That, too, was matter of fact. The sun had been out earlier that day. His mother had left him when he was an infant. He was maybe probably some sort of genius. He was … Regan estimated 5’10, 5’11. Not overly tall, but certainly not short. He was also wearing a lot of leather for someone who was currently drawing hexagons in the armory of a fine art museum.
“What’s your deal?” she asked him. “Why time travel?”
“I like to keep a long-term problem going,” he said.
“What, like a computer program?”
“Yes.” She’d been joking, but he clearly wasn’t.
“You’re some kind of math dude?”
“A specific kind of math dude, yeah.”
He raked his fingers through his hair, which was definitely too long on top.
“I hope you didn’t tip much on that haircut,” she remarked. “It’s not very good.”
“My dad did it the last time I was home. He doesn’t have a lot of free time.”
Well, now she felt like a dick.
“Why are you drawing in here?” she asked him.
“I like it here,” he said. “I have an annual membership.”
So he wasn’t a tourist. “Why?”
“Because I like it here,” he repeated. “I can think in here.”
“It gets crowded,” she pointed out. “Noisy.”
“Yes, but it’s the right kind of noise.”
The longer she looked at him, the more attractive he got. He had an interesting jawline. He didn’t sleep well, that much was obvious. The bruising beneath his eyes was violently purple. She wondered what kept him awake at night, and what her name was. Or his name. Or maybe they were all nameless. He was a mystery, which was interesting. He never quite did or said what she thought he was going to, though that could become its own kind of predictable after a while.
He had a nice mouth, Regan thought. She glanced down at his pen, which had bite marks along the side. She would have guessed as much. She imagined the plastic getting caught between his teeth, his tongue slipping over it.
She shivered slightly.
“You work here?” he asked her.
“I’m a docent,” she said.
“You look too young to be a docent.”
Everything he said was astutely informed, clipped and certain.
“I’m older than I look,” she informed him. It was a common mistake.
“How old are you?”
“Three years past my arrest,” she said whimsically.
He indulged his curiosity; she’d wondered if he would. “Arrest for what?”
“Counterfeit. Theft.”
He blinked, and she preened in his hitch of hesitation.
Then he glanced down at his watch.
“I should go,” he said, registering the time, or possibly the concept of time itself, which she had recently learned was a thing he thought a great deal about. He reached for the bag she hadn’t noticed at his feet, which had a motorcycle helmet strapped to it. The existence of a motorcycle explained the leather, even if it didn’t explain anything else. He closed his notebook and placed it in his bag, which was a nondescript backpack that had suffered moderate abuse. There was a textbook inside; a thick one, like Janson’s History of Art, and Regan shook her head.
If she were to paint him, she thought, nobody would even believe her.
She didn’t say anything as he slung his bag over his shoulder, though he paused for a moment just before he moved to pass her, toying with a thought.
“Maybe I’ll see you again,” he said.
She shrugged. “Maybe you will.”
She meant it, of course—the ‘maybe’ of it all. It seemed they were both saying that logistically speaking, it might happen again. Clearly their spheres of occupation had a tendency to intersect. That would technically be a coincidence. If and when it happened, Regan would have an actual reason to recognize him. （Rather than what she had now, which was just a sensation.） He had such defined brows for someone with so many messy features. That, of course, and his mouth, which was unmissable. There was a defined dip on top, a crooked sort of slant to the shape of it, making it seem as if he were regularly caught between expressions. He definitely had some sort of oral fixation, Regan confirmed, watching his hand rise reflexively to his mouth. He’d said that he smoked, and that seemed right. Of everything she’d noticed about him, that seemed like the most （and perhaps the only） fitting detail. He seemed like the sort of person who liked having something between his lips.