“When you’ve come from academia, every single thing here seems odd,” Wallis said. “Which particular type of ‘odd’ are you referring to?”

“How he wanted me to disown what I studied.”

“Oh, yes,” Wallis said. “The same thing happened to me at my first job. ‘Did your fieldwork in Borneo? Not much computing there, dear!’”

I should have left it there. It might have been more pleasant for me. “Still,” I said, “it was weird. I felt like he somehow wanted me to give up my Ph.D. To renounce it.”

Wallis slid the job offer across the table.

I put my hand on the paper, still warm from the laser printer. Stock options, sick leave, vacation, more money in a year than I’d ever earned in four. At the bottom was Wallis’s neat signature, and a blank line waiting for mine.

“Well,” she said, extending a pen, a fat black fountain pen, its gold point shining in the light. “Isn’t that rather what you’re about to do?”