Straight Man

  “Let’s start small, shall we?” Jacob suggests. “How come you’re terrorizing my niece in class?”

  “Your niece?”

  “Blair,” he explains. “I’m her uncle.”

  “You are? I had no idea.”

  “She didn’t want any special treatment.”

  “She won’t stand up for her convictions,” I explain. “I didn’t realize the problem was genetic until now. I wouldn’t have been so hard on her.”

  This is one of my better jabs, but Jacob doesn’t even flinch. He just chuckles. “God, you are such an arrogant prick. You remember when we came here?”

  “Black September, 1971? Sure.”

  “Remember old Rudy Byers? Even twenty years ago people were saying what an arrogant prick you were. Rudy said, Don’t worry, he’ll grow up. Pups are supposed to mess themselves. Swat him on the ass with a rolled-up newspaper a couple times and he’ll get the message.”

  “Now there was a dean,” I say nostalgically.

  “The thing is, you’re worse now than you were then. And you think you’re just being frisky. Fifty years old and you’re still shitting on the carpet and thinking it’s clever.”

  “Well,” I say, “at least one of us got trained. Somebody says ‘heel’ and you heel. Somebody says make out a list, you make out a list.”

  I study him carefully, because this is where he’ll start denying, if he’s going to. I guess I’m surprised when he doesn’t. Jacob and I go back a long time, and it’s time that makes you think you know people. But instead of looking guilty, Jacob appears even more full of himself.

  “That other job offer was from right here, wasn’t it?” I say. “That’s why you didn’t have to worry about what Gracie would say about Texas.”

  “I think she would have gone with me,” Jacob says.

  “So now, finally, you’re a player,” I say. “And all you had to do was write down four names.”

  “Wrong again,” he says. “It wasn’t all I had to do. It was the easy part of what I had to do.”

  “That’s the first thing you’ve said I don’t believe,” I tell him. “I refuse to believe that writing down those names was easy.” What I don’t tell him is that I know how hard it must have been because I considered doing it.

  He raises his hands in the air like he’s going to surrender. “Dee-fee-cult for you, easy for me.” Still grinning.

  “Jacob,” I say.

  “It’s a rough break for Orshee,” he admits, “but he’ll be given a year to find something else. He’s publishing that trendy cultural theory crap, and he’s sufficiently smarmy. Somebody will hire him.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Orshee,” I tell him.

  “Who then? Finny?” Jacob says. “Finny will be given a year’s sabbatical at half pay to finish his dissertation at Penn. He won’t, but that’s his problem. After his sabbatical, we’ll keep him on to teach comp as an adjunct if he wants. That’s more than he deserves.”

  “And Billy Quigley?”

  “Walter is retiring over in university publications. Billy will be offered his job. He can nip in private all day. I know for a fact he’s wanted Walter’s job for a long time.” Jacob is having all he can do to contain himself now. I half-expect him to leap up on his desk and do a jig. The expression of pure delight on his face makes him look like a Jewish leprechaun. “Which leaves only William Henry Devereaux, Jr. What’s to be done with that asshole?”

  Until this moment I’ve felt myself to be a match for Jacob, even though he’s had the advantage of playing a concealed hand while most of my cards are face up on the table. But now I have a sinking feeling. Jacob knows he’s got me beat on the board. It doesn’t matter to him what I’m holding. And when I realize the card he’s about to turn over, a wave of pure nausea passes over me, and I feel the weight of my backed up urine pressing down hard on my groin.

  “You’re wrong,” I say, a little desperately. “It doesn’t leave just me. It also leaves you.” And I’m about to ask him what his price was, what sort of carrot Dickie had to dangle in front of him in order to get Jacob to play ball, when the penny drops. Terence Watters doesn’t waste his time talking to liberal arts deans.

  “My God,” I say. “Dickie’s out, isn’t he?”

  Jacob chortles. “Big tidal wave came and washed him clean away.”

  “And you’re in. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” he says, and it’s only now that his grin disappears. It was at this point, no doubt, that he expected me to be happy for him. And maybe I am.

  “Is it what you want, Jacob?”

