Nobody's Fool

made a face. “He’s the one they’re trying to fire, right?”
    â€œHe and I just had a little difference of opinion,” Sully said. “He should be just about coming to.”
    Toby studied first Sully, then Peter, who nodded at her ruefully that this was true. “Sully, Sully, Sully,” she observed.
    And so now they were racing through the dusk toward the lake where the Roebucks’ camp was located, their load of hardwood rattling so noisily in the back that they practically had to shout to be heard above the racket.
    â€œShe’s one of the nicest, too,” Sully observed in response to Peter’s observation about Toby’s being the prettiest woman in Bath. “Her husband treats her like shit, of course. He’s given her the clap three times this year. Can you imagine doing that to a girl like her?”
    Peter didn’t answer the question right away, perhaps because he was trying to interpret it. After a moment Sully noticed his son was grinning at him in the near dark. “What?” he said.
    â€œHow long have you had this crush on her?”
    Sully frowned at him. “She’s a little young for me.”
    â€œThat’s not what I asked,” Peter pointed out, still grinning at him slyly.
    â€œI just hate to see such a nice girl treated like that, is all,” he explained.
    Again Peter delayed answering for a meaningful beat, then finally said, “Okay.”
    â€œYou don’t believe me, wise ass?”
    â€œWhatever you say,” Peter agreed, looking ahead at the Bronco’s taillights. “You’d probably have better luck if you thought of her as a woman. Women don’t like to be referred to as ‘girls’ anymore.”
    â€œThey don’t?”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œYou learn that at the university?”
    â€œAmong other things.”
    â€œAnd now you know all the right things to say?”
    â€œNope,” he said. “Just some of the wrong ones.”
    â€œWhat happened to the shy kid you used to be?”
    â€œI don’t know. Why?”
    â€œI liked him.”
    â€œReally?” Peter said. “You should have said something.”
    The Roebucks’ camp was located on the far end of the lake, accessible via a rutted, unpaved road that wound in and out of the trees along the water’s edge. The water was a sheet of glass reflecting the quarter moon. They’d left all the other camps behind when Toby finally pulled off the road and down a steep embankment, parking on a narrow ledge just wide enough for one car. Sully pulled in behind her diagonally and turned off the engine, then the headlights, which illuminated the large roof of the camp still farther down the bank. When they got out, they could hear the waves lapping against the shore below.
    â€œNice hideout, sweetheart,” Peter said, doing Humphrey Bogart. “The cops’ll never find us here.”
    â€œThey’re not after
you
” Sully pointed out.
    â€œWith my luck I’ll be nabbed as your accomplice.”
    â€œI’ll tell them you were no help,” Sully said. “As usual.”
    â€œDon Sullivan, the last of the tough guys,” Toby Roebuck said, her voice near in the dark. Also her perfume, which mingled with the crisp air off the lake below, creating an intoxicating mixture of damp earth and leaves and water and girl. Not woman, in Sully’s opinion. Girl. “I better have the goddamn key,” she said. They could hear her rummaging through her purse.
    â€œWe could probably get in anyhow,” Sully said, getting out.
    â€œRight,” Toby snorted. “I heard all about you and your crowbar. There!” she held up the key triumphantly, a glint of silver in the moonlight. “Watch the Weps.”
    â€œOkay,” Sully said. “What steps?”
    She took his hand then, placing it on a railing he hadn’t noticed. “Four, then level, then three more,” she said, leading the way, her hand on his elbow now in much the same fashion, he noted, to his embarrassment, that he led old Hattie from the apartment into the diner each morning.
    â€œOuch,” he said, finding a patch of unlevel ground where his ankle turned, shooting pain from his knee to his groin.
    â€œWhy don’t you wait here,” she suggested. “Let me go unlock and turn the kitchen light on.”
    As she said this, a light
came
on, not from below and