“You know, your face could have been a lot worse if I’d wanted it to be,” said Billy.
“Am I supposed to say thank you?”
“No, just so long as you don’t expect me to say sorry.”
“The thought had never crossed my mind.”
“You’re smarter than you look.”
Zak watched Billy Moore do a silent circuit of the store, then stop at a framed reproduction of Buondelmonte’s map of Constantinople, the only survivor from before the Turkish siege: turrets, city walls, a hippodrome, a drawbridge that seemed to end in the middle of water.
“Look, I don’t get it,” Billy said at last. “I just don’t get this whole map thing.”
“Does that matter?” said Zak.
“Yeah, it does. You’re the smart guy. Help me on this.”
“Why? Why do you want to ‘get it’?” Zak said.
“Because I’m trying to understand what I’m involved with. Just like I think you are.”
Zak was reluctant to consider that he and Billy Moore had anything in common. But if Billy was telling the truth, then yes, maybe they did share a basic urge to comprehend the situation they were in, and perhaps an urge to be free of it. Also, Zak couldn’t quite resist the opportunity to demonstrate his expertise. In exchange maybe Billy would share some information that Zak could take back to Marilyn.
“Basically, of course,” Zak began, as simply as he could, “maps tell us where we are and how to get where we’re going. And not just in a literal way, but in a political, metaphorical, and philosophical way too. No map can ever show everything, so every map involves selection, putting in what’s considered important and leaving out what isn’t. Every map shows the concerns and prejudices of the mapmaker.”
Billy Moore nodded slowly.
“And maps are always nostalgic one way or another,” said Zak, “always referring to the past, to something that no longer quite exists, because no matter how current a map is, whatever technology you’re using, whether it’s printed on paper or created by a satellite or a computer, it’s out of date as soon as it’s been made. Maps can only ever tell one fragmentary, temporary version of the truth. But that’s okay. And a map doesn’t even have to be ‘true’ to be useful.”
He couldn’t tell if Billy Moore was looking at him with grudging admiration or confusion or contempt.
“Let me show you something,” said Zak.
He took the cylindrical leather map case from a drawer in his desk and removed the Jack Torry map, unrolling just a couple of feet of it.
“Take this map here,” said Zak. “You couldn’t use it to get anywhere, but you could use it to learn about certain events.”
“Like what?” said Billy.
“It shows where certain rapes occurred. So it’s only partly a map concerned with place: it’s more of a map concerned with recording actions.”
“Who’d want a map like that?”
“Some people just do.”
“Sick fucks?”
“Not always,” said Zak. “But let me try a less loaded example.”
Putting away the Torry map, Zak crossed the store and pointed out a framed eighteenth-century map of Greenland, or Carte de Groenland, according to the uneven italic script along its lower edge. It was a copper engraving with an elaborate cartouche, bright coloring, not large, not really all that valuable.
“Let me tell you about Greenland,” Zak said. “Let me tell you about Alfred Wegener.”
Billy looked at him suspiciously.
“Don’t worry. It’s not rocket science. It’s barely even cartography.”
Billy was not immediately reassured.
“Alfred Wegener was a meteorologist who spent a lot of time looking at maps. And one day he looked at all the ins and outs of the Americas and he saw how they could be fitted into all the outs and ins of Europe and Africa. And he came up with this wild idea of continental drift.
“Everybody thought Wegener was crazy. Maybe he even had some doubts himself. But then he went on an expedition to Greenland, and while he was there, he kept looking at old maps, and he made some new maps of his own. Then he compared the two, checked the longitude and latitude of the coast, and he calculated that over the previous hundred years — between the making of the old maps and his new one — the coast had moved a whole mile, which is a colossal amount of movement for a landmass. This was great news for Wegener. As far as he was concerned, this was absolute proof that his continental drift theory was right.”
“Yeah?” said Billy Moore.
“And the continental drift theory is right, more or less. But Wegener was completely wrong about the coast of Greenland. It hadn’t moved at all. It was right where it had always been. Wegener was a better mapmaker than his predecessor, that’s all. The old map had simply been inaccurate; it had put the coast of Greenland in the wrong place by one mile.”
“Okay. I get it, I think,” said Billy. “Or maybe I don’t. What are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you that the inaccuracy didn’t matter. The old map was ‘false,’ but it showed Wegener something that turned out to be true.”
“And that’s a big deal?”
“It can be,” said Zak. “Take those maps tattooed on the women. We don’t know what they mean. Maybe they’re maps of real places, maybe they’re not. Who knows? But they’ve got to be a map of something. Maps always mean something to somebody, and they always mean more to some people than to others.”
Billy stared at the map of Greenland, thinking about what Zak had said, and thinking about much else.
“So you don’t know a damn thing about these maps on the backs of those women?” he said.
“No,” Zak admitted.
“You don’t know who did them or why. You don’t know what they mean to Wrobleski or why he needs these women taken to him. Or what he’s going to do with them.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Zak. “I was hoping you did.”
“So correct me if I’m wrong: for all your knowledge about maps and meanings and continental drift, you don’t know any more than I do.”
“Well…” said Zak.
Billy Moore’s cell phone rang. He saw it was Akim, and he knew that his lesson in cartography was over.
“Zak,” Billy said, “maybe you aren’t any smarter than you look.”
Zak was left with his phone and his list of customers. He wondered when, if ever, it would be appropriate to try getting in touch with Marilyn. Probably he should wait for her to call him. Maybe he could distract himself by doing a little research into the history of the Telstar Hotel.
26. MARILYN OFF THE GRID
That night, Marilyn returned alone to the Grid. Although Zak had said he sometimes went there to lick his wounds, and he surely had plenty to lick now, he wasn’t there, and she was relieved. Sex complicated everything. She probably shouldn’t have taken him back to the Telstar. She wondered how long it would be before he called her: too soon, she was sure.
The place was a lot less welcoming and a lot more crowded than when she was there the first time: there was nowhere to sit. She bought herself a drink and took up a spot standing, wedged in by the piano, where she could listen to Sam, who was now playing something melancholy and formless and, she assumed, improvised. She found that encouraging. She dropped a couple of bills into his tip jar, and when he took a break, she offered to buy him a drink. Funny how if you’re a young woman and you offer to buy a drink for some guy and say you’re really interested in his work, he can be surprisingly willing to talk to you. He slid along the broad piano stool so Marilyn could sit next to him.
“My friend tells me you used to be a cop,” Marilyn said.