Straight Man

unhappy. Odder still, I can’t wait to hear her explanation, because in the dream I
am
unhappy. In fact, I’m weeping pitifully as I leap, latch on to, and chin my way up the stairs. Of course, you should have seen those stairs. They were enough to make anyone weep. But now, sitting up in bed, safe in my own human-scale house, the clear light of the guiltless new day streaming in the window, I wish I had not conceded my unhappiness to Lily, even in a dream.
    Occam is whining pitifully at the bedroom door, as if he too has been troubled by dreams, so I invite him in, something I would never do were my wife in residence. He takes in which side of the bed I’m on,comes around to this side, rests his chin on the bed, and sighs meaningfully, as if to suggest what I already know, that this does not promise to be a good day. To delay imagining its details, I turn on the television by remote to a morning news-talk show and scratch Occam’s ears idly, hoping that Lily will call again. Perhaps because I’ve got the sound muted, I don’t immediately comprehend when I see myself brandishing wild-eyed Finny. Adding sound only deepens my confusion. Occam, as a rule not one to be distracted during an ear scratch, perks up at the sound of his master’s voice, looks at the television, then at me. When I don’t have an explanation, he trots over to the television and sniffs it. The big shock comes, at least to me, when the short segment (I’ve been edited more severely this time) concludes and I realize that this isn’t the local news that occurs when the network cuts away. No, it’s the regular
Good Morning America
crew that’s laughing, almost out of control, before heading into the weather.
    The telephone is ringing again when I step out of the shower. I’m no longer anxious to pick it up, but I do.
    “It’s June,” Teddy’s wife informs me.
    “Hi, June.”
    “How can you associate with that man?” she wants to know.
    “What man?” I say, though I know she’s referring to Tony Coniglia.
    “He’s a debauched old rummy,” she continues, still fuming about last night. “That thing with the clams was sickening. I bet that reporter with the tits is having second and third thoughts.”
    “I wouldn’t know, June. I don’t even know why you’ve called me.”
    “Rachel asked me to,” she admits. “I’m in your office, actually. All the lines in the outer office are tied up. Rachel must have a crush on you, the grief she’s taking on your behalf.”
    “Who from?” I wonder out loud while pausing to consider the pleasant possibility that a woman I’m half in love with might be half in love with me.
    “It’s a long list. She’s even caught hell from the CEO for refusing to give him your home phone.”
    “Tell her to go ahead and give it to him. I’m about to leave here anyway.”
    “She says to remind you about your meeting with Dickie this afternoon. And I’d be prepared for a world of shit when you get here.”
    “Tell Rachel I have to visit the high school, but I’ll be in after that. In fact, tell her I said to take the rest of the day off.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Absolutely,” I say. I don’t want Rachel taking abuse on my account. “Tell her to go home. Tell her I’m putting her in for a raise.”
    “I’ll tell her, but Vegas odds are four to five you won’t last the day.”
    “Then you all get raises.”
    Downstairs, I notice what failed to attract my attention last night, that the message light on the answering machine is blinking. Thanks, I suspect, to my television appearance last night, there are twenty-five messages, a new record. That’s the bad news. The good news is that twenty of them are hang-ups. There’s also one from Billy Quigley, who’s apparently gotten impatient and started talking before the sound of the beep. As a result, his message is one slurred word, “Peckerwood.” My wife’s voice is the only one I care to hear, and it comes late, number 17, in the scheme of things, though I’ve no idea what time that would make it, whether I was standing in front of the urinal at The Tracks, or on the pay phone flirting with Meg Quigley, or eating raw clams, or sitting in Tony’s hot tub with a naked young woman when she called.
    There’s a flatness to Lily’s voice on the tape that suggests she’s intuited all of my misbehavior. Her message is brief, leaving the number and name of the hotel she’s checked into, which explains why she wasn’t at her