Straight Man

here?” she informs us. “Dipwad?”
    Rourke looks at me first, then Rachel. “Of course it isn’t,” he tells her. “It’s out
here
.”
    Not a bad exit line, I have to admit. “Hey,” I say to Rachel when he’s gone. “You’re
my
secretary, remember? I’m the one you feed the straight lines to.”
    “Sorry?”
    “How should I know if you’re sorry?”
    This confuses her. I can tell. “Let your voice fall,” I remind her on the way into my office. Meg has apparently paid me another visit, because in the middle of my ruined blotter sits a single ripe peach. I study this for a moment, then a note in Rachel’s hand that my friend Bodie Pie in Women’s Studies has been trying to reach me. I hit the intercom and ask Rachel to join me.
    “I’m sorry about last night,” I tell her when she closes the door behind her. “I mean, if you and Cal are getting back together, that’s great.” When she doesn’t say something quick enough, I chatter on. “I never should have called the house so late, and I certainly never should have said I didn’t like him. That was way out of line.”
    Rachel is studying her hands as I say all this. I wonder if she’s as fond of them as I am. They are not the hands of a young woman. They’ve endured dishwater and paper cuts and burns on the oven door, but they are fine and graceful, and I would like to take them in my own.
    “We’re not?” she says, and now I’m the one confused. “Getting back together?”
    How absurd that I should feel a powerful wave of relief. I try to tell myself it’s nothing but decent affection I feel for her, but the truth is, it doesn’t feel entirely decent. She’s too lovely a woman for this to be decent affection, though it’s probably not exactly indecent either. Is there a state more or less halfway between decency and indecency? Is there a name for such a realm? The Kingdom of Cowardice? The Fiefdom of Altruism? The Grove of Academe?
    In the real world Rachel is talking to me. “Sometimes when he’s drinking, he remembers he’s got a son? Also he likes to drop by at night, to make sure I’m not seeing anyone?”
    “I didn’t mean to intrude …,” I say, a lie.
    “He ends up falling asleep?” she explains, adding, “on the couch?” But her eyes are full.
    “You want to take the rest of the day off?” I suggest. “I mean it. I’ve seen days like this before. They don’t improve.”
    She shrugs, wipes the corner of one eye on a sleeve. “He might still be there?”
    “Then stay here,” I say, trying for a grin. “Okay, I’m off to the Vatican.” Since Dickie Pope became CEO four years ago, that’s what the old Administration Building has come to be called. I see by my watch that there’s just about time to make the walk across campus to Administration Row.
    “Don’t let them fire you?”
    “Never,” I assure her. “I’d quit first. See what you can do about getting me a new blotter,” I say, slipping the new peach into my jacket pocket. I’ve been to Administration Row many times and often regretted not having something to throw. I hand Rachel the old, soiled blotter with considerable embarrassment. It looks more like a sexual act has taken place upon it than an oblique invitation extended. “You need to find a new place to hide your master key.”
    “They all get mad at me when they can’t find it?”
    “I know. It’s just that I’m the only one who’s supposed to know where it is, and I’m the only one who doesn’t.”
    “I’ve told you? You keep forgetting?”
    “Rachel,” I tell her. “You’re right. The problem is me. If Lily calls …,” I begin, but then I can’t think of what message to leave. What I would say to my wife depends upon a number of variables. Like whether she’s seen me on
Good Morning America
. Like whether I am the cause of the flatness I heard in her voice this morning on the answering machine.
    “You love her more than life itself?” Rachel suggests.
    “Okay,” I concede. “Why not? Coming from you she just might buy it.”
    I notice that Billy Quigley’s door is open and try to sneak by, but he catches me, insists that I come inside and close the door behind me.
    “I’m in kind of a hurry,” I explain, taking a reluctant seat. Billy’s office is an all-Irish motif. On the walls, pictures of Yeats, Joyce, O’Casey. And a bottle of good Irish whiskey in the lower drawer of his desk. He wants to pour me one, but I beg him not to. Sometimes