Straight Man

He can’t believe I’ve actually said there are no characters in his story. He reads part of the rape scene aloud as we walk, just to show me how wrong I am. By the time we arrive at my office, my good spirits are restored.

CHAPTER
10
    Rachel has several messages for me.
    Herbert Schonberg, the union rep, is very disappointed I’ve chosen not to return his calls. To me, his choice of the word
disappointed
suggests insincerity. June Barnes, Teddy’s wife, wants me to call her at home at my first convenience, never mind why, just do it. Mysterious and intriguing. Orshee wants to consult me about a real estate matter. Mysterious without being intriguing. Gracie still begs an audience. Neither mysterious nor intriguing, but possibly dangerous. Tony Coniglia wants me to know he’s booked a racquetball court for four-thirty and asks if I could be on time for once. Vaguely insulting. And Rachel says there’s another message for me on my desk, which there is. In the center of my blotter sit five peach pits, a dark, wet spot radiating outward. As I study these, it occurs to me that a lot of people are taking liberties with my excellent disposition. After all, I
am
the chair of a large academic department, however temporarily.
    There’s no reason I should be treated as if I were wearing a Kick Me sign.
    Rachel buzzes and says she’s going home.
    “Already?” I say. “You’re going to leave me all alone?”
    “It’s three-fifteen?” she says, her intercom voice full of all too real guilt. “I have to pick up Jory?”
    “I’m kidding,” I tell her. “Go.”
    “You really liked the stories?”
    “I sent them to Wendy, my agent,” I tell her. “At least I think she’s still my agent.”
    I wait to see how Rachel will react to what I’ve done without her permission. Last fall she started submitting her stories for publication but then quit when her husband began saying I told you so about the rejections and complaining about the cost of postage. I’ve told her to use the department mail so it won’t cost her anything, but she’s far too ethical. Besides, she suspects that her moron husband is right about her not being good enough. She may even believe he’s right about my trying to get her into bed.
    Rachel doesn’t say anything for a minute, and in the silence I consider whether I just might be trying to get Rachel into bed. I can almost picture it, but not quite, probably because I’m still staring at the peach pits soaking my blotter. Can Meg Quigley have eaten all these peaches? And what is she trying to say? Is she extending Eliot’s metaphor by suggesting that, unlike timid Prufrock, she dares to eat a half a dozen peaches? What would that mean, in purely sexual terms? Or does she just want me to understand I’m the pits?
    Imaginatively, I appear to be in bed with both of these women at once, unequal to either task. I go through the batch of memos again, hoping there’s a message from Lily that I missed—she ought to have arrived in Philly by now—but there isn’t.
    “Thanks?” Rachel finally says. “When?”
    “Last week. I made a copy.”
    Another silence. “Promise that if she hates them you won’t tell me?”
    “Why?” I ask her. “What makes her the final arbiter?”
    Silence, for a moment. “Who is?”
    “I am,” I say. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
    “I really have to go?” she says.
    Me too. All this imagination is not without consequence. I have to pee again. My last visit was on my way to class, what, an hour ago? Now I have to go again.
    The intercom crackles, and Rachel is on again. “Professor DuBois would like to see you.”
    “Okay,” I say, directly into the intercom, loud enough so that I’m sure Gracie will hear. “Frisk her and send her in.”
    Gracie enters. She’s dressed beautifully, expensively, in a beige dress that looks like it could be cashmere. As her always lush body has gotten bigger, so has her hair, as if it’s her intention to keep her general bodily proportions the same. She looks, frankly, heroic and quite wonderful, a brave woman intent on one last sexual conquest before menopause. I can understand Mike Law’s having become dispirited. If ever a man was unequal to a task presented by a woman, Mike is that man. As always, Gracie’s perfume precedes her, and I remember that it was the sensation I had of asphyxiating in Gracie’s perfume yesterday that got me started on her.
    “I don’t suppose there’s any chance