A man with a thick accent took exception, and for a minute they talked in a way that Saskia couldn’t follow. Willem had brought up a map on his laptop. He and Saskia played a guessing game of trying to match place-names with the word fragments that they managed to fish out of the verbal gumbo. Just north of Sugar Land, in the western suburbs of Houston, the map showed large bodies of water, obviously artificial given that they were neat polygons outlined by roads. They were labeled as reservoirs. And yet on satellite imagery they appeared to be forests, dotted with recreational facilities. Sometimes, it seemed, these parts of the city were wooded parkland and other times they were underwater. Rufus and the Cajuns were talking about "Energy Corridor" and "Buffalo Bayou." Willem identified these on the map as well—both ran eastward toward downtown. The former was a row of office complexes, including at least one Shell facility. The latter was a natural watercourse that apparently drained those huge park/reservoir zones.