Nobody's Fool

you’ll discover how hard it is to find another one-legged attorney who’s always in a good mood.”
    â€œHe’s right, too,” Birdie said seriously when the door closed behind Wirf. “I don’t know how we’ll replace him.”
    Sully frowned. “Why would we want to? He’s right there on that bar stool about eight hours a day.”
    â€œI hear he’s a sick man,” Birdie said.
    Sully considered this possibility. “I don’t think so,” he said. “He just drinks too much.”
    â€œMy cousin works up at the hospital,” Birdie said ominously. “According to her, his liver’s about gone. He’s been peeing blood for months.”
    â€œWirf?” Sully said. Hell, he started to say, they’d been standing together side by side peeing into the trough in The Horse’s men’s room every night for the past ten years. Except that this wasn’t true, Sully realized. Lately, though he couldn’t recall when it had started, Wirf had been peeing in the single-stall commode. “He doesn’t look sick,” Sully said weakly.
    Birdie shook her head. “He looks sick as hell. When was the last time you really looked at him?”
    â€œHe’d have said something,” Sully said.
    â€œNo,” Birdie said. “He wouldn’t.”
    She was right, too, Sully was suddenly sure. Wirf wouldn’t have said shit if he had a mouthful. “I hope you’re wrong, Birdie.”
    â€œMe too,” she said. “Go make your phone call.”
    Ruth picked up on the first ring. “Hi,” Sully said. “That you that called The Horse?”
    â€œIt was,” she said. “I’ve got exactly an hour and a half if you feel up to some love in the afternoon.”
    â€œThere is nothing in this wide world I’d like more,” Sully said quite honestly. “Except a new truck.” More honestly still. A new truck and an assurance that what he’d just heard about Wirf wasn’t true.
    â€œDid he say, ‘Go with eggs’?” Birdie wondered when Sully returned.
    â€œWho?” Sully said.
    â€œWirf,” Birdie said. “He said,
‘Vaya con huevos.’ 
”
    â€œI wasn’t paying any attention,” Sully admitted.
    â€œNo kidding,” Birdie said.
    â€œYou’re just all discombobulated,” Mrs. Gruber explained in response to Miss Beryl’s announcement that she was not in the best of spirits. Discombobulated was one of Mrs. Gruber’s favorite terms, and when she used it over the phone, she did so unself-consciously, as if it were common, a word you’d hear half a dozen times in conversations everywhere, regardless of demographics. “I’m all discombobulated myself,” she told Miss Beryl. “I just can’t help thinking it’s Monday.” She went on to explain why. Yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, they’d gone out for dinner at the Northwoods Inn, a place they seldom visited except for Sunday dinner. So yesterday hadbecome Sunday in Mrs. Gruber’s mind, which meant that today had to be Monday.
    â€œI don’t see what difference it makes,” Miss Beryl told her friend irritably. It wasn’t as if Mrs. Gruber now had to look forward to a workweek instead of a weekend. “Let it be Monday if it wants to.”
    Mrs. Gruber considered this lunatic advice. “Well,” she said after a brief pause. “I see somebody’s grumpy today.”
    This was true enough. The dreadful Joyce woman was gone at last. She’d finally emerged groggily from the guest bedroom at eleven o’clock in the morning, having finally been awakened by the telephone. Clive Jr. had called three times between nine and eleven to check on her. It was his plan to finish up at the bank and take her to lunch in Schuyler Springs, there being no suitable place in Bath. Proximity to Schuyler was a good way to sell Bath, Clive Jr. had long ago discovered. His usual strategy was to put visitors up in a plush Schuyler Springs hotel, wine and dine them there, take them to the races or to a concert in the summer and thereby impress them that all this was only ten minutes from where the money’d be spent. When he could avoid it, he never took potential investors to Bath at all.
    â€œDo you think she’s all right?” he asked Miss Beryl the last time he called. “I can’t believe she’s still