A promiscuity of mysterious and totally unexpected artifacts was partially buried under the books on the floor. I recognized the thick shaft of a Wright and Ditson racquet that might have seen action in the hands of the redoubtable Du Guesclin in the Hundred Years War, and a lamp whose light bulb protruded from the maw of a sneering, stuffed alligator.

A meandering trail led through the thicket from the door to the desk. Armbruster sat behind it, having graciously cleared the only other chair of books for my comfort. He dug into a wavering column of documents, hands burrowing like a pair of underground animals. At the very plinth, under an offensively murky jar of olives, he pulled out my preliminary draft. He stared at it. I stared at him, waiting.

“It’s full of seepage,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your dissertation. I find a certain subjectivism seeping into your exegesis,” he explained. “No place for that sort of thing.” He flipped a few pages. “Undeniably you have talent…” The way he stressed the word made it sound dangerous, as if he were diagnosing a rare disease. “…But,” he shrugged his goat shoulders, shaggy in the ill-fitting Shetland jacket, “why do you suppose the seepage so stubbornly persists?”

It was my turn to shrug. “What do you think, sir?”

“Breslau, I’m not one to beat around bushes, so I’ll give it to you with the bark off. I think you should pursue some endeavor where your imagination would be better appreciated and your flair for theatrics and adjectives handicap you less.”

Pursue, he said, but pursue what? All I could think of was Shakespeare’s line, “Exit, pursued by a bear.” All I wanted was to get out of that evil-smelling chamber. But Armbruster was still trying to be helpful.

“Have you ever thought of writing, maybe for television? Or a gossip column for a tabloid? I know a man at the copy desk of the Courant…”

“I don’t think I could write fiction. Or semi-fiction.”

“Thing is…” he tugged at his piles for emphasis, “you’re not pushy enough. I attack your preliminary draft and you don’t even defend it.”

“I was pushy with Dr. Chatterton and…” my voice trailed off. My thoughts at times ran to pushiness, but, outside of Chatterton, I couldn’t think of anyone I’d been pushy with.

“Passivity,” he plunged on loftily, “is never an asset.”