Library Conversations (rp for cyke_out)

[a_sloane]

The library was quickly becoming a favorite place, which disconcerted Arvin Sloane to some degree. He hated being predictable. Still. It reminded him of Zurich, not of Los Angeles, which he found preferable, and yet had an atmosphere of its own. The mysterious Charles Xavier, who had come and gone before Sloane moved into the mansion, must have created it, and it was entertaining and challenging to identify hidden doors, books that didn't belong, which one one but an avid reader would notice, and sometimes just to enjoy the quiet.

Sloane had forgotten how teenagers could be. He had missed both Sydney's and Nadia's teenage years, and there had been no reason to involve himself with others. Sometimes he thought teaching them was being locked up with ten to fifteen versions of Marshall Flinkman and Julian Sark; they were either over eager, or sullen and unsubtly sarkastic. Irina, he remembered, had taught when playing Laura Bristow, and she had raised Sark. Clearly, she was even stronger than Sloane had always thought her to be.

So here he was, retreating in the library, looking forward to working on his idea for infiltrating and invading first the Sentinel outside and then SHIELD which was supposed to be a surprise gift for his, well, hosts, when realizing this time, he wasn't alone. There was already someone in the library. Scott Summers. Looking somewhat harrassed himself.

Comments

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

Scott wasn't hiding. He was in the library, getting ready for tomorrow's history class. At least, that was the plan. He had put together a unit on the popular image of crime and justice in the twentieth century. It was sometimes fun to shake things up, and it kept the boys interested, anyway; well, the boys and Laura. He had come in here looking for a copy of In Cold Blood, to refresh his memory on a few points, and had happened on a shelf of Tom Wolfe books. That figured, since the library had partly been replenished from Warren Worthington's personal collection. Pretentious rich-boy crap.

But then his hand stopped on the spine of The Right Stuff, and he was hit by a memory that he had lost hold of until that moment. He had found this book in the library at the orphanage, had carried around a paperback until the spine broke in half, and then he carried the halfs. He had learned, by then, not to talk about his father, the brave test pilot who almost got the chance to be an astronaut. But he could read this one, over and over. He even found a mention of a promising young pilot named Christopher Summers. At least, years later, he remembered that he had found it.

Scott sat down with the book, meaning to flip through, to see whether the reference had really been there, or was something a lonely child had fabricated. Two hours later, he was halfway through the book, when he heard a footstep and looked up to see Sloane in the doorway.

Jerking hastily to his feet, Scott ran a hand over the hair he had absently been messing with as he read. It probably wasn't an improvement. "Mr. . . .ahh. . .Arvin." He hadn't quite worked out what to call the man -- he still hardly managed to address Charles Xavier anything other than 'Professor' -- but, after all, Scott was the boss here. In theory.

"How are you, ahh, finding the school? I'm sorry we haven't talked very much. It's been, well, a hell of a week."

*OOC -- Note -- set after Scott's evening with Logan, and before his kiss and make up with Emma -- for the sake of maximum angst, of course.

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

It's still a bit jarring to be addressed as "Arvin" by a relatively new aquaintance and a young man - even Sark after three years hadn't gone there, and Weiss had, well, tried and withdrawn after one look - but it fits with the new life he tries to create here. This Arvin Sloane is not a leader. For his part, Sloane would have called Scott "Summers" if their positions had been reversed - much like Marcus Dixon had always been "Dixon" during ten years of working together, and had only become Marcus when telling Arvin, on Arvin's way to being executed, he had prayed for him, for that one exchange -, Vaughn was Vaughn and Weiss was Weiss, but Scott was the head of the school and had offered first names during their initial interview.

Though right now, his whole demeanour screamed "troubled young man in need of a mission".

"Challenging," he replied, coming in. "Which is what I hoped for."

There had been that incident with Logan, but it actually rated as less challenging than the being locked up with ten to fifteen adolescent Marshalls and Sarks, because that kind of powerplay was ever so familiar, save for the self healing.

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

Scott thought he detected a slight annoyance cross Sloane's face at the use of his first name.

Not that he had to yield to the man's wishes; no need to forget who was in charge here. On the other hand, Scott didn't want to be a jerk, needlessly -- he hadn't heard anything either way, but he suspected Logan might have that covered. Logan. One topic Scott really didn't want to think about right now.

