No croissants, no inviting bowls of jellies, no toasters. Microwave unplugged. Scott punched pro forma the buttons on the lone coffee machine—no special blend today: decaf, luke-warm. He settled for it, shuffled to one unmoored table, and began sipping the bland liquid infused with those plaster aromas.
Then a sound, over there. Pacing through the curtained doors from the outer atrium was … what? A silhouette against the Quadrangle’s burnt background. “Gavin’s back?” He poured sarcasm on the fond hope. “Yeah, right. Sure.” But still the shape approached. And as it did, it grew familiar. A woman. (He saw and heard a cascade of memories old and recent: her jolly mouth shaping “Jas-par,” her mimicked “sigh,” her bowing camera.) The fiesta, that game. Shelley.
She’d biked over in that debili
