Straight Man

calls it.
    Her name is Missy Blaylock, which I remember as soon as she tells me. I’ve been almost watching her on the tube for a year. Her segment, usually the last on the eleven o’clock news, after even the weather and sports, represents a signal to Lily and me, should either of us still be awake, to turn off the bedroom television, the overhead light, and go to sleep. Now, in the dim light of The Tracks, I’m seeing Missy Blaylock anew. She’s been to the station to deliver the tape and stopped off somewhere to change, having exacted a promise from Tony and me to wait for her. The idea is that we’ll watch the news together on the bar’s big-screen TV. “You’ve got tenure, I hope,” she says.
    In the four hours we’ve been here, I’ve accomplished a good deal besides getting drunk. I’ve made half a dozen phone calls and another half a dozen trips to the sour men’s room. I’ve called all three of the women that four hours’ worth of tequila guzzling have convinced me I’m in love with. First Lily, who, I tell myself, is really the only woman I’m in love with. She’s told me that she’s staying with her father, and I’ve called his number, once from home and again from the pay phone here at The Tracks. Since I spoke to him last, Angelo has gotten himself a message machine. Why is something I’d like to ask him if somebody would pick up. He never leaves the house and has no known friends or associates. All his police force pals are either dead or living in Florida. What use has a friendless man who never leaves the house for an answering machine? The message is pure Angelo though. “You got Angelo’s place. I’m not saying I’m here. I’m not saying I’m not here. You got something to say to me? Now’s the time.” When I called from home I left a message for Lily to call me and let me know she got in safely, but then I left, so I don’t know if she’s called. There’s a way, I’m sure, to get my messages off my own machine from here at The Tracks, but it involves a secret code number I forgot thirty seconds after inventing it.
    “Pick up, Angelo, if you’re there,” I tell him this time, my second call. “It’s Hank Devereaux.” My voice sounds strange, though, and it occurs to me that Angelo might not believe me. Tequila lowers my voice and adds gravel. To Angelo, I may sound now more like the sortof man he wished his only daughter had married. I’ve always been fond of Angelo despite his not having much use for me. I don’t take it personally. I try to remember he doesn’t have much use for anyone who goes through life unarmed. When this same man arms himself with words Angelo doesn’t understand, he likes him even less.
    I should be glad nobody’s home. By threatening on camera to kill a duck a day until I get my budget, I’ve become a hero to the members of my entourage, but I know my wife would not be among my admirers if she were here. Which raises the question of why I’m so anxious to tell her about it, why I’m so disappointed she won’t be around to catch me on the local news. The other person I wish were around is Jacob Rose, who also would not be pleased to learn what I’ve gone and done. I recall that he not only left me in charge (a joke, granted) but instructed me to do nothing (another joke) in his absence. When it occurs to me that the two people I’d like most to tell about my misbehavior are by coincidence both out of town, I’m visited by a disturbing yet strangely exhilarating thought. That it may not be a coincidence. No sooner does this possibility occur to me, shooting its small, tender roots into the fertile soil of my long disused creative imagination, than I’m visited by a powerful image of the two of them, my friend and my wife, together in a hotel room in Philadelphia. The picture is at once more focused and believable than the vision I had yesterday of Lily and Teddy, perhaps because Jacob and Lily have always been such good friends. She counseled him through his disastrous affair with Gracie, through his divorce from Jane, through the disappointment of Gracie’s sudden decision to marry Mike Law. For the last decade Jacob has been the loneliest man I know (with the possible exception of Mike Law), and such loneliness has been known to weaken scruples. Is it because I like my narratives to hang together that I’m encouraged by the plausibility of this scenario? But it takes two to tango, and the other dancer in the scenario is