He focused on Sloane instead, giving what he hoped was a friendly smile. "I'm sorry for the informality. The faculty here have all pretty much known each other since the beginning of time, if you hadn't noticed. It's all first names or else --" His mouth twitched. "I don't suppose, in your line of work, you ever had a battle name."

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

"Oh, I've been called names," Sloane replies wryly, returning the smile, and walks towards the window. "I'm sure your friend Mr. Logan could come up with some new ones."

He sounds more amused than anything else.

"I find it rejuvinating, in a way, being around students and faculty that are so much younger."

Well, except for Logan, but then again, they avoided each other after that first encounter, and besides, classified files or not, Sloane had no idea how old the man truly was, just guess work.

"But I admit it sometimes reminds me of, well, the past, in lack of a better term. That other country, to which we can't return."

Jack, he thinks, and experiences a moment of fierce loss he hadn't expected. This was supposed to be an attempt at socializing and putting Scott Summers at ease by admitting to little weaknesses. Not an access of genuine emotions.

It probably was just that Scott Summers with his quiet aura was a good listener, and had reminded him of Jack a little during the auditioning interview. One more reason to be wary and to stick to harmless school teacher personas. Well, not harmless. They wouldn't have hired him if he was, not in this kind of school.

"If I come across as too hierarchical," he adds, back to socializing, "feel free to remind me dust starts settling on me. That usually works."

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

"Oh, believe me, I've been called my share, as well. Anybody whose job description involves telling people things they don't want to hear comes in for a little of that." Scott has a feeling this isn't the only reason Arvin Sloane has been called unpleasant names. But whatever might be lurking in the dark corners of the man's history, there's evidence that he has been an effective leader -- and nobody does that without bruising a few egos.

"That's not actually what I meant, though. It's a trait of the whole hero culture, I guess. Love it or mock it. We X-men tend to do both. But, well for instance, when I came here, the Professor gave me the name 'Cyclops.' I didn't like it. It called attention to the one thing about me I had always tried to hide. And besides, you know -- in the story, he's a villain. The Professor told me I'd understand, one day."

He shook his head. "I'm still not sure I do, but that doesn't matter. These kids you've met -- some of them aren't more than fourteen, fifteen. I'm not like the Professor, though. I let them name themselves. What someone wants to call himself, that tells a hell of a lot about them. So, Mr. Sloane. For the sake of argument, you're being re-christened?" Scott raised an eyebrow.

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

In the far away days of being a field agent in the CIA, Sloane had, in fact, had a code name. Which he has no intention to use right now, both because the past is the past, and because it had been singularly uninventive. Now, when Sloane had been the one to hand out code names, they usually fit, such as Raptor for Jack, Phoenix for Sydney and - but he's not going to think about Nadia now.

Evergreen. Evergreen.

"Ah, now that is a challenge," he said briskly. "I'm afraid I'll have to come up with something ordinary and easy to remember. Like an ordinary day of the week. I'd pick Wednesday. For that is certainly my day. Considering it was the day I arrived here."

There are other reasons, of course. They are in a library, after all, Sloane is an avid reader, and definitely not above making literary jokes.

"I'm curious. What would your choice have been, if you had had one back in the day?"

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

Scott was first puzzled, then a little uneasy at Sloane's choice.

"Switching pantheons on me?" he said cautiously. He had, after all, met an incarnation of a powerful Norse god, who occasionally doubled as an unassuming physician. Maybe there really was more to Sloane than met the eye. But nah, that was silly.

"Just for the record. I had nothing to do with cloning Thor. The guys you want for that are. . ." He grinned. "Ahh, never mind." Then, with an assessing look at Sloane, he said, "Odin's not such a bad identity. I'm not a big fan of his . . .ahh, brother, is it?"

Scott was tempted to mention his own experiences with Asgard, but he decided to leave it for another day; possibly some time when he was really really drunk. Which didn't happen often, and possibly never would in front of Sloane. Once you knew a man well enough to drink and let your guard down, maybe then you could talk about the time you and your teammates fought Loki to a draw.

Sloane's question took him a little by surprise. Scott didn't recall ever being asked what he would have named himself. "It's probably just as well I didn't get to pick my name. I probably would have gone with something hideously uncreative like 'Laser Boy'. And then --" In a self-mocking tone, he said, "Then Marvel Girl would never have taken me seriously." He shook his head. "We really were such kids."

