Maurice Eugene Dobson, aged forty-three years and two months, is standing in the middle of a car of the A train, on his way home. He is not holding onto the pole: he stands off to its side, swaying slightly with the movements of the train, but balanced perfectly and seemingly without effort. He never holds onto the poles. He takes pride in being able to maintain his balance like this, although he knows it’s not the sort of quality anyone else will appreciate, and it’s not really something you can put on your résumé. Too bad.

He is a small man, though he prefers the word diminutive. He is five feet, four and a half inches tall in his stocking feet, and slightly built: his clothes hang on him as though bewildered to have such an insufficient resident. He wears pressed khaki pants, their sharp creases billowing several inches forward of his knees; he wears a stiff checkered shirt and a navy blue suit jacket with a single gold button that is somehow incongruous. His shoes are brown leather loafers and exude a dated, faintly genteel air. Clothes the students make fun of. He knows they do, behind his back: Mr. Dobson, that is one creepy dude, I actually don’t think he’s from this planet, doesn’t he know his pants don’t fit? – where did he get his shoes? – they look like my grandmother’s – and so on and on. They’re all idiots, he tells himself as a manner of consolation. The students, certainly, and to a large extent the faculty too.

He has a curious face, opaque and changeable in the light. His eyes bug slightly out of his head, but not in an unpleasant way; he has a rounded chin and a round, childish nose. He appears to be watching, yet at the same time oblivious. He sways with the train – he is immune to the forces that jolt other humans. His finger holds the pencil, poised over the folded newspaper; he regards it without expression.

He is doing the crossword. He is not good at crosswords. You’d expect him to be, even he would expect himself to be if he didn’t know himself, but he is not. He’s better with numbers than with words. But all his life, ever since he was a child, he has always wanted to get smarter, he has always wanted to learn – he remembers the inadequacy of looking through a telescope lens and not understanding. And so he tries the crosswords. Every day he tries the crosswords, even though he knows it is somewhat stupid when he will probably never be verbally adept. Again, résumé deficiency. Damn you, damn you, I’m never going to get a better job, am I?

Sometimes the wish to be smarter gives way to the wish for glory. He knows it is a regression, beneath him – he who was born praising the intellect over fame – but he imagines himself in a high, majestic Roman-like stadium, the Colosseum? Yes. But not crumbling – restored to its former splendor, gleaming white in the sun, beneath the ancient rays – a filled Roman stadium, and people are cheering. In keeping with the classical theme, he is Mentor, the original Mentor, the only Mentor, and Theo that boy from third period who pays attention sometimes is whoever Mentor’s protégé was – was it Telemachus? And he has won accolades, and Theo sits up in the middle of third period and stares at him like he has suddenly understood.

He does not trip on his way out of the train. He used to trip over air, but those days are over; they all gave him too much grief for that. The idiots of yesteryear. He can still see the sneering faces. They’re all the same, really, idiots. You grow up and they get replaced by other idiots and instead of stealing your girlfriend and your notebooks and your math homework they steal your job. MacLean, MacLean, why do you have tenure and I don’t?

MacLean has the shiniest teeth he has ever seen. You can always tell them by their teeth.

Maurice Dobson finds his keys and holds onto them, in the outer pocket of his briefcase. He wants the keys to the kingdom. He wants the keys to the universe (cheesy music! Cue the cheesy sci-fi music!). He wants that, the fanfare. He wants to eat something other than heated-up Cup Noodles for dinner tonight. He wants a job at MIT. God, they’re all idiots here.