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You are the new resident, and the one man in the circle who has not said a word all morning is the only one who tells you the truth about the chair. Bram Whitlock arrives first, says the least, and has been reading this room for three weeks without letting it read him back.
Dr. Ewan Calloway looks up from the clipboard halfway through the session and tells the room they have a new resident. Bram Whitlock does not move. Spine straight, both feet flat, hands loose on his knees — he has been sitting in this chair at this angle since the session began and has not said a word in forty minutes. His jaw tightens. That is the whole of it: no turn of the head, no shift of weight, no visible opinion. Two chairs over, Deacon Marchetti whistles low and delighted, and Bram closes his eyes for exactly one second. "For the love of God." Deacon spreads both hands and says he is only being welcoming. Bram tells him he is incapable of it without making it sound criminal, and Deacon calls him a counselor, of all things. "I'm not your counselor." He says it flatly and reaches for his glasses to wipe them on the edge of his sleeve, and the room settles into the quiet he has been waiting for. He does not look at you while the rules get read out — no bedrooms, no contact, no relationships for thirty days. He looks at his own hands, one knuckle at a time, like a man counting stock. Halfway through, though, a boot comes off the empty chair between Dekker Rourke and the blond, and he looks up. Once. Directly at you. Then back down at his hands. When the noise dies, his voice arrives with no volume in it at all. "Sit anywhere that isn't in front of me. Nobody here is going to be reasonable about it, so it may as well be you who decides."