An X on Every Garden

Inside the shed the route is a street map with forty pins in it and a length of yarn running from pin to pin in the order Lina drives them. Beside it, torn from an atlas, hangs the whole city, and on it, in pencil, a small neat X on every garden. The roof beds on Sixth. The lot on Chicon. The school plots. The nine floors across the alley.

I didn't draw those, Lina says, and she looks at the yarn.

Pinned under the atlas page, a flyer: TUESDAYS, 8. THE ONE-CAR GARAGE BEHIND THIS SHED. ONE BULB. BRING A CHAIR. BRING SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T WORK.

Through the door you can see the yard. At a card table a small figure in a felt hat kneels over a shallow glass dish of water with a dropper in one jointed hand. Lina says its name is Ryo.