Star Wars - Kenobi

chair and laughed again. Well, Ben has friends, whoever he is. It wasn’t hard to see why. He played the quiet one. But scraping the surface, she found an infectious enthusiasm for all things. Their lunch had lasted an hour and a half, as they’d shopped from the shelves to find what he was looking for—and the repast had spread across two tables. He’d listened intently to her stories of life on the ranch and at the oasis—and now he was doing the dishes.
    And he was living as a hermit?
    “Don’t feel bad,” she said as Ben reappeared. “We didn’t exactly have all the ingredients.”
    “You came close,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel. “As frontier stores go, this is a supermarket on Coruscant.”
    “You’ve been there?”
    Ben looked at her for a second—and then over at Old Ulbreck, who let loose with an angry snort. The farmer had been snoring loudly in his chair for hours, after having gorged on jerky. Annileen had joked that Magda Ulbreck—or his heart doctor—would send over a bounty hunter for him any minute. Ben had laughed, but she’d noticed his slight tension at first meeting Ulbreck, and for a moment, she could’ve sworn Ulbreck recognized Ben. But the old man had obviously dismissed the thought, because after that he paid Ben no mind. Which was, Annileen thought, a lucky stroke for Ben: to Ulbreck, strangers were either potential thieves, or audiences for his stories. Now Ben nodded toward the farmer. “He looks happy,” he said.
    “I’m happier when he’s asleep,” she said, rising. “But don’t change the subject.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean you’ve done it again. You’ve managed to let me talk all through lunch, and you’ve hardly gotten a word in edgewise.”
    “It’s called being a polite guest,” he said.
    “Are you sure you’re not wanted for something? No price on your head on Duro for running illicit omelets?”
    “No, nothing like that,” he said, leaning against the counter. He looked around, taking everything in. “I just—I guess you could say now I just watch . And this is a peaceful enough place for it.” He looked out the window toward the livery yard.
    “What do you think so far?”
    “It might seem that there’s not much here,” he said. “But what there is, there’s plenty of.”
    There was something uncertain in his voice, Annileen thought, as if Ben couldn’t yet decide whether he liked Tatooine or not.
    He turned back to her. “Sorry—no offense to your home. Far be it from me to judge something from one part.” He walked back to the table for more dishes.
    “No, you’re perfectly safe in judging one part of Tatooine from another,” Annileen said, surveying the room. “Grains of sand, settlements, settlers —we’re all pretty much the same. It’s always been like this, and it’s never going to change.”
    “I try to avoid the worlds always and never, ” Ben said, taking the cloth to a plate that was already clean. His tone grew solemn. “Things that seem permanent, a given, have a way of changing quickly, to something you don’t recognize. And not all change is for the better.”
    She studied him closely. Pleasant on the outside, torn up on the inside? Many of the people in her life were the opposite—you had to get through layers of abrasiveness to find the niceness in them, if it existed at all. Maybe this was the key to the man. “Did … something happen to you, Ben?”
    “No,” he said, looking at the dish. Almost under his breath he added: “Not to me.”
    Abruptly, he turned away—and began wiping off the tables they’d sat at. He stepped gently past Bohmer, who still sat motionless at his solitary table with his beverage. Brightening, Ben regarded him with admiration. “Now, here’s someone who knows how to watch.”
    Bohmer’s focus hadn’t changed, still on the steaming cup.
    “I never know what he sees there,” she said. “I don’t even know why he comes in every day.” She wondered, sometimes, what sadness was in the Rodian’s life.
    “Do you speak any Rodian?” Ben asked.
    “I’m not sure he does. All these years, and I don’t know anything about him.” She cocked an eyebrow at Ben. “I guess it’s contagious.”
    Ben looked at the chrono on the wall. “Well, I should buy my keg of water and go,” he said. “Your race fans will be back soon.” He walked to the stack of transparent drums in the corner. Lugging one of the large containers down, he turned and