Straight Man

Meg’s bed, my presence makes no kind of sense.
    “See what I meant last night?” I say. “Nobody tells everything.”
    This is definitely anger I’m feeling right now, and I’d like it to be righteous anger, but it’s hard to feel that toward a man whose undershorts you’re wearing.
    “Get dressed,” I suggest. “Take a shower first.”
    He makes no immediate move to do as he’s told, despite the clarity and simplicity of my directions. “Are you going to leave,” he finally asks, “so I can?”
    Unbelievable. “What, are you shy, Russell?”
    He’s sitting up in bed now, covers pulled up to his waist. “This isn’t anything, Hank,” he says. “Meg doesn’t mean anything to me.”
    I nod my understanding. “At least your stories are consistent. She just assured me you mean nothing to her either.”
    Russell looks a little hurt to hear this, but he covers it quickly. “It’s just …”
    “It’s kind of like a support system,” I suggest, recalling Julie’s explanation for all the phone calls she made over the weekend. “You shouldn’t try to be the Lone Ranger when you’re hurting.”
    He’s squinting at me now, unsure whether this New Age, talk-show language of mine constitutes mockery. “You look funny,” he says finally.
    “Funny how?”
    “Violent funny,” he acknowledges nervously. “Like you wouldn’t mind killing somebody you were sure deserved it.”
    “Get dressed, Russell,” I tell him again. “Shower first. Then dress. Then pack everything you’ll need in Atlanta for a week or so. Maybe longer.”
    I go back into the living room so he can begin. It’s a tiny apartment with thin walls, and I can’t help hearing his powerful postcoital stream in the toilet bowl. It’s only fair, I suppose. I’ve mocked him, so now he’s mocking me. First Bobo, now Russell.
    I consult my watch, try to gauge how long it will take to drive to the airport and back. I’ve got a lot to do before my workshop at two in the afternoon. I call the office to get Rachel to schedule an appointment with the dean, but instead of Rachel I get her voice mail. Hard to believe, but she seems to have followed a direct order and not reported for duty today. Which means I’m on my own. Thankfully, when I call the dean’s number I get Marjory, not Jacob.
    “I need to see him late this afternoon,” I tell her.
    “I think he wants to talk to you right now,” Marjory informs me.
    “Well, I don’t want to talk to him,” I tell her, but I hear a muffled sound on her end, and then Jacob is on the line.
    “Goddamn it, Hank,” he says before I can hang up on him.
    To pass the time, I count the William Henry Devereaux books on Meg’s bookcase. The final tally is four—three of my father’s, the one of mine. When I hear the shower thunk off, I call Marjory back.
    “Boy, is he pissed at you,” she informs me.
    “Good,” I tell her. “I’ve been having bad thoughts about him all morning. One right after another.”
    “He’s doing the best he can, Hank.”
    So I tell her the joke about the priest who hires an old woman to play the organ at services. Nine o’clock Mass on Sunday morning, the church is full. Everyone stands for the processional hymn, and the organ thunders to life, but the notes are completely random. Nothing like this has ever been heard in a church before. All through Mass it’s like this, as if a small child has been allowed to experiment on the instrument. After Mass is over, the priest is pretty steamed. Clearly the old woman has lied about knowing how to play the organ. Furious, the priest wants to know what she has to say for herself. “Guess what the old woman replies,” I ask Marjory.
    “I’m doing the best I can?” she guesses, confirming what I and others have long suspected, that
she
should be dean. “How’s three-thirty this afternoon?”
    I tell her three-thirty is perfection.
    “So,” Russell says when we’ve driven halfway to the airport in silence. “You’re, like, running me out of town?”
    “I think you need to look into this job opportunity in Atlanta, Russell,” I tell him.
    He nods, his hair newly moussed and prickly. “I forgot all about your old man,” he tells me. When I glance over at him and frown, he continues. “Julie told me he was, like, this Olympic adulterer. He left you and your mother and ran off with a grad student, right? In that context I guess I can see why you’re so upset with me.”
    “Shut up, Russell.”
    He