Thinking about Jean, and the old days, sent him back through a complex series of emotions, some of them in places he doesn't really want to go. He reminded himself that this was a professional conversation -- what was it about Sloane that made Scott feel constantly on the verge of confessing to him? -- and sorted back through Sloane's remarks for something neutral he could grab hold of. "The day you got here. You said you met Logan?"

Oh, good one, Summers subconscious. Way to go for the neutral subject.

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

Sloane is experienced enough not to ask "Cloning Thor?!?" , but he does think of Allison Doren and wonders whether Thor is a code name for someone superhero who has been doubled the way Sloane had created a double for Sydney's friend Francie.

Mostly, though, he's impressed Scott picked up the reference. The occasional frustrating thing about CIA and terrorist organizations alike was that they tended to be hideously undereducated these days.

"Odin traded one of his eyes for wisdom, which I suppose makes us both blind in some regards and seeing in others," he says, referring to the equally one eyed Cyclops of Greek myth. "But I'm glad you approve."

He doesn't mention that Odin did choose to make Loki his blood brother and chose trickery and deceit with it, on quite a lot of occasions; Scott does know his myths, after all, and besides, what he says next is amusing and touching at the same time. No prices for guessing Marvel Girl was a lost love.

"I might have been an adult when I met my late wife," Sloane says, and remembers Emily, and that day in Washington, "but there was running into a pole involved nonetheless. Laughter is one of the better beginnings of a relationship, in my experience."

Then he gets asked about Logan. His expression loses its wistfulness, conjured up by the memory of Emily and young love - for someone who used to be on the Most Wanted List, Sloane can be surprisingly sentimental at times - but retains the amusement. It isn't even feigned, though there is something edgy in it.

"Ah, yes. Quite an interesting encounter. He offered" - one can here the quotes in the phrase coming up now - "'best buddy' terms, but I think we came to an agreement that it was a bit too early for that and a leisurely pace was far more suitable."

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

"I'm just glad you didn't pick Odysseus. It's hard to yell in a combat situation, for one thing. And between the two of us it would be bad precedent."

That was the kind of thing that passed for a joke when Scott said it. He suspected, though, that the comparison wasn't inapt. What were the words used to describe that traveller -- silver-tongued? Circumspect? He could almost hear the Professor's words in his head -- In today's idiom, one might read 'circumspect' as 'devious'. Yeah, Scott thought back at his mentor. You're one to talk.

It wasn't an actual conversation, Scott was fairly sure. With Xavier back on the planet, he couldn't always tell.

Considering Sloane's response to Logan, Scott knew he wasn't getting the full story of that meeting, but he was curious. "What impression did he make on you? Be honest. Wolverine is such a fixture in our little world, it's a little hard to imagine how he comes across -- meeting him for the first time."

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

"There is that," Sloane agreed regarding the Odysseus matter, and skipped the "Nemo" joke (as Odysseus called himself "Nobody" when with Cyclops) as too obvious.

"I thought he came across as very protective and completely devoted to the people here," Sloane said when asked about Wolverine, and he's quite serious and completely truthful for a change, "and as someone who should never be sent on an investigation or any kind of mission requiring subtlety without a partner to balance him. As opposed to a direct combat situation, where he'd excel on his own."

He leaned back against the window, watching Scott. There is the danger of appearing presumptious, but then again, Scott did ask, and while a lifetime of deception is so ingrained that it sometimes comes without any necessity, Sloane is trying to make a new start here. Besides, if he had asked a new agent for his opinion on a valued member of the team, he wouldn't have cared for some respectful stammering of praise.

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

Scott listened, nodded, was silent for a moment, then repeated, "Should never be sent. I'm kind of flattered, actually, that you think, just because I'm supposed to be in charge, I can stop him from doing whatever he wants to do."

This was partly a joke, but only partly, and it occurred to him that Sloane might not think much of self- deprecation, coming from a leader. In any case, he suspected Sloane of underestimating Logan -- and he also figured, if that were the case, it would be because Logan wanted him to.

