“Yes?” I prompted, like he clearly wanted me to.

“Well, he said if I’m so convinced we need a new den home, I should get out there and find us one. Basically, it was put up or shut up.”

“Seriously?”

“Seems so.” Rubio wagged his head in disbelief. “He said I’m off picker duty, which I’m no good at anyway. That I ought to put my architectural training to better use—get out and evaluate possible sites. What I can’t figure is if this is just the easiest way to muzzle me, or if he really wants me to look. I mean, like, what took him so long?”

“Of course he does! After we had the river washing through the main floor again? We can’t be going through this every time a storm blows in. This is great!” I pummeled him gently on the shoulder. Good for Rousseau: stamping out a pesky brush fire and moving forward at the same time. “So, what’s the deal? Where will you start?”

“Here, I hoped.” Rubio closed the unresponsive search program. “I was looking for a high-rez map of the city, a building-by-building view, so I can work out a plan of attack. We had good ones at the firm, but it looks like I’ll have to trust my memory for now.”

Lucky guy, I mused. You’ve got one to trust.

—

The second day of cleanup, while Rousseau worked the main hall with praise for hard work and resiliency, I found Rubio down on his bony knees with a big sheet of brown paper spread out on the floor. He had the curly ends weighted down with coffee mugs.

I peered over his bent back. “What now?”

“Making a map,” he mumbled through the stubby shop pencil clamped between his teeth. He spat it into his palm. “Couldn’t talk the Mess out of a table yet.”

He was copying the large-scale city map mounted next to the duty board, ripped out of some midtown subway station before the water rose that far, the biggest map anyone had been able to come up with. It was the picker’s Bible. Rube’s version left out all the bus and subway lines but included the latest water levels. He was laying in the street grid, using a thin strip of wood to guide his pencil.

I knelt beside him for a closer look. “Why so big?”

“For the detail.” He sat back on his heels. He looked intent and very pleased with himself. “Been a long time since I’ve done this sort of thing by hand. I’ll put in the other dens, like on the duty map, and a few other major landmarks, then those buildings I remember or discover when I go out that might make good new den sites.”