Nobody's Fool

head? Who all these years later won’t admit what a dope he was?”
    They’d been down this road too, of course. It was one of Ruth’s favorite arguments against him. It was true, of course, that Kenny Roebuck had offered him a sweat equity partnership in Tip Top Construction when they were both younger men. And it was also true that Sully probably should have said yes. Still, Sully didn’t see much margin in regret. If he allowed himself the luxury of lamenting that he hadn’t become a partner in Tip Top Construction, he’d just start regretting other things, and once he started in that direction there’d be no stopping. He’d end up a maudlin old fraud like his father, telling his nurses and anyone else who would listen that he’d lived a man’s life and made a man’s mistakes. No, Sully’d decided long ago to abstain from all but the most general forms of regret. Heallowed himself the vague wish that things had turned out differently, without blaming himself that they hadn’t, any more than he’d blamed himself when his 1-2-3 triple never ran like it should at least once. It didn’t pay to second-guess every one of life’s decisions, to pretend to wisdom about the past from the safety of the present, the way so many people did when they got older. As if, given a second chance to live their lives, they’d be smarter. Sully didn’t know too many people who got noticeably smarter over the course of a lifetime. Some made fewer mistakes, but in Sully’s opinion that was because they couldn’t go quite so fast. They had less energy, not more virtue; fewer opportunities to screw up, not more wisdom. It was Sully’s policy to stick by his mistakes, which was what he did now. “I was pretty smart to say no, as it turned out,” he told Ruth. “If I owned half of Tip Top Construction and saw Carl pissing it away, I’d have to shoot the son of a bitch. Then I’d end up in jail. As it is, I’m walking around a free man and I don’t care what he does.”
    â€œWalking is right,” Ruth reminded him, “which brings us back to your needing a car.”
    â€œI’ve got the El Camino right outside,” Sully reminded her.
    â€œTerrific,” Ruth said. “So instead of owning the company car, you get to borrow it.”
    â€œI’d rather borrow it,” Sully told her truthfully, explaining that he’d already gotten a ticket in the El Camino this morning. “I put it in the glove compartment for Carl. Be a nice little surprise for him.”
    â€œAnd what do you call that?” Ruth shook her head in disbelief. It was amazing how quickly Sully could exasperate her. “Having other people pay your tickets.”
    â€œWith Carl Roebuck I call it justice,” Sully grinned.
    Ruth got angrily to her feet, started dressing. As she feared, her good mood had not survived a serious discussion with Sully. “I’ll tell Janey that’s what you call it.”
    Sully blinked. “Were we talking about Janey just now?”
    â€œOne of us was.”
    Sully sighed, swung his legs out of bed, searched for his shorts, which were somewhere in the tangle of bedding. “Well, as usual, you lost me,” he admitted.
    â€œIt’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 talkingabout 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.”
    â€œYou 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