  “It is,” he admits, a little sadly, it seems to me. Perhaps he’s remembering that when we were hired, we were both loose cannons. With this move, it’s official: the revolution has become an institution. “I don’t expect you to understand …”

  But of course I do, or I think I do. Jacob is a decent man of sound, thoughtful principles and educational values, who’s been subservient throughout most of his career to lesser men. He’d like to see what he can do while he can still do it. He won’t get another chance, and I can’t find it in my heart to blame him for seizing this one.

  “Listen,” I say, getting to my feet. “I’m sorry. Since I came in here, I’ve been trying to hurt your feelings. I really have no idea why.”

  He waves this off. “Forget it. I’ve known you for twenty years. I know you’ve got no idea why you do what you do.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make a good CEO.”

  “Hey,” he grins. “I’m sure you’ll be a good dean of liberal arts.”

  I go over to the window, to my window if I want it to be, just in time to see the last of the tethered donkeys being led up a ramp into the women’s gym. Truth? I’m tempted. The same thing has occurred to me that no doubt occurred to Jacob. Just imagine the two of us in power. What fun we’d have. And, for a man like me, who’s so enjoyed rattling the English department’s cage, a promotion represents a wider field of play. Sure, I’ve always taken pride in my ability to wreak havoc from any position on the game board, but from this one …

  I indulge the fantasy for a long moment, then put it away. Even if I wanted this job, and I don’t, I can’t let Jacob do it. Of all the moves he’s made, appointing me dean is the only one that would cost him, and it would cost more than he can afford. No one will miss Orshee. No one will deny the justice of his decision concerning Finny, except possibly Finny himself. And Billy Quigley’s reassignment will be seen as an act of kindness. On the other hand, making me dean would be seen as an act of arrogance and defiance, a plum given a friend. He couldn’t do a worse thing without appointing Gracie.

  “Of course nothing is free,” Jacob is saying. He’s apparently read my temptation in my hesitation. “This is going to cost you your secretary. Marjory’s going to hit the links, and I’m going to need someone to make me look competent. Since Rachel damn near made you look competent, I’m going to have to steal her. I figure we get our department colleagues to elect Paul Rourke chair, then we take turns abusing him. What do you say?”

  What does William Henry Devereaux, Jr., say? Nothing for a long moment, then, “Listen, Jacob. Thanks anyway.”

  Jacob just stares at me for several beats before exploding. “I knew it.” He’s gotten up from his desk now and is pacing behind it. “I knew you’d do this. What’s wrong with you?” he wants to know, and he’s not the only one. Another wave of nausea has crashed over me. I have all I can do not to double over. “What kind of man goes through life content to be a fly in other people’s ointment? What kind of pleasure do you derive from that? How old are you?”

  All these questions mix dangerously with my nausea, and I have to sit down, certain that I will pass out if I don’t. I try to remember if I’ve ever felt worse in my life. The tips of my fingers are tingling, the edges of my vision blurring. Jacob appears blissfully unaware of my plight.

  “You know who I feel sorry for?” he’s saying. “Your wife. Women are always t
elling me I can’t see anything from a woman’s point of view. But I’ll tell you, my heart fucking bleeds for any woman—much less a woman as bright and kind as Lily—who has to spend a lifetime with a bonehead like you.”

  At the mention of Lily I break into a cold sweat. I can feel four distinct tracks of perspiration moving down my trunk and into the waistband of my shorts. Waves of nausea are rolling over me like contractions. Like Jacob—like every man our age—I have been accused of not being able to imagine anything from a woman’s point of view, but sitting here, paralyzed with something very much like fear, I feel like I’ve just crossed into the final stage of labor. Transition!—the term for it suddenly returns to me. I feel fully dilated, like it’s now okay for me to push. Except that this is not the place. I know the place. It’s just outside the dean’s office and down the hall a couple of doors. Time? At a dead run, ten seconds, if I were capable of a dead run. In my current cramped condition, limping tenderly, grabbing onto the backs of chairs and door-frames, three times that, at least. I wait for a monster contraction to subside and struggle to my feet.

