I hadn’t thought about that. My euphoria evaporated. I resented his bluntness. His doubts about my ability could have at least been mollified; he had made no effort to conceal them.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’ll be a rock star or join the circus. Play tuba in a band.”

He ignored the pallid attempt at insouciance. “I do feel a certain responsibility, and you’re much too young to assume the emeritus.” He smiled supportively. “You’re just a colt.”

“An aging colt. I’m pushing fifteen.”

“Just a colt,” he repeated, cherishing the phrase, “with talent, and an unlimited potential for… for…”

His voice broke off, a contrail of uncertainty. Now he was trying to be kind, and it was more concussive than his bluntness. He didn’t know what I had a talent for, and neither did I. I remembered my mother, proud of my dash through high school in a year, indulging me (and herself) with the same sort of vague encomium. “I do not think you will die,” she had said on that occasion, “without making a Real Contribution.”

“…Or perhaps let it lie dormant for a couple of years, until it asserts itself.”

“It’ll have to assert itself in about a month, or I’ll starve to death.”

“Come now, boy. Can’t you live with your mother?”

What could I do in Ravenna, Colorado? I thought of life with the remote fortress that was Old Moms, in her flowering black robes and heavy gold-plated chains, going sadly, oppressively bump in the night as she walked the house shaping her odd-shaped poems. I could hear her sigh like a leaky bellows, feel her inflexible eyes on the back of my neck, perplexed, perhaps embarrassed by the presence of this foundered son of a defeated father.

“I’d rather not,” I said.

He frowned. Deep in thought, he swung his torso to the left, slipping a hand under his elevated right ham, and pushed back his piles.

“What about research?” he asked. “If you care to give it a go, Chatterton might take you on.”

“Phillips Chatterton? Researching what?”

“He would of course brief you.”

“But he’s an Egyptologist. Didn’t you say…?”

“He is indeed. With solid credentials. There was his paper on the mastabas of the Old Kingdom…”

“That’s hardly my field.”

“He is a man of many disciplines. Protean. One of those clever people,” he added mysteriously, “clever enough to conceal his cleverness.”

“Would he have me? We didn’t hit it off too well…”

“I’ll speak to him.”

“Where would I work? Baltimore? Washington? College Park?”

“He is no longer affiliated with a university, choosing to devote all his time to his, ah, project. His home is his laboratory, shared with a few others of the same ah persuasion. You’d work at his home.”

Would I indeed? Interesting…

“Any other questions?”

Just one, but not for Armbruster’s elongated ears. The question was, of course, was I clever enough to suppress my own cleverness? Because, of course, the only reason for taking the job was to bask in the glorious proximity of Chatterton’s daughter.