Nobody's Fool (20 page)

Her day job was as a cashier at the IGA, which meant she must have seen him out the window.

"Not since the end of September," she told him.

"You used to keep better track of my days off."

"Well, I know my memory stinks, but I do seem to recall you were the one who wanted to cool it for a while."

They'd agreed to this back in August when Gregory, Ruth's youngest, now a senior at Bath High, had seen them together coming out of The Horse late one night. Having lied about his own plans for the evening, the boy was in no posit ion to accuse his mother, and in fact he'd said nothing about seeing her with Sully, but their eyes had met across the nearly deserted street, and Ruth had seen the look on his face when the realization dawned on him.

She'd told Sully right then that they were going to have to be good for a while. And so, since August, they'd been good, Ruth working her two jobs, Sully going to school and spending his evenings at The Horse with Wirf and the other regulars, often until closing. In truth, their being good every now and then had always been part of the rhythm of their relationship, and Sully sometimes thought that had they been able to marry, as they'd once wanted to, by now they'd have succeeded in making each other miserable.

Being good was often just what they needed, provided they weren't good too long. Because their sporadic abstinence was imposed upon them by periods of heightened suspicion in Ruth's husband, they'd never had to face the possibility that they enjoyed being good nearly as much as being bad. Lately their periodic seasons of virtue had grown gradually longer, and this, though Sully didn't dare admit it to Ruth, suited him fine. Adultery, like full-court basketball, was a younger man's sport, and engaging in it these last few years had made Sully feel a little foolish and undignified. Over twenty years now he and Ruth had been lovers, and they were unable to decide, together or separately, whether to be proud or ashamed of their relationship, just as they had been unable to explain the ebb and flow of their need for each other. It was far easier to acknowledge the need when it was upon them than to admit its absence later, and their bitterest arguments tended to be over who it was that decided to be good for a while, who was responsible for their lapse into virtue, who had been avoiding and ignoring whom. Sully could feel one of these arguments coming on now, and he also sensed that he was going to lose it.

"So you're saying that when I said 'a while," you thought I meant three months," Ruth said, her thumbs digging deeper now between Sully's shoulder blades, skillfully crossing the boundary between pleasure and pain. " No," Sully countered.

"I thought you meant seven. I thought you wanted Gregory graduated and away at college." An indirect hit, apparently, since Ruth's thumbs returned a little closer to affection mode.

"Well, you didn't have to go along so agreeably."

"I'm not a mind reader," he said, deciding to press his luck a little further, a tactic that seldom reaped dividends with Ruth.

"You have to let me know what you want."

Ruth stopped the massage and did not answer immediately.

"What I want," she finally said, "is for you to want. I think I could be reasonably content if I were sure you couldn't get through the day without thinking about me. If I knew you picked up the phone half a dozen times just to tell me different things. That's what I'd like, Sully."

"You'd be happy if you knew I was miserable?" Sully paraphrased her posit ion.

"You got it."

"How about if I just tell you I've missed you?"

NOBODY'S FOOL 10S

Ruth resumed the massage.

"I guess I'd settle for that and an explanation of why your son was chasing you across the IGA parking lot." So Sully explained how his grandson had cracked his bad knee with Dr. Seuss, mentioning also that he'd received an invitation to stop by Vera's tomorrow. Ruth always felt bad about the holidays Sully spent alone, but she also harbored a deep distrust of Sully'sex-wife that he'd never been able to account for until Ruth confessed to him one day that she always feared they'd end up remarried, an irrational fear that persisted even though Vera was already remarried to someone else.

"Are you going to go?"

"I may drop by when I finish up work," Sully said without much enthusiasm.

"I promised Dummy I'd sheetrock a house for him tomorrow."

"On Thanksgiving?" Sully shrugged.

"Why not?" There were so many reasons why a sane man would not want to sheetrock a house in the freezing cold on Thanksgiving that Ruth declined to select among them.

When Sully asked why not, he didn't mean that he couldn't think of any reasons. He meant that he'd decided in advance not to accept their validity. Ruth quit the massage for good and slid into the booth facing him.

"Will it take all day?"

"Might," Sully admitted.

"I had a half-day job today and it took all day and half the night. Rub did most of it."

"Your first day back.

What'd you expect? "

" More. "

" Maybe tomorrow will be better. " "Tomorrow will be worse," he told her honestly.

"That much I'm sure of. The day after that might be better. I can't work at the old pace, that much I know already. I might not be able to manage at all."

"Want some advice?"

"Not really."

"Go back to school." Sully didn't respond immediately, hoping to create through silence the impression that he was actually considering her wisdom.

"I can't make any money at school, Ruth," he said finally.

"You need some money?" He shook his head.

"Not right this very minute. I might someday, though. I'm for sure going to need a new truck, probably by the first of the year.

The back and forth to school has just about finished mine. I've half planned for that, but if there are any surprises . "

106RICHARD R 1; S S 0

"Rolling with the punches is what you're good at," Ruth reminded him.

"It's what we're both good at." Sully nodded, because he knew it was true and because it heartened him to have Ruth say so. Sitting across the table from her this way brought home to him how much he had indeed missed her.

There were times when he wondered if perhaps they couldn't continue in just this way, content with each other's companionship, with the memory of shared intimacy, the assurance of continued friendship. He knew better than to suggest this to Ruth, though. She was twelve years younger than he, and their lovemaking, however infrequent, was more important to her than to him.

"I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind slipping a few punches this round." He was trying to find a way to bring up the subject of Jane and her visit, which Ruth might or might not know about, when they heard a throaty rumble outside. Ruth stood quickly to peer out the window.

