Footsteps....

"You could bring the sun to tears," the man says again, shaking his head, a small smile on his face, a wistful look in his eyes -- they are green, Dot notices, beguiling, ever watchful, tricky, deceptive.

"How can I bring the sun to tears when it never shows its face?"

"I want you to remember my name," says the man.

"Do you remember mine?"

"Of course -- it is Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey. And also it is Melvil Dewey, and also Dew-E and Do-e and Dui and now, simply Dot. I imagine by the time we finish with each other you will have changed it to a symbol, something indecipherable but undoubtedly deeply significant."

"How do I know you? How do you know me? I remember you but I don't remember you. I know you but don't know you."

"Because I have always been with you, you have always been with me," the man replies.

Dot looks back at the way he has come, sees one set of footprints, his lone trail stretching off into the distance. "But I came here alone."

"You refer to the lone set of footprints. Looks can be deceiving."

"What do you mean?" Dot asks, but he thinks he knows, thinks he has read this story before, written in flowery script on framed pieces of paper in bathrooms in houses he has visited.

"Melville, you see but one set of footprints because I was carrying you," the man says.

"But.... You can't be...."

The man laughs, heartily, the sound as strange to Dot as anything he has heard. "No, Melville, I'm just pulling your leg. You've been alone this whole time."