Judy Budnitz - Flying Leap

The mapmaker knows you. Some people say he can follow you everywhere. Your shadow is like the ink spot the mapmaker traces to draw your path. Some say he has your future and fate drawn out in the lines on his map, indelible as the lines on your hand, and as he watches you walk the paths of your life, he is proud of his handiwork. You don’t know what to think, but you look into his piercing hawk eyes and feel his talon grip on your wrist, and you are suddenly not sure you want to see the map he has for you.

“The Theater District,” says Mrs. Clark, as if it will help the mapmaker understand. She leans against her husband. Mr. Clark clears his throat in annoyance. The mapmaker bends over his work.

Gordon wanders the streets, not looking for anything. He tries to remember his mother’s face, the laugh of a friend, the dog that was a childhood companion, his toy soldiers. They are all gone, all lost. The streets are cold underfoot. He will not stop walking.

Victor and Nick wear dark clothes and leather gloves. They have made arrangements. They carry their tools and heavy metal things and ski masks. They follow the map, the map that the mapmaker gave them. They follow it down streets, down some stairs, down below the subway, through hidden passages, down and down and down. Past pipes and rats and blasts of steam, down into the underbelly of the city. “This map is incredible,” says Victor.

Natalie follows her map. She follows the line as it wanders over the page, bending, turning, twisting back on itself like a restless sleeper. She’s determined; she will reach the end. Her feet hurt terribly.

You take the map he gives you. You fold it in your hands and go out to the street. You decide you’ll look at it later. But you wonder if he has, back in his shop, a master map with every person’s life drawn out neat and indelible, all the paths that cross and join and separate, all the lives that run parallel and never meet at all. You wonder if he is laughing as he draws the thoughts you are thinking right now, to amuse himself.

Gordon stops walking. The world stops flowing past him. It holds still so he can look. He looks up at the buildings, so high that they nearly meet over his head. He looks at the neat lines and squares beneath his feet. The children playing on the corner speak another language. He is lost, and there is no map shop.

“What’s this?” says Mr. Clark as the mapmaker hands him a piece of paper. “That will take you where you want to go,” the mapmaker says. “I can’t read it,” Mr. Clark says. “Let me see,” says Mrs. Clark, and snatches it from him. The shop is dim; she takes it to the door to read it in the twilight from outside. “I can’t—” she says as the door bangs open with a gust of wind, and the paper is swept out of her hand.

Natalie is near the end; she can feel it.

Down stairs and ladders, through passages where the rats look up, surprised at being disturbed. Moisture drips down the walls. “This is terrific,” says Victor. “We should be getting there soon.” Nick says, “It’s really hot down here.”

Natalie’s map has ceased to move. She folds it and puts it in her pocket and looks up. She sees a man sitting on a stoop, watching her. “Hello,” she says. He says, “Hello. I’m so tired.” He has a grizzled face and kind eyes. She says, “I am, too.” She sits beside him. He opens his mouth and so does she and they talk for hours, gazing at each other and at the little section of starry sky visible between the buildings.

Mr. Clark chases the bit of paper as it blows down the street. “Damn it!” he cries, and runs after it, panting. “Wait!” cries Mrs. Clark. She takes off her shoes and flies after him, her breasts bouncing, her shoes in hand. She runs like a gazelle, in leaps and bounds, chasing her husband as he chases the paper. Mrs. Clark has found her balance.

Victor and Nick reach a metal platform surrounded by a railing. They lean over and stare into a chasm. Nick wipes his forehead. “It’s so hot in here. Very, very hot,” he says. “Shut up,” says Victor. “We have to go on.” “Down there?” says Nick. Victor says, “That’s what the map says. Do you see a ladder?” And then a fiery breath heaves out of the chasm, bringing with it a hot burning smell and shrill screaming echoes. “Did you hear that?” says Nick. “It’s the subway, jerk,” says Victor. And the two of them make their way down.

Gordon stands and asks her to come home with him. She consults her map and finds that this is the right thing to do. She knows it is, but she is a practical girl and wants to make sure. They walk to Gordon’s apartment. She takes off her coat and she takes off her shoes. And then he sees it—the curves and shapes and colors. He puts his finger on her arm, on a thin blue vein that bends and branches like a river. He explores the texture of her skin, the shape of her coastline, her temperate regions, the mountains and valleys that poets write about. She is warm and wet and dry and large and small all at once. She is a country he can live in. Here is a place he can be.

Natalie is a practical girl. She knows she has not found the thing she lost. But she has found something else, something better.

The paper blows, dancing on the wind, and Mr. Clark follows, cursing and sweating, Mrs. Clark skipping with her newfound lightness, and the paper leads them in a fluttering, flailing dance all the way to the Theater District.

You can’t resist. You look at the map he gave you. You see wondrous colors and dancing shapes; everything you want is spread out on the paper, waiting for you. It is just what you wanted. And so you go on your way, feeling secure that now everything will be all right; the mapmaker has said so.

Back in his shop, the mapmaker sits over his master map, watching the paths converge. He smiles at your thoughts, and then he leans his head on his hand. He sleeps. He sleeps, and dreams of dandelions and tiger lilies that roar in foreign lands. In his sleep he reaches out to stroke them, and he knocks over his pot of ink, and it spills all over the map, and all your lives take a glorious, disastrous, unexpected turn.

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