Straight Man

generally sound, may be flawed in this instance. And they’re a little miffed at my insistence, just as I’m now miffed at Phil Watson.
    “You think it’s cancer, don’t you?” I accuse him.
    “I don’t think it’s a stone,” he admits. “Actually, this emission may be good news.”
    “Not from where I’m sitting,” I tell him.
    I hang up, examine my situation more closely. This morning it took me a half hour to fill a thimble with urine, barely enough to do a urinalysis. Now, in the half hour or so I’ve been asleep, I’ve voided my bladder enough to soak a pant leg, a wool sock, a size ten shoe, and a deep office chair.
    What I require now, I realize, is an escape plan. I’ve talked to the only person in the world who is likely to understand my predicament. Now my duty is to avoid all the others until I can clean up. It’s five-twenty and still light outside, which means I’m going to have to walk halfway across campus in dripping, reeking chinos. Either that or wait until it’s dark and my pants have dried. The good news is that at this hour the faculty (except for those meeting to recall me as chair) have gone home, and most of the students have adjourned to their dining halls. The other good news is that having voided my bladder I feel wonderful, better than I have felt in days. I feel like I could do the quarter mile from Modern Languages to the back lot where I left the Lincoln at a dead sprint. In fact, this is the plan I’ve about decided on when I hear the double doors grind open down the hall and voices heading in my direction. I recognize Billy Quigley’s voice immediately, and I’m grateful that it’s Billy. If I had to choose someone on this campus to find me in my present condition, it would be Billy, who, like all drunks, knows humiliation. If he were alone, I’d go out into the hall and demand his pants, and, knowing Billy, he’d hand them over.
    But Billy is not alone. Recognizing his daughter’s voice, I’m filled with blind panic. There are many things I would spare Billy’s beautiful daughter, and the fact that she has been flirting with an incontinent man is one of them. The footsteps and voices stop outside my door. There’s a tap on the frosted glass.
    “He was just in there,” I hear Meg tell her father. “I heard him talking on the phone.”
    “Come out of there, you peckerwood,” Billy Quigley demands. He’s got a late afternoon load on, I can tell. “Our dimwit colleagues are still at it. Let’s go down there and raise hell. We’ll save your worthless peckerwood bacon.”
    “Maybe he went to the men’s room,” Meg suggests. It may be the scent of urine seeping from beneath the door that suggests this possibility.
    “Nah, he’s in there hiding.” Billy pounds on the doorframe with his fist, rattling the glass.
    “Maybe he’s …” She stops. I can almost hear her thinking. “Are you all right, Hank?”
    I hold my breath.
    “I know where Rachel keeps the key,” I hear Meg say. “Let me into the office.”
    They go next door, and I hear Billy use his key to get them inside. He’s not supposed to have one of these, but most of the faculty do, so they can sneak inflammatory anonymous memos into the mailboxes in the dead of night. A light goes on in the outer office.
    “Somebody’s in there,” I hear Billy say. “I can hear him.”
    “Here,” Meg says, and a key is inserted into the lock.
    They both enter, look around the office for a hiding space large enough to conceal a man my size. Meg checks the cavity under my desk. “It smells like he’s been keeping cats in here,” she observes.
    Billy is looking up at the hole in the ceiling. She sees where he’s looking and follows his glance. “You don’t suppose …,” she says.
    I withdraw farther into the shadows. My eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness, but there’s a thick, slanting oak beam overhead that keeps me from rising.
    “Nah,” Billy says. “He ducked out the other door when we came in through the office. I heard him.” But he’s still looking up into the ceiling suspiciously. It’s
possible
, he’s thinking. I’m just crazy enough. “Well, screw him,” he concludes. “I’m going to go disrupt that meeting. They must be about ready to vote. They’ve had their hour to posture.”
    “I’ll wait here a few minutes,” Meg says, “in case he comes back.”
    When her father’s gone and out of earshot, I hear Meg pick up the phone, dial a number.