When I negotiate for my next job I'm going to put in a stipulation that say if I have to fly for business I'll only fly first-class. Jill Barad, the CEO of Mattel, has a stipulation in her contract so that when she leaves she gets to buy her office furniture for a dollar. I will point this out to the person I am negotiating with and then I'll seem reasonable.

Tano puts down the tray.

"You're not supposed to put down the tray," I tell him.

"I know, but I need to. I need to have my maps in front of me."

Tano has three kinds of maps:

1. The Fodor's kind that are in a book on a page next to a list of what's on the map.

2. The fold-out kind that show things like sea elevation, or trees of Massachusetts, or Paul Revere's grandma's cousin's home.

3. Maps Tano made himself.

He copies maps out of Fodor's and Baedeker's because, he says, he doesn't want to have to lug around a book. He labels the copies of the maps with places he wants to go. He has a Back Bay map of restaurants. A Back Bay map of nice walks. He has eighteen maps that he has meticulously labeled and when he folds them up they are too big to fit in the jacket pocket that the Baedeker's fits in.

The stewardess asks Tano to shut his tray.

I ask Tano where he wants to eat when we get to Boston.

He looks for his three places-to-eat maps. He says, L6 looks like a good place—but then he realizes he forgot to show L6 on the key; it's only in his map.

I tell Tano he's a psycho with his maps. "You marked more restaurants than we'd need if we lived there for a year."

"But this way, if we want Indian food, it won't matter where we are because I marked an Indian food restaurant in each neighborhood."

He wants to show me. I say no. I say I won't look at the maps. I say I don't want to be part of his psychoness.

He says, "It's a security thing. I just like doing my maps."

"Why do you need so many of them?"

"For the same reason you need to bring six weeks' worth of reading material on a five-day vacation."

The plane takes off and I put my feet on top of the pile of magazines under my seat so they won't slide away.