can't keep," said DeAnne.
"Oh, I'll keep it," said Step. "One way or another."
"How can you stop her from punishing him even more as soon as you're through talking to her?"
"If necessary I'll go to class every day."
"She'd never permit that. The school would never permit it."
"A parent, observing his child's class?"
"You'd lose your job."
"I'll quit the job!" said Step, and to his own surprise he was talking loudly, angrily. He brought his voice back down, spoke quietly, intensely. "I will quit the job. I hate the job. The job is keeping me from being a decent father to my children. The job is killing me and my family. Screw the job."
DeAnne visibly recoiled from him. "Step, please," she said.
It made him irrationally angry, to have her get upset at him for his language when he was talking about something that actually mattered. "Oh, don't you like the way I said it? The word screw is too rough for you?
It's a euphemism, DeAnne. You can't get mad at me for using a euphemism! I mean, I could have said-"
"I'm not mad at you for saying screw, you dunce! I'm not mad at you at all, and don't be mad at me either, I can't stand it!" She burst into tears. "You were about to say the f- word! You were about to say that to your own wife."
"What is this about?" asked Step. "You were mad at me, I know you well enough to know what it looks like, you were mad at me for saying screw and-"
"So I was! For one stupid second! And then I realized it was stupid and I'm sorry, I can't help getting some look on my face for one split second, I don't deserve to have you swearing at me!"
"What are we doing?" said Step. "Why are we fighting?"
"Because our son has been tormented in school and we didn't do anything to help him-"
"How could we? He didn't tell us-"
"And we're both so angry we want to beat somebody up and the only person within easy reach is each other." DeAnne stopped talking for a moment. Then, to Step's surprise, she laughed. Laughed and lowered herself to the edge of the bed.
"OK, share the joke with the rest of us in this room," said Step.
"I was just thinking-this is so stupid, it isn't even funny ..." She wiped tears away from her eyes.
"I know, I can see how funny it isn't," said Step.
"I just thought, when I said we're so mad and the only person we can reach is each other, I thought, `Let's go beat up Sister LeSueur."'
She was right. It wasn't really funny, and yet Step had to sit down beside her on the bed and laugh and laugh.
Step didn't actually ask for permission to leave work in the middle of the day. He just leaned his head into Dicky's office and said, "I'm taking lunch at two-thirty this afternoon because I have to go meet with my son's teacher after school."
"Your wife can't do that?" asked Dicky.
"Dicky," said Step, "it's my lunch hour, and I'm taking it at two-thirty. I'm only telling you because I want you to know where I'm going to be during that time period. I wasn't asking permission.
Dicky made no argument, just shrugged and gave a sort of half smile that made Step say to himself, You're too sensitive, too prickly Step. Dicky didn't mean anything by what he said, and you jumped all over him.
Then, at twenty after two, as Step was sliding his microcassette recorder into his right pants pocket just prior to leaving, Dicky buzzed him on the phone. "Come by my office, please," he said.
"I'm on my way out," said Step. "To lunch."
"On your way, then, please stop by my office."
Step felt a sick dread in the pit of his stomach. Is he firing me? Because I spoke rudely to him? Impossible.
Or maybe Ray Keene found out that I snuck a copy of my employment agreement, and so he thinks I'm looking for another job and so I'm being sacked because of that.
Instead, Dicky was all smiles when Step came into his office. There was another man there, a tall, thin fellow with a dark complexion and a sepulchral face that would have been rather fright ening if he hadn't been smiling so broadly. In fact, his head was so narrow and his smile so wide that it looked for a moment as if he really were, literally, grinning from ear to ear. A