Hank Devereaux and Gracie DuBois’s Mix of Professional Conflict and Personal Affection

Hank Devereaux and Gracie DuBois’s relationship is defined by an unsettled mixture of departmental rivalry, mutual provocation, and unexpected personal regard. In their meeting, Gracie says she wants to distinguish personal matters from professional ones, but the distinction proves difficult to maintain: she apologizes to Hank, announces a grievance against him, admits that she has always liked him, and warns him that she may have to vote for his removal as department chair. Hank answers with a counter-threat of his own. Neither affection nor conflict cancels the other.

A Meeting Framed by Disguise

Gracie comes to see Hank shortly before leaving town, with only a few minutes available. Their encounter begins under an absurdly theatrical condition: Hank wears a fake nose and black plastic glasses that he obtained from Charles Purty. He has removed the attached mustache because he wants a slight exaggeration rather than a broad parody. The disguise refers to Hank’s damaged nose, an injury associated with Gracie, and turns their prior antagonism into a visible prop between them.

Gracie asks whether they can conduct the meeting like adult professionals. Hank had expected her to react more strongly to the disguise, even to mistake it briefly for a sign that he had injured her in return. Instead, her response disappoints his expectation. His private reflection makes their conflict look reciprocal but not symmetrical: he imagines guilt changing how he would perceive a joke at her expense, while he suspects that Gracie either lacks that kind of moral imagination or already knows what to expect from him. The disguise is comic, but it also exposes how readily each reads the other through their history of provocation.

When Gracie begins to apologize, Hank removes the false nose and invites her to call him Hank. She then winces, a small response that acknowledges the injury more directly than her earlier reaction to the disguise did. The gesture briefly alters the tone of the meeting: the prop comes off, but the history it signifies remains present.

Professional Turf and Insecurity

Gracie says she has reconsidered what has happened and wants personal issues separated from professional ones. Hank agrees, although he does not understand what she means by the distinction. She then tells him that she has decided to file a grievance against him. When he asks whether this is the personal or the professional part, she does not answer the question; instead, she explains that the grievance will clarify her position as a senior faculty member and show that she will not be pushed aside.

Her stated concern is the prospect of another fiction writer being hired. She acknowledges that she may seem small-minded but says she must protect her turf, and that Hank would do the same in her position. She also stresses that she has given fifteen years to the institution. Her language presents the grievance as a defense of professional standing, not simply a personal reprisal. Yet the conversation shows how closely those motives are joined: she frames the possible hiring as a threat to her place, while Hank hears her account alongside the history of their quarrels.

The dispute is sharpened by an irony Hank does not voice. He knows the funding will not come through, so the possible appointment that troubles Gracie is unlikely to happen. He has promised Jacob Rose to keep that information secret and therefore cannot use it to reassure her or dissolve the argument. He also judges that her tenured status makes it extraordinarily difficult to push her aside. He stays silent, in part because she might interpret his explanation as an insult about her appearance. His silence preserves the professional dispute even though he believes its practical premise may soon disappear.

Admiration Within the Conflict

Gracie says that the grievance is only part of what she wants to discuss. She tells Hank that she has always liked him and describes him as resembling a character in a good book: almost real, unlike professors, though she recognizes that she has become one herself. Hank finds the admission both odd and touching. It is an unusually intimate judgment, especially from someone who has just declared her intention to file against him.

Her admiration also carries an edge of irony. Gracie calls Hank a successful writer, but the book she regards as evidence of that success was published twenty years earlier and soon forgotten. Its modest remaining stock has lingered in the campus bookstore for years. Hank is startled that this history could make him an object of professional envy. The exchange therefore reveals not a settled estimate of his career but a difference in how the two understand its symbolic value: Gracie sees a writer where Hank sees the thin remains of an old achievement.

Warning, Loyalty, and Counter-Threat

Before the meeting ends, Gracie tells Hank that Finny is sounding out colleagues about recalling him and may introduce a motion at the next department meeting. She adds that, given the situation as it stands, she fears she knows how she would have to vote. The warning comes from a colleague preparing a grievance against him, but also from someone who has just expressed genuine admiration. Gracie does not conceal the likely consequence of her professional judgment; nor does her warning erase the affection she has described.

Hank replies that they understand each other better than they understand themselves, putting the false nose and glasses back on to make his point. He then says he expects to file a grievance against Gracie as well. Her brief fear, followed by surprise, reflects how unfamiliar the threat is coming from him: he is the only department member who has never filed or threatened a grievance against a colleague. He deadpans that sexual harassment is a serious charge. The remark turns their dispute back into a performance of mutual intimidation, while the disguise underscores its theatrical quality.

The meeting does not settle their personal or professional differences. Instead, it makes their coexistence more legible: Gracie can admire Hank and still anticipate voting against him; Hank can recognize her insecurity and withhold information while answering her grievance with one of his own. Their connection remains charged precisely because regard, competition, and retaliation occupy the same conversation.