Straight Man

tell her. “Not to Dickie Pope. And of course Rourke still insists my whole act needs work.”
    “I wish …,” she says, but now it’s her turn to let her voice trail away.
    “What?” I say. “Go ahead.”
    “I wish you’d just request a leave of absence. Or even resign, if that’s what you want. You’ll have to do something worse before they’ll fire you, and I don’t want you to do anything worse.”
    “You think I’m trying to get myself fired?”
    “Aren’t you?”
    I consider the possibility. “What I want may be a moot point. Dickie told me this morning there’s likely to be a twenty percent reduction in staff in the fall.”
    “Then the rumors are true.”
    “My colleagues are eager to believe I’ve sold them out.”
    “Have you reassured them you didn’t?”
    “You know the English department. They’ll believe what they want.”
    “No, Hank. The majority will believe
you
, if you tell them. If you tell them straight.”
    “I promised Dickie I wouldn’t decide anything until I’d talked the whole thing over with you. He insisted. The last thing he said to me was, ‘Talk it over with Lila.’ So tell me, Lila, when are you coming back?”
    “Tuesday, I think.”
    “I thought Monday.”
    “Me too. I had to postpone the interview.”
    “How come?”
    “Look, Hank, there’s … a problem here in Philly,” she says. And as soon as she says this, I know that it’s something real and serious, something she’s been sitting on while we talked about academic matters. “How about if we talk tonight?” she suggests. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”
    I consult my watch and see that class is, at this moment, starting without me.
    “Angelo?” I say, remembering that I’ve not been able to reach her father when I’ve called.
    “Yes.”
    “Is he okay?” Dumb question. It’s been a long time since Angelo could be described as okay. Most likely he’s tumbled hard off the wagon.
    “Yes and no.” Her voice is flat now. I’m to understand that it will do me no good to ask further questions. “Did you remember to visit my class this morning?”
    I tell her I did. “Guido wanted to know how much money I made from
Off the Road
.”
    “Poor Guido.”
    “Poor Guido extorts lunch money off skinny white kids,” I tell her, adding, for good measure, “Your husband
was
a skinny white kid once. Bullies used to take
my
lunch money, you know.”
    “God, I wish you were here, Hank. You just made me smile for the first time in twenty-four hours.”
    “I used to make you laugh,” I recall. “Out loud. Uncontrollably.”
    “Not uncontrollably,” she corrects me.
    “Well,” I concede. “Maybe not uncontrollably.”
    “We had more energy then,” my wife reminds me. “For laughter. For most things. Plus everything was newer.”
    “Do you ever wish things were new again?”
    “Sometimes,” she admits. “Not often.”
    “Sweet-talker.”
    When I hang up, I notice a shadowy human movement on the glass of the phone booth door. I see it’s Leo, who’s apparently observed me sneaking out of the department and followed me into the basement.
    For all I know he’s been standing next to the phone booth for the whole conversation. Right now, he’s so close that he has to step back when I open the door. I study him and wonder if it can really be youth I’ve been regretting the loss of. Leo’s got a manuscript in hand, and there’s a tremor in his voice that’s part excitement and, more strangely, part rage. He can’t quite keep his hands still. The way he’s holding the pages out to me suggests that one end is on fire, the end he wants me to grab. What I’d like to grab and ring is Leo’s long, gooselike neck.
    “Great news,” he tells me, and I half-expect him to report that Solange, the young woman who eviscerated him in workshop, has been hit by a truck. But the truth, as always, is even stranger. “I’ve had a story accepted,” he says. “For publication.”

CHAPTER
20
    Attendance is always sparse on Friday afternoons, especially so near the end of the term when the topic is persuasion. So far, I haven’t persuaded my freshmen that the ability to persuade is an important skill. Even Blair, my best student, a pale young woman I’ve been trying all term to coax into confident utterance, seems to doubt the whole enterprise. This particular group of students, like so many these days, seems divided, unequally, between the vocal clueless and the quietly