The guy was calmly smoking at the end of the hallway, looking official and somehow menacing in his Bogart-style trench-coat and military style haircut. Every  top of the hour he was engulfed in a flurry of students, most of them in blue jeans and (almost) trendy jackets, cautiously enjoying their break and carefully avoiding his proximity and eye contact. They never talked close to him. And even when the courses finished and everybody rushed home, turning the hallway quite busy, there was a kind of boundary around him, a DMZ of sorts, keeping him isolated in a bubble maybe 10 feet deep. Nobod… citeste mai mult