As they trundled on past Napoleon, picking up a passenger here and there, the signs of fighting became more evident. Long blocks of empty lots, many of them burned, a few of them leveled. Graffiti like fresh petroglyphs encoding a secret history of all the back-and-forth between the different factions. Parking lots and side streets taken over by weeds coming up through cracks in the blacktop. A city whose true rulers were the feral cats and dogs that patrolled the nights, and were reportedly being displaced by the new breed of coyotes that had mixed with the big dogs. Through the window, Donny saw one dog lope off into the tall grass at the sound of the trolley, too fast to see closely but with something pink and fleshy hanging from its mouth.

They were still adding to their serve count under the Golden Arches, but the arches were shattered, just the flimsy aluminum frame left, all the wiring stripped out for salvage. Under new management by the customers, who started the morning off with fair-trade chicory and fried dough liberally seasoned with the sugars of free peoples. The staff at the inn that morning had told Donny that was a good option for breakfast, but he didn’t have time. Nor the inclination—until he noticed the garden they had grown where the drive-through used to be, and the gang of children spread out on a giant picnic blanket while their teacher handed out strawberries the size of baseballs. Something about that happy scene opened up the valve that contained his grief, a valve whose welds were cauterized by the cynicism of a lawyer who had seen some of the worst things people were capable of.

The nervous-looking woman in the seat next to him caught him crying, and gave him a look of understanding, if not of sympathy. And when she saw Donny’s eyes, she clutched her travel papers tighter, pushed her suitcase closer to her husband, and looked past him at the old billboard by the roadside. A worker was up there pasting a new poster over the palimpsest.

come to greenland

And the thing was, it was actually green. Even the new houses of the model village. And the people were wearing shorts.

The one thing he didn’t see through the window were the blue helmets of the international peacekeeping troops. They had left New Orleans six months earlier. He opened up his briefcase, and dug back into the file he had not had enough time to study on the unexpectedly complicated trip down.

He was rereading the French news report on the Tributary when the streetcar stopped at Lee Circle for the security check.

Lee Circle, which no longer had that name, marked the western boundary of the secure zone beyond which outsiders were restricted. When the streetcar turned into the roundabout and stopped, two paramilitaries boarded the bus.