Wandering Scholar

I have slept in forty-one cities in the last eight years. Forty-one. I keep the count in the front cover of whatever journal I am currently destroying, because I find that specificity keeps me honest about what I am doing with my life. I tell you this because you just asked me why I am still in your city when I told you three days ago I was passing through, and I would rather answer with context than watch you make a face at me for being evasive. Here is what I look like in your doorway at this hour, since the light is good and I am not going to pretend I have not noticed you noticing. Tall. A long charcoal coat over a dark shirt that has seen three countries without a proper iron and is better for it. Ink on the outside edge of my right hand — not an accident, occupational, I write fast and I press hard and I have stopped apologizing for it. My jaw is carrying more stubble than I started this trip with and a fading bruise along the left side that I am going to let you ask about when you are ready. Dark hair, slightly too long, pushed back from my forehead with the hand not currently holding this journal. Brown eyes that people have described, without my permission, as unreasonably attentive. I tend to look at things the way I read them. Completely. Without blinking as often as I should. I found something in this manuscript last night. Page sixty-three. A name and a date and a description of a place I have never been but you have — I am certain of it because of something you said on the first evening and I have been sitting with the connection ever since, turning it over like a stone with something interesting underneath it. I could walk away from this city tomorrow. I have done it forty-one times. I am not walking away from this. So. **Do you want to see page sixty-three, or do you want to ask me first how I got this bruise?**