“Yeah.” He nodded. “I had to use this one a little earlier. Thanks.”

“Soooo…Genealogy?” she asked.

He grunted, “Huh?”

He had already dropped a spool of aging film from the box into his hand and was pushing it onto the feed spindle when she asked the question, so he wasn’t really paying attention. In actuality, he was thinking about the fact that, until today, he hadn’t done research via microfilm since he was in college, and that had been longer ago than he cared to remember. He mentally “hmmphed” as the memory passed and mutely attributed the interaction with the young student as triggering it.

“I was just wondering if you were maybe doing genealogical research,” she continued, undaunted by his inattentive demeanor. “You know, investigating your roots. That sort of thing.”

“Yeah,” he glanced back at her and replied with a tired nod. “Yeah, I guess you could say it’s something like that.”

He returned his gaze to the front and pressed the plastic spool inward until he felt it snap into place then tugged at the free end of the celluloid. He could literally feel that the young woman was still standing behind him for some unknown reason. He briefly wondered if he should reach back and check for his wallet, however, what she was exuding definitely didn’t feel malicious. In fact, unless he missed his guess, it felt like a strange mix of curiosity and arousal. At any rate, since no hairs were rising on his neck and no alarms were going off inside his head, he mentally shook it off and tried to ignore her.

She didn’t let him.

“Yeah, I figured as much,” she finally said. “I’ve been watching you.”

He looked over his shoulder at her again. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Well, I mean…” she paused and shrugged. “You look kinda old to be a student.”

“Thanks,” he replied flatly, a complete lack of sincerity haloing the word.