Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

“I can’t remember the last time I bought a pack of cigarettes,” he told her.

“Okay, but that’s not what I asked. You think you’re talking to somebody who’s never bummed a smoke?”

No surprise that she hadn’t gone for his head fake. He had pretty much given up cigarettes during the day, but at night, out at the Horse, he’d cadge a few from Jocko or Carl Roebuck. “No,” he told her, “but I might be talking to somebody who should mind her own business.”

“Yeah?” she said, fixing him with her trademark stare.

“I didn’t say I was, ” he clarified. “Just that I might be.”

She held his gaze a moment longer, then let him off the hook. “Men,” she said, causing Sully to wonder — and not for the first time — why so many women deemed him the personification of the whole infuriating male gender, an attitude he found it particularly hard to swallow coming from Bootsie and Ruth, given the men they were married to.

“I gotta get out of this uniform,” she said, heading up the stairs. “It’s rubbed me raw everywhere.”

He didn’t care to contemplate this chafing. With Bootsie, everywhere covered a lot of territory. In the kitchen, he sat down heavily in the only chair at the dinette that wasn’t piled high with crap, and after a moment his breathing returned to normal. One day, possibly quite soon, it wouldn’t. He knew that. What he couldn’t decide was how to feel about it. He still had three or four good days to every bad one, but his VA cardiologist said that ratio wouldn’t hold. Four would become three, then two, then one. Eventually they’d all be like today. That was assuming things happened slowly, which they might not.

From upstairs came a groan of pure pleasure, and before Sully could prevent it he was visited by an unwanted image of Bootsie stepping out of her uniform and examining the day’s abrasions. How often did he think about sex? Too fucking often.

“What’s this I heard about the old mill falling down?” she hollered, her voice penetrating the ceiling.

“Just the wall nearest the street,” Sully called upward.

“Yeah, but how does something like that happen?” she asked.

So, speaking through the ceiling, he told her what he’d learned over the course of the afternoon, how Carl, meaning to shore everything up again later, had severed the building’s collar ties and floor joists, leaving the long wall that bordered the sidewalk free to topple into the road on top of Roy Purdy, who conveniently happened to be driving by. Sully, who’d spent the morning daydreaming pleasantly about how he might murder Roy, couldn’t decide whether or not to feel guilty. If he hadn’t goaded Roy with his fake want ads, delaying his departure by a minute or two, the man likely would’ve passed through the area before the wall collapsed. Had Sully’s idle woolgathering somehow been mistaken for a prayer and answered? God’s answering prayers now? Since when?

Bootsie came back into the kitchen, clad now in one of the brightly colored muumuus she favored, beneath the fabric of which, to Sully’s eye, far too much violent pendulous motion was going on. “What do you want to bet they’ll be saying Carl did it on purpose, for the insurance?”

“They’re already saying it.”

“You think he did?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” he admitted, “but no, I doubt it.” Mostly because whenever Carl had dumb ideas, he ran them by Sully first.

“You want a beer?” Bootsie said, opening the fridge.

“No, thanks.”

“Good. We’re out.” Of that and just about everything else, judging by the empty shelves. Just how badly were they struggling financially, Sully wondered. Rub had steady work at the cemetery now, and Bootsie had her food service job at the hospital, but neither was overpaid. He had no idea what they spent their money on, but Rub always seemed to be broke.

When Bootsie pulled out the drawer under the phone book, Sully quickly turned away, because that, he happened to know, was where she kept her diabetes kit. The last time he made the mistake of watching her sink the needle into her belly, right through the fabric of her muumuu, he’d nearly passed out. In fact, just knowing what was going on behind his back caused sweat to bead on his forehead. “Tell me when you’re done.”

She chortled, clearly enjoying his discomfort. “For such a tough guy, you sure are squeamish.”

“If the Second World War had been fought with hypodermic needles, I’d have deserted in basic training.”

“Well, you can turn around. I’m all done,” she said. He waited, though, not trusting her, until he heard the drawer close again. When he finally ventured to glance, she was surveying the kitchen with the air of someone who was repulsed by the sight without being motivated in the least to do anything about it. “I don’t suppose you know how to fix a dishwasher.”

“You ask me that every time I’m here,” he told her. “The answer’s still no.”

“Maybe I could get Carl to come over and detonate the whole kitchen,” she said. “Just blow it to smithereens and start over.” When Sully didn’t offer an opinion, she regarded him through narrowed eyes. “Don’t say it,” she advised.

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Yeah, you were. You were going to say that a month from now I’d be right back in the same place.”

“Not true,” he said. A week from now was more like it.

“I’m not stupid.”

“Did I say you were?”

“No, I guess you didn’t,” she answered. “Must’ve been something I heard in my head.” Going over to the window, she peered out into the darkness. “You ever hear things in your head, Sully?”

All the time, Dolly, he was about to say, but suddenly she said, “Son of a bitch,” with her voice so full of genuine wonder that he joined her at the window. There, lying on the ground, its outline unmistakable even in the dark, was the tree limb he and Rub were supposed to have lopped off that afternoon. Had the fucking thing fallen of its own accord? No, lying there at the base of the tree was the chain saw Rub had rented the day before. Had he gotten tired of waiting for Sully and borrowed a ladder somewhere else? Their nearest neighbor lived a good half mile away, too far to walk carrying a ladder, even an aluminum one. Had he called a tree-pruning service? Highly unlikely. Not after renting the saw. Besides, Bootsie would whack his peenie if he paid somebody else to do a job he’d promised to take care of himself. It was possible he’d called his cousins, who owned Squeers Refuse Removal, or maybe they’d driven by en route to the dump and offered to lend a hand, but he doubted it. Rub wasn’t on good-enough terms with his cousins to ask a favor, and they weren’t the sort to offer unasked. Sully himself was, so far as he knew, Rub’s only friend.

“That’s my dimwit husband for you,” Bootsie said, shaking her head in disbelief. “It takes him a month to finally do what I ask him and cut the freakin’ branch down, then he just walks away like the job’s done. What do you want to bet it’s still sitting right there a month from now?”

It was on the tip of Sully’s tongue to say Like all these dirty dishes? Like that tower of pizza boxes? but he was wise enough to hold it. “Nah, we’ll cart it off tomorrow, I promise,” he assured her.

Her purse was on the counter, and she pulled out a ten-dollar bill, then stuffed it into a glass on the sink that was crusty with orange juice. “My last ten bucks,” she said, holding up the glass as Exhibit A, “says this time tomorrow that tree limb’s still right there.”

Which pissed him off. “If you think I won’t take your money—”