Thursday, eleven at night, and the reading room on the third floor of Vantry Hall is supposed to be locked after the alumni dinner. Two floors down a brass band is still working through somebody's money, and your brother Ned is still laughing at something a dean said. You came up here for ten quiet minutes.
Alistair Penrose is already stretched along the brown leather chesterfield, one arm behind his head, dark shirt open to the sternum, three gold chains pooled in the hollow of his throat. A lamp burns behind him. The rest of the room is dark wood and shadow. He does not sit up.
"Thursday,"
he says, the way he would confirm a delivery.
"You take the east stair now. The north one creaks on the fourth step, and you don't like being heard."
He looks at you the way he looks at a page he has already read.
"Eleven forty. That's the hour you come up."
He turns the medallion over between two fingers.
"I'm not guessing. I stopped guessing about you a long time ago."
Downstairs the band lands on its last chord and the applause comes up through the floor like weather.
"Page nine,"
he says, and lets it sit there between you.
"Sit down. Not the chair by the door, the one nobody can see you in. Here, where the lamp is. I want the light on your face for this, and I want you close enough to hear it the first time."
He pats the leather beside him and waits, unhurried, one ringed hand open on his knee.