  “You know what you are?” Jacob asks me. He’s got a good, righteous head of steam up, and I envy him this. He’s saying things that friendship has kept him from saying for twenty years, and their release at this late date is orgasmic. Asking him to stop would be like asking him to pull out. “You are the physical embodiment of the perversity principle,” he gives me to understand. “Fake left, go right. Fake right, go left. Keep everybody in suspense, right? What’s Hank going to do? If you have to fuck yourself over to surprise them, so be it.”

  Somehow, I’ve made it out into Marjory’s office, and Marjory, who prefers golf to sex, and who is not, like Jacob, in the throes of an intense rhetorical orgasm, is looking at me with such alarm that it’s clear she’s intuited my distress. I’m tempted to tell her I’m in labor, the contractions are coming one right after the other. Instead I fix her with a homicidal glare and say, “Get him away from me!”

  But this merely encourages Jacob. “There he is, Marjory,” he addresses her. “Hank Devereaux. The man who fucked himself and claimed it was the best lay he ever had.”

  “Jacob,” Marjory says sharply. “I think Hank is sick.”

  I’ve made it as far as the door that leads to the outer office where the students who have come to petition the dean are required to wait. They too look alarmed when they see me.

  “They don’t come much sicker,” Jacob agrees.

  My palm is so slick with sweat that I can’t get a grip on the stainless steel doorknob. It keeps slipping. I wipe off my palm on my tweed coat and try again.

  “Just answer me one thing before you go,” Jacob says, leaning against the door so it stays shut. “I’ll ask you the simplest question I know, and I bet it stumps you.”

  I try to bring him into focus, but I can’t. I swear to God if I had a forty-five I’d blow him across the room and into eternity.

  “Just answer me this,” he insists, blind, apparently to the fact that perspiration is now pouring off me. There’s a bead of ice cold sweat on the tip of my nose. “Just one simple question. It’s one your wife and your kids and all your friends would like you to answer.” He’s close enough to whisper now, so he does. It’s a nice, short question, but he pauses between its elements for emphasis. “What … the fuck … do you … want?”

  This is the question with which he expects to stump William Henry Devereaux, Jr.? Even Marjory, telephone to her ear, looks like she could answer it on my behalf. But there’s nothing for me to do but gird, as they say, my loins, summon what strength remains, grab my dean by his lapels, lift him onto his tiptoes, and draw him to me. This I do.

  “I want,” I tell him as solemnly as I know how, because I don’t want this to be mistaken for irony or any other literary device, “to pee.”

  Something—the seriousness of my demeanor, or the simplicity of my text—gets through to Jacob. “Okay, I was wrong,” he shrugs so I’ll let him down. “You do know what you want.”

  And I’m out the door and into the corridor, hobbling at full throttle, unzipping as I go for the sake of efficiency, toward the door marked MEN. A minute or so later, Jacob follows, either sent by Marjory to check on me or summoned by the sound of my laughter. The look on his face as he watches me is a mixture of embarrassment and concern and perplexity. I cannot for the life of me stop laughing, and I certainly don’t expect him to understand the meaning of what he’s bearing witness to. But the fact is that no fifteen-year-old boy standing barefoot on an icy tile floor after awakening from a ten-hour sleep in a cold bedroom has ever hit porcelain with a more powerful, confident, thankful stream than mine. It is heaven. “Dear God,” somebody moans. Probably me. It’s the last thing I remember.

  CHAPTER

  36

  In my dream I am the star of the donkey basketball game. I have never been more light and graceful, never less encumbered by gravity or age. My shots, every one of them, leave my fingertips with perfect backspin and arc toward the hoop with a precision that is pure poetry, its refrain the sweet ripping of twine. And remember: I’m doing all this on a donkey. I have chosen an excellent beast—honest, bright, generous, and kind—to bear me up and down the court, and we have established between us a deep rapport. I have whispered into his ear that when the game is over I will not give him up, he will have his freedom, and this news—that he will no longer be indentured to the foolish master who keeps him in diapers—has made a young ass of him again. He is so ennobled by the prospect of his freedom that he sees in the occasion of his last game the opportunity for glory. Together we steal the ball and fast-break at every opportunity, thundering down the court to the wild cheers of the capacity crowd. I love this game.

  “I love you, too,” Lily assures me.

  Lily? How did she get here?

  She got here, I conclude solipsistically, in the usual way, by my opening my eyes.

