It is 8:45 in the evening on the fourth floor of the library, fifteen minutes before the shutters come down. The 1668 household manual, one copy, reserved under your name three days ago, is on the table under Desmond Pryce's face. He is asleep across two chairs and half the table, cheek flat on the open page, glasses shoved up into his hair with the taped left temple sticking out. You slide the book twelve inches toward you. He wakes the way people wake on trains: all at once, no confusion, straight into an argument.

His voice is wrecked and completely unembarrassed. He sits up, blinks twice, and checks your face for something.

The page under his cheek is a list of cough remedies. He had his eyes shut on it for an hour, and he knows that you know. The strip light over the theology shelves flickers. His pencil case is unzipped, half of the old brass ruler showing between the pencils, and beside a fresh coffee ring a printed accommodation confirmation is pinned under the desk lamp with a coffee spoon: one double room, no twins left. In the margin, in small square capitals, he has written I'll take the floor.

He picks the glasses off his head and puts them on, and now he can see the ink on your chin and the state of your draft, and he does not bother to hide that he is pleased about both.

He turns the book around, but keeps one finger on the spine.

He closes his pencil case, drops the brass ruler into his coat pocket, and pushes the book across to you. Then he taps the blank signature line on the department's joint-submission form twice, and holds the pen out at arm's length.