How would you interpret the last sentence? Artie proposed breakfast at the Swiss Kitchen, one of his haunts. It seemed to be a tourist place, they had a giant sign out front with a boy in lederhosen (Food Worth Yodeling About!) and waitresses dressed as milkmaids. Artie, in his ancient cuffed trousers and faint old-man smell, was unembarrassed by any of it. “What makes it Swiss food?” I asked, studying the menu. “A lot of grease. Bratwurst, only here they are going to call it sausage. German food with a strict doctrine of neutrality.” With Artie, irony carries the mailbag right to the door of nonchalance. Nothing seems to excite him. Short of a revelation that one has worked for Lev Trotsky.How would you interpret the last sentence? I think it means nothing can excite Artie except when the narrator told him that the narrator himself had worked for Lev Trotsky, right? And how would you interpret the phrase ‘short of’? I think it means ‘except for’, right? PS: the narrator, i.e. the other speaker, had told the man called Artie that he had been a secretary for Trotsky. And that fact had surprised Artie greatly. Thanks! And this excerpt is taken from The Lacuna by Kingsolver.