Straight Man

home,” I insisted. “Stay here tonight. Drive back in the morning.”
    “I accept your invitation, for one reason and one reason only. Do you know what that reason is?”
    “Because this is the Season of Grace?”
    He grinned at me drunkenly. “You’ve always been my best student.”
    And so, I conclude, if William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is less than ecstatically happy, less grateful for his myriad blessings than he should be to the Bestower of Said Blessings, it must be because he has not fully accepted his good friend’s invitation to join him and Nolan Ryan and Dr. J. and Nadia Comaneci, and all the others who have lost their best stuff, in entering the Season of Grace.
    I am, however, relatively at peace with who and what I’ve become, thanks to a series of events that occurred back in May. One rainy Saturday morning Yolanda Ackles, Tony Coniglia’s former student, attempted suicide by stepping in front of a car at the bottom of the steep hill that leads up to Tony’s house. The driver, who owned a car identical in color and make to Tony’s and who must have been preternaturally alert, saw her when she stepped out from behind a tree. He stood on the brakes, but even so he knocked her through the intersection. He later described for the police the way she had calmly stepped out into the street and turned to face his oncoming car, a beatific smile on her face, her arms out as if to embrace him, a sight more horrifying to him than her body when she finally came to rest in an unnatural position against the opposite curb. Everyone who saw the accident said it was a miracle that she had not been killed. Witnesses testified that at one point she sat up and smiled before passing out. At the hospital she was found to have sustained a fractured ankle, a broken collarbone, a severe concussion, and multiple lacerations. None of her injuries was life threatening.
    Later that morning, however, Tony Coniglia was admitted to the same hospital with heart fibrillations, and because of his cardiac history he was kept overnight for observation. He returned home the next afternoon with a prescription for a mild tranquilizer and instructions not to play racquetball with me for the rest of the summer. That evening Jacob Rose called and suggested I join him in paying Tony a visit. Maybe he’d invite one or two of Tony’s other friends. Together we’d cheer him up. Since Russell happened to be in town for the weekend, I invited him to come along. It had occurred to me that he might be able to get Tony’s computer to function.
    By the time we arrived, the house was full of men, and the atmosphere bordered, inappropriately enough, on festive. Jacob, acting as host, met us at the door with a glass of whiskey in his hand. “I thought I told you to bring the pizza,” he said.
    “I could go get some,” Russell offered.
    Jacob cocked his head at me. “I’ve got no idea who this kid is, but I like him.” He turned to Russell then, extending his hand. “I’ve spent most of the day talking to the board of trustees, and you’re the first person to take anything I’ve said seriously. I was joking about the pizza, but how were you to know?”
    Inside, I introduced Russell around. There were a couple fellows from Tony’s department, one each from Psych and Chemistry, as well as a few from English. Across the room I witnessed something I hadn’t seen in years—Teddy Barnes and Paul Rourke in what appeared to be pleasant conversation. Or if not pleasant, at least nonadversarial. Mike Law, looking morose, but no more so than when he was married to Gracie, was also there.
    There were no women, which was good. I would not have liked this convivial scene to be reported. If I understood correctly, we’d gathered to assure our friend and colleague that what happened to Yolanda Ackles was not his fault. This we might have managed to do if we had come one at a time, or even perhaps if the gathering had stayed small. But males who come together in numbers this large, without the civilizing presence of women, are genetically unable to sustain the solemnity of any occasion once the whiskey has been located. To look at us, you’d have sworn we didn’t care a jot about what happened to poor Yolanda Ackles. It looked like we’d closed ranks around one of our own, and perhaps this
was
what we’d done, though I doubt it was what we meant to do. I could tell Russell was confused by the merriment. He suspected there was some aspect to