Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“It’s never hard, once the subject of responsibility comes up,” Ruth told him, hooking her bra angrily.

Sully threw up his hands. “All I’d like to know is what you want, Ruth. One second we’re talking about traffic tickets, the next we’re talking about Janey. Is there something you want me to do for her? Is there something she wants me to do? I need a clue here, Ruth.”

“You might think about her, Sully,” Ruth explained, furious now. Maybe she wasn’t always clear in her expression, but she suspected there was something wrong with this man that he couldn’t follow connections that struck her as obvious. She suspected his blindness was intentional, that always making her explain was merely a delaying tactic. Probably he was hoping she’d be unable to put her feelings into words, a failure that would allow him to continue drifting. Trying to get Sully to see things her way was like trying to put a cat into a bag — there was always a leg left over. “You might even worry about her. That’s normal for people who care about each other.”

He was standing now with his back to her, but she could still see the swelling of his knee. “It’s the reason I worry about you, for all the good it does me.”

Sully stepped into his shorts before turning around to face her. “I never asked you to worry about me,” he said. “In fact, I’d prefer you didn’t.”

Ruth fought the tears she felt coming, finished dressing as quickly as she could, while Sully searched for his undershirt. “It’s really your plan to end up alone, isn’t it?” she said.

“It might be best,” Sully admitted.

At the motel room door, she turned back to him. “You should have forgiven your father,” she told him. “And I should have known what it meant when you didn’t.”

When she was gone, Sully studied the slammed door curiously. Somehow his father had sneaked back into the conversation. Even dead he was a crafty son of a bitch.

“You again,” Sully said, sliding onto the bar stool next to Rub, who was nursing a beer.

“Where’d you go?” Rub wondered. “I went over to Carl’s but you weren’t there.”

“I must’ve already left,” Sully explained.

“Where?”

“None of your business, Rub,” Sully told him. “There’s no law says I’ve got to spend every hour of every day with you, is there?”

Rub shrugged.

“Is there?” Sully said.

“You get mad when you want me and I’m not around,” he reminded Sully.

This was true. “Anyhow, here you are.”

“We got work?”

“Carl wasn’t there.”

“He’s in back, playing cards.” Rub nodded, indicating the big dining room, the one Tiny closed during the off-season.

“That explains it,” Sully said.

Birdie came over. “You had a call right after you left,” she said.

“Miles Anderson?”

“Miles Anderson. He wants you to call him back ‘at your very first convenience.’ ” Birdie imitated Miles Anderson’s speech. “Here’s his number.”

Sully took the slip of paper Birdie handed him and stuffed it into his pocket.

“Aren’t you going to call him?” Rub wanted to know.

“Not right now,” he said, though he knew that was exactly what he should do. That was the trouble with stupid streaks. You often knew the right thing to do, you just couldn’t locate the will.

“How come?”

“Because right now it’s not convenient,” Sully told him, confusing Rub, to whom the empty moment looked as convenient as could be. “Because I waited an hour for the bastard and now he can wait for me. Because right now I’d rather play poker. How about you?”

Rub studied the dregs of his beer sadly. “Bootsie took my money,” he confessed. “I never should have gone by the dime store,” he admitted.

“How does she always know when I’ve paid you?” Sully marveled.

“She always guesses, somehow,” Rub said, himself mystified. “Don’t do no good to lie to her, either.”

“I thought you were working this afternoon,” Carl Roebuck said when he looked up and saw Sully. There were four players in the game seated at a round table directly beneath a chandelier. In addition to Carl, the others were all men Sully knew. They could all afford to lose, too, which was good, provided they could be coerced to do it.

“I thought I was too,” Sully said, pulling up a free chair. “Just as well, though. This looks like a better career move.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” one of the other men said. “This son of a bitch is winning every other hand.”

Everyone looked at Carl Roebuck, who did not look like a man ashamed of winning.

“Mr. Lucky,” one of the men said.

Sully took out some money in order to make himself truly welcome. “His secret is, he cheats,” Sully said. “Luckily I know all his tricks, which means he’s done cheating for today.”

Carl sold Sully some chips. “You could be roofing the house on Belvedere, you know.”

Sully nodded. “Just like you to send a one-legged man up on a roof. I fall off on my head and then you don’t have to pay me all the money you owe me.”

“Have it your way.” Carl dealt cards around the table. “Even with one leg you’d be safer up there on the roof than you are here, though.”

“Can I play?” Rub said. He’d been standing just inside the doorway since they came in, eyeing the one remaining free chair. These were not men Rub presumed in the presence of.

“No, Rub,” Carl said.

“Nope,” the others agreed.

Rub looked at the floor.

“Sure, Rub,” Carl said. “Jesus. Can’t you tell when people are pulling your chain?”

In fact, Rub couldn’t. Sometimes these same men refused to let him play, claiming he stank. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to tell it was a joke now, when most of the time it wasn’t. “You didn’t deal me in,” Rub noted when he’d taken the chair next to Sully.

“You weren’t playing when the hand started,” Carl explained.

“I was standing right there,” Rub said, pointing at the air he had so recently displaced.

“How can I deal you in when you’re standing over there?” Carl said. To illustrate, he sent a card whistling through the air toward the doorway. “That what you wanted me to do?”

“Misdeal,” somebody said.

“I had a pair of wired sevens,” one man complained angrily. “That was a deliberate misdeal.”

Carl turned over his own hole cards, revealing a pair of tens.

“Mr. Lucky,” the man who had said this before repeated, then whistled the theme song.

Rub went and fetched the card Carl had tossed across the room, then sat back down. Carl reshuffled. Sully cut. Carl dealt, skipping Rub again.

“What about me?” Rub said.

“Sony, Rub,” Carl said. “Did you want to play?”

Everybody tossed their cards back in, groaned.

“Make up your mind,” Carl said. “You want to play or not?”

“In about one minute I’m going to rip your head off,” Sully said.

Carl shuffled, dealt again. “I told you you’d be happier roofing. Some people don’t know what’s good for them.”

The man to Rub’s left opened. Rub, who was a surprisingly good poker player, raised.

“Did it ever occur to you that you might be one of them?” Sully asked, calling Rub’s bet.

“I know exactly what’s good for me,” Carl said, tossing his cards into the center of the table. Two others followed, leaving just the man who had opened, Rub and Sully. Sully consulted his hole cards, which made, together with his first two up cards, a Sausalito straight — two, four, six, eight.

Tiny had set up an old space heater near the table. Its whirring reminded Sully of the sound of approaching traffic. No doubt about it, the smart thing to do would be to fold. On the other hand, Sully considered, he’d come this far.