The familiar routes between home and the mairie
Wesley leaves his ground-floor apartment — a low-rise building with a shared inner courtyard — and walks to the mairie. Always the same streets. The route coincides with the one that smells best at that hour, even if it isn't the shortest. At half past seven, the street that runs behind the market catches the wind coming down from the granite hills. At a quarter to eight, the sun has already warmed the east-facing facade of the mairie and comes through the windows of the mediation room. Wesley calculates his movements with that kind of precision — not out of compulsion, but because every variable he controls is one less variable to complicate his day.
He carries the rigid folder with the files under his arm. Inside the folder, the goat-hair brush wrapped in a cloth. In the coat pocket, the paper tape. In the other hand, nothing — Wesley needs one hand free to open the mairie door, to lift the window latch, to point to a line on the cadastral map when the first meeting starts.
A backpack solves something the rigid folder can't: it frees both hands. This backpack has a main compartment with room for a laptop up to fifteen inches, a front pocket for smaller items — keys, charger, loose documents — and an interior zip pocket for things you don't want mixing with the rest. The straps are adjustable and padded. The back panel has a mesh layer that allows airflow between the bag and your back.
