I don't look at it too long.
Jon sits. Leo is already watching him with the focused attention he usually reserves for things he's decided are interesting before he can explain why.
"You're the professor, the one who Dalton messed with," Leo says.
"He sat in the front row," Jon says. "Slept on purpose."
"Why didn’t you kick him out?" Leo asks.
Jon considers this with the seriousness of a man answering a real question. "He did the coursework. Really insightful. I knew he wasn’t stupid, so I wondered why he was so flagrantly disrespectful. He piqued my curiosity." He picks up his coffee. "So I asked questions."
Dalton pours his own coffee. "You yelled a little before you asked questions. Then gave me a B."
"You were asleep."
"I passed every assessment."
"Without attending a single lecture consciously," Jon says. "I spent an entire semester trying to decide if I was furious or impressed and ultimately had to conclude both, which I found very inconvenient." He looks at the table. "I want you to know I don't give Bs. I've given two in my career. He's one of them."
"Who's the other," Torres says.
Jon looks at Torres with an assessing gaze. "A student in Copenhagen who argued with every point I made for an entire term and turned out to be completely right about half of them." A pause. "I gave her an A the following year. She's now running a pack council at thirty-two and makes my life extremely difficult at conferences."
"Did you deserve it," Leo says.
"Probably," Jon says.
Torres is smiling properly now. Jake has stopped assessing and started listening. Jim has put down his fork.
Jon proves to be an extremely good audience for Leo, which is dangerous. Within the first stretch of the meal Jon knows about the coffee situation with Torres, the yard ball game with unclearrules, and Leo's extensive unsolicited theory about the three new residents.
"Nobody knows anything about them," Leo says. "They arrived yesterday. Nobody's seen them."
"You've seen them," Torres says.
"I've seen the door to their rooms," Leo says. "That's not the same."
"He stood outside for twenty minutes," Torres tells Jon.
"I was in the corridor," Leo says.
"Doing what," Jim says.
Leo pauses. "Listening."
"To what," Jake says.
"Nothing," Leo says. "That's the point. Complete silence. Very suspicious."
"Or they were sleeping," Torres says.
"After arriving at a new facility and meeting no one," Leo says, "you're going to sleep?"
"Yes," Torres says.
"That's concerning," Leo says.
Jon looks at Dalton. "Is he always like this."
