Chương 2
Since then, Daniel had been freelancing.
Freelancing meant editing a dentist’s Instagram reels at eleven at night because the dentist believed every video needed the phrase life-changing smile.
It meant product videos for a surf shop that paid sixty days late.
It meant his mother asking, with increasing delicacy, whether he had considered applying for a government job.
And recently it meant the cleanup videos.
Those had started by accident.
One Saturday morning, irritated by the weeds blocking the path near his apartment, Daniel had borrowed a shovel and string trimmer from his uncle. He filmed himself clearing twenty feet of buried concrete because filming things made unpleasant work feel purposeful.
The video got eighty thousand views.
The next got two hundred thousand.
People liked before-and-after images.
They liked neglect transformed into order.
They liked a young man in a black LA cap doing something useful without complaining very much.
Daniel liked being that young man too.
The first version of the county video reached half a million views before dinner.
At 6:32 p.m., Leah texted him.
She had asked for his number after the filming because he promised to send her the finished clip.
Her message said:
You left out the part about the damaged slab.
Daniel stared at it while standing over a pot of instant noodles.
He typed, He said MAY be damaged.
Then deleted it.
He typed, The closure is still ridiculous.
Deleted that too.
Finally he wrote:
I’m posting a follow-up when they inspect it.
Three dots appeared.
Then disappeared.
A minute later:
You made it look like they closed it just because you cleared it.
Daniel set the phone facedown beside the stove.
The noodles boiled over.
He swore, turned the burner off, and wiped cloudy water with a dish towel that immediately became too hot to hold.
When he picked up the phone again, the comments under his video were moving faster than he could read.
Typical government.
They probably want to tear it out and charge taxpayers 2 million to put it back.
Somebody needs to get fired.
Bro did their job for FREE and they punish him.
Name the inspector.
Daniel stopped scrolling.
He went into the caption and added:
Please don’t harass individual workers. This is about getting the sidewalk reopened.
He felt better for approximately thirty seconds.
Then he noticed someone had identified Morgan from the county website.
By eight o’clock, screenshots of Morgan’s staff profile were circulating.
Daniel called Leah.
She answered after four rings.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
There was traffic behind her.
“Are you driving?” Daniel asked.
“Walking.”
“Where?”
A pause.
“On the road, actually.”
He sat down.
She gave a humorless little laugh. “Your sidewalk has a barricade on it.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“Okay. That’s fair.”
“What’s fair?”
“The way you said that.”
“I wasn’t trying to be clever.”
“I know.”
He could hear her breathing as she walked.
A car passed, then another.
Daniel pictured the shoulder there: narrow, rough, interrupted by drainage grates and clumps of waist-high grass.
“You should cross,” he said.
“To what?”
He had no answer.
Leah said, “This is why I cared when you cleared it.”
Her voice had changed. Less irritated now.
“My mom used to walk this stretch to the bus. She stopped after she got clipped by a side mirror.”
Daniel straightened.
“What?”
“She was fine. Bruised arm. More angry than hurt.”
“You never told me that.”
“You knew me for twenty minutes.”
“Right.”
“She doesn’t walk much anymore anyway. Bad knees.”
Daniel picked at a crack in the plastic table.
“I’m sorry.”
“She’d hate that.”
“What?”
“You sounding sorry for her.”
Despite himself, Daniel smiled.
Leah continued, “I just don’t want the actual problem to get lost because everyone’s mad at one inspector.”
“He could have handled it better.”
“Probably.”
“And they did ignore the sidewalk.”
“Probably.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I sound like someone who has filled out county complaint forms before.”
Daniel leaned back in his chair.
“What happened?”
“With what?”
“The complaints.”
“Nothing.”
“Exactly.”
“No, not exactly.” Her voice sharpened again. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t know why nothing happened. Neither do you.”
Daniel said nothing.
Leah reached an intersection. He heard the rapid chirp of a pedestrian signal.
Then she said, “You’re good at making people look.”
He waited.
“That’s not the same thing as knowing what they’re looking at.”
The line irritated him because it sounded like something he would have cut from a script for being too polished.
He nearly told her that.
Instead he said, “I’ll call the county tomorrow.”
“You should.”
“Good night, Leah.”
“Night.”
Daniel slept badly.
At 7:18 the next morning, he woke to twenty-six missed calls, most from numbers he did not recognize.
One was from Morgan Blake.
The voicemail was brief.
“Daniel, this is Morgan from yesterday. I’m asking again that you discourage people from using the closed section until our assessment is done. Somebody moved one of the barricades overnight. Also, if you still have the full recording of our conversation, please don’t delete it. Call me.”
Daniel listened twice.
The second time, he noticed Morgan did not sound angry.
He sounded tired.
At nine, Daniel drove back to the sidewalk.
The clouds were lower than the day before. The canal smelled faintly of mud and wet grass. Birds made quick metallic calls from somewhere among the banana leaves.
One barricade had been dragged into the weeds.
Daniel put it back.
He looked around first, though he was not sure why.
There was nobody nearby except an older man pushing a bicycle along the road shoulder. A plastic grocery bag hung from each handlebar.
The man nodded at Daniel.
“Your sidewalk?”
Daniel almost said yes.
Instead he said, “Not mine.”
The man stopped.
“You the internet guy.”
“I guess.”
“You built it?”
“No. I cleared it.”
The man frowned at the concrete.
“That was always there.”
May you like
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“No, I mean always.” The man pointed with his chin. “My kids walked that way school time. Long time ago.”
