Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“ You’d miss me, snookums,” Carl Roebuck said confidently, giving Sully a pinch on the cheek.

To celebrate, lunch at The Horse.

As usual during the noon hour, the place was crowded with businessmen from up and down the length of Main Street, every table taken. There were three stools at the end of the bar, though, and Sully pointed Rub and Peter in their direction. Clive Jr. and a woman Sully’d never seen before were just getting up from a table near the window. When Clive Jr. saw Sully, his face clouded over and he looked at the woman he was with almost fearfully, Sully thought.

“I got to go talk to that prick,” Carl said when Sully, Peter and Rub headed for the bar.

“Who? The Bank?”

“I’m hearing things I don’t want to hear,” Carl said. “That goddamn deal is heading south. I can feel it.”

“The theme park?”

“What a putz,” Carl said, eyeing Clive Jr. across the room. “If it’d been me I’d have had that Texas big shot laid and then blown and then back on a plane before the ink was dry on the contract. Dickhead over there is just like his old man. The square of all squares. Can you believe that woman he’s going to marry?”

“She’s not getting much of a bargain, either,” Sully reminded him. “Go ahead. We’ll send the check over when we’re done.”

“It’d be just like you,” Carl Roebuck said.

“Slide down one,” Sully told Rub, indicating the next stool.

Rub looked reluctant. “How come?”

“So I can be on the end.”

“How come?”

“So you won’t swing around on that stool and bang my knee, like you’re so fond of doing.”

Rub moved. “How come I’m always the one you boss?” he wondered, settling onto the middle stool.

Sully moved the stool Rub had vacated so he could stand next to it. “What? You want me to give Peter an order, is that it?”

Rub shrugged, embarrassed to have instigated open conflict.

“Well?” Sully said.

“I just don’t see—”

Sully held up a hand and Rub stopped. “I just want to know what would make you happy, Rub. If it’ll make you happy, I’ll give Peter a direct order. And if he’s smart he’ll do as he’s told, too.”

Rub shrugged again, but clearly the idea appealed to him.

“Are you ready?” Sully said. “Are you paying attention?”

Rub said he was.

“Son.”

“What?” said Peter, who seemed not to be in the mood for such games. He was still half angry about Will, was Sully’s guess.

“I want you to stay right where you are,” Sully told him. “Don’t get off that fucking stool. That’s an order.”

Peter surrendered a reluctant grin. “Okay,” he said.

Sully turned back to Rub. “There,” he said. “You happy now?”

Rub was not happy, but he knew better than to say so. Blessedly, Birdie came over and was waiting to take their order. “We got a new item,” she told them. “Hot buffalo wings.”

“I didn’t know buffalos had wings,” said Peter, who for some reason was fond of Birdie, or of her flattery of himself.

Rub frowned, stared at Peter malevolently. “They don’t,” he said, then checked with Sully to make sure.

“You had two calls,” Birdie said. “Your ex and Mrs. Roebuck.”

“Okay,” Sully said dubiously, fishing around in his pants pocket for change. “What’s your mother want to talk to me about?”

“No clue,” Peter said, insincerely, it seemed to Sully.

He located two dimes. “She probably wants to inform me I’m not much of a grandfather,” he decided. “Okay if I tell her you already did?”

“You want to order, at least, before you run off?” Birdie said.

“A hamburger,” Sully said.

“You don’t want to try the wings?”

“All right, suit yourself,” Sully said.

“Don’t get huffy. I was just asking.”

“Cheeseburger,” Rub said when Birdie looked at him.

“Try the wings,” Sully suggested.

“Okay,” Rub said.

“How about you, handsome?” Birdie said to Peter.

“Hamburger. Fries.”

“Make it easy on yourself,” Sully told her on the way to the pay phone. “Bring us three orders of wings.”

Since there was no way to guess how long these calls would take, Sully took his bar stool with him and set it up beneath the pay telephone. He had two calls to make. One to the prettiest girl in Bath, who just conceivably might have been calling to extend some invitation, and one from his ex-wife, who’d almost certainly called to read him the riot act about something. Who to call back first?

“Hi, dolly,” Sully said when Toby Roebuck answered. “Your no-good husband’s down here at The Horse.” Clive Jr. and the woman he was with had left. Carl had joined a table of local businessmen and had begun to tell them what a putz Clive Jr. was, Sully could tell. “He just ordered lunch. I can be there in five minutes.”

“You talk a good fight over the phone,” she said. It was amazing how she never missed a beat calling his bluffs. In fact, it was probably this that convinced him that he was bluffing. “Besides,” she said. “You couldn’t be here in five minutes. It takes you that long just to climb the stairs.”

“I bet I could cut my time in half for the right reason,” Sully told her. It was true. He did talk a good fight over the phone. “What the hell’s this I hear about you being knocked up?”

“Too true,” Toby Roebuck admitted. “Is he still strutting and crowing?”

“like the little bantam rooster he is.”

“You gotta love him.”

“Nope,” Sully said. “ You gotta love him.”

“Anyway,” Toby Roebuck said like a woman who’d enjoyed about as much banter as she could stand. “Here’s the skinny on the house.”

“What house?”

“Your house, Sully. Turn the page. We’ve moved on to a new subject.”

Sully remembered now that Carl had asked her to check on the status of the Bowdon Street house, and he became aware of something like a hope regarding it, a hope that was there before he could banish it.

“Technically,” she said, “you still own it.”

“Technically,” Sully repeated, not much caring for the sound of the word.

“You’re in what’s called a redemption period. You’ve been in it for over a month. You must have gotten a notice.”

“I must’ve,” Sully agreed.

Toby Roebuck let that go. “What it means is that somebody has contracted to purchase the house for back taxes. But if you come up with the same money by February first, the property reverts to you.”

“Who bought it?”

“I don’t know. The buyers are not required to disclose their identities.”

Sully considered this. “Well,” he said after a moment, “whoever bought it is in for a big surprise, because I just sold the floors to your husband.”

“Hmmmm.”

“Who would want it is what I’d like to know,” Sully said, though even as he wondered, it occurred to him that the owners of the Sans Souci might want the tiny postage stamp of property that abutted their land. Maybe they just wanted everything on the north side of Bowdon to be theirs, neat and tidy. Which led to an obvious question. How much did they want it? “What are the back taxes?”

“Are you ready?”

“I think so,” Sully said, guessing five thousand dollars.

“Just over ten thousand.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Sorry.”

Sully took a deep breath. That settled the matter, anyway. “That’s a lot of money for a house with no floors,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to loan it to me?”

That struck Toby Roebuck as pretty funny. “Oh, Sully,” she sighed before hanging up. “You are a stitch.”