At the desk, a man in a hot pink T-shirt guarded the gap. I use the word "guarded" loosely. He was so deeply absorbed in whatever he was reading that I could have vaulted over the desk without his noticing me. The thought was tempting, but that kindergarten training dies hard. I didn't vault. Instead I coughed. When that didn't work, I coughed again. Loudly. I was afraid I was going to have to resort to more drastic measures — like sneezing — but the third cough finally broke through his literary absorption. As he hoisted himself up, I took a peek at his reading material. It was a copy of Hello! magazine, open to a fine showing of airbrushed celebrities.

Somehow, I didn't think this was the archivist. In fact, I had a pretty shrewd guess as to who he was.

"I believe we spoke on the phone," I said.

Clearly, he also remembered our conversation fondly. His face went from lascivious to hostile in the space of a second. "Oh. You."

So much for being a goodwill ambassador for America, or whatever else it is that the Fulbright people expect you to do. Fortunately, my grant was a Clive fellowship, not a Fulbright, so I was off the hook. As far as I could tell, Mr. Clive had harbored no pretensions about his grantees fostering international amity.

That being the case, I felt no guilt at all about saying crisply, "I'm here to see the papers of Sebastian, Lord Vaughn."

The boy gave me a look as though to say, "You would." Levering himself up with obvious effort, he trudged wearily off into the blazing desert sands, five hundred miles across rugged terrain, to the metal shelves right behind the desk. There, he made a great show of studying the labels on the binders.

"That's Vaughn, v-a-u-g-h-n," I said helpfully. "Sebastian, Lord Vaughn."

"Which one?" asked Pink Shirt dourly.