Straight Man

wall.”
    “He was just wondering if I thought you’d stand for chair again,” I tell him. “He didn’t want to nominate you unless he was sure you’d accept.”
    Teddy knows better than to entertain this possibility. Paul Rourke was the power behind his ouster from the chair I now temporarily occupy. Still, I can see the hope in his eyes. In the ever-changing world of departmental politics, it’s just possible that things have changed enough for Teddy to become acceptable to Rourke. Perhaps my even more abusive reign has made his own look democratic by comparison. Maybe his tenure as chair looks like the good old days now. Maybe, compared with me, he looks sane. Not once during his six years as chair did he ever threaten to kill ducks.
    You don’t have to be Teddy to know these thoughts are flickering through his mind, rendered plausible, as even the most ridiculous scenarios are, by desire. It’s a crazy world, he’s telling himself. If Jacob Rose and Gracie DuBois can marry in it, if his wife of twenty-some years can have a fling with a man whose academic specialty is sitcoms, is there really any reason to believe he shouldn’t be chair again? Well, yes, but it takes Teddy far too long to realize it.
    “You’re joking, right?” he finally says, and his attempt to disguise his disappointment stirs in me a powerful desire to be cruel to this man who has been my friend for a long time. As I’ve said before, I share with my dog many deep thoughts and feelings, and at this moment I understand completely his desire last week to groin Teddy, and I’m no more capable of resisting the temptation than he was.
    “Don’t be pathetic, Teddy,” I advise.
    I can see from his expression how badly I’ve hurt his feelings. This low blow is indeed Occam-like, a pointed snout to the gonads, and it’s either Teddy’s fundamental generosity of spirit or our long friendship that drives him to find an excuse for my boorish behavior. “Boy, you’re really drunk,” he says.
    “Immaterial, but true,” I admit.
    He shrugs. “I just came over to congratulate you—”
    “Like hell,” I tell him, unmoved by the beginnings of tears forming in Teddy’s eyes. He looks like he did the night he confessed his love for my wife, the night he told me I didn’t love her enough, back when we were both young men. “You came over to gossip.”
    I’m half-expecting a reprimand from Tony, but my companion has unaccountably lapsed into an almost comatose silence. When the waiter arrives with our salads, I look over at him and am surprised to discover on his face an expression like menace. He stabs, off center, the cherry tomato in the middle of his salad with such violence that it jumps off the plate and skitters across the table. Since it’s closest to Teddy, he reaches out to pick the tomato up and return it to its owner, only to discover that Tony has risen from his seat and lunged after it with a second thrust of his fork, skewering it this time with all three tines, pinning it to the tablecloth, where it oozes juice and seeds. He’s missed Teddy’s fingers so narrowly that Teddy, startled, jumps back. Bodie Pie is watching all this, and so is half the restaurant. Like the drunks we are, at least tonight, we’ve been talking too loud, and of course no sound travels in a restaurant quite as clearly as anger.
    “Cripes. All right,” Teddy says, pushing his chair back. “I’ll go away.”
    “Oh, sit still,” I tell him, unnecessarily, since Teddy has made no real move to get up. All Teddy’s threats are academic, especially his threats to leave. And maybe he can sense that I’m belatedly ashamed of myself. In driver’s manuals they say that only time can make a drunk man sober, but in my experience shame is also sobering. “Really. Sit.”
    He scoots his chair back in, eager, Occam-like. “How come you’re so pissed off at me?” he wants to know. “I voted for you.”
    “Maybe that’s the reason. Did you ever think of that?” When he doesn’t say anything, I continue. “Maybe it’s the fact that you can’t even go out to dinner on a Monday night in this town without running into half the Railton Campus.”
    This observation has not made things better, I can tell. I meant it to refer to the Rourkes’ presence, but of course it includes Teddy and June as well. And Bodie Pie, who has also overheard it, no doubt.
    “Anyway, forget I said anything,” I tell him. “It’s been a long day. What’s