The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (3)

"So Henry" Helen says, "we hear that you are a librarian. But you don't look like a librarian."

"Actually, I am a Calvin Klein underwear model. The librarian thing is just a front."

---

"How come you guys are up if it's nighttime?"

Alba sniffs.

"You're making coffee, so it's morning."

"Oh, it's the old coffee-equals-morning fallacy," Henry says. "There's a hole in your logic, buddy."

"What?" Alba asks. She hates to be wrong about anything.

"You are basing you conclusion on faulty data; that is, you are forgetting that your parents are coffee fiends of the first order, and that we just might have gotten out of bed in the middle of the night in order to drink MORE COFFEE."

He's roaring like a monster, maybe a Coffee Fiend.

"I want coffee," says Alba. "I'm a Coffee Fiend." She roars back at Henry. But he scoops her off of him and plops her down on her feet. Alba runs around the table to me and throws her arms around my shoulders.

"Roar!" she yells in my ear. I get up to pick up and pick Alba up. She's so heavy now.

"Roar, yourself."

I carry her down the hall and throw her onto her bed, and she shrieks with laughter. The clock on her nightstand says 4:16 a.m.

"See?" I show her. "It's too early for you to get up."

After the obligatory amount of fuss Alba settles back into bed, and I walk back to the kitchen. Henry has managed to pour us both coffee."

---

"You look perfect; a Nice Young Man."

"When in fact, I am the Punk Librarian Deluxe. Parents, beware."