Judy Budnitz - Flying Leap

“Five years or fifty thousand miles,” says Gordon as he walks the streets with his hands in his pockets and stubble on his face. He passes the lit windows of shops: stuffed animals, grapefruits, shiny dresses on mannequins that gaze at him longingly. What should I do now, what should I do? he sings in his head. Quit my job? Spend my savings? Do I have time to love a beautiful woman, start a family, star in a movie, study Zen? Is there time to do anything before the time’s up? Maybe, he thinks, if I don’t have much of anything, it will be easier to give it all up. Maybe I should keep walking and walking, use up my miles as fast as possible, get it over with. Then I’ll never have to know what I’m missing.

You’re looking at the sign, peering in the windows. They’re coated with dust, broken, patched with cardboard. What a coincidence, you say. But it’s not a coincidence at all. It’s simply practical. People who know where they are don’t need maps; those who are lost do. So naturally, the mapmaker has situated his shop in the place where people are lost, the place where demand is greatest. The mapmaker and his shop are waiting here for you. He saw you coming; he put himself in your path. The map shop is here especially for you, like the gingerbread house in the heart of the deep dark forest.

“Look—maps,” says Mr. Clark. He’s hurrying up the sidewalk, mopping his neck with a handkerchief. Mrs. Clark wobbles after. “Surely they can at least give us directions,” he says. The place looks deserted, some of the windows broken. He reaches for the doorknob. It is shaped like a fish and slithers in his hand. They push their way inside. And inside—maps. Rolls and rolls of them, on shelves, pinned to the walls, lying crumbling in corners. Blurred splotches of color. Thin tangles of line that trail into nothing. “This isn’t what we need,” Mrs. Clark clucks. “Can I help you?” says the man behind the counter. “We’re lost,” says Mr. Clark. “I see,” says the man. “Theater District,” says Mrs. Clark, and stumbles against Mr. Clark in her tight shoes. “Sorry, lost my balance,” she gasps. “One thing at a time,” says the mapmaker.

Two men, in a booth, in a bar. Slouching before two glasses of beer. Victor has black greasy hair like Elvis. Nick has Elvis’s soft, pouty mouth. “Here’s the deal. It’s simple,” says Victor. “Yeah,” says Nick. Victor says, “We got the tools; we know the codes. It’s a cinch once we get in there. We can take it all.” Nick says, “Right.” Victor: “But we’re gonna need a way in. There’s got to be a way.” Nick: “Yeah.” Victor: “Yeah, maybe through the basements? Underneath? You think?” Nick: “Yeah. Sure.” Victor: “Maybe a garbage chute? The subway carries garbage; some buildings have a tunnel going straight down there.” Nick: “Yeah.” Victor: “Can’t you say anything useful?” Nick thinks for a while and says: “Yeah.” Victor grabs him by the hair and knocks his head against the table twice, spills the beer, and laughs.

Natalie walks the streets. She looks for what she lost. She looks in grocery stores and in alleys. She looks on park benches. She wanders through hotel hallways, watching the maids airing out the rooms and killing last night’s sweaty ghosts. She watches the people leaving the movie houses with their eyes glazed and dreamy, full of distant cities and music and imagined touches. She asks prostitutes and drag queens if they have seen it—the thing she lost. “Sorry, honey,” they say, “everybody knows once you lost that , you don’t ever get it back.” She knows that in a way they are right. But in a way they are not.

You go inside the map shop. Inside it is like a church gone to seed. High ceiling, stained-glass windows, a holy hush, the pews replaced by shelves. You almost wish it was a church. You would like that sort of guidance. Here are maps. Hundreds of maps in curling piles. Fantastic faded colors. Delicate lines across the paper like a lover’s hair on the pillowcase. Street maps as intricate as the designs on a computer chip. Continents cramped into strange new shapes: a dog begging, a charm bracelet of islands, a centaur, a toilet seat. Maps in which sea monsters, mermaids, and watery gods are drawn where the oceans spread into the unknown. The best parts, you think, are these unknown regions.

The wife says I should take a vacation. She says to me, “You should close up the shop, take some days off.” I tell her I can’t, but she doesn’t understand. “Your back,” she says, “you’re straining your eyes, and your arthritis. You’re old; you should retire.” “This is my job,” I tell her. “These people need me. What can I do?” “Let’s take a trip,” she begs. “Let’s go to another city. You draw maps of a new place if you want.” I tell her a new place wouldn’t make any difference, but she doesn’t understand.

The map shop finds Gordon. It seems to spring up out of the ground in front of him. He has been walking for days, nonstop, and he bumps his nose on the wall before he sees it. “Maps,” he says. “Hmmm.” He scratches the stubble on his face. He pushes open the door and steps inside. “Can I help you?” says the mapmaker. “Maybe,” says Gordon. “I’m looking,” he says. He looks at the mapmaker, who has wrinkles grooved deep in his face, marking his age like the rings in a tree. Gordon sighs. “I’m looking for something. A place I can go to. A destination. A reason to keep going. Do you have anything like that?”

“A simple street map,” says Mr. Clark, “of the neighborhood. A subway map even. Don’t you have anything like that?” Mrs. Clark says, “The Theater District. Everybody knows where that is!” The mapmaker looks at them blankly. “I’ll do my best,” he says, and sharpens his pencil. “We’re going to be late,” mutters Mr. Clark. Mrs. Clark moans, “She’ll think we’re getting senile.”

Natalie goes to the map shop. She makes a beeline for it; she knows it is there. She’s a sensible girl. As she goes inside, the bell on the door tinkles. She goes to the counter and explains what she is looking for. “I see,” says the mapmaker. He looks at the gooseflesh on her bare legs and the blisters on her heels. “I have something for you,” he says, and hands her a roll of paper. She studies it. “I don’t see anything,” she says. “You will,” he says. “Well, thank you.” She is as polite as ever, gives him everything in her pocket—a bus token and $3.45. He takes it with a gallant bow.

You ask the mapmaker if he has a map for you. He looks at your face and then takes your hand and studies the whorls and lines of your fingertips. His hair is white; his eyes are deep; his skin is dry and paper-thin. “I might have something,” he says.

“There is a map for you,” says the mapmaker, “but I don’t have it. It’s a map you have to find yourself.” “Then can you give me a map to find that map?” says Gordon. “Sorry,” says the mapmaker. “I see,” says Gordon sadly. He turns and leaves, and the bell on the door rings softly after him.

“I need a map,” says Victor, who has found the map shop even though it tried to hide from him. He says, “I need a map of the underground.” “The underground?” says the mapmaker. “Yeah,” says Nick. Victor says, “You know, a map of the subways and basements and things in the city. Infrastructure. Don’t you have anything like that?” The mapmaker says, “The underground? Is that like the underworld?” Nick says, “Yeah.” Victor says, “Yeah, I guess. You got anything like that? Something for the neighborhood around the First National?” The mapmaker smiles and says, “I do.”

Natalie steps outside and studies her map. Now she sees a line on it, starting in the middle and snaking to the right. So she turns to her right and begins walking. At the corner she stops and consults the map. The line has hooked to the left and now she can see it moving, bleeding across the paper in a decisive way. She turns left and follows it.