By midmorning the drawing-compass shop had a line that did not hurry. The brass legs were still trying on tiny slippers at the counter, each pair pausing to greet the paper before glancing toward the little dimple that would be the center.
We asked at the kiosk across the street. "They used to swing the moment someone opened the lid," said a man with a folded map. "Now the paper has to hear a hello, and the center has to nod. It makes the whole street feel rounder."
The shopkeeper, who keeps a pencil behind one ear and a spare slipper no bigger than a lentil, explained it as if it were ordinary housekeeping. "A circle is not a circle until both feet have wiped themselves," she told us. "The paper likes to be included. The center likes to know the radius is sitting down." After that, she said, one circle is plenty. The legs fold themselves away as if they had finished a full orbit of the table.
The next day a sparrow sat on the awning through the first greeting and left only after the center had given its nod. Neighbors swear the bird traced a second, much smaller circle in the air, but the shopkeeper will only say that the awning asked for an encore in a whisper, and that one circle was still the correct answer.