Nobody's Fool

“listen, Mr. Anderson. What do you say we start all over? You could begin by saying you’re sorry for standing me up, and then I could say I’m sorry for being insolent, and then we could set up another time to meet at the house, and you could promise to be there this time, and we could just go from there.”
    â€œHow’s ten in the morning?” Miles Anderson suggested.
    â€œWe skipped a few things there, didn’t we?” Sully observed. “Okay, ten. I’ll be the one wearing a carnation in my lapel.”
    â€œI wonder. Might I ask you a question?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œHave you been drinking?”
    â€œOnly a little. Can I ask you one? What do you do for a living?”
    â€œI’m a university professor.”
    â€œSo is my son.”
    Incredulity. “Indeed?”
    â€œHe was just denied tenure.”
    â€œThese are dark times. Where?”
    â€œWest Virginia.”
    â€œOh, my,” Miles Anderson said. “Where
does
one go from there?”
    When Sully returned to the game, Carl Roebuck was selling chips to Wirf, who had come in while Sully was on the phone. Sully could tell at a glance that Wirf was drunk. When the transaction was complete, Carl Roebuck still had about ninety percent of the chips stacked in front of himself. Still, Sully was optimistic. The winter’s worth of work he’d counted on had returned, and having Wirf in the game meant he didn’t have to worry about going bust right away. Sully sat, then stood again and walked around his chair, clockwise first, then counterclockwise, to dispel the afternoon’s bad luck. “Red River round a green monkey’s asshole,” he added, making a complicated sign in the air over the deck of cards.
    â€œYou through?” Carl said, picking up the deck.
    â€œYes, I am.”
    â€œWant to cut?”
    â€œNo, they’re fine now.”
    Actually, the cards were fine for Carl Roebuck. Before Sully could get adjusted again, the pot was up to forty dollars and Sully realized he’d have been wise to drop two cards ago. To make matters worse, Wirf was beaming at him so benevolently that Sully half expected him to make the sort of maudlin declaration of friendship Wirf was capable of when his blood alcohol level achieved a certain balance.
    â€œWhat?” Sully finally said.
    â€œI’m trying to communicate with you telepathically.” Wirf grinned drunkenly.
    â€œWell, quit it,” Sully said.
    â€œDon’t waste your time,” Carl Roebuck agreed, tossing chips into the center of the table. “The only way to communicate with Sully is to hit him in the head with a shovel.”
    â€œScrew you both,” Sully said, raising the bet.
    By the time they finished, it was a seventy-dollar pot. Carl won it with a full house and pulled the money toward him sadly.
    â€œI was telepathically advising you to drop,” Wirf explained, tossing in his three deuces faceup.
    Sully tossed his own cards in facedown. He didn’t want anyone to know what he’d stayed in with.
    The game broke up at five when three of the players said they’d better go home and eat some leftover turkey while they were still welcome. “I’m going to have to bring my wife in for testing,” a man named Herbert remarked, pushing his chair back from the table, pocketing what money Carl Roebuck hadn’t won. “Just her and me anymore, and every year she buys the biggest turkey in the store. We eat off the son of a bitch all the way to Christmas, and then she buys another one even bigger.”
    â€œI like turkey,” Rub said.
    â€œI used to myself,” Herbert said, “before I had to eat fifty pounds of it every year.”
    â€œShould we wake him up?” somebody wondered in reference to Wirf, who had fallen asleep with his mouth open midway through the last hand. Wirf, playing drunk and unpredictably, had been the final nail in Sully’s coffin.
    â€œLet him sleep,” said Sully, who had come to view sleep as a precious commodity since his knee.
    In the bar it was warmer than in the back room, and Sully realizedhe’d been cold and achy for about two hours and wondered if he was coming down with something. Maybe it would be quick and painless and fatal.
    Carl Roebuck, having stuffed his winnings into his pockets, slid onto the bar stool next to Sully. “Well, smart guy, how bad was the damage?”
    Sully ran