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the couch, Angus sustained a quiet, baritone moan.
    I looked around the room as I settled into a matching armchair across from my supine landlord. I saw crammed bookshelves on opposite sides of the room, and a large bay window, opening onto the river. Hardwood floors gleamed. A vintage single malt stood guard over two glass tumblers on top of a small, oak liquor cabinet in the corner. I noticed that an antique chess table with a game in progress was framed in the bay window with two rather uncomfortable looking, arrow-back chairs.
    The interior architecture was open concept, so the living room bled into the dining area, which featured a small fireplace, an antique harvest table and eight chairs, a modest chandelier, and a couple of landscape paintings on the pale yellow walls. I couldn’t see the kitchen from my perch but assumed it was off the dining room. I wanted a look at his books, but that would have to wait.
    His face-clenching and low moaning abated. I would like to have used the word
stopped
but
abated
was regrettably more accurate. Social convention compelled me to say something, as several minutes had elapsed since I’d sat down.
    “Are you feeling all right? Can I get you a glass of water or something?” I offered.
    “Water won’t cure what’s ailin’ me. But three fingers of Lagavulin would be a start.”
    I wasn’t much of a drinker, but my father’s dedicated exploration of single malts made Lagavulin a familiar name. Pleased to have something to do that took me a little farther away from him, I poured a generous portion of the peaty-scented scotch and placed the glass within his reach on the coffee table. I waited until he’d taken a few swigs to take off the edge before I lifted my head above the trench.
    “Did you just receive some bad news?” I said, gesturing to the letter. He fixed me with a steely gaze as if contemplating bringing me into his circle.
    “You’re a young English professor. Have you ever taught English to engineers?” he asked.
    “Never. The closest I’ve ever come to engineering students was when a group of them swarmed me one day early in my freshman year. Apparently, I had set off some kind of artsy alarm by walking too close to the metal lab,” I replied with little or no thought. “Ah, no offence,” I blurted.
    To his credit (and my good fortune), he seemed nonplussed by my moronic response. In fact, he was looking at the ceiling and almost seemed to be somewhere else at the time. He turned his head so that I was again in his field of view.
    “Every five years or so, I’m sentenced to a term of teachin’ introductory English to first-year engineers. I did it last year, and it near finished me. What sustained me through the unbounded ignorance of me young charges was the knowledge that I’d never have to do it again. By the time my number was to come up again, I’d be retired.”
    “Surely, it can’t be that bad.”
    “For a man of letters, it’s utter torture!” he spat. I thought he was a man of wrenches. But putting this conversation together with Google’s biographical offerings, I clearly saw that Professor Angus McLintock was one of a rare breed of Renaissance engineers who actually read outside of his field. “These kids are so fixated on engineerin’, beer, and nurses that they wouldn’t know literature if they threw up on it. Their idea of a pleasin’ read is
Kinematics and Dynamics of Planar Machinery
. Such myopia I cannot again endure. I cannae do it again. I won’t.”
    “But you did it last year. Are you not off the hook for a few more years?” I inquired.
    “I was until that infernal missive arrived.” With purpose, he extended his middle finger towards the letter.
“A
bizarre confluenceof life-threatenin’ illnesses, ill-timed sabbaticals, and retirements in our department has put me very firmly back on the hook,” he moaned. “I cannae do it again. I just cannae.”
    I feared we were seconds away from a crying jag. “Just