Nobody's Fool

breasts and commenced to make blubbering noises.
    â€œDon’t let him drive, dolly,” Sully warned the girl. “The second one is really magic.”
    â€œI won’t,” she said, her eyes meeting Sully’s seriously and soberly, as they had done several times during the afternoon. She’d been drinking as heavily as the men, but she looked to be in a lot better condition for it. So this was the girl who had wrecked Peter’s marriage and talked dirty to Vera on the telephone, Sully thought. No wonder his ex-wife had gone into a tizzy. Vera was, and always had been, a close-your-eyes, missionary-position sort of woman. She probably hadn’t done much to prepare Peter for the likes of Didi. Apparently even Carl Roebuck hadn’t been prepared. “If you see Peter, tell him I said hi,” she said.
    â€œI will,” Sully promised.
    â€œYou will not,” Carl Roebuck said, his voice muffled in the girl’s sweater. “He can’t have both these women.”
    â€œCarl’s used to having all the girls in Bath to himself,” Sully explained to her.
    Didi looked down at him. “His heart’s broken,” she said. “It’s kind of sweet, don’t you think?”
    â€œKind of,” Sully said.
    â€œI bet no girl ever broke your heart,” she said, her eyes meeting his again.
    â€œHe’s in love with my wife too,” Carl said. “Everybody loves Toby. Nobody loves me.”
    Wirf appeared in the doorway, using an inverted push broom as a crutch, his empty pant leg dangling. “You’d keep my leg, wouldn’t you?” he said to Sully.
    â€œYou don’t need a leg,” Carl Roebuck turned and studied him. “You need a parrot.”
    â€œShould we give him back his leg?” Sully asked Will.
    Will nodded eagerly.
    Sully slid Wirf’s prosthesis in front of the boy. “Go ahead.”
    The boy’s eyes got wide, and he shook his head, leaning away from it.
    â€œIt’s not alive,” Sully said, rapping it. “See?”
    â€œHe don’t want to, Sully,” said Ralph, who looked like he didn’t want to either.
    â€œYou could tell your brother,” Sully said. “You think he’d believe you?”
    Will stared at the limb with fear and longing. The idea clearly appealed to him. The limb clearly did not.
    â€œSully—” Ralph began, but Sully held up his hand, and after a long moment the boy reached out and took Wirf’s leg with both hands, as if he suspected that it contained the man’s liquid life and the spilling of a drop would mean less of him. They all watched the boy as he carried the limb to Wirf where he leaned against the door frame. When Didi snuffed her nose, Sully looked and saw that she was crying, tears rolling silently down her cheeks.
    Wirf drew up a chair and accepted the prosthesis from Sully’s grandson. “Thanks,” he said, pulling up his pant cuff. No one, not even Will, looked away as he fastened his leg. “Your rotten grandfather would have kept it. Now I’m a whole man again.”
    For a moment, as Sully watched, it wasn’t Will standing there but Peter, the Peter he remembered as a boy. Or maybe even himself, the boy he remembered himself to have been so long ago, the boy who had a heart capable of being broken.
    â€œJesus Christ,” Carl Roebuck said softly. “What a day.”

    By the time Sully arrived at the flat the U-Haul was nearly unloaded. The only things left inside were an oak desk and a tall file cabinet. Peter had backed the trailer up over the curb to the base of the front porch and laid a ramp that angled from the inside of the U-Haul to the top of the steps. Sully was inside tugging the desk from the rear of the U-Haul toward the front when Peter appeared on the porch. “Grab the other end,” Sully suggested. Thankfully, Peter had taken the drawers out.
    Peter moved past him to the other end of the desk but declined to lift just yet. “Where’s Rub?”
    â€œHome,” Sully said. “I thought I’d give him the night off.” Actually, he’d thought about fetching Rub, but it was late and Rub was probably still sick. Also, he’d heard that Bootsie had been released, and Sully couldn’t face Rub’s wife, not after the kind of day this had been. “You going to pick up that end, or what?”
    â€œYou’re drunk,” Peter