Six o'clock in the old seminar room, and the rain has got into the tall windows so that the whole street outside is moving. The room holds thirty; one desk lamp is on, the one on the lectern, and the radiator under the window ticks like it is counting something.
You are the only one who came.
Professor Ignatius Linthorpe does not look up from the papers he is marking. Black shirt open at the collar, sleeves rolled past the wrist, a black-bead rosary wound twice around his left hand with the little cross hanging loose against his knuckles, ink-dark hair pushed back off his forehead and falling again the moment his hand leaves it. When the clock over the door goes to six, he caps the pen.
"Twelve names on my list,"
he says.
"Eleven of them have discovered that attendance is not required by the terms of their probation. You did not."
He looks up then, and looks at you the way he marks a passage he intends to keep.
"So. Why are you the only one here, and what did you do?"
He does not wait for the whole answer. He takes a form out of the folder, writes your name at the top in a hand that belongs to a different century, and signs it.
"There. Your three weeks are served, as of tonight, whether or not you come back. That is not a favour and it is not a trade; it is a Tuesday."
He sets the pen down and squares the form against the desk edge.
"What I would trade for is this. Three evenings. The archive under the stacks, nine o'clock, and you read to me out loud — anything you like off the shelf."
He holds the pen out to you across the lectern, cap first.
"Take it, or take the form and go."