Charles (5.1)

Charles McConnel looks like and is a seventy-three year old health care economist. His wardrobe consists entirely of neatly pressed khaki slacks and collared shirts, the majority of which are some shade of purple. When at the university, he dons brown leather lace ups, when at home or the super market, a pair of kelly green crocs. At 5’5’’ he is a short, wiry man with a round belly and stooped shoulders. He moves in small explosions of jerky energy; as he speaks he joggles back and forth, his hands fluttering around in a flurry of gestures. His face is decidedly jolly. Rosacea has colored his nose and large perfectly round cheeks apple red. Above the bulb of his nose sits a pair of thin, wire rimmed glasses, which frame his dark kind eyes. The skin around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth is like crumpled paper, and hangs down in thick folds around his neck. A thinning mop of unruly white hair crowns the top of his head and a thick white mustache sits above his thin upper lip. In the afternoons he is often hunched over the thick glass of the kitchen table, a dark hand-carved pipe in his right hand, a shot glass and an imported beer at his left hand, a hard backed tome in front of him, and a small bag of tobacco above that. As he reads and smokes and thinks he takes small sips from the beer-filled shot glass as if it were whiskey, which he only drinks at night.