Straight Man

going on with you?”
    Teddy’s face brightens, and I realize he’s been waiting for me to ask something like this. “June and I are going on a cruise,” he says, beaming. “We just decided. We really need to get away for a while. It’s going to cost a lot, but …”
    Tony, I see, has miraculously finished his salad while I’ve been twirling a strip of lettuce on my fork as if it were pasta. He still hasn’t said a word to Teddy, and his expression of malice has, if anything, intensified at the mention of Teddy’s wife. It’s as though he’s tapped into my own surge of inexplicable anger and is surfing this borrowed emotion at its crest, unaware that its owner has slipped mercifully down into the trough. He reaches over, uninvited, and furiously stabs at my cherry tomato, nailing it on the third try, though most of its ruptured insides leak out onto my lettuce. This is too much for Teddy, who slides his chair back for real this time and stands.
    “Do me a favor,” Tony says unexpectedly, his mouth full of my salad, acknowledging Teddy directly for the first time. We all wait until Tony has finished chewing. “Tell that fucking bitch you’re married to that I never laid a finger on that girl.”
    There’s no reason, of course, for Teddy to do this favor. Everyone in the restaurant, including June, who’s just returned from the women’s room, has heard the request. Bodie Pie is trying to attract the attention of a waiter with her credit card. Her companion has not returned to the table.
    Tony now has my entire salad in front of him, and he’s devouring it with startling ferocity. I can’t help but watch, and Teddy, who’s been given every imaginable permission and encouragement to leave, seems rooted to the floor. Only when he looks over at me and our eyes meet and I give him a shrug does he take a wordless leave. The last piece of my romaine lettuce is huge, but rather than stop to cut it, Tony stuffs it into his mouth whole, using his fingers to accomplish his design. This from a man who has the most meticulous, indeed the fussiest manners of any man I know except Finny. This from Tony Coniglia, who accuses me of being a cretin because I doctor clams with cocktail sauce. At the moment, there’s no danger of my exhibiting bad manners. My companion has eaten his own salad, plus mine, and now he’s finishing the bread. Which leaves nothing for me but the condiments, and I’m not even sure I’m entitled to these.
    There’s only one person I can think of who might be able to defuse the present situation, and that’s Jacob Rose. I wish he were here, despite the fact that I know he’d defuse it at my expense. The first thing he’d observe is that I have piss poor luck in restaurants. Most of the time I’m ignored, and even on those occasions that I’m actually served food, I still don’t get to eat it. And I’ve already been warned that I’m going to pay for this dinner.
    When he finishes the bread, Tony looks around for a waiter, but they’ve all made themselves scarce. Both his water and his whiskey glass are empty, and I notice that Tony is sweating profusely, though it’s not warm in the restaurant. Given his history of heart problems, it occurs to me that he might be having an attack, but when I ask him if he’s all right, he gets up from the table, wipes his face, his forehead, and the back of his neck with his cloth napkin, and tosses it onto the chair. “I’ll be right back,” he assures me.
    Since it’s the men’s room I assume he’s heading toward, I don’t try to stop him, but instead he goes over to Teddy and June’s table, where they too have been unsuccessful in getting their waiter to bring them their check. There isn’t a single waiter in the dining room, and I make a mental note not to overtip this evening. Courage isn’t something you normally require in a waiter, but this entire crew is far too timid to prosper.
    June tries to get up when she sees Tony approaching, but she’s too late, and anyway Tony is holding up his hands in surrender. At least I think it’s surrender. He doesn’t have anything in either hand. He slides into the booth next to June.
    Suddenly Bodie Pie is at my elbow. “Is this scene going to get better or worse?” she wants to know.
    I gesture for her to sit down, but she declines. “I have no idea what’s got into him,” I confess.
    She nods. “I warned you about this last Friday.”
    “When?”
    “When you were out picking