"You're right about field work, though. For all his lone-wolf schtick, Logan's had a lot of success working with partners. You've met one of his favorites already. Miss Pryde," he added, glancing at Sloane to see what kind of reaction that got. A guy who could underestimate Wolverine probably hadn't thought twice about Kitty. "Logan and I have worked together a time or two, of course --"

Scott turned his back and walked to the window, not wanting to betray any unease. Still, Sloane might suspect the subject was making him nervous. Scott weighed the pros and cons, and decided to tell him what he would eventually hear repeated as gossip, if he hadn't all ready.

"Logan and I have always had a complicated relationship --" Looking back now, Scott continued. "He was in love with my wife."

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

Sloane had actually been impressed by Kitty during their brief encounter; he would have hired her in a heartbeat. But then, Sloane is slightly biased towards female agents, especially if they are brunettes with anger inside; not that he would admit this. On a more conscious basis, he thinks that Kitty Pryde's ability could be extremely useful for dealing with the Sentinel outside, but that's something to bring up at a later point.

"I can see why they'd make an amazing team," is all he says out loud, regarding the Kitty and Logan matter, and then learns more about the emotional complications chez Xavier's. Which induces another memory he pushes away. Jack reviving him after putting him through that execution; punishment for a 25 years old affair. And the irony was that it hadn't been Irina he had been in love with.

Present, now: focus. Scott tells him this rather personal information why? It probably isn't the world's best kept secret, but still. Well. It certainly makes Logan look more complicated, not just the relationship, which is worth considering. Hm.

He doesn't ask "and did your wife love him?" or "how did that make you feel?". These kind of questions strike him as too intrusive and reminiscent of Judy Barnett, and despite having been fond of Judy beyond playing a game, Sloane has no intention to ever give in to anything that sounds like therapy, no matter whether as the patient or the therapist. What he does say is, sounding completely matter-of-fact:

"There are worse complications."

Which says something about the complications in Sloane's own emotional life, but he wouldn't care for that comment, either, and point out he was merely being factual. Presumably Logan did not kill the late Mrs. Grey-Summers, either because of a directive of the organization he works for or because he thinks she is planning on killing her daughter.

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

Scott seriously considered Sloane's statement. There are worse complications than having a friend who's in love with your wife. . .

"Probably," he conceded. "I'm not sure there are many more complicated complications, if you see my point. If you just love somebody, or just hate them -- well, it's easy to know where you stand with them. Sometimes it seems like those people can drift out of your life fairly easily, and the people you're left with are the ones you're still trying to figure out."

He shook his head. "God, I'm not usually this morose, believe it or not. My -- ahh -- you might have heard this already. My father passed away recently. I've been a little bit off. Even if you think you know how something is going to affect you --" He shook his head. "Enough about me. Did you have something you wanted to ask, or were you just trying to use the library." He pointed at the copy of The Right Stuff. "I can take my book somewhere else." Then he added, unnecessarily, "Dad was a pilot." Change a few sounds in that word, and it would also be true, but that part was much harder to explain.

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

Sloane, who isn't standing far from Scott, makes the additional step that allows him to put his hand on Scott's shoulder.

"There is no stronger bond than between parent and child," he says softly.

It's not a calculated gesture, at this point, though ironically what allows him to make it had been in part calculated; the fact that he told Scott and Emma about his dead daughter, though he had paid for this particular calculation as he had known he would, with the old pain coming back in full force. Still, the fact they know makes for one of the few spontanous gestures he allowed himself since arriving here. It's something that some new aquaintances find surprising because his demeanour is otherwise quite old fashioned, but Arvin Sloane has always been a physical man towards people he feels sympathy for; Jack and Sydney Bristow could testify.

"Actually," he continues, stepping back again before it could become presumptous, "I was just looking for a quiet retreat before my next class. But there's no need to go. I should get out and catch some fresh air anyway; it looks like we'll have rain again tomorrow."

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

Scott is mildly surprised to feel Sloane's touch, but it's not a bad surprise. All the relationships in his life seem so complicated, now, this show of pure sympathy from a near stranger moves him.

He doesn't deserve it, of course. He hadn't been thinking, until Sloane's reaction, of what Sloane had said about his own family.

