A. W. I. A. 9: Is it time to continue with the interview?

The man who was supposed to be a doctor may have been right after all. This is beginning to look like a broken story. Still, I mean to tell it.

What happened next, after they came and got me and took me away for no reason at all, and after I had been talking for some time to the man who was supposed to be a doctor, and getting nowhere with him, was that I asked for a cup of coffee and he said he'd get me one.

Then, he stood and went to the door and turned the knob and walked out. Whoever was standing guard in the hall--if that's where they stand guard, and not somewhere else with a bank of monitors--was out of sight. He did not close the door and I could see a bit of the wall in the hallway, and nothing else, while he padded away.

I didn't know where he'd gone for coffee or how long it would take him to return.
I looked at the pad he'd left. The page I could see was blank, but I felt sure I'd seen him write something, and one page was folded backwards over the binding. Maybe that was the page he'd been writing on. I started to reach across the table, then stopped and let my hand fall to its enamel surface: his pen lay across the blank page.

I didn't know how many cameras were watching me, or whether he'd simply marked the angle at which he'd placed the pen across the pad; there was such a choreographed quality of unconsciousness to that angle, though, and to the entire situation, that I could only conclude this was another test.

I decided to pass it. But I was still figuring out whether that meant stealing a peek at the pad or leaving it be when I heard footsteps again. I pulled my hand to my chest so fast that whoever was watching me might have supposed I'd gotten a shock from the table. My heart was pounding, but I tried to look composed as I prepared for him to reenter the room. But he didn't come. Instead I heard a door nearby open and the hum of voices or perhaps a radio before it closed again.

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