Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

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 prefight 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 tightly 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. “Your wife’ll be out in a minute. You can give her a lift home. She looks beat.”

Zack wasn’t ready to sit down. “I’m not sure I like walking in here and finding you,” he complained.

Sully shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s one of three restaurants in town.” He thumbed the sliver of Bermuda onion and flicked it into the rubber plant with his forefinger.

“How come you’re sitting way down here in the dark?”

“I don’t know, Zachary.” Sully sighed. “Do I need a reason? Do I follow you around and ask you how come you sit in one chair and not another one?”

Zack didn’t have an answer.

“Pretty funny, you sitting here in the dark,” Zack managed, though he’d clearly lost the edge, somehow. He couldn’t help thinking he should have had Sully in some kind of corner, that the other man had a hell of a lot of explaining to do. But here they were arguing pleasantly over whether Sully had a right to sit in here by himself in the dark if he felt like it. Which he did, Zack had to admit.

Ruth emerged from the kitchen drying her hands on a rag. She glared at Zack, who immediately fidgeted guiltily. “What’s the matter?” she said. “Can’t start a fight?”

“What’s he doing here?”

“Let’s you and me go home, sport,” Ruth said. “ I’ll fight with you.”

Zack looked like he’d rather fight with Sully and was sorry now to have missed the opportunity.

Ruth turned to Sully. “I’d like to go home tonight,” she said. “Are you going to leave me a tip or what?”

“I’m half afraid to,” Sully said. “Some not-too-bright person might get the wrong idea.”

“Let him,” Ruth said. “Somebody’s got to make a living in this family.”

Zack watched his wife pick up the dollar and change Sully put on the table.

“Not the sort of tip that would make anybody suspicious, is it?” she said, stuffing the money into her husband’s shirt pocket. “Can I trust you to act like a grown-up for about two minutes while I get my coat?”

“Sure.” Zack shrugged, not looking up from the floor.

When Ruth was gone, Sully again motioned to the bench across from him, and this time Zack sighed and sat down. He looked so pitiful and unhappy that Sully had half a mind to tell him the truth and promise to reform. “I don’t know, Zachary,” he admitted instead.

Zack was studying his fingernails now. “Me neither, I guess,” he said.

Which made Sully laugh.

Which made Zack grin sheepishly. “I don’t know what I’m worried about even,” he admitted. “Hell, I’m a grandpa and she’s a grandma.”

“Me, too,” Sully said, his knee humming to the tune his grandson Wacker had taught it that morning. “A grandfather, that is.”

Zack shrugged. “We’re too old to get ourselves arrested for fighting in public, I guess.”

“That’s assuming that people would recognize it as fighting.”

Ruth came out with her coat on, stood by the door. “Well,” she barked. “Come on, dumbbell.”

Sully and Zack exchanged glances. “I think she means you,” Sully said.

Zack got up slowly. He knew who she meant without having to be told. “You drive,” Ruth told him as they headed out the door. “I want both my hands free.”

When the door swung shut behind them, Vince came out of the kitchen and started switching off the restaurant’s remaining lights and singing, “Hello, young lovers, wherever you are.” When he pulled the plug on the jukebox, it made a resentful sound before the light went out. “Tell the truth and shame the Devil,” he said. “Are you doing the two-step with young Mrs. Roebuck? Don’t tell me you’re too tired, either.”

Sully slid out of the booth. “I suppose I could find the energy if she’d have me,” he admitted. It was a question he had never seriously considered. “My guess is she loves her husband. Why is a mystery, but apparently she does.”

“What makes you think so?”

Sully didn’t know why he thought so exactly, but he did. Maybe because she was supposed to. Maybe because every other young woman in Bath seemed to.

“The reason I ask,” Vince said, “is that I keep hearing she’s involved with somebody in Schuyler.”

“I doubt it,” Sully said, perhaps too quickly.

“You do?” Vince grinned.

“I do.”

“I don’t.” Vince said. “Know why?”

“No, why.”

“Because I don’t want to go through life like that dumb bastard Zack. Twenty years you and Ruth have been giving him horns, and he still can’t make up his feeble mind if it’s true. I’d rather be suspicious than a damn fool.”