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Straight Man

Straight Man

Titel: Straight Man Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Richard Russo
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of life’s seriousness, its pettiness, its tragedy, its lack of coherent meaning, my spirits are far too easily restored. Darkness is very nearly complete by the time we arrive in Allegheny Wells. Our headlights do little more than pierce the epidermis of the Pennsylvania woods that border the narrow blacktop. In their deep, dark interior, it’seasy to imagine wolves roaming, gathering into packs, circling, closing in, howling and slathering. They may even be close enough to hear me chuckling.
    When I’ve showered and dressed, I find Russell outside, camped in a deck chair, Occam snoring peacefully alongside. The tape on my message machine looks pretty close to full, its green light blinking in rapid-fire bursts. I consider it, but I hate to ruin my good mood by pressing play and allowing my colleagues to share their thoughts with me. Most of them just want to tell me what happened in the department meeting, but hell, I was there. It’ll be interesting to compare their versions with each other and with the truth but, frankly, not that interesting, so I put on a jacket and join my son-in-law on the deck. The wolves I imagined closing in earlier seem to have found other distractions. I sniff the air for evidence of lupine presence, find none. Perhaps in the shower I’ve removed the scent they’ve been following.
    Russell informs me that the phone has rung several times since I was in the shower. I ignore this, pull up a chaise longue. “There’s beer in the fridge,” I tell him.
    “Like hell,” he says. “I looked.”
    “Really?”
    “Really.”
    I consider this. “Does Julie drink beer?”
    “Sure.”
    “Since when?”
    “Since she was sixteen, like everybody else,” Russell assures me. Sons-in-law like knowing things their fathers-in-law don’t. They like sharing what they know.
    The evening is surprisingly warm. Still too cool to sit outside without a jacket, but warm enough to imagine summer. On such nights as this Lily and I have, over the years since we built the house, welcomed the approach of summer this way, by enduring the mild discomfort of a reluctant spring, substituting promise for reality, knowing our days are headed in the right direction. Tonight, a fast-moving cold front is forecast to pass through central Pennsylvania. Temperaturesare predicted to plunge, though by tomorrow warmer weather will return.
    Russell observes me stroking the arms of my chaise longue fondly. “Deck furniture was one of the things we were going to buy before the money ran out,” he tells me.
    When I don’t say anything to that, he continues tentatively, “Tell me honestly. Do you like your house?”
    “I don’t think much about it, Russell. I guess I like it well enough. We’ve had a comfortable existence since we built.” If Lily were here, she’d explain that I’m like most men, oblivious to my surroundings. But I do like the fact that the house we built has lots of windows, plenty of light. And I like being far enough away from the university that I can’t be called in to campus every time somebody leaves the lights on.
    “I ask,” Russell says, “because I’ve never hated anything so much in my life.”
    “You hate my house, Russell?”
    He looks over at me in the dark. “My house,” he clarifies.
    “But they’re identical,” I remind him. “I can’t help feeling you’ve insulted my house.”
    Russell wisely ignores this. “I hate the house itself,” he continues. “I hate the furniture. I even hate all the things we’d have if the money hadn’t run out.”
    “Next you’ll be saying you hate my daughter.”
    I expect a quick denial, and I don’t get it. “Here’s what I don’t understand,” he says. He’s choosing his words very carefully, as well he might. He knows I’m fond of him but doesn’t know how much this will count for in the overall scheme of things. He’d like my fondness for him to be trump in this game, but he suspects it isn’t. Or maybe it’s just that what he has to say is hard. “You and Lily aren’t … acquisitive,” he says finally.
    Again, I’m not sure how to respond to this. His compliment trails an insult, as he well knows. How did two people like Lily and me manage to raise such an acquisitive daughter? is what he wants to understand. He actually seems to want me to explain it to him. What I’d like to explain is that I don’t think Julie in her heart of hearts is all thatacquisitive either. She’s just unhappy and frustrated

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