Nobody's Fool

he’d call Rub to come get him. He also promised to think about stopping by Vera’s the next day. According to Peter, his stepfather, Ralph, whose health had been poor for some time, had just gotten out of the hospital and things hadn’t been going too well. Sully said he’d try to stop by and cheer everybody up. One look at him should do it, he told Peter, who misunderstood and concluded it was Sully’s intention to come by in something like his present condition, which Peter counseled against. They managed to shake hands successfully then, all of this accomplished a few feet from the Gremlin, the windows of which remained tightly rolled up.
    Sully knocked on the side window, startling Charlotte, who looked like she’d been somewhere else, as if she’d genuinely forgotten his existence. When she rolled down the window, he saw that her eyes were red and puffy. “Nice to see you’re still so good looking, dolly,” he offered, though in fact she’d put on weight, he could tell. The compliment failed to cheer her up.
    â€œThat’s a minority view,” she said.
    â€œMy views usually are,” Sully admitted, realizing as he did so that he’d just taken the compliment back. To get out of the awkward moment, he rapped on the window Wacker was seated next to. “Next time you whack me, whack my right leg,” he told his grandson, “That’s the good one. You ever whack the left one again, I’m going to chase you all the way back home to West Virginia.”
    Wacker did not look impressed by this threat. In fact, he raised the Dr. Seuss over his head by way of invitation. The tiny white bubble of snot still pulsed calmly in one nostril. Will, by contrast, looked like he was about to wet his pants in sheer terror. When Sully flashed him a grin to show that it was all in fun, the boy was visibly relieved, and as the Gremlin pulled away, he offered his grandfather a shy smile.
    Carl Roebuck’s house, the one where he’d found the coins in the attic, was about a block away on Glendale, and since this was more or less on his way downtown, Sully decided what the hell. Most of the morning was already lost and besides, it’d be nice to see Toby, Carl’s wife, again.
    Toby Roebuck was, to Sully’s mind, the best-looking woman in Bath by no small margin. She had the kind of looks he associated with television.She was perfectly formed, confident, sassy, soap-commercial pure. The sort of girl he’d have fallen for hard had he been thirty years younger. He was sure of this because he’d fallen for her hard just last year at age fifty-nine and old enough to know better. He hadn’t seen her to talk to since he quit working for Carl back in August, when his swelling infatuation was yet another reason—along with his swollen knee—to give up manual labor for a while.
    Who but Carl Roebuck, the little twerp, wouldn’t be satisfied with such a woman, Sully wondered as he limped up the driveway of the Roebuck house. Well, most men wouldn’t be, he had to admit, because most men were never satisfied. Still, he couldn’t help thinking
he’d
be satisfied, now, at age sixty. Of course, he was nearly twice Carl’s age and over the years he’d grown sentimental where women were concerned and had gradually developed the older man’s confidence that he’d know how to treat a woman like Toby, confidence born of the fact that there was now no chance he’d ever have one.
    Toby Roebuck’s Bronco, a vehicle Sully had long coveted along with its owner, was in one of the open stalls of the Roebuck garage. The bay where Carl’s red Camaro usually sat when he was at home stood empty, which was good. Sometimes Carl came home for the lunch hour for a little afternoon delight. Most days, though, he went someplace else for the same thing. Sully had been hoping that would be the case today, because he didn’t want to run into Carl just yet. Alongside the back porch a shiny new snowblower was parked. The machine looked like it probably cost about what Carl Roebuck owed him. Maybe more. Probably more. Sully made a mental note to price them.
    Since the back door was unlocked, he knocked on his way in, calling, “Hi, dolly. You aren’t naked or anything, are you?” Once last summer he’d come upon Toby Roebuck sunbathing topless in the back yard, a happenstance that had apparently embarrassed