"I'm glad -- " he says, turning back to Sloane. "That is to say, you're lucky if that's been your experience. Well, not -- not lucky, obviously. I'm sorry for your loss, but -- I grew up in an orphanage. I hardly had a relationship with my father. I have a son and a daughter myself and --" To oversimplify things, grossly. "-- I've abandoned him, at least twice -- no, three time. As for my daughter -- when I first knew who she was, I rejected her." He shakes his head. "Obviously, there were other things -- other people -- I was more attached to."

Responding at last to Sloane's final overture, he says, "If you want to go, don't let me keep you."

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

If I had known...

Nadia says in Sloane's mind. He doesn't leave; it's fairly obvious that Scott Summers needs to talk to someone who isn't a family member or an old friend, and as he observed earlier, the rest of the staff here are all involved with each other since ages.

(At this point, Dr. Judy Barnett would make a terse observation along the lines of pots and kettles, and point out that there was a reason Jack Bristow sent a psychiatrist to his old friend Arvin, and it wasn't so Sloane could have sex with her. But Dr. Barnett isn't here.)

"My daughter Nadia grew up in an orphanage as well," Sloane says, telling himself it is only to allow Scott to talk further. "I did not know she existed until well into her adulthood. When we finally found each other, I - I managed to fail her in a fairly unforgivable way, and she told me that if she had known who I was, she'd have tried everything to get adopted." There is an odd sense of pride along with the regret when he says this; Nadia striking out verbally when she was helpless to do so otherwise, and trying her best to trick him had been when he truly believed, emotionally as well as rationally, that she was his and Irina's daughter. "And yet she chose to join me later, and saved my life in doing so. I don't think we ever deserve our children, Scott, not in the sense of being worthy of them, but -"

He remembers the birthday, Nadia's last birthday, the celebration at his house at Sydney's suggestion, the toast he gave.

" - The Chinese have a saying: "One joy scatters a thousand griefs." We only had a brief time together, and yet she brought such joy in my life. Obviously, I did not know your father, and I do not know your children. But I can't imagine that you did not share moments of joy with either of them, as well as grief. And both joy and grief make them a part of you, and you a part of them."

She'll make us proud, Elena said, so sure he was on her side. Elena had been the one who actually had raised Nadia in that orphanage, as much as anyone had, and yet Elena had not hesitated to turn her into a zombie. Looking at Elena had carried something of the horror of looking at one's own reflection; he knew too well he had come close, so close, to the same sin when injecting Nadia with the Rambaldi fluid until it was either her life or the revelation. Sloane watches Scott, and wonders who raised him, in the orphanage or later. Who had been his Elena. Charles Xavier?

"Are your children still alive?"

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

Sloane's response, once again, takes Scott by surprise -- he realizes that he had constructed a rather simplistic, sentimenal story around Sloane's dead daughter.

"It's never simple, is it?" he muses, then, with the trace of a smile. "Not for people like us, anyway. And yes, we -- Dad and I were reunited, when I was an adult. We got along passably well. He worked -- abroad -- and he asked me to come work with him, once. I almost said 'yes,' but, well, there was a woman. My son's mother. I stayed behind for her, which turned out to be ironic --"

He shakes his head. "Yes," he says, "Yes, Nathan and Rachel are alive." The better modifier would be 'again' rather than 'still,' but even with Sloane's own unlikely abilities, there's too much here that he'd rather not get into. "They're both abroad right now. Pursuing their own interests --" Realizing that he probably doesn't look like he could have a child more than 15 years old or so, at the outside, he adds in a deadpan, "They're precocious."

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

The linguist in Sloane notices the "my son's mother" phrase instead of the more obvious "wife" and, considering he wasn't married to Irina Derevko, either, draws the wrong conclusion Nathan's mother was an affair, and the right conclusion she wasn't the much mourned Ms. Grey-Summers.

"No, it never is. You must be proud of them, though. To be able to make their own way abroad after... abandonment... speaks highly of their strength and abilities. But of course, you yourself had to find your own way through life, too, growing up in an orphanage. And now you are responsible for other children. I've only been here for a short time, Scott, but judging by what I saw so far, they seem to have complete confidence in you. It must have made your father proud as well - to imagine his son the captain of such an endangered vessel as this school is."

He uses the metaphor because of Scott's earlier mention that his father was a pilot, but also because fragments of a Victorian poem going through his mind - "we are still captains of our fate" - he can't quite place the quote or the poem's author, though.

