Straight Man

kid solemnly. Guido hangs his head and hands a small white kid a couple bills.
    “I didn’t mean to take his lunch money, Mr. Brownlow,” Guido says. “It was an accident.”
    “I understand, Guido,” Harold says, as the white kid scampers off. “But I don’t want any more accidents, understand?”
    “Okay, Mr. Brownlow,” Guido says, and he lumbers off, looking oddly innocent, as if he himself believes in the concept of accidental extortion.
    When Harold sees me, he grins and comes over.
    “Guido?” I say, watching the big black kid until he disappears through the double doors.
    “Go figure,” Harold says, extending a hand. “I think I speak for the entire staff here at the penitentiary when I say how damn proud of you we all are. Who says there’s nothing good on television?”
    “Too much violence though,” I admit.
    “I thought it was tasteful, but then that’s me,” Harold says. “You heard from Lily?”
    “She called last night, but I was out.”
    “Tell her not to do anything rash,” Harold advises. “My sources inform me there’s been some movement on the school board. People really do want her to stay.”
    “I’ll tell her.”
    “Of course, if she wanted to start something new, I’d understand,” Harold admits sadly. “Time’s winged chariot and all that. When I was her age, I got it into my head somehow I was going to die. I played golf every day all summer, convinced every round would be my last. Cost a fortune.”
    “And here you are.”
    He nods. “Cured my slice, though. You should come out with Marjory and me sometime.” His wife, by coincidence, is Jacob Rose’s secretary.
    “Maybe this summer.”
    “All in your head, golf,” Harold muses. “A thousand and one contingencies.”
    “I’m looking for a game with just one contingency,” I tell him. “Two at the most.”
    “Mind if I ask you kind of a personal question?”
    “Go head, Harold,” I say, though I wish to hell he wouldn’t. Still, nothing is more personal to Harold than golf, and having shared with me his most intimate thoughts on this subject, he may feel I owe him something.
    “Is that vomit on your collar?” he wants to know.
    He shows me where, but it’s beneath my chin, and I can’t see it.
    “Stop at the men’s,” he suggests. “I don’t do so hot when Marge is gone either,” he adds, in an attempt to comfort me, surely. Throwing up on yourself is the kind of thing that can happen to married men our age when our wives are gone, is his logic.
    In the men’s room I address the business of my soiled collar with paper towels and tap water. I also try to think of something to say to Lily’s “rocks.” About the only people to visit the low-track kids, she says, are reformed drug abusers and promoters of safe sex. Kids likethese are told what to avoid, not what to aspire to. And she warned me to be prepared for straightforward, unsophisticated questions. Give them honest answers, she advised, though she may not have anticipated that they’ll be asking me about the spot on my collar.
    Her rocks are rumbling nervously when I enter the classroom. I see Lily has found a couple copies of
Off the Road
, which are making the rounds without sparking much interest, though one tough-looking young girl in the front row squints at me suspiciously, turns the book over, and studies the author photo, then me again. What the hell happened to you? is what she’d like to ask, I can tell.
    “Hey,” says a skinny black kid, “you the dude from TV.”
    At this they look me over with renewed interest. “The duck guy,” somebody says.
    “We done that shit, you know what’d happen to us?” somebody else wants to know.
    And they’re off. I can see why Lily likes these kids. In two seconds flat they’ve got their own conversation going. Everybody’s talking but me. I’m the Rosetta stone they’re trying to translate, and they don’t want any help just yet. After a while though they remember their manners. Lily probably reminded them, last thing, that I’m their guest, that they’re supposed to behave, that they’re not to hurt me.
    “So,” says Guido, the accidental extortionist, from the back row. “How much money you
make
on this book?”
    When I pass Orshee’s office on the way to my own, his door is open, and he invites me in. His office, one of the worst on the English department floor, overlooks the parking lot, and no doubt he has seen me coming. He’s dressed in jeans,