Nobody's Fool

was more likely to bend Carl Roebuck out of whack than to be instructed by Sully to calm down. Along with Tip Top Construction, Carl had inherited from his father a heart condition that had already required bypass surgery.
    â€œYou know the trouble with guys like you?” Carl stood, glowing red now, even though he hadn’t raised his voice. “You figure you got a rightto steal from anybody that’s got a few bucks. I’m supposed to assume the position because you got a busted knee and no prospects, like this is some kind of Feel-Sorry-for-Sully Week. Well, it ain’t, my friend. This is Fuck-You Week.”
    Carl was pacing back and forth behind his desk as he spoke, and for some reason his speech had a soothing
effect
on Sully, who put his feet up on Carl’s desk. “That was last week, actually. And the week before.”
    â€œThen go away. You did shoddy work, and I’m not paying you for it. You think I got where I am doing shoddy work?”
    Sully couldn’t help but smile at this. Maybe later in the day when he remembered it, this line of bullshit would piss him off, but right now, watching Carl Roebuck, beet red with trumped-up self-righteousness, constituted something like partial payment for the debt. And when Sully finally spoke, his voice was even lower than Carl’s.
    â€œNo, Carl,” he admitted. “You didn’t get where you are by doing shoddy work. You didn’t get where you are by doing any work. You got where you are because your father worked himself into an early grave so you could piss away everything he worked for on ski trips and sports cars.”
    Sully let this much sink in before continuing. “Now personally, I don’t care about the ski trips and the sports cars. I don’t even care if you wind up broke, which you probably will. But before you do, you’re going to pay me the three hundred bucks you owe me, because I dug a fifty-foot trench under your terrace in ninety-degree heat and busted my balls tugging on hundred-year-old pipes that snapped off in my hands every two feet. That’s why you’re going to pay me.”
    He got to his feet then, facing Carl Roebuck across his big desk. “I’ll tell you another thing. You’re going to pay for the beer. I just decided. It was only a six-pack, but since you think it was a case, you can pay for a case. Call it a tax on being a prick.”
    That seemed like a pretty good exit line to Sully, and he slammed the door on the way out. The glass hadn’t stopped reverberating, however, before he thought of an even better way to leave, so he went back in. Carl was still standing there behind the desk, so Sully picked up right where he left off. “The other reason you’re going to pay me is that someday you’re going to catch me in a
really
bad mood. My knee’s going to be throbbing so bad that even Feel-Sorry-for-Sully Week won’t make any difference. The only thing that’ll make it feel better will be seeing your sorry ass go flying out that window. About two seconds before you hit the bricks, it’ll dawn on you that I wasn’t kidding.”
    Instead of slamming the door again, Sully stood in the open doorway to witness the full effect of his verbal assault. Almost immediately he wished he had slammed the door. Carl’s color, instead of deepening, actually began to return to its normal shade, and with its return came the grin that made it impossible for people to stay mad at Carl Roebuck. Instead of storming out from behind the desk and taking a swing at Sully, as Sully half hoped he would, Carl returned to his swivel chair, sat down and put his own soft-loafered feet up. “Sully,” he said finally. “You’re right. I’m not going to pay you, but you’re right. I
am
lucky. Most of the time I remember, but sometimes I forget. Anyway, since we’re friends, I’ll give you a tip. When you leave, stop outside there on the landing for about five minutes before you go down. That’ll save you having to walk back up here when it occurs to you.”
    â€œWhen what occurs to me?”
    Carl Roebuck wagged an index finger maddeningly. “If I told you, it would ruin the surprise, schmucko.”
    Ruby was also grinning at Sully when he left, which probably meant that whatever the surprise was, she’d already figured it out. Outside on the landing, where he’d been told to wait, where the