"Well, I'm glad you're in a peaceful mood because Guess Who just pulled up. It's a good thing he's too cheap to fix that muffler."

"Go. I can handle Zack," Sully said without much confidence, but Ruth had already disappeared into the kitchen. A second later, when the front door to the restaurant swung open. Sully didn't turn around. It took Ruth's husband, Zack, a minute to realize who it was sitting down there in the closed section of the restaurant and another minute to decide what to do about it. What he'd come in for was to borrow some money from Ruth, since Wednesday was the night Vince paid her. Any public altercation with Sully would compromise this modest plan, and so Zack gave deep and careful consideration to just turning around and slipping outside again and waiting for Ruth to come out, which she'd have to do eventually.

And he might have adopted this strategy if he could have been sure that nobody would see him slinking away. Zack was frequently accused of cowardice. People kept telling him they couldn't understand why Zack didn't just shoot Sully or at least club him a good one with a baseball bat. He disliked being called a coward, so he took a deep breath and attempted to summon an indignation he didn't really feel at Sully's presence.

"What do you know?" Zack said when he arrived at Sully's booth, Sully still seated, his back to Zack.

"Look who's here. Sully, of all people."

"Zachary," Sully said, motioning to the empty bench opposite. Zack considered this genial offer. Except for the rumors that persisted about his wife and Sully, Zack didn't object to Sully personally. He had no hard evidence that Sully and Ruth were lovers (he himself did not love Ruth NOBODY'S FOOL 107 and couldn't see why anyone would), and this lack of evidence prevented him from building up a good head of righteous steam.

Every time he tried, usually at someone else's instigation, he ended up being made a fool. Sully had a way of be sting him at pre fight verbal sparring, and when Sully landed a good one, Zack took the mandatory eight count, trying to think of a retort. Sometimes, failing to think of one, he just threw in the towel right there. The last time, this summer, had been the worst, and the confrontation was still fresh in Zack's mind. He and his cousin Paulie had gone to find Sully at The Horse. Somebody had called to say he was there with Ruth, but when they arrived it was just Sully seated at the bar. At Paulie's insistence they'd slid onto the two vacant stools next to him.

"See this guy here?" Zack had announced in a stage whisper to his cousin.

"He thinks he's a real ladies' man." Sully'd swiveled on his stool then and examined Zack so patiently and with so little concern that Zack's confidence first eroded, then crumbled.

"I am, too, compared to some people," Sully finally said, a remark that struck Zack as neither confirmation nor denial and therefore impossible to act upon.

"A real ladies' man," Zack had repeated lamely. Then he decided on a veiled accusation.

"Some people says he likes my wife, but Sully says no."

Sully, who had swung back around on his stool, rotated again. He ran his fingers through the stubble on his chin thoughtfully.

"I never said I didn't like your wife, Zack," he said.

"I think she's terrific, in fact. I probably like her better than you do." And Sully'd paused there, apparently confident that it would be a while before Zack would be able to take this in, analyze the data, arrive at a conclusion.

Zack too was aware that he was slow, which was why he sometimes practiced verbal sparring with Sully when he was alone, trying to anticipate how the conversation might go, preparing a snappy rejoinder or two. Except that the conversation never did go that way, and it wasn't going that way this time, either. In fact, Zack could feel desperation already seeping in. He was about to say, for the third time, "Some ladies' man," when Sully lowered the boom.

"I never said I didn't like your wife, Zack. I just said I wasn't screwing your wife."

"That makes two of you," somebody piped in from down the bar, and Zack had felt the whole room go out of focus. He had to be led out of The Horse by his cousin Paulie, who, out in the bright sunlight of the street, finally got him to quit muttering "Some ladies' man." When he was finally able to shake the cobwebs, he'd made a resolution. There'd be no more talk. Next time he'd either leave Sully alone or sucker-punch him as a solution to pre fight jitters.

Unfortunately, the present circumstance conspired against him. He couldn't very well sucker-punch Sully in his wife's place of employment. Truth be told, he was a little afraid to, anyway. Sully might be an old fart, but he'd been a tough customer when he was younger, and Zack, who had never been a tough customer, was afraid that at sixty. Sully might still have a few tricks up his sleeve, and Zack did not want to get beat up by an old cripple.

On the other hand, he couldn't very well ignore Sully's presence here in the restaurant, especially seated down here in the dark part, which seemed significant somehow. As usual, Zack found himself kind of in between. He had to engage Sully in another conversation.

"What're you up to, need I ask?"

With his dishes all bussed, the only evidence of Sully's having eaten dinner was his coffee cup and a tiny dice of Bermuda onion on the formica tabletop.

And the cherrystone clam, still clamped rightly shut. Sully hoped Ruth's husband would notice these and draw the correct inference, but he wasn't optimistic. Zack had already drawn one inference in the last minute or so, and that would be it for a while.

"I was just sitting here wondering how things could get worse," Sully told him.

"Oh," Zack said, feeling the jab land. As usual, he hadn't seen it coming.

"I must have been thinking out loud," Sully went on, "because here you are." He didn't much care for the idea of being wedged into a tight booth when the man blocking his exit might summon the necessary conviction to punch him. Zack would probably get in a half-dozen good licks before Sully could get to his feet. And if Zack ever kicked Sully in the knee there'd be nothing to do but just sit back down in the booth and cry.

The good news was that if Zack was going to start a fight, he probably would have by now. In fact, he had the look of a man who'd already decided to cut his losses.

"Take a load off your feet, why don't you?"

Sully suggested again.