Though, having on the way downstairs passed in his digs a very ghost of a sometime Administration speechwriter “on the way up,” I was not here to film a ceiling mosaicked blue green crimson with river birds and one great-lobed ear, an esoteric oblong drawn in or on it, anciently listening downward upon this forty-meter-or-so pool, saffron and gray of water, a roped-off, only somewhat deeper section for the diving board where a bald man with a moustache treaded water. Plus shower rooms; swimsuited civilian and military mixing nakedly (how did I know one from the other?), soldiers in fatigues; and this sketchy guy somehow, a large face I knew I would act on if I could just recall his job, his deep chin stonier for his short stature, eyebrows so thick and angularly peaked they didn’t need the small, recessed eyes beneath, a man bronzed on neck and forearms contemplating both the busy pool and this big woman guard in camo fatigues one-handing at her side a more or less automatic weapon I wasn’t familiar with with an awkward-looking outside sling swivel; yet also aware, I knew, of me, this stocky, quick civilian I half-remembered, tense, factoring me into the scene his blistered lips saying to the woman what I must hear while wondering all at once why he was here and why would our people consign the Scrolls to underground waterways, why not fax them home?