  “I was having a dream,” I tell my wife, looking around at the hospital room she’s brought with her. I appear to be lying in its bed, though why is a mystery. This is one beautiful woman, my wife, and I’m very glad to see her except for her bad timing. I was about to achieve glory, and now I never will. Someone left a cake out in the rain, I think, my dream sliding away on greased skids, and I’ll never have that recipe again. I’ve always feared the day would come when that lyric made sense, and now that day is apparently here.

  “How do you feel?” Lily wants to know.

  “Great,” I say. “A little sleepy.”

  The door to the hospital room is open, and out in the hall there’s a large man sitting, looking in at us. There’s something wrong with his face. It’s sectioned off, like a chart of a cow, the kind of diagram butchers display in supermarkets, telling you where the various cuts of beef come from. Despite this, he looks familiar.

  “Phil said you’d feel pretty good. They’ve got you shot full of painkillers.”

  “My head hurts a little,” I admit, studying the large man out in the hall, who has not moved a muscle. I wonder if he might be an allegorical figure. Maybe if I look at Lily and then look back he’ll be replaced by another shape whose significance I’m supposed to decode.

  “You hit your head when you blacked out,” she explains, taking my hand. “You’ve had a busy few days.”

  “It wasn’t easy making all your predictions come true,” I tell her. “Jail was easy enough, but how to get into the hospital had me stumped.”

  The large man with the diagrammed face is still there, immobile.

  “I think you’re about to go back to sleep,” Lily says.

  I think she’s right, as usual. I can feel my eyes closing. Maybe I’ll be reunited with my donkey, finish the game, and make good on my promise to give the poor beast his freedom, though none of this seems quite as appealing as it did before. Now that I’ve awakened, the dream emotion, once powerfully felt, too closely resembles my father’s sorrow at the thought of having once wrong
ed Charles Dickens. And speaking of fathers, I motion to Lily to come closer so I can whisper to her. “Is that Angelo out there?”

  She nods sadly. “We’re going to have a houseguest for a while.”

  “That’s okay,” I whisper. “Don’t worry about it. Welcome home.”

  As I drift back into sleep, I can’t help thinking that it’s a wonderful thing to be right about the world. To weigh the evidence, always incomplete, and correctly intuit the whole, to see the world in a grain of sand, to recognize its beauty, its simplicity, its truth. It’s as close as we get to God in this life, and we reside in the glow of such brief flashes of understanding, fully awake, sometimes, for two or three seconds, at peace with our existence. And then back to sleep we go.

  “So what’s he doing sending his brother, is what I want to know,” Angelo explains. “Like I’m supposed to know this seven-foot-tall Negro is Raschid’s brother? Angelo, the goddamn mind reader. I mean, here’s a kid who looks like he’s got all he can do to read the headline of the goddamn paper he’s delivering—but me?—I’m supposed to be able to read his mind. I’m supposed to know this seven-foot-tall Negro and his two eight-foot-tall pals mean me no harm. Here they are on my stoop, giving me the look, right? I’ve never seen them before, and I don’t know them from a bag of assholes, but I’m very polite. I explain how it’s my policy not to give money to strangers, whether or not they happen to be giant Negroes. I tell them my paper boy’s name is Raschid, and whether he has a brother or not I myself have no fucking idea. Again, I’m no mind reader. I tell them if Raschid has mononucleosis like they say, I’m sorry. I like Raschid. He’s a nice, polite Negro boy. One of the few. He don’t go around giving white people the look. When he gets better, he can come by my house any time he wants and I’ll pay him what I owe him. But I don’t give money to giant Negroes I’ve never seen before and that’s that. It’s too bad, but that’s the way it is. And I don’t really care if they happen to be holding Raschid’s collection book. This they could have taken off his body for all I know. It’s always the nice, polite Negro boys that get it in the neck. You don’t believe me, watch the news. See ’em come filing out of church, all dressed up and wanting to know why some Negro kid had to be shot down crossing the street when all he was was an honor roll student who sang in the church choir. Like the rest of us are supposed to have an explanation for why things happen to these people. But they’re right. It’s the polite ones that get it in the neck every time. That much I do know. That much I’ve figured out.”