Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

Gus held up the envelope. “Aren’t you concerned I’ll call this Janet Applebaum and tell her all about you?”

Kurt waved this off. “No need. Already done. Trust me. The good woman has been forewarned, and in no uncertain terms. Unfortunately, I think she may have concluded that the person warning her was deranged, just as you did.”

“You are deranged.”

“Jeez,” he said, emptying the last of the bottle into his glass. “I’ve drunk the lion’s share of this, haven’t I?”

Gus took a sip from his glass. The wine tasted better now, the fear-induced nausea having pretty much passed, leaving in its place little but sadness. “What’s wrong with Alice, Kurt? What have you done to her?”

“You give me too much credit. It’s true I may have undermined her confidence from time to time, but I never told her anything about herself that she didn’t already know. Like most people, Alice was complicit every step of the way. But I doubt any permanent damage has been done. If she had a good man, she’d be right as rain.”

“Instead she’s got you.”

“Poor Alice,” he agreed. “I think she’s fond of you. She has no idea you’re gay, of course.”

“I’m not, Kurt.”

He shrugged, as if the point wasn’t worth arguing over. “Next you’ll be telling me you have no political ambitions.”

To this, Gus offered no response.

“Jesus,” Kurt said, rubbing his temples. “I can actually see your mind working. You’re thinking, Good guess — right? Every English professor has a novel in his desk drawer; every poli-sci prof wants to prove that those who teach can sometimes do?”

Which was pretty much what Gus had been thinking. But really, how could this psychopath know about his long-range plans? He’d never spoken about them to anyone.

“The house is a good idea,” Kurt said. “The one on Upper Main Street, by the Sans Souci? The one you keep going back to look at? Needs work but, as they say in the biz, it’s got good bones. And Bath prices can only go up.”

“You’ve been following me.”

Kurt snorted at this. “You think I’m behind you, Gus? Really? Because what should be coming into focus right about now is how far ahead of you I’ve been, right from the start. But getting back to the house? Good idea. Outsiders seldom fare well in small-town politics. Gotta sink those roots into the community, have some skin in the game. So yeah, make an offer. Use locals to renovate, even if they fuck everything up.”

Conclusions Gus had already come to. Why did it make him feel better to have a man he viscerally loathed confirm the wisdom of his strategy?

“Which leaves only the other thing you’ve been mulling over. Will people in a jerkwater town like Bath vote for a gay?”

“This again.”

“Hey, it’s not me you have to convince. Good-looking woman at your side just might do the trick, is all I’m saying.”

Gus put the letter back in the envelope. “You said you had a couple favors.”

“Right,” he said, sitting up straight and doing a little drum solo on the table with his thumbs. “Almost forgot. If it’s not too much to ask, I was hoping you might look in on Alice while I’m gone. Make sure she’s okay? Moving again so soon is kind of freaking her out. I’m flying out to California the day after tomorrow. I need to find us a place to live, meet my new staff, give them their marching orders, arrange for the movers, a hundred other things. I should be back by the middle of the month, though, and like I said, after that we’ll be out of your hair.”

Kurt rose, his glass empty now, along with the bottle, and extended his hand. When Gus hesitated, he actually looked hurt. “Come on,” he said, “nobody died. Why be a bad sport? I’d feel better if we parted as friends.”

Hating himself, Gus shook the man’s hand.

“I have your promise? You’ll look after Alice while I’m gone?”

“Yes, that I will do.”

“You know what,” Kurt said. “You play your cards right, you could come out of this with what you want.” He shrugged, again. “Or what you imagine you want.”

—

SO, GUS THOUGHT, in the end it had been a bargain, and Alice herself a plastic chip. Had he sensed this even from the start? Over the next few weeks the exact nature of the covenant took shape. Gus had looked in on Alice, as promised. Though she was even more fretful than usual, she didn’t seem to need him for much beyond a half gallon of milk or a dozen eggs if he happened to be going to the store. He didn’t wonder why their station wagon was absent from the driveway, since Kurt would’ve driven it to Albany to catch his flight and left it in long-term parking. Alice didn’t drive and had no use for it. One morning he asked her why, given that she was trying not to sleep so much, she always kept the place so dark, the drapes drawn tightly shut in the middle of the day. “He likes it like that,” she told him.

“But Kurt isn’t here,” he pointed out. “How do you like it?”

She seemed to consider this, her own preference, for the first time. With the drapes pulled back, the apartment flooded with natural light, Gus began to notice things were missing. He’d only been there once before and hadn’t been paying close attention, but hadn’t there been a laptop set up in the kitchen nook? A Bose radio?

“Has Kurt telephoned you?” he asked the following day. She responded, as if to a trick question, “I don’t think so.” He noticed the phalanx of pill bottles lined up along the kitchen windowsill, all prescription drugs: Paxil, Xanax, a few others.

“I’m not well,” she explained when he asked what they were for. “They help me to not be so frightened.”

When Kurt had been gone a week, Gus asked if he might have a look in their bedroom. If Alice saw anything strange in this request, she gave no sign. Some of Kurt’s clothes were hanging from the rod in the closet, but fewer than Gus would’ve expected. His dresser drawers contained underwear and some stray, unmatched socks, a few yellowing handkerchiefs — the sort of things Gus had crammed into the back of his own drawers — but where was the good stuff? Gradually it came to him that what he was looking at was a snake’s shed skin, which in turn caused him to recall something in their final conversation that had barely registered at the time. Twice Kurt had used the phrase “be out of your hair.” The second time he’d said we. The first time he’d used the pronoun I. The first had been a slip. Kurt wasn’t coming back.

Slowly, as if the thrown-back drapes were allowing for all manner of illumination, Alice began to show signs of similar understanding, though she continued to insist that Kurt would shortly return, after which they’d begin their new lives in California. To Gus, such statements felt like trial balloons. Would he contradict her? “Why don’t I cook us dinner tonight?” he suggested one morning before heading in to work. He’d prepare the food in his kitchen and bring it over. They could eat outside on the back patio with the sliding door open so Alice could hear the phone if it rang. “Should I?” she said, clearly tempted when he offered her a glass of wine, and he told her he thought one glass wouldn’t hurt. He also advised her to consult a local physician about how many of the medications she was taking were really necessary. After dessert, when he rose to go back next door, he said, as if the thought had just that moment occurred to him, “How would you like it if I looked after you from now on?”

She regarded him with an expression that he took to be midway between knowledge and innocence. “You’re a very nice man,” she said, “but what about Kurt?”