Nobody's Fool

traced the sound to the hallway she shared with Sully, and she contemplated the wisdom of opening her door to see what manner of thing was on the other side. Still, God hates a coward, she thought, and opened the door a crack.
    The hall light was on, and there, just outside her door by the stairway that led up to Sully’s flat, stood a Doberman with a lopsided grin. One end of the chain she’d been hearing was attached to the dog’s rhinestone collar. The other end was attached to nothing at all. As far as she could tell, the dog was the only occupant of the hallway, though she was unwilling to open the door any wider to be sure. “Who are you?” she asked the Doberman, which started at the sound of her voice, suffered some kind of spasm and slumped against the banister as if shot. Before Miss Beryl could process this, the outside door opened and Sully materialized, screwdriver in hand.
    â€œI tightened that railing back down for you,” he told Miss Beryl when she opened the door to survey the strange scene in full. Sully seemed not to be surprised by the fact that there was a Doberman slumped against the stairs, which might or might not have meant that the dog was with him.Neither did Sully seem surprised that his landlady was awake at two in the morning.
    In fact, her tenant looked to Miss Beryl like a man for whom there were no more surprises. He was paler and thinner and more ghostlike than ever, though not exactly Dickensian. “You mind if I come in and take my boots off, Mrs. Peoples?”
    â€œOf course not, Donald,” she said, stepping back from the door.
    At this the dog let out a huge sigh and slumped all the way to the floor. Both Sully and Miss Beryl studied the animal. Sully shook his head. “What’s your policy on pets?”
    â€œDoes he bark?” Miss Beryl wondered.
    â€œHe did a few minutes ago,” Sully told her, his voice, for some reason, shaky. “Just in time, too. I was about to step into thin air.”
    Miss Beryl waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. So pale and thin, Sully looked like air might well be his natural element.
    â€œI can only stay a minute,” he told her, collapsing into the newly repaired Queen Anne, which protested audibly but held together. Mr. Blue had been right. It was fixed.
    â€œI’m making tea,” she said. “Can I interest you in a cup?”
    â€œNo, you can’t,” he said, grinning at her now. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
    â€œOther people change their minds occasionally,” she told him. “I keep thinking you might.”
    Sully lit a cigarette and seemed to consider this. “You do?”
    His question seemed less mocking than wistful, as if he was grateful for her refusal to accept his bullheadedness at face value. Outside in the hall the dog’s chain rattled.
    Sully glanced around her flat as if for the first time, taking things in: “I guess it’s just you and me, old girl,” Sully said, no doubt in reference to Clive Jr.
    At this, Miss Beryl herself sat down. “I’ve been discussing Clive Jr. with his father all afternoon,” she admitted. “We failed him, I guess. It pains me to admit, but somehow we managed to raise a son with no …” She let her sentence die, unable to locate a word for what her son lacked, at least a word that would not represent a further betrayal.
    â€œWell,” Sully said. “At least you raised him. You did your best.”
    â€œHe was never the star of my firmament, somehow,” Miss Beryl confessed, sharing this sad truth for the first time with another living human. It was what Clive Sr. had accused her of one afternoon not longbefore Audrey Peach had sent him through the windshield. By then Sully had gone off to join the war, and Miss Beryl had already resigned herself to the certainty that he’d be killed. She was so sure he would be that she’d already begun to apportion blame. Most of it, of course, rested squarely on the shoulders of the brutal, stupid man who was the boy’s father and part of what was left on Sully’s mother, who’d found such grateful solace in her own victimization. But there was some blame left over, and Miss Beryl had located what remained in her own home. She wasn’t supposed to know that her husband and son had gone over to Bowdon Street to put an end to Sully’s tenure at their dinner table, to