had been hungry, and funny about it once food arrived. She had liked the funny part before she realized how much hunger had gone into it. That was old knowledge, capable of arriving between them more quickly than a new sentence.
She bit the bread. “This needs something.”
“It has a bucket.”
She laughed before she could make the sound smaller. He looked pleased in a way she found more dangerous than any of his posters.
Sol came around the canvas carrying a folded cloth and stopped at the sight of them. He looked at Lil, at the bread, and then away with an elaborate tact that made the timber feel suddenly like a stage.
“We can give you a little privacy.”
“You could stop announcing it,” Lil said.
Sol nodded. He had something to ask Joshua about an afternoon sequence. He held the cloth against his chest and waited instead of going away. Lil recognized the practice: a person who did not interrupt could still make every minute feel borrowed.
Joshua swallowed.
“Not yet,” he said.
“Only the order of—”
“I haven't finished lunch.”
Sol looked surprised, then tired. “Neither have I.”
It was not an accusation polished for effect. His own meal was plainly wrapped in the cloth. He had been carrying it around while someone changed the equipment plan.
Joshua shifted along the timber. Lil nearly stopped him. The small space had been theirs for less than five minutes; she resented losing it before she had decided whether she wanted it.
Then Sol said, “Thank you, but I'd rather sit where nobody can ask me anything.”
He walked away with his lunch. Lil liked him considerably more for leaving honestly than she had when he offered privacy as another service.
Joshua watched him go.
“I should have asked sooner.”
“You can let a man eat without making it your next failure.”
He nodded, but the nod was the one he used for advice he intended to convert into work.
Lil reached into her pocket and found the little twist of salt she carried for food that had lost an argument. He spread his bread flat. She let him take a pinch.
“That's all?” he asked.
“You can pay for extravagance.”
“What do you charge?”
It was a foolish question between them. The air changed with it. Lil retied the twist and put it away.
He saw the change. “I meant for salt.”
“I know.”
She knew how to charge for difficult distance, for a damaged wheel, for a return load someone had thought would float uphill alone. She knew less about the amount of time she would give a man who had become both more famous and harder to reach without moving any farther away.
He had people depending on him. So did she. That had become the most available explanation for everything they failed to do.
“I could get you away for an hour,” she said.
His face lifted. She almost went on: a yard bench, a quiet route, a cart leaving at a time she controlled. She could have made the hour happen with the same competence that made her dangerous in a meeting.
“When?” he asked.
She looked toward Neri's table. No answer had appeared merely because he had sat down.
“I haven't worked it out.”
The lift left his face, not as disappointment with her but as a return to the ground. He took another bite. She had offered an hour she did not possess to a man surrounded by promises of exactly that quality.
“I'd like an hour,” he said. “Somewhere I can dislike the food.”
“You can dislike this.”
“This is excellent bread.”
“Then you aren't trying.”
He smiled. For a while they ate without making a plan. Two workers carried an empty crate past the canvas. One recognized him and began to stop, then saw Lil's expression and thought better of whatever recognition required. She regretted that too; perhaps he had only meant hello. She could be a barrier without owning rope.
“What do you want?” Joshua asked.
It was not the public version, the question before a promise. He was looking at the bread in her hands as if he expected her to name something small.
She considered giving him a manageable answer.
“For you to ask me something you don't already need,” she said.
He was quiet long enough that she wished she had chosen salt.
“Did you ever fix the pocket?” he asked.
She looked down at her coat. He pointed to the lining at the left side, the place where a coin could travel below the reach of her fingers. He remembered her shaking the coat upside down beside a road while insisting she had enough for breakfast.
“No,” she said.
“You could afford the repair.”
“I can afford many things I haven't done.”
He held the bucket under the coat while she turned the pocket out. Two old bits of string and a small washer fell into it. No lost fortune. He fished out the washer and handed it back solemnly.
“A prosperous visit,” she said.
The hammer began again. Lil stood. She had a yard to return to; he had a person with a book whose unanswered questions would still be there. She did not offer to solve them. He did not ask her to take him away.
At the edge of the canvas he said her name. Just Lil, not a request attached to it.
She turned.
“Come hungry next time.”
“Bring something better.”
Neither supplied a date. It was not a booking. As she crossed the open ground, she put the washer into her sound pocket and felt, unexpectedly, the difference.