Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Sully frowned and considered this, unsure whether Toby Roebuck was issuing him an invitation or wishing her husband a painfully broken knee. The latter, he decided, since it made more sense. “He’s given you the clap?”

“Only three times,” she said.

“Jesus,” Sully said, genuinely surprised. He’d always been amazed that Toby Roebuck managed to take her husband’s myriad infidelities in stride. Even this latest outrage she reported matter-of-factly, as if venereal disease were part of an equation she understood, or should have understood, when she married Carl Roebuck. As if this third dose of the clap was beginning to strain her tolerance. To Sully it was spooky. Tolerance of male misbehavior had not been prominently in evidence with any of the women Sully’d ever found himself involved. In fact, they identified, judged and exacted punishment for his misdeeds in one swift, efficient motion. It didn’t make any kind of sense, Sully recognized, that this young woman, who could have any man in the county for the asking, would stick with one who kept giving her the clap.

“I warned him last week to fire that little tramp at the office. She’s a walking incubator.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Sully said, though there was nothing to worry about. The only thing Ruby had ever offered him was her contempt.

“You tell me, Sully,” she said, studying him seriously. “What does it mean that he won’t fire her?”

Sully shrugged. “I don’t think he’s in love with her, if that’s what you mean.”

Toby considered this, as if she wasn’t sure what she’d meant.

“To be honest,” Sully admitted, “I have no idea why he does what he does. Most of the time I don’t even know why I do what I do, much less anybody else.” He’d finished his cup of coffee, pushed it toward the center of the table. “Thanks for the coffee. Hang in there.”

“That’s the sum of your wisdom on the subject?” she said, pretending outrage. “Hang in there?”

“I hate to tell you, dolly, but that’s the sum of my wisdom on all subjects. You sure you don’t want to write me that check while you’re feeling rebellious?”

“That he’d never forgive me for.”

Sully got to his feet, flexed at the knee. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll settle for a lift downtown.”

“Where’s your sad-ass truck?”

“Stuck in the mud,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Old stick-in-the-mud Sully,” she grinned at him in a way that made him wonder if he had been given an invitation earlier. “That’s one thing I have to say about Carl”—pulling her parka off the hook by the door—“he never settles.”

The “even for me” she left unspoken.

Sully had Toby Roebuck drop him off in front of the OTB, which was a good place to look for somebody who probably wasn’t there. “You didn’t see me today, in case anybody asks,” he reminded her as he got out.

“See who?” Toby said.

Sully started to answer, then realized she was making a joke.

“Come see me in my play,” she suggested.

“You got any nude scenes?”

“Tell me something,” she said, before he closed the door. “What were you like when you were young?”

“Just like this,” he said. “Only more.”

The OTB was busy as usual, though a quick scan of the premises did not turn up Rub among the crowd. Between eleven and twelve on weekdays the North Bath OTB was always occupied by a small army of retired men in pale yellow and powder blue windbreakers who would disappear by noon, heading home to lunches of tuna-fish sandwiches on white bread and steaming bowls of Campbell’s tomato soup, surrendering the field to the poorer, more desperate, more compulsive types who turned the state’s profit. This late in the year, the well-scrubbed, well-mannered windbreaker men all wore sweaters beneath their jackets, and many wore scarves at the insistence of their wives, who, since their husbands’ retirement, had come to treat them like school-bound children, making sure their scarves were wrapped high and snug about their wattled throats, jackets zipped up as far as they would go. Toasty was the word these wives used. Toasty warm. In response to being treated like children, these husbands retaliated by behaving like children, unzipping and unwrapping as soon as they were safely out of sight. They shared the child’s natural aversion to heavy winter wear and could not be induced to don bulky overcoats until it snowed and the snow stayed. It had snowed today, but the snow was melting.

“Sully!” they cheered when he came in, all doffing their baseball caps. Sully knew most of these men and liked them well enough, their comparative good fortune notwithstanding. Why shouldn’t they wear thin windbreakers in late November? They left warm houses at midmorning, got into cars with good heaters that had been sitting in warm, if not toasty warm, garages overnight, drove five minutes to the donut shop, dashed inside where it was warm, and there they stayed, gossiping over hot coffee refills, until it was time to visit the OTB and play their daily double. Then home again. When they wanted a change of pace, they visited the insurance office or the hardware store or the post office or the drugstore where they’d worked for thirty years before retiring. They were never outside long enough to find out what the temperature was, much less catch a cold, and so they all looked hale and hearty and weather resistant even in their out-of-season clothing.

They were insulated against cold economic weather too. Having spent their working lives in North Bath, they were not rich, but they were comfortable, and they congratulated themselves that they’d be more comfortable still if Bath real estate would just go ahead and boom like everybody was predicting. Or like everybody in Bath was predicting. Albany had already spilled northward, and realtors were predicting excitedly that the entire interstate corridor would share in the boom. The best of the shabby old Victorian houses along Glendale, like the Roebucks’, had already been bought up and restored by young men and women, most of whom worked in Albany. They hopped on the interstate in the morning and returned in the evening, a twenty-five-minute drive. These OTB men were angry with themselves for having once considered the old Victorians mere dinosaurs. Thirty years ago such houses could have been bought for a song, but instead they had built well-insulated, new, split-level ranches with picture windows. These were also beginning to creep up in assessed value and taxes, but much more slowly. They all knew now they could have made their killing in the Victorians if they’d guessed that an entire generation of Vietnam draft protesters in torn, faded jeans would end up with money and spend it resuscitating decrepit old houses. Now all they could do was watch the value of their split-levels inch up and worry about timing. Higher taxes were eating into their pensions and Social Security and savings. They didn’t want to sell their split-levels too early, only to discover that the real boom in the market hadn’t come yet. The conventional wisdom seemed to be that things were just beginning to pick up momentum, what with the Sans Souci scheduled to reopen in the summer and the groundbreaking on the amusement park imminent.

But, of course, waiting was risky, too. What if the Ultimate Escape deal collapsed at the last minute? They didn’t want to wait too long and find themselves stuck with their dream homes of thirty years ago. They had new dream homes now — condos in warmer climes — and they spent the long mornings discussing these. Most favored condos on the Florida gulf, except these were getting expensive and there were disturbing reports of alligators lumbering out of the glades and devouring small children. The windbreaker men didn’t have any small children, but the alligator stories haunted them anyway, a single incident circulating so many times that you’d have thought there was an army of Florida alligators advancing against a defenseless line of condos all the way from the Everglades to St. Petersburg. Even the golf courses were rumored to be full of alligators. Talk about your hazards. For this reason an increasing number of these morning OTB men favored Arizona, where the condos were rumored to be cheaper and where there weren’t any alligators. There were rattlesnakes and scorpions and tarantulas and spiders and Gila monsters, but none of these were big enough to glom onto a man and drag him back into the swamp to eat. In the desert there weren’t even any swamps to drag you into.