Myth-Nomers & Im-Pervections by Robert Asprin

He studied me for a moment with his Pervish yellow eyes, then gave a small shrug.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll give you a straight answer. You don’t get rich working for someone else . . . especially not at the kind of jobs I’d been qualified for. You see, I don’t come from money. All my folks gave me was my name. After that I was pretty much on my own. I don’t have much school to my credit, and, like I say, my family isn’t connected. I can’t get a good job from an old pal of my dad’s. That means I’d start at the bottom . . . and probably end there, too. Anyway, I gave it a good long think, and decided I wanted more out of life.”

I tried to think of a tactful way of saying that this still looked pretty bottom of the barrel to me. “. . . So you think this is better than working at an entry-level job for someone else?”

His head came up proudly.

“I didn’t say that. I don’t figure to be doing this forever. This is just a way to raise the capital to start a bigger business. I’m risking it all on my own abilities. If it works, I get all the profits instead of a wage and I can move on to better things. What’s more, if it works well enough, I’ve got more to pass on to my kids than my parents did. If it doesn’t . . . well, I’m no worse off than when I started.”

“You’ve got kids?”

“Who, me? No . . . at least, not yet. Maybe someday. Right now, the way things are going. I can’t even afford a steady girlfriend, if you know what I mean.” Actually, I didn’t. I had plenty of money personally, but no girlfriend. Therefore, I didn’t have the vaguest idea what the upkeep on one would be.