A Lady in Waiting 4

His name was Sherrod Franklin. He told her it was typically shortened to Rod and that’s how he signed most things. She asked him to call her Becky. It was painfully obvious he was a military veteran; that much was in the paperwork attached to the contract they all got to see. Everything else was a mystery.
If anyone around there knew that gossip was mostly baloney, it was Becky. Still, she found herself quite surprised when his personality seemed nothing like the chatter she heard from the other women. By now, a trio in particular had managed to foist themselves into his company at one or another of the mealtimes. Despite all their best efforts, it seemed he never revealed much of anything. One of the flirts remarked he had a way of turning the conversation away from himself after repeated blunt questions. He used little references from literature, history and the typical movies and music. Their pooled knowledge drew an image of a most mysterious gentleman who seemed to know something about everything, yet said almost nothing which wasn’t somehow an echo of what they had revealed already. He showed no interest in correcting a blatant lie about him, leaving them in some confusion as to what was true.
To Becky, he seemed completely open and honest. True, he was in no hurry to tell his tale, but there was no evasion. Instead, the answers were simply far out of the normal band of expectations. You would never have guessed any significant portion of the truth about him. Rod could not be characterized easily because he simply didn’t fit into any of the standard categories. Still, within the parameters of her official authority to query him, he was quite forthcoming.
His current contract made him simply a reporter in the sense of writing for the agency that hired him. There was actually a large stack of surveys for all the different offices and installations served by the bureaucratic mess where they sat at that moment. Each survey was of a different type for each of the different offices. In some cases, he had two or more different surveys for each official entity, with parameters requiring he carry out interviews at different times in their various projects, etc. He would be going back to some locations repeatedly throughout the coming year. He seemed to think riding thirty of forty miles round-trip was no big deal, but was prepared to take his bike along on the occasional train ride for more distant locations, and then cycling the rest of the way.
Most of his surveys seemed somehow the indirect result of investigations into a recent string of scandals back in Washington, DC. However, this particular approach was completely different from what anyone else had seen in the past. She noted this carefully, leaving it up to him to explain if he wanted. Something inside her said his answer was plausible and honest, so she took it at face value. There was not a shred of boasting, but he explained he did have an important unnamed Somebody sponsoring him. This sponsor believed Rod could provide some unique perspective based on his published writings and previous experience as a military veteran.
Something told her simply calling him a writer would be a mistake, though. She asked, and received, from him a couple of Internet links to his published work. He asked for a rough outline of religious activity on the installation. They had a contract chaplain and the occasional visit from a military one, but only about half the community engaged in any part of the religious activities on a regular basis. She was officially the point of contact for that stuff, holding some Christian beliefs of her own, but didn’t really care much for what was available up to that point. Nothing of that sort was ever going to please everyone.
That was when he shocked her. Glancing at his watch, he rose and remarked he’d love to visit with her again, but had an appointment on the other side of the installation about his quarters. He paused and said, “I can’t blame you for wishing there was something better. I believe if you glance through my writings, you’ll understand what I mean. Something tells me we are kindred souls in some ways; I would highly value having someone I could talk to about it.” He dropped a card on her desk with his email address.