Straight Man

with a view of the back parking lot, take off my jacket, roll up my sleeves, and let the warmth rain down upon mybare forearms. Today, I realize, is the end bracket to a now recognizable segment of my life. This winter, when I attempted to climb Pleasant Street Hill and ended up slaloming, out of control, from top to bottom, I lost my faith in consequence. Fearing I was forever tenured on drab “Pleasant,” where nothing dramatically good or bad could happen, where I was fully insured against catastrophe, I began to doubt the power of either “unpleasantness” or ecstasy to touch me. What remained to William Henry Devereaux, Jr., was the gradual day, the inevitable transition from left field to first base, and finally to designated hitter, that misbegotten invention designed to convince the washed up that they’re still in the game. Today is the day I’m to learn how wrong I was. Today, I learn the lesson of those who live on Pleasant Street and grouse at being moved out of left field. Those who complain don’t even get to play first. I wanted consequence? Here it is. How do I like them apples?
That
’ll teach me.
    The problem is, I’m not sure I’ve learned my lesson. Right now, unless I’m mistaken, Lou Steinmetz is explaining to young Leo where he went wrong, explaining the terrible thing he’s done, how foolish he was to do it, how inevitable that he’d get caught. As a result, he’ll be kicked out of school, Lou will explain, and it will be nobody’s fault but Leo’s own. Let this be a lesson to you, the chief of campus security will conclude. And then he’ll study Leo to see if the lesson has sunk in. And be disappointed. I’ve seen that look on Leo’s face more than once, and it expresses, more eloquently than Leo himself could ever express in words, his conviction that he was not put here in this world to learn other people’s lessons. He’ll accept his punishment because he has no choice, but he’ll pass when it comes to the education, thanks just the same. Leo has only to look at Lou Steinmetz to know that Lou is not God. The problem is that if Leo were privileged to look directly at the face of God, he’d probably arrive at the same conclusion, and I suspect that, in this respect, he and I are the same. If we were capable of learning our lessons, we’d become obedient. Sensing this, we’re dead set against moral instruction.
    In the center of the parking lot stands a trailer with slatted sides from which a long line of tethered donkeys are being led down a makeshift ramp. They are the scrawniest, saddest-looking animals I’ve ever seen, and that includes geese in neck braces. Lethargic and docile, they appear blind as they descend the ramp, though this may be a temporarycondition caused by their removal from the dark, comfortable trailer into the bright afternoon sunlight. Pathetic as they appear, consider this: their dignity has not yet been assaulted. Tonight their hooves will be bound in cloth and foam, their hindquarters diapered to protect the floor of the women’s gym. (They would never be permitted near the men’s gym.) I can’t imagine anyone would want to pit faculty against administration, even in a humorous fashion, in the current political context, but if tonight’s game has been canceled, nobody’s told the men in charge of these docile beasts.
    “Every time I see you, you look worse,” Marjory observes when I limp in.
    “I should come over more often,” I tell her. “That way my decline wouldn’t seem so pronounced.”
    “See this?” she says, indicating her large blotter calendar. She turns April over so I can see May. The fifteenth is circled in bold red. On the sixteenth a small note in Marjory’s neat hand: “Happy days are here again.”
    “You’re taking your retirement?”
    “With a vengeance. Thanks to Jacob, I was made a nice offer. Harold and I are looking at condos in the Chapel Hill area.”
    “Harold really enjoys golf, doesn’t he?”
    “More than sex. It’s one of the things we have in common. I like it more than sex too.” She’s been studying me all this time. And it occurs to me to wonder if this is Marjory’s way of suggesting that after I’m fired my life may actually improve. Surely I would prefer golf to academe, if not to sex.
    “You’ve known about all this shit for a long time, haven’t you?”
    Her guilty expression makes me regret pinning her down this way. “Since last fall when Jacob was fired.”
    “And