Nobody's Fool

side of Bowdon to be theirs, neat and tidy. Which led to an obvious question. How much did they want it? “What are the back taxes?”
    â€œAre you ready?”
    â€œI think so,” Sully said, guessing five thousand dollars.
    â€œJust over ten thousand.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.”
    â€œSorry.”
    Sully took a deep breath. That settled the matter, anyway. “That’s a lot of money for a house with no floors,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to loan it to me?”
    That struck Toby Roebuck as pretty funny. “Oh, Sully,” she sighed before hanging up. “You are a stitch.”
    Vera answered on the first ring.
    â€œHi,” Sully said, not bothering to identify himself. With Vera, he always liked to go on the assumption that she’d recognize his voice, even if he hadn’t spoken to her in a year. This much he took as his due, the result of their having been married long enough to have a son. The way he saw it, any woman you married owed you that much, especially if you weren’t going to ask her for anything else. “What’s up?”
    â€œWho is this?”
    In fact, Sully was tempted to fire the same question back. Unless he’d dialed the wrong number, this had to be Vera, but it didn’t sound like her, the voice lower by several notes. Whoever it was sounded like she’d just awakened from a two-day sleep. “Vera?”
    â€œOh,” she said.
    â€œWhat do you mean, oh,” he said, already annoyed. “I had a message you called.”
    â€œJust to say you win.”
    Sully considered this. He couldn’t think of anything he’d won. Certainly not anything concerning Vera. “What the hell are you talking about?”
    â€œI just wanted to tell you that you’d won.”
    â€œWon what, Vera?” he said, but she’d already hung up.
    Sully stared at the phone for a second before hanging up and heading back to the bar where Rub and Peter were eating chicken wings. Since neither of them looked up, he went back to the phone and dialed Vera’s number again. This time the phone rang twenty times before she answered. “What the hell’s going on?” he said. “And don’t hang up on me, either. It’d take me about two minutes to get over there. Don’t think Ralph’ll keep me out either, because he won’t.”
    â€œI have no illusions about my husband ever standing up for me, Sully,” she said, her voice full of self-pity. “At the moment, he isn’t even here.”
    â€œI don’t blame him,” Sully told her. The words were out before he could call them back, not that he necessarily would have, had he been able to. When the other end was silent too long, he said, “What’s the matter, Vera? You wouldn’t have called if you didn’t want to tell me.”
    When she spoke this time, he could hear the give in her voice. “It’s just that … I’ve tried … so … hard,” she finally sobbed.
    Sully was suspicious of his ex-wife’s grief, knowing from long experience Vera’s inclination toward theater. With Vera the road to hysteria was short in all situations, large and small.
    â€œYou never tried at all,” she continued, “and you end up with him.”
    â€œIs it Peter we’re talking about?” Sully said, catching, he thought, a glimmer. He’d been so sure this would be about Will that he couldn’t switch gears.
    â€œYou won,” she said again, “but you didn’t win much.”
    â€œThe hell with you, Vera,” he said, ready himself to hang up.
    â€œHave him tell you about the foul-mouthed little tramp he’s got in Morgantown.”
    â€œPeter doesn’t tell me shit, Vera,” Sully assured her.
    â€œHe will,” she told him. “You’re soul mates. I’m the one he despises.”
    â€œYou’re crazy, too.”
    Silence again. More theater, probably. Though perhaps something else. “You know when you’ve lost somebody, Sully. At least I do. Practice makes perfect. When something means the world to me, I know it’s only a matter of time.”
    â€œYou haven’t lost Peter,” he told her. “And I certainly haven’t won him. I haven’t even tried to win him.”
    â€œThat’s what attracts him,” she said, sniffling now.