Straight Man

have stabbed you through the throat with an ice pick, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought, we can
use
this.”
    “The throat?” I say. “With an ice pick?” I mean, after all, we’re sitting here on Dickie’s leather couch in the office of the chief executive officer of an institution of higher learning, as close to the heart of civilization as you can get without going to a better school.
    Dickie ignores me. “I mean I called you every name in the book at first. I said, ‘What’s that hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm’ trying to do to me?” He pauses, as if to allow me the opportunity to count the
hmm
’s and substitute expletives in the blanks so I’ll know what he called me. “But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, ‘This is
funny
.’ ”
    Since Dickie Pope has never given any indication of a sense of humor, I can only conclude that he does not think any of this is funny. Unless it’s funny in the same way that stabbing me through the throat with an ice pick would be funny. Beneath this performance, Dickie, I realize, is still in a black rage.
    “And then suddenly I’m laughing my ass off, this is so hmm-hmm funny. What am I worried about? I say to myself. A little humiliation? A little embarrassment with a state legislator? I mean, we’re all adults here, right?”
    I consider this to be another rhetorical question, but apparently it isn’t.
    “Am I right?” Dickie wants to know.
    “Absolutely,” I assure him.
    “So, I say, make use of it. Every problem contains its own solution. That’s the first rule every administrator learns.”
    “How many rules are there altogether?” I ask. I’m not an innocent, but I can play that role.
    He ignores me. “Ignore all smart-ass questions” may be one of the other rules. “And it’s not like we don’t have more serious problems to attend to,” he says.
    “No,” I agree. “It’s not like that.”
    “Speaking of which,” Dickie says, as if this digression has just occurred to him. “This rowdy department of yours. How many grievances do you have pending right now?”
    “Just against me,” I ask, “or against Teddy when he was chair?”
    He shrugs, generous. “The two of you.”
    “I’ve lost count,” I admit. “Fifteen? Twenty? Most of them are nuisance grievances.”
    “Nuisance,” Dickie says, leaning forward to stab my tweedy shoulder with an elegant index finger. “That’s the word. That’s the right hmm-hmm word for them. And so’s the union that nurtures them, though you may not agree with me.”
    No doubt about it. Now we’re getting somewhere. Because Dickie would not have made such an observation without having done some research. Sometime last night it’s occurred to him to wonder just who I am, this guy he wants to stab through the throat with an ice pick. I must be somebody, so who the hell am I? He’s made a call or two, and he’s learned that I was not in favor of union representation when the vote was taken over a decade ago. He may even know that I’ve been an outspoken critic of the kind of egalitarian spirit that has pervaded the institution since the union’s arrival. Or it could be he’s known these things about me for some time. Maybe last fall he wondered just whothe hell this “Lucky Hank” guy was who was writing academic satires for the newspaper. Maybe he wanted to put an ice pick in the throat of this Lucky Hank character too. Regardless, if he’s taken the trouble to find out about my attitude toward the union, he’s also learned that I’m unpredictable, a genuine loose cannon. What he’d like to know now is just how loose. Can he afford me as a friend?
    “These things go in cycles,” I decide to say. “Every academic union should be tossed out after five years.” Then, before Dickie’s grin can spread too far, I add, “Then at the end of the next five years, all the university administrators should be booted out and another union voted in.”
    “That’s pretty cynical,” Dickie says, as if cynicism were a character trait he’d never have suspected in me until this moment. “Now, I believe in continuity and vision.”
    “Vision’s good,” I agree.
    “Take this place. You may be right about things moving in cycles,” he concedes. “This nuisance union, as you call it, has had our institution by the hmm-hmm for a long time. But anybody with vision”—he pauses here to point to his own right eye, which has narrowed with significance—“can see