CROWN OF THORNS
Chapter Two: The Library
I saw him three times in the two weeks after the competition, and I counted, which told me something I wasn't yet ready to examine.
The first time was in the university library, third floor, political theory section, where he was standing with three books in his arms and the specific frown of a man who knows exactly what he wants and has not yet found it.
"The Pettit," I said.
He looked up.
"On the shelf below," I said. "Someone shelved it wrong. It's been there six weeks. I've been meaning to report it."
He looked at the shelf below. "Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government." He picked it up, turned it over once, and looked back at me, and I felt that look land somewhere it had no business landing in a library. "You've been watching the Pettit for six weeks."
"I noticed it was misshelved," I said. "That's not watching."
"You knew exactly what I was looking for."
"You were standing in the political theory section looking frustrated," I said. "And Pettit on republican freedom is the standard reference for the argument you made in the debate. The argument I dismantled."
He studied me, the frown gone, something sharper in its place.
"You think I'm going back to find the flaw."
"Aren't you?"
A pause, honest this time. "Yes."
"The flaw is in the institutional category," I said. "Pettit doesn't resolve it. You'd need Braithwaite and Pettit together, the institutional responsibility paper, in the Political Theory annual, two thousand fourteen."
"Mara Flynn," he said, like he was testing the shape of my name against the shape of what I'd just done.
"Yes."
"Why are you helping me?"
"I'm not helping you," I said. "If you find the Braithwaite-Pettit paper, you'll see it supports the critique more than the original argument. I'm not giving you ammunition. I'm pointing you at the honest version of the question."
"The honest version."
"The category problem with mandated activism doesn't have a clean theoretical resolution," I said. "The literature knows this. Pettit partly addresses it and sidesteps it in chapter six. It's a real problem in the field, which is why it was a vulnerable point."
"And you found it."
"Yes."
"Because you read the literature."
"Yes."
"Mara," he said, and something in the single syllable sat closer to my skin than it should have.
"Cole."
"The drink," he said. "You said perhaps."
"I said not tonight."
"It's not tonight."
I looked at him properly then, in the library's mid morning quiet, the particular stillness of people concentrating and the particular heat of a conversation that had nothing to do with books anymore.
"I don't drink coffee with people I've just beaten in a public competition," I said. "It looks like charity."
"And now?"
"It's been two weeks," I said. "The competition is history."
"So yes?"
"If you're buying."
He almost smiled, the real version, not the one from the stage, and something low in my stomach noticed the difference before the rest of me did.
"Deal."
* * *
We had coffee in the student union café, not the bar, which was exactly the right choice on his part and which I noted and did not say.
He talked about the debate. Not the loss, he was not, I had decided, the kind of man who would spend an hour discussing a loss with the person who'd caused it, but the genuine intellectual problem underneath it.
"The issue," he said, turning his cup slowly without drinking from it, "is that the mandate produces perverse incentives. You force institutions to activate and they perform activism rather than practise it."
"Yes."
"Which was your category error argument."
"Yes."
"But if you don't mandate," he said, "you get the current situation. Institutional passivity in the face of board failure."
"Also a problem."
"So there's no clean answer."
"No."
"Which means your victory was... not exactly correct."
I looked at him, at the small provocation in it, and felt something that was almost pleasure at being pushed on. "My victory was precisely correct," I said. "You advanced an argument with a structural weakness. I identified the weakness. The fact that the alternatives have weaknesses of their own doesn't rehabilitate the one I dismantled."
"You're not conceding anything."
"I'm being accurate," I said. "My victory was correct. Your argument had a flaw. Both true."
"And if I'd advanced a better argument?"
"I'd have had to work harder."
"Would you have won?"
I let the honesty cost me something, which I rarely did. "I don't know."
He went quiet, and I watched him recalibrate again, slower this time, more careful with it.
"That's honest," he said.
"Yes."
"You don't know, often. I'd imagine."
"Rarely," I said. "It's rare I don't know something I'm arguing about."
"And personally?"
