"Does one man count as many?" asks the man with an easy smile.
His accent isn't Russian. If one had to pin it down, one might call it cosmopolitan - maybe a Frenchman who's worked to sound English, maybe an Englishman who's spent time on the continent. Maybe an American with pretensions. His clothes are stylish, with pieces borrowed just a little too liberally from youth culture for a man of his years. The impression he gives, as a whole, is that of a poet, a drunkard, or a homosexual.
But, as some oblique signal - one comprehensible, perhaps, to a clever man who's a-sort-of-analyst - his teacup has a spoon sticking out of it. In the Russian fashion, he doesn't remove it before he takes a sip. And then he smiles at Ralston, and pulls the spoon out, and sets it down on his saucer, and says, "I've always been told I have quite a lot of presence."
(The music, perhaps in some oblique joke, is Sibelius.)
no subject
His accent isn't Russian. If one had to pin it down, one might call it cosmopolitan - maybe a Frenchman who's worked to sound English, maybe an Englishman who's spent time on the continent. Maybe an American with pretensions. His clothes are stylish, with pieces borrowed just a little too liberally from youth culture for a man of his years. The impression he gives, as a whole, is that of a poet, a drunkard, or a homosexual.
But, as some oblique signal - one comprehensible, perhaps, to a clever man who's a-sort-of-analyst - his teacup has a spoon sticking out of it. In the Russian fashion, he doesn't remove it before he takes a sip. And then he smiles at Ralston, and pulls the spoon out, and sets it down on his saucer, and says, "I've always been told I have quite a lot of presence."
(The music, perhaps in some oblique joke, is Sibelius.)
"Tea?"