Straight Man

profaned, and this new role in which I have cast my wife is a clear violation of narrative rules. And this isn’t the only violation. In a good story Bodie Pie cannot be
both
having sweaty sex with my wife
and
sitting before me, fully clothed, smoking a cigarette, which she is, though I don’t remember her lighting one, and here it is half smoked. When I focus on the burning tip of her cigarette, the lovers are suddenly gone, and once again Bodie’s small office contains just us two old friends, talking. Actually, Bodie’s the one talking, explaining, I realize, why she left a message for me to call her. “Anyway,” she’s saying. “Tell him to be on guard.”
    Clearly, I’ve missed some damn thing. A small chunk of time, of the life of William Henry Devereaux, Jr., has slipped into some kind of void. “Who?” I say.
    “Tony,” she says, studying me suspiciously now. “Tony Coniglia. The person we’ve been talking about.”
    “Right.” I nod demonstratively, as if this has clarified everything.
    But she must suspect I’m still not up to speed because she says, “Where did you go just then?”
    “What do you mean?” I ask, though I know what she means.
    She exhales a long, deep, thoughtful lungful of smoke. “You should have seen your face.”
    To get back to my office, I must go by the student center and the duck pond. On my way I pass half a dozen students I know, most of whom seem to be looking everywhere but at me. Unless I’m getting paranoid, one student actually changes direction in order to avoid running into me. Is this the result of my television celebrity, I wonder, or am I still wearing the expression alluded to by Bodie Pie? A third explanation occurs to me, and I check to make sure I’ve zipped up after my last vigil at the urinal. I spend a lot of time with my dick outside my fly these days. Maybe it’s begun to feel natural there. But everything seems to be in order.
    When I come around the corner of the student center, I see why so many students are embarrassed to meet my eye. On the very spot where I faced the cameras last night, a large group of protesters have gathered. They’re carrying placards and chanting something I can’tquite make out, because the clucks have joined in quacking and the geese honking and trumpeting, a hell of a din. The TV crew has returned, just pulled up in fact. To my amazement, Missy Blaylock is among them. She climbs out of the van like an arthritic, closes the door softly, leans her broad forehead against its cool metal surface. The sound guy, the same one who last night wanted to know if I was trying to pass a stone, sees me coming and grins. “You’re in a world of shit now, son,” he says. “These animal rights assholes play for keeps.”
    “That’s who they are?”
    “That’s who they are. And they want nothing less than your balls,” he assures me. “And, hey, I’ve gotta ask. What’d you guys do to her last night?”
    We turn and study Missy, who looked up briefly when she heard my voice, groaned once, and went back to cleaving unto the van.
    “I
really
hate coming here,” she says. “Did I mention that?”
    “I don’t think coming to campus was your mistake,” I point out.
    “Tell me about it,” she agrees. “I’ve got to talk to you about that guy.” She says all of this with her forehead still melded to the van.
    “Okay,” I tell her, “but you know him better than I do.”
    She straightens up, gives me a narrow-eyed look. “And I believe you have a photograph of me that I would like returned.”
    “Okay,” I agree reluctantly. “But I’ve spent the whole morning trying to find just the right frame.”
    When the crew starts carrying equipment over to the pond, I volunteer to help, in the hope that this way I won’t be noticed. When we get closer, I can read the placards the protesters are carrying. The most popular seems to be STOP THE SLAUGHTER , and that’s what the group is chanting. Some of the placards have my grainy, blown-up photograph on them in the center of the now ubiquitous symbol:
    I don’t know who any of these people are, but I have to admire their efficiency, their ability to mobilize so quickly. After all, they’ve only had about fourteen hours to organize this protest, locate a photograph of the villain they intend to symbolize (it’s the photo from my book jacket, I realize), blow it up, nail the poster board to the sticks. And there are probably other organizational difficulties