I looked at him across the small table, the grey mid November light outside doing nothing to soften the directness of the question.
"That's a different question."
"Yes," he said. "I'm asking the different one."
"Cole."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Why am I asking?"
"Why are you interested in the personal," I said. "You don't know me. I beat you in a competition. We've talked for..." I checked my watch. "Forty minutes."
"Forty minutes." His mouth moved, not quite a smile. "Yes."
"So why?"
He held my eyes, and I had the distinct sensation of being looked at the way I usually looked at other people, assessed, measured, found interesting against my will.
"Because in forty minutes I've had a more interesting conversation than I've had in three years at Alderton."
"That's..."
"Melodramatic?"
"I was going to say extravagant."
"It's accurate," he said. "Not melodramatic. I'm at an elite university full of very bright people. Most of them are interested in performing brightness. You're interested in being right."
"I'm interested in the truth of things."
"That's what I mean. You don't perform."
I looked at him, at the dark eyes and the stillness underneath the usual ease, and felt a pull I had no good argument against.
"Cole Ashby."
"Yes."
"The reputation," I said. "Charming and strategic."
"Yes."
"Is that the performance?"
He was quiet a moment.
"Partly."
"What's the non performance?"
He looked at me for a long moment, longer than the question needed, and I felt the look settle somewhere low and warm.
"This," he said. "This conversation."
"Then why do the other version? The charming and strategic."
"Because it works."
"For what?"
"For..." He stopped himself. "The rooms. The committee positions. The network you build for what comes after."
"The barrister future."
"Yes."
"And the barrister future requires charm and strategy."
"And competence," he said. "Which I also have."
"I know," I said. "I watched you in the debate, before the second round. You're good."
"Not as good as you."
"No," I said, and watched something cross his face that wasn't quite wounded and wasn't quite pleased, something more honest than either.
"Mara."
"Yes."
"I don't..." He stopped again. "I don't usually have this conversation."
"The direct one."
"The honest one. The non performing one."
"Because it doesn't work for the rooms."
"Because I haven't needed it to."
"And now?"
He looked at me the way a man looks at a result he hadn't planned for and found he didn't mind.
"Now I'm having coffee with the person who dismantled my argument in front of three hundred people. And she's interesting. The honest version of interesting. Not the performing version."
I looked at him, at the openness he clearly wasn't used to offering, and felt the temperature in the small café table between us climb by several degrees that had nothing to do with the coffee.
"Cole."
"Yes."
"I'm going to say something."
"Please."
"The charm and the strategy," I said. "I'm not interested in those. I have no use for them."
"I know."
"But the person who stood in the library looking for Pettit. Who knew what the honest question was about mandated activism. Who took perhaps and let it stand for two weeks. That person I'm willing to have coffee with again."
"Again," he said, like he was turning the word over to check its weight.
"Yes."
"What are you willing to have after coffee?"
I let myself look at him, at the mouth that had asked the question and the eyes that weren't performing it, and felt the pull sharpen into something closer to want.
"Don't be charming."
"That wasn't..." He stopped himself, properly this time. "You're right. I'm sorry. The reflex."
"The performing version."
"Yes."
"The direct answer," I said, "is I don't know yet."
"Honest."
"Yes."
We looked at each other for a long moment, and I was aware, in a way I didn't fully approve of, of exactly how close his hand was to mine on the table, and how little effort it would take to close the distance, and how much I wanted to.
"Then I'll buy you coffee again," he said. "Until you know."
"All right."
He doesn't push, I thought again, crossing the library quadrangle in the November cold, my coat collar up against a wind that did nothing to cool whatever had taken up residence under my skin.
He takes the honest answer and leaves room for it.
That's not the reputation.
Which means the reputation is the performance.
And this is something else.
Yes, said the voice I was no longer bothering to manage. Something else entirely.
And beneath the thought, low and insistent, was the memory of his hand on the table, close enough to mine that I had spent the last ten minutes of the conversation thinking about very little else, and the knowledge, unwelcome and entirely clear, that I wanted that hand somewhere other than a café table, and soon.
* * *