Nobody's Fool

trusted, she knew, to keep her secret. She wished the same could be said for Mrs. Gruber, whom Clive Jr. used, Miss Beryl suspected, to check up on her. Mrs. Gruber denied this, of course, but then she would, having been forbidden by her friend to communicate any information of a personal nature to Clive Jr. But Miss Beryl was pretty sure Mrs. Gruber was a snitch just the same. Clive Jr. could be ingratiating, and one of Mrs. Gruber’s chief enjoyments in life was discussing other people’s illnesses and accidents. Miss Beryl doubted that her friend could resist an insidious sweet-talker like Clive Jr.
    Still at the front window, Miss Beryl peered for a long time through the blinds and up the street in the direction of Mrs. Gruber’s house. Quarter to seven. The street was still silent, the new blanket of snow spoiled by just the one set of dark tire tracks. Miss Beryl sighed and stared up into the web of tree limbs, starkly black against the white morning sky. “Fall,” she said, pleased and heartened as she always was by the sound of her own decisive voice. “See if I care.”
    â€œYou probably
wouldn’t
care if I fell,” said a voice behind her. “I bet you’d laugh, in fact.”
    Miss Beryl had been so preoccupied with her thoughts, she had not heard her living room door open or her tenant enter. It seemed only a few seconds before that she’d heard him snort awake in the upstairs bedroom, surely not enough time to rise, dress, do all the early morning things a civilized person had to do. But of course men were strange creatures and not, strictly speaking, civilized at all, most of them. The one she saw standing before her in his stocking feet, work boots dangling from their leather laces, had no doubt simply rolled out of bed and into his clothes. She doubted he wore pajamas, probably slept in his shorts the way Clive Sr. had, then grabbed the first pair of trousers he saw, the ones draped across a chair or over the bottom of the bed. Knowing Sully, he probably slept in his socks to save time.
    Not that her tenant was much worse than most men. He had the laborer’s habit of bathing after his day’s work was done instead of in the morning, which meant that when he awoke he had only two immediate needs—to relieve himself and to locate a cup of coffee. In Sully’s case the coffee was two blocks away at Hattie’s Lunch, and he often arrived there before he was completely awake. He left his work boots downstairs in the hall by the back door. For some reason he liked to put them on in Miss Beryl’s downstairs flat rather than his own. The boots always left a dirty trail, in winter a muddy print on the hardwood floor, in summer a dry cluster of tiny pebbles which Miss Beryl would sweep into a dustpan when he’d left. Men in general, Miss Beryl had observed, seldom took note of what they trailed behind them, but Sully was particularly oblivious, his wake particularly messy. Still, Miss Beryl wouldn’t have given a nickel for a fastidious man, and she didn’t mind cleaning up after Sully each morning. He provided her a small task, and her days had few enough of these. “Lordy,” Miss Beryl said. “Sneak up on an old woman.”
    â€œI thought you were talking to me, Mrs. Peoples,” Sully told her. He was the only person she knew who called her “missus,” and the gesture reserved for him a special place in Miss Beryl’s heart. “I just thought I’d stop in to make sure you didn’t die in your sleep.”
    â€œNot yet,” she told him.
    â€œYou’re talking to yourself, though,” he pointed out, “so it can’t be long.”
    â€œI wasn’t talking to myself. I was talking to Ed,” Miss Beryl informed her tenant, indicating Ed on the wall.
    â€œOh,” Sully said, feigning relief. “And here I thought you were going batty.”
    He sat down heavily on Miss Beryl’s Queen Anne chair, causing her to wince. The chair was delicate, a gift from Clive Sr., who had bought it for her at an antique shop in Schuyler Springs. She had talked him into buying it, actually. Clive Sr. had thought it too fragile, with its slender curved legs and arms. A large man, he’d pointed out that if he ever sat in it, “the damn thing” would probably collapse and run him through. “It wasn’t my intention for you to sit in it, ever,” Miss Beryl had