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

"Dad was proud of me, I think -- in that very nonspecific kind of way that involved not really understanding what i do." He shrugs. "I'm methodical, he's impatient. He's much more like my brother -- or my daughter for that matter. If we'd tried to work together, we would have gone crazy."

In any case, if Scott is honest with himself, he knows that Christopher Summers was never the father figure that he tried to impress.

He looks up at Sloane. "It sounds like you were proud of your daughter. You said she saved your life. She must have been --" Powerful, a warrior, strong. He suspects, suddenly, that she died on a mission, maybe even trying to save her father's life. "Did she -- well, did she know how you felt? At the end?"

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

Sloane has a sudden memory of Nadia's blood on his hands, which doesn't make sense; he had stood several feet away from her and Sydney when shooting her. There was no blood when she crumbled. Well, it's not hard to guess that the mind plays tricks and uses appropriate metaphors, he thinks, pushing the image away and ignoring the fact it carries a different sense memory than that night in Svogoda with it as well.

"Not at the end," he says. "She wasn't herself then; she had been drugged by -"

Her aunt. Her foster mother. Who wouldn't have been able to do so if not for Sloane having pursued that particular line of research years earlier.

"- someone who tried to use her as a weapon against everything Nadia held dear."

And before that, she must have believed that he had betrayed her. Ironic that the only way she wouldn't have believed it at the end would have been if she recognized what he did when shooting her; stopping her from killing her sister.

"But a few weeks before, I was in a - well, you could say I had a choice to make."

Explaining about wandering inside one's own memories was probably a bit too convoluted to explain, but then, given everyone's talents here, Scott Summers might actually have had a similar experience himself

"And frankly, I thought I should remain where I was."

I was a good man once, but now I am a monster. There is no place for monsters in this world, Nadia.

"But my daughter thought otherwise. She told me she believed in me."

Nadia's voice, telling him that Emily and Jaqueline were gone, had been for a long time, the choice between a past that never was and thus never could betrayed inside his own mind and reality, embodied by his daughter who had seen the worst he could be in a way he had always been able to prevent Emily from.

I believe in you, Dad.

"So I think - I hope - that she knew."

There's that image again, as false as the memory of Emily carrying a living Jaqueline in her arms, of Nadia's blood on his hands. With an effort, he puts it into the black hole in his mind that swallows what he won't, can't look at, and focuses on Scott again.

"It is not always easy, working with family members," he says, trying not to make it sound like a platitude. "And yet sometimes the results can be... extraordinary, rather because of the differences than inspite of them. Nadia's half sister Sydney and her father spent most of Sydney's adolescence unable to to talk with each other for longer than five minutes, and yet once they started working together, the results were magnificent. Maybe your children and yourself will surprise each other in a similar way, one day."

When those children are grown up, as Sloane has their age rather wrong. Of course he also neglects to mention that magnificent Jack and Sydney cooperation hinged on a) him recruiting Sydney against Jack's wishes and b) both of them working against him. The more recent state of affairs, with Sydney believing Jack killed Irina and freezing him out again for a while before starting to trust him again, gets also edited out of the recount. Besides. Both, in Sloane's mind, prove his point anyway; he knows what is best for his Bristows even if they don't, and what is best for them is working together, with him, even if it is against him.

The practical application here for the Summers clan: there should be a reunion sooner or later. Surely, a mutual foe can be produced?

[cyke-out.livejournal.com]

She wasn't herself. . .

Scott hears the words and shakes his head. How many times has this been true of himself, of people he cares about. "God," he says, "I'm sorry."

He stops speaking for a moment and looks at Sloane, trying to get a good measure of him. He doesn't want to forget that he and Emma have assessed what they could of this man's past, and determined that a lot of it was almost certainly unsavory. Scott needed someone to talk to, and Sloane was providing that, but was it just a way of earning his trust? In any case, the stories, like his own, are almost certainly edited for content and context.

"One of these days," he says, "you and I are going to sit down and tell each other some real stories. Whole stories. But --" He reaches down for his book, remembers the other he came for, and heads to the shelf. "I have a feeling," he says, "that today is not that day. I have what I need. I've been here too long anyway. Enjoy the library, it's what you came for."

And he heads toward the door.