The walk to work felt longer without his phone to distract him. This is good for me, he thought. I always mean to stop and smell the flowers. Or at least to notice them.

All the best flowers grew by the road.

They grew all year long, now.

The next day, the young man woke in his soft bed, in his safe house. He hurried out onto the road. (He liked the road, everyone did. He was lucky to live so close.)

This time when he got to the bridge, he tucked his phone—it still worked, thank goodness—into his back pocket. He still felt like it might fly out over the railing, isn’t that crazy? He kept touching his pocket to make sure it was there.

Thinking of it made him think of the mudthing. He wondered if she was down there today. It’s not like she just hangs out, waiting for people to drop their phones, he thought. But he stopped anyway in the middle of the bridge. He leaned out over the railing. “Hello?”

There was a slopping sound beneath him.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you. Hello.” She lifted herself up out of the riverbed, pushing some of the mud away from her face. “Did you drop something?”

“No . . .” he said.

“Do you want to? Maybe a volleyball this time? We could play a little catch.”

He laughed. “I just thought I’d say hello.”

“Oh . . . That’s nice. Hello.”

“So, um . . .” He cleared his throat. He hadn’t really thought this through. “Do you live here? Under the bridge?”

“I guess I do,” she said. “Do you live up there?”

“Along the road,” he said.

“That’s lucky.”

“It is.” He brought his hand up to shield his eyes again. “Are you—I mean, I hope this isn’t impolite—”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you a troll?”

She laughed. “Because I live under a bridge?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “I don’t mean to—”

“No, it’s okay. I guess I am a troll. I live under bridges and call out to innocent boys.”

“I’m not—I mean, you didn’t call out to me.”

“I will next time,” she said. “Just to say hello.”

“That would be nice,” he said. Which was the wrong thing. He should have said something jokey.

She cleared her throat. He guessed she had a throat.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose I should go to work.”

“To your job?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like it?”

“I really do,” he said. “It makes me feel useful.”

“What is it?”

“Oh. It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s like—I monitor a section of the road. It’s maintenance. Resource management. There’s a little bit of graphic design.”

“That does sound useful,” she said. “For people who use the road.”

“It is!” he said. “Well, anyway . . . it was nice talking to you.”

“You, too.”