Straight Man

about being in transition. Because the funding isn’t going to come through for your chair search. That’s strictly between us. It’ll be next week before you’re told officially.”
    “Would it do any good to ask why?”
    Jacob shrugs. “You could ask. I could tell you. But it would just piss you off. You wouldn’t enjoy your lunch. Why don’t you order something?” He glances over his shoulder and effortlessly catches the eye of the waitress who’s been ignoring me. She slides off her stool and comes over. “How’s everything?” she wants to know.
    “Terrific,” he assures her. “I’d like some coffee though.”
    When the girl makes to depart, he adds, “Don’t you want anything, Hank?”
    The girl stares at me in surprise, as if I’ve just materialized at the table. “Oh!” she exclaims. “Hi there!”
    I order a corned beef sandwich. She writes this down, gets the dean’s coffee, then returns to her barstool.
    “Off the record, nobody’s convinced that bringing in someone from outside will cure the English department’s ailments,” Jacob says.
    “That was my original position, if you recall.”
    “Well then, you got your way, for once,” Jacob grins. “Which reminds me. Finny asked me for a ruling on procedure. He doesn’t want you to conduct the on-campus interviews. He says since you weren’t in favor of an outside search in the first place, you shouldn’t be in charge. Since there won’t be any on-campus interviews anyway, I’m going to rule in his favor. Let him feel good about something.”
    “I bet you can trace your lineage all the way back to Solomon.”
    “He’s also threatening litigation if you don’t stop harassing him about his degree from the Ventura Boulevard Burrito Palace and School for the Arts. According to university counsel, there isn’t much we can do. If Finny wants to embarrass himself by listing a degree from an unaccredited institution, it’s his business. We can’t humiliate him without embarrassing ourselves in the process. If he ever goes up for full professor, we can chop his biscuits, but until then …”
    “That’s fine,” I assure him. “I don’t want him fired. I’d just like to control the damage he does.”
    “That’s where we’re different,” Jacob says, his voice full of good-natured resignation, pushing his coffee cup toward the center of the table. “I’d like to fire the bastard. Anyway, I gotta go.”
    “Listen,” I say. “Before you do your vanishing act, tell me when I’m going to get my soft money.”
    He gives me a look that says I know better than to ask this. Which I do. “When I get mine.”
    “Not good enough,” I tell him.
    “I know. What can I say?”
    “Make me a promise. Let me make a few promises. The money always comes through. Why not give our adjunct faculty a little peace of mind? Call it an early Christmas present.”
    “You’re forgetting your audience.”
    “Okay, call it a Yom Kippur present.”
    “Call it Ramadan, for all I care. I can’t give you money I don’t have. If I promise and the appropriation doesn’t come through, who benefits? We go through this shit every year. The troops all know the drill.”
    “Knowing the drill doesn’t make it a good drill,” I point out uselessly. “You could make an issue of this if you were properly motivated. You could do the right thing for once, just for the hell of it.”
    Jacob now assumes the weary expression he dons when I’ve gone too far, traded on the fact that we were both once mortal, played ball together, were even denied tenure. “Don’t you ever get nosebleeds up there on the high moral ground?”
    I smile innocently. “This nose?”
    “Right. I lost my head.”
    “I’m serious about this, Jacob,” I tell him, and I’m surprised to discover that I am. When difficult things can’t get done, it’s too bad. When easy things can’t get done, and there’s no good reason, it’s more than too bad. It makes everything seem deep down mean and petty. “I’ve got department stationery, you know. And I’m pretty sure you’d be responsible for any promises I make. Piss me off and I’ll not only hire them, I’ll promise them raises.”
    “That would be your last official act though.”
    “No threats please,” I say. “There can’t be more than two or three people in the whole university who would take a Jacob Rose threat seriously, and I’m not one of them.”
    As soon as I say this, I’m sorry, because of