Too many times in recent years he'd been set up, let down. And if it wasn't a trap, if they didn't intend to greet him with, “What are you doing here? Get lost!”, it would happen anyway, in an hour or two, a week, a month at most, and he'd be right back here again, sitting on this bench in this little square of city park, with no idea of when it was all going to end for good, if indeed it ever would. There was no rational explanation for what was happening to him, and that left only the irrational to consider. He knew that he was not imagining things. I don't even have an imagination, he thought. Even as a child he'd shown no creativity at all. He could copy a square from a book, but he could never draw one on his own. He'd have no idea what size to make it, or where to put it on the page. But he didn’t need an imagination to survive. He'd always known that he could simply plod along like millions of others seemed to do. He needed no talent, no special training to do what he intended to do, get a simple job, earn a basic living, go for long walks in the sun on sunny days, stay at home and read adventure novels when it rained.
