Free Straight Man by Richard Russo

explanation, surely.
    “Where’s Russell?” I say, eager for a change of topic, hoping he will not be home, though I like Russell.
    Julie takes the bag of groceries from me and puts it on the kitchen table. “He’s around somewhere.” She bellows his name. We hear a faint reply.
    “Upstairs,” Julie says.
    “Outside,” I say. “Back deck.” Their house carries sound the same way ours does, even though ours is fucked up. I can tell Russell is out back. What I can’t guess is why. It’s far too cold to be deck sitting.
    “Come on out,” Russell’s voice, barely audible, finds us.
    What I really need, suddenly, urgently, is to pee, for about the tenth time today, I think, and at the thought of what this probably means, my sweat goes cold. No, I tell myself. Don’t even think about it.
    We go out on the back deck, where Russell is standing on the bottom rung of a stepladder under the eaves a few feet away. He’s got a flashlight in one hand, and he’s shining it up into a pretty amazing wasps’ nest that’s attached to the overhang. There’ve been several warm days this week, and apparently that’s been enough. In Russell’s other hand is an enormous can of Raid. He looks like he’s been standing in just this attitude for a long time.
    “You think they’re asleep?” he says.
    What I think is that this man should not be a homeowner. My daughter, now that she’s seen the nest, has backed up near the sliding deck door, through which she clearly plans to duck.
    “I’m not sure wasps
do
sleep, Russell,” I tell him.
    The flashlight locates me. Apparently Russell had not noticed, until I spoke, that his wife was not alone. “Hank,” he says, altogether too glad to see me, as if, now that I’m here, he’s got a friend.
    “Hi, Russell.”
    “God. What happened to your nose?”
    “Stung by a wasp,” I tell him.
    “No shit?”
    “Would I shit you, Russell?” The answer to this rhetorical question is obviously yes, but Russell has been standing too long beneath a wasps’ nest, trying to work up the courage to Raid it. There’s nothing more real to him at this moment than a wasp sting, and some damn thing has happened to my nose that a wasp sting just might account for. “They always build their nest right in that same spot in our house too,” I tell him. “I came over to warn you. I think we may have identical wasps.”
    When he finally lowers the flashlight, I can see he’s caught on. “I’d sure hate for us to have identical noses,” he says. “Yours is the ugliest one I ever saw.”
    The flashlight returns to my face for another look. I hold up my hand this time, tired of the light in my eyes, and of Russell’s curiosity. “I bet if I had that flashlight I could find something ugly on you too,” I tell him.
    “Jules. Come hold the flashlight while I spray,” he suggests.
    “Be real,” Julie tells him.
    I go over, take the flashlight, locate the nest.
    “Ready?” Russell wants to know, his voice grim, determined, scared.
    “You’ve never been to war, have you,” I say.
    “Neither have you,” he correctly points out. “You were a typist in Vietnam.”
    This is not precisely true. I was a typist
during
Vietnam. “I teach
The Red Badge of Courage
every year, though,” I tell him. “Spray the bastards so we can go inside.”
    Russell sprays the gray, paperlike cone until it glistens and begins to drip. There’s no activity. I begin to suspect it’s last year’s cone we’re dousing. “That’s the way I want to go,” Russell says, satisfied with the job once he’s finished.
    “You want someone to asphyxiate you with insecticide?” I say.
    “Nope,” he says. “I want to die in my sleep.”
    “Much as you sleep,” Julie says, “there’s a good chance you will.”
    We go inside, to the kitchen, their only fully furnished room. Russell and I sit down. Blessedly, my daughter and son-in-law have not tried to copy our interior furnishings. Perhaps our stuff is