Nobody's Fool

to be out looking for him, but he didn’t have the heart.”
    â€œThis is about the fifth time it’s happened,” Sully observed.
    Wirf nodded. “Have you ever noticed how people do the same things over and over?”
    â€œYou don’t mean us?”
    â€œNo. I was referring to other people,” Wirf explained. “Hell, we’re full of surprises.”
    In fact, the conclusion Sully’d come to today was that just about everybody was full of surprises. A month ago he’d have agreed with Wirf that both people and events were predictable to the point of boredom. But since getting out of jail this morning, Sully had been pursued by the strange sensation that everything had changed, that the rules of existence had been subverted somehow while he was away. Even the fact that his luck had changed contributed to this somewhat otherworldly feeling, as if he’d returned to a place he no longer knew. It looked the same, but it felt deep down different. How else to explain the fact that he’d gotten lost going to Bootsie and Rub’s flat? How else to explain the strange conversation he’d just had with Jocko, who’d not even returned to the bar but rather slunk out the door? Exhausted as he was, the only reason he’d come into The Horse at all was in the hopes of ending the day with some degree of normalcy, some zigging with Wirf and quarreling with Tiny to restore his equilibrium, dispel the sense of disorientation that had him reeling.
    And now here was Wirf, for all his bleary-eyed normality, the most predictable of humans, studying him with an odd seriousness, Sully’s five hundred dollars still sitting in front of him. Wirf looked for all the world like a man about to zag in the face of a man who’d joined him in the hopes of zigging.
    â€œWhat?” Sully said finally. “You’re not going to start in on me, are you?”
    â€œNo,” Wirf promised. “But I am going to ask you a favor.”
    â€œOkay,” Sully said. “As long as you don’t want me to do it tonight.”
    Wirf consulted his watch. “It probably won’t be tonight,” he said seriously. “But whenever it is, I want you to do it.”
    â€œAsk, then,” Sully said. “How can I do it or not do it if you won’t tell me what it is?”
    â€œI just want you to know I’m serious,” Wirf went on. “I know you think I wouldn’t say shit if I had a mouthful, and that’s true most of thetime, but right now I want you to promise me this, and if you don’t, we’re through.”
    Sully studied his friend warily. “I’m not quitting work,” he said. “And I’m not going back to college, not even for you. My son’s going to start teaching out there next term, and with my luck they’ll make me take his course.”
    Wirf grinned broadly at the idea. “That’s not the favor. The favor is your landlady.”
    Sully was enormously relieved to hear it. After all the buildup, maybe this would be easy after all. “Anything I can do for Beryl, I’ll do. I’ll be more than happy to, in fact.”
    Wirf was looking at him with the same almost cross-eyed seriousness. “She feels the same way about you. Which is why she did something for you, with my help.”
    â€œWhat?” Sully said, though he had an idea.
    â€œYou own the house on Bowdon again,” Wirf said.
    â€œShe paid the back taxes?”
    â€œJust over ten grand.”
    â€œAnd you let her.”
    â€œI encouraged her,” Wirf said emphatically.
    â€œKnowing I wanted no fucking part of the place, knowing that it wasn’t worth selling for scrap, you let her.”
    â€œIt’s worth twenty thousand at least, maybe more,” Wirf said.
    â€œYou’re full of shit.”
    Wirf shook his head. “I already have an offer of twenty from the people who own the Sans Souci. They’ll go higher, too.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œTo avoid litigation. That dirt road they carved runs right across the corner of your property. I checked. And they don’t have an easement. We could sue their asses. They might give twice what they’ve offered so far. Three times.” He stopped, let Sully digest this. “At the very least, at twenty thousand, you could pay her back, square away your truck, start new.”
    Sully thought about it. Starting new was an attractive