Amos Gaines arrived for his four o'clock cleaning at three fifty-eight. Marguerite later called it the most suspicious thing she'd seen in twenty-three years at the front desk.
He was wearing his tea-colored shirt and carrying a city-issue binder labeled FY BUDGET — WORKING DRAFT. He signed in. He filled out the health history form, all four pages, without being asked twice. Then he sat in the waiting room with his binder on his knees, like a man waiting outside a principal's office.
Marguerite stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and looked at the line that read HAROLD VOSS SHOWS UP FOR HIS CLEANING: 200 to 1.
"Does showing up count?" I asked her.
"Showing up is not a cleaning," said Marguerite. "The bet is very specific." But she capped her marker and watched him the whole time.
I brought Amos back to Room Two. He sat in the chair. I clipped the paper bib around his neck, because it is policy, and because I wanted to see if he would let me.
He let me.
Theo came in with the folder. He sat on his stool, but he did not put on his gloves. He did not reach for the light. He set the folder on the tray where the instruments usually go, and on top of the folder he set pebble number seventeen.
"Amos," he said. "I'm not going to talk to you about the city with my hands in your mouth. That wouldn't be fair."
"I appreciate that," said Amos.
"So we'll talk first. Then, if you like, Rosa will clean your teeth. You're very overdue."
"I know," said Amos miserably. "I get the postcards."
Theo opened the folder.
He did it the way he explains a root canal. Slowly, in order, once in technical language and once in plain English.
He showed Amos the sixty-three claims. He showed him the windshields, the bicycles and the dog stroller. Amos looked at the stroller claim for a very long time.
"I remember that dog," he said. "It was in the paper."
Then Theo showed him the memo. Post-cure sweeping deferred pending budget review. Signed H. Gaines.
Amos took the page and held it close to his face. His mustache went very still.
"Six thousand two hundred," he said.
"And forty-one thousand three hundred and eighty in claims," I said. "Plus copying fees."
"I didn't know that." He looked up at Theo. "I genuinely didn't.
"Claims go to Risk Management. They're on the fourth floor. They pay them out of a different fund. Nobody ever sends the numbers back down to us."
"Nobody adds it up," said Theo.
"Nobody adds it up," Amos agreed. He sounded like a man discovering that his house had a basement he'd never been in.
Theo picked up pebble seventeen and held it out to him. Amos took it carefully, like it might be evidence, which it was.
"That's a chip seal chip," Amos said. "Three-eighths inch, crushed granite. That's from Benning's quarry."
"I picked it up at the Birch Hollow 5K finish line," said Theo. "Turn it over."
Amos turned it over and read the label. BIRCH HOLLOW 5K, 23:51. DISPUTED. 8/14.
"August fourteenth," Theo said. "Same day as the last windshield claim. The road was still loose three months after your notice said 'several weeks.' I was there. I have the receipt."
Amos sat in the dental chair in his paper bib and looked at the stone in his palm. Nobody spoke. Down the hall, I could hear Marguerite pretending to type.
"You keep one of these from every race?" Amos asked finally.
"Forty-one so far."
"With dates?"
"With dates and times. And notes, sometimes."
Amos shook his head slowly. "Doc, that's better record-keeping than my whole department."
The trouble, Amos explained, was money. Even if he agreed with every page in the folder, Phase Two had no money. Phase Two money came from the Finance Committee. The Finance Committee met—
"On Tuesday," said Theo.
Amos stopped. He looked at his watch. It was four-twenty.
"At six," he said slowly. "Tonight."
"Then it's a Tuesday problem," said Theo.
Amos looked at him for a long moment. Then he unclipped his own paper bib, folded it into quarters, and stood up.
"Can I borrow your folder?" he said.
"You can have the copies. They're forty-one seventy-five."
"I'll expense it."
At the door, Amos turned back. He looked a little embarrassed.
"I'm sorry about the cleaning," he said.
"Reschedule," said Theo. "You're very good at it."
Theo and I went to the Finance Committee meeting. We sat in the back row. Marguerite came too, with fresh pretzels. She said she wanted to see how the odds moved in person.
Councilwoman Okoro chaired it. The chicken sat in front of her.
When it was his turn, Amos Gaines stood up with our folder. He reached for the chicken out of habit.
"Staff," said Councilwoman Okoro, "are not subject to the chicken."
Amos looked relieved and terrified at the same time.
Then he spoke for eleven minutes. He did not mention running, or pebbles, or Theo. He talked about deferred maintenance and claims exposure and the Birch Hollow precedent.
He used the phrase "fiscally indefensible" twice. The second time, a councilman nodded so hard his glasses slid down.
He asked for an emergency allocation of seven thousand four hundred dollars, for contractor sweeping of Old Mill Road, to be completed before October twenty-sixth.
It passed four to one. The one was a councilman who voted no on everything in October, on principle, for reasons nobody fully understood.
Out in the hall, Amos caught up with us. He was slightly out of breath.
"There's a catch," he said. "Benning has one sweeper truck free. It can do the travel lanes on Friday.
"But it doesn't get the shoulders, the gutters, or the corners. Not well enough for—" He glanced at Theo. "For your purposes."
"So who does?" I asked.
Amos reached into his binder and pulled out a document. It was our Form PW-17. It had a large red stamp on the front that said DENIED. Next to it, slightly crooked, was a new stamp in blue.
APPROVED — CONTRACTOR-SUPERVISED FINISH WORK.
"I had to find a different stamp," Amos said. "We don't use that one much."
On Saturday, October twenty-fifth, sixty-four people swept the shoulders of Old Mill Road.
They wore fluorescent vests that said STRIDE THEORY: FIND YOUR PACE. They had forty-two yellow brooms and twenty-two of their own. Mr. Haskell, the retired snowplow driver, took command of the corners. He had a technique involving the wrist, which he explained to anyone who would listen.
Mrs. Albescu swept with her crown, very proudly. The Feeney twins swept adjacent sections and argued about it. Doug's softball team swept in a line and made it competitive. Craig Pell swept with his own broom, a green-handled one he described as "a professional tool."
Amos Gaines came in a city vest and a city hat. He supervised by pointing, like the man with the rollers, until Marguerite handed him a broom. After that he swept.
It took two hours and ten minutes. At the end, Theo walked the whole six miles in his running clothes, slowly, looking. He did not pick anything up. When he reached the county line, he turned around and gave the group a thumbs-up.
Sixty-four people cheered on the side of a country road. A farmer driving past in a pickup honked twice, in what I chose to believe was support.
On race morning, the start line at the river was cold and loud. There were three thousand runners in bright layers. Somebody was playing music that was mostly drums.
Theo stood in his corral in shorts and a long-sleeved shirt, without shoes, bouncing a little on the spot.
Marguerite and I were on the curb with a thermos. She had brought a small, portable whiteboard. It read: DR. B FINISHES: EVEN MONEY.
At seven fifty-two, Craig Pell came through the crowd. He had his whistle and his windbreaker. Under his arm was a shoebox.
He walked up to the corral rope and held it out.
"Size eleven," Craig said. "Whenever you're ready."
I waited for Not today. By my count, Craig had offered that box forty-three times.
Theo looked at the box. He looked at Craig. Then, in front of three thousand runners, he reached over the rope and took it.
"Thank you, Craig," he said.
Next to me, Marguerite dropped her marker into the river.
Up next: Pebble Forty-Two
Continue to Part 6 →