Ancient of Days by Michael Bishop

Prudently, though, he saved back three or four of the pictures. Without facing away from me, RuthClaire thumbed through the batch in her hands.
    “You’re a Judas, Paul—the most treacherously back-stabbing Benedict Arnold I’ve ever had the misfortune to know. And I actually married you! How could that have happened?”
    To Nollinger I said, “I’m toting up your bill at the West Bank, Herr Professor. It’s going to be a shocker. Just you wait.”
    “You told him about Adam,” RuthClaire said. “You volunteered the information.”
    “I was worried about you. Grant me that much compassionate concern for your welfare. I’m not an unfeeling toad, for Christ’s sake.”
    “When?” RuthClaire asked Nollinger. “When did he get in touch with you?”
    “Last month, Ms. Loyd.”
    She counted on her fingers as if computing a conception date. “It took at least four months for this ‘compassionate concern’ to develop? Four whole months, Paul?”
    “His instincts were right in coming to me,” Nollinger said. “You’ve no business keeping a rare hominid specimen like Adam in your own home. He’s an invaluable evolutionary Rosetta stone. He belongs to the world scientific community.”
    “Of which, I suppose, you’re the self-appointed representative?”
    “Yes, ma’am, if you’ll just take it upon yourself to see me in that light.”
    “First, I’m not keeping Adam in my house; he’s living here of his own free will. Second, he’s a human being and not an anonymous evolutionary whatchamacallit belonging to you or anyone else. And finally, I’m ready for you and Benedict Iscariot here to haul your presumptuous heinies back to Beulah Fork.”
    Nollinger looked at me knowingly. “Your ex seems to be an uncompromising spiritual heir of Louis Rutherford, doesn’t she?”
    “What does that mean?” RuthClaire demanded.
    “I think what he’s trying to say is that you’ve got yourself the world’s only habiline houseboy and you don’t want to give him up.”
    “It’s a form of involuntary servitude,” Nollinger said, “no matter how many with-it rationales you use to justify the relationship.”
    “He comes and goes as he likes,” RuthClaire spat. “Paradise Farm is his only haven in this materialistic world of ours. Maybe you’d like him to live in a shopping mall or a trade-school garage or a tumbledown outhouse on Cleve Snyder’s place?”
    “Or a fenced-in run at the field station?” I said, turning to the anthropologist. “So you can dope him up with amphetamines for fun and profit.”
    “Wait a minute, Mr. Loyd,” Nollinger said. “I’m on your side.”
    RuthClaire tore up the prints in her hands and sprinkled them on the floor like Kodachrome confetti. “These are cheap paparazzo snapshots,” she said, teeth clenched. She next went to work shredding the envelope.
    “I still have these,” Nollinger told her, holding up the prints he had palmed. “And Mr. Loyd still has an entire set of his own.”
    “She feels better, though,” I said, looking askance at RuthClaire.
    “Of course she does. Once we’ve gone, she’ll have her habiline houseboy in here to clean up the mess. It’s not many folks in this day and age who command the obedience of a loyal unpaid retainer. She likes the feeling of power she gets from—”
    Surprising even myself, I plunged my fist deep into Nollinger’s diaphragm. I would have preferred to clip him on the temple or jaw, but his wire-rimmed glasses dissuaded me—or, rather, my subconscious. Nollinger finished his sentence with an inarticulate “ Umpf !” and collapsed atop the photo scraps.
    RuthClaire said, “Maybe you feel a little better, too. Not too much, though, I hope. His insults pale beside your treachery, Paul.”
    “That’s probably so,” I said, hangdog.
    “Get him out of here. I’ll start soliciting bed partners on Peachtree Street before your unmannerly ‘nephew’ ever lays eyes on the living Adam.”
    I helped Nollinger