Straight Man

to authorship. Bad books call to authors with the same haunting siren song as good ones, and there’s no law that says you have to listen, not when there’s an ample supply of cotton for the ears. On that note I zip.
    Outside, the hall is empty, so I slip into my office through my private door, close it quietly, turn on my small Tensor desk lamp ratherthan the overhead, hoping for a few moments of peace. Here, the low, droning sound I kept hearing in the men’s room is more pronounced. Then, all of a sudden, it’s gone. I shake my head but can’t bring it back. I see that Rachel has found me a new blotter, so I take young Hal out of my jacket pocket and, instead of shelving him as intended, I open to the first page and begin to read. I’m only a few sentences into the text when Rachel’s voice crackles over the intercom, causing me to jump about a foot. “Are you in there?” she wants to know. Which me? I wonder. Young Hal, the wide-ranging outfielder? Or the tenured first baseman with warning-track power? Rachel sounds worried, like it’s the door of Dr. Jekyll’s laboratory she’s been listening at.
    “I’m thinking about writing another book, Rachel,” I tell her.
    “Really? That’s great?”
    The droning is back, as if triggered by my assertion. It sounds like distant thunder now. Rolling. Rumbling. The storm Dickie pointed to in the sky seems to have arrived.
    “You have some messages?” Rachel informs me.
    I sigh. These messages, it occurs to me, are the cotton for my ears that I thought to make use of back in the men’s room. The academic memo, the voice message, the e-mail (which I don’t receive) taken together are the cotton plugs that drown out the siren’s song. At first resentful, we scholar-sailors come to be grateful for them.
    “Sing them out, Rachel,” I tell her bravely, though I see jagged rocks ahead. “And don’t spare my feelings. Give them to me straight, kid. I can take it.”
    “Herbert Schonberg called twice?” The union rep I’ve been evading for days. “He says he intends to see you this afternoon if he has to track you with bloodhounds?” It occurs to me now that I’ve been dodging him for the wrong reason. I’ve assumed he wanted to bust my chops about the various grievances filed against me, including the most recent one, Gracie’s, but now I realize it’s about Dickie’s tidal wave.
    “Boring stuff, Rachel. You can do better.”
    “The dean called again? Long distance? He said thanks a lot? He said you’d understand?”
    And I do. My shenanigans, their timing, are not a good advertisement for Jacob. I’ve disobeyed his strict orders to do nothing in his absence. I may have knocked him clean off the short list. Jacob and I goback a long way, and if I’ve botched his escape from Railton, I’ll deserve to lose his friendship.
    “What do you say we go back to the boring ones, Rachel?” I suggest.
    Rumble rumble rumble. I lean back in my swivel chair and study the ceiling tiles, which actually appear to be vibrating. “Your daughter called?”
    “Julie?”
    “She wanted to know if you could come out to the house this afternoon?”
    “No,” I tell Rachel, the wrong person. “Out of the question.”
    “She sounded like she was crying?”
    “Do you have her number?”
    Rachel says she does.
    “Call her back. Ask her if she was crying.”
    Silence.
    “Okay, I agree. Bad idea. Bad boss. Call her back and let me talk to her.”
    I close young Hal. Just as well.
    “I’m getting their machine?” Rachel’s back on the intercom.
    “I’ll pick up,” I tell her.
    I listen to Russell’s voice message, and at the beep, say, “It’s me, darlin’. Pick up if you’re there.” I wait several beats. “Okay, it’s almost noon. I’ll try to come by later.”
    Suddenly, she’s on the line. “Okay,” she says, sounding remarkably like her mother, and then just as suddenly she’s hung up. I call again, get the machine, wait, tell her to pick up, listen to dead air until the machine clicks off. What the hell is this about? Melodrama, knowing Julie.
    I get back on the intercom with Rachel, a sensible woman. “Let’s take a long lunch,” I suggest. “We’ll drive out to the Railton Sheraton. If we’re together there won’t be anybody to take these messages.”
    “Sorry? Today’s my sexual harassment lunch?”
    Sexual harassment lunch? “Okay, I’ll bite.”
    “It’s for all the department secretaries?” she explains. “Sort of a