Since sitting down, she had talked to four pairs of neighbors trying to work out cost shares for various damages to shared property (driveways, mostly, and in one case a revenue-bringing apple orchard that was affected unequally across the two neighbors’ lands); she had talked to three employee-employer pairs arguing about the terms of furloughs, layoffs, and forced temporary leaves. (Her method required her to speak first and longest to the employees; one had come alone, to seek advice about negotiating with his parents, who were also his employers—this was, coincidentally, the brother of Stella from Anti-Love.) She had talked to two separating or recently separated couples who wound up sharing quarters because one of their homes had been flooded beyond repair. One pair was doing fine but wanted, proactively, to seek a more formal agreement about their situation. The other was a nightmare of intractable brutality, the kind of case that left Marina numb—her only defense against the alternative, a sense of impotence accompanied by a crushing shame at the stated goals of her chosen profession—and prompted her to put a “Back in Ten” sign on the door and to leave her “office” for a walk.

The forest was thick with slender trees, something she hadn’t noticed until now. “All of these trees are the same age,” she thought, though she was hopeless at identifying the different species: ash, birch, aspen, beech, every tree name a short word beginning with a or b, all of them registering to Marina only as tree. Among them were a few pines, which she was able to identify at least as evergreen. Wandering among them, she came upon a single, much larger tree, with giant jagged leaves already beginning to turn red. Maple, she thought, embarrassed to feel an attendant infusion of pride.

One of the branches of the giant maple—its trunk was wider than Marina’s shoulders—had fallen in the storm and created a kind of slanted bench. Marina sat and reached into her jacket pocket out of habit, as if she’d find a pack of cigarettes there. Instead she found a folded-up note. When had she last worn this jacket? She couldn’t recall.

The note was in her own handwriting, apparently taken during or just after a conversation she must have wanted to remember. It said:

What is a person besides Capacity + Temperament + Experience? And which one is on top? Studies re: rock / paper / scissors = amateurs tend to pick rock. Associations of strength, etc. Strategy is to pick paper when playing with amateur.Which of capacity / temperament / experience is paper?

She returned to an empty tent, its dusk-activated solar lights now dimly aglow. No more takers, for now.

THE NEWS REPORTS