Straight Man

yours and liked it. Anyway, take the weekend to think things over. Talk it over with Lila.”
    Better and better. I can feel my grin spreading, buoyed by the fact that he’s gotten my wife’s name wrong a second time. He’s taken the trouble to research me, but even so he’s making mistakes.
    “I always discuss everything with Lila,” I tell him. “Lila’s one shrewd cookie. You think
I’m
smart? You should meet my Lila. In fact, I don’t know where I’d be without Lila. If I ever do write another book and make a lot of money, I’m going to buy a yacht and name her the
Lila
.”
    Dickie Pope is staring at me, bewildered now, perhaps even convinced I’m insane. When we shake, he doesn’t let go of my hand right away. “I’m not sure I’ve done a good job of convincing you of the gravity of the situation, Hank. And I do want you to understand that there
is
a storm coming. A real gully washer.”
    Since we’re right by the window, which affords a sweeping view of the campus all the way to the duck pond, I offer him our entire tenured academic landscape with a sweeping gesture. “Not a hmm-hmm cloud in the sky,” I observe.

CHAPTER
16
    On my way back across campus, I see Bodie Pie slip into Social Sciences via the back door and remember she wanted to talk to me, so I follow, risking the possibility that I’ll get lost in the building’s legendary labyrinths. Social Sciences, the newest building on campus, was built in the midseventies, when there was money for both buildings and faculty. According to myth, the structure was designed to prevent student takeovers, and this may be true. A series of pods, it’s all zigzagging corridors and abrupt mezzanines that make it impossible to walk from one end of the building to another. At one point, if you’re on the first floor, either you have to go up two floors, over, and down again or you have to go outside the building and then in again in order to arrive at an office you can see from where you’re standing. The campus joke is that Lou Steinmetz has an office in the building but no one knows where.
    If I’m the most embattled program chair on campus, Bodie Pie, of Women’s Studies, runs a close second, and Bodie takes her troubles toheart, which makes her situation far worse than mine. She can usually use some cheering up.
    “I don’t think I could work in these conditions,” I say when I arrive at the open doorway of her dismal office. Women’s Studies is in the basement, almost entirely below ground. There’s a long, horizontal window in Bodie’s office that affords a narrow view of the sidewalk outside, as well as the feet and ankles of people who pass by on it. “Don’t you have a secretary, at least?”
    I’ve caught Bodie smoking a cigarette, which she quickly stubs out, guilty. “Girls don’t need secretaries. They
are
secretaries.”
    “Would you feel better if I got you a cup of coffee?” I say, since there’s a pot made and I could use a cup myself. I touch the glass, which is hot. It doesn’t look like it’s been sitting there too long.
    “No, I wouldn’t feel better,” she says. “I saw you come out of the Vatican. I thought I’d ducked in here in time.”
    “Now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings, Bodie,” I tell her, pouring coffee into two Styrofoam cups. “Besides. I thought you wanted to talk to me.”
    “Talk to you, not see you. There’s a difference.” When I don’t know what to say to this, she continues. “You ever have one of those days where you hope you won’t run into anybody you even remotely like? So you won’t have to be civil even?”
    I study her. Bodie and I have been friends for a long time, and she’s another of the women on campus that I’d be a little in love with if I were not in love with my wife, Bodie’s being a lesbian notwithstanding. She is always falling in what she calls romantic courtly love. Sometimes she tells me about it.
    “I see you got my present, anyhow,” I say, noting the sign I had printed and framed, which is hanging on the wall behind her desk: Welcome to Bitch Gulch. I’m not a misogynist, but I can play that role. I’ve also had some special stationery printed up for her. Underneath the university seal, I’ve added a motto: “Where Women are Womyn and Men are Males.”
    Bodie swivels and studies the sign. “Some of my sisters say it’s in bad taste.”
    “
That’s
their objection?”
    “They’re very serious. Earnest, you’d almost