Straight Man

dangling her sandal from her big toe beneath the table. In the middle of the dining room I see Bodie Pie with a good-looking young woman.
    “Just your luck,” Tony says, too loudly. “The lesbian.”
    I have sobered up a little on the drive. Tony, I would guess, is in far worse shape than I. Now that we’re here, it’s good that we’re going to eat.
    Teddy and June spot us in the doorway, so I wave. Their heads go together, and we don’t have to be there to follow the discussion. Teddy wants to ask us to join them. June, who has no use for Tony, says absolutely not.
    “What are all these people doing eating out on a Monday night?” is what I want to know.
    “Two-for-one night,” Tony says.
    “One of our meals is free?” I say.
    “Mine,” Tony clarifies. “I paid for fifty-five dollars’ worth of clams last week.”
    “I wondered who paid for all that,” I tell him. “I’m glad it was you, since you’re the one who ate them all.”
    We get the last table in the place, though in about two minutes Rourke and the second Mrs. R. stop by our table on the way out. The second Mrs. R. is not a woman I’m even half in love with. What I can’t help wondering is how it’s possible for a woman to go through life with the same bored look on her face all the time. I wouldn’t want to be married to Paul Rourke, but I doubt boredom would be the emotion he’d inspire. “Hello, Reverend,” I say.
    “Lucky Hank,” he observes. “You must be celebrating the fact that you’ve got one more week as chair.”
    “I think I’ll have the lobster,” I tell him.
    “You should have been here ten minutes ago. Juney actually leaned across the table and kissed her husband. I’d been about ready to order dessert until I saw that.” He’s about to leave when he remembers something. “How long have you known that our chair search was going to be canceled?”
    Even drunk as I am, I recognize this trap. Rourke would like nothing better than to catch Jacob Rose in an outright lie. “Has oursearch been canceled?” I ask. I’m prejudiced, of course, but I think I play the innocent every bit as convincingly as my dean. Which may even be a reason to believe I’d make a good dean. Maybe it’s the influence of a fifth of fine whiskey or the proximity of my longtime enemy, but the idea of becoming his dean has grown on me. Judas Peckerwood. I can almost see the nameplate on the door.
    “I should know better than to ask,” Rourke says. “Twenty years I’ve known you and Jacob, and you’ve never told the truth yet. Enjoy your lobster.”
    “You drive carefully,” I tell the second Mrs. R. Her husband flinches but does not turn around.
    “
That
used to be one wild woman,” Tony observes when they’re gone.
    “Don’t tell me you had a lot to offer her too,” I sigh.
    He doesn’t look up from his menu. “You think all my knowledge is carnal, but it’s not.”
    In the middle of the room the young woman with Bodie Pie gets up to go to the women’s. She’s tall and athletic-looking, vaguely familiar. A coach of one of the women’s teams perhaps. Something about the expression on Bodie’s face suggests to me that this dinner they’re having is good-bye. Bodie takes out her cigarettes, starts to light one, then remembers she’s in nonsmoking and puts them away again. When I catch her eye, I give her the kind of loopy smile that’s supposed to convey understanding and sympathy but that probably conveys only how drunk I am. The look I get back suggests that she’s confusing me with her ex-husband, the man who convinced her to be a lesbian.
    When the waiter comes, I order a large cut of prime rib, which causes my companion to look at me with disgust. “You wouldn’t.”
    “What do you mean I wouldn’t?”
    “Do you know how bad that is for you?” Since his heart bypass, Tony is death on red meat. “Do you know how many pounds of undigested animal fat the average American carries around in his body?”
    Given the amount of sour mash Tony has consumed tonight, I’m in no mood to listen. When I see that the waiter has hesitated before writing down my order, I repeat it. “Rare,” I add.
    Tony orders the brook trout.
    When the waiter leaves us, and when June Barnes gets up to go to the women’s room, Teddy comes over, his face flushed with excitement, and pulls up a chair. “What’d Rourke want?” he asks eagerly. “He broke a lamp in his office after the meeting. Threw it against the