Nobody's Fool

“Shakespeare, only modernized. I’m disguised as a boy.”
    Sully leered at her appreciatively. “Good luck.”
    Toby Roebuck ignored this. She joined him at the table, sitting in one chair, putting her feet up on another. “So you’re going back to work. You and Carl deserve each other. You’re both self-destructive. He just has more fun. You come home with broken knees, he comes home with the clap.”
    Sully flexed his knee. “I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind trading places for a while.”
    Toby grinned at him. “I wish you would. Broken knees aren’t contagious.”
    Sully frowned and considered this, unsure whether Toby Roebuck was issuing him an invitation or wishing her husband a painfully broken knee. The latter, he decided, since it made more sense. “He’s given you the clap?”
    â€œOnly three times,” she said.
    â€œJesus,” Sully said, genuinely surprised. He’d always been amazed that Toby Roebuck managed to take her husband’s myriad infidelities in stride. Even this latest outrage she reported matter-of-factly, as if venereal disease were part of an equation she understood, or should have understood, when she married Carl Roebuck. As if this third dose of the clap was beginning to strain her tolerance. To Sully it was spooky. Tolerance of male misbehavior had not been prominently in evidence with any of the women Sully’d ever found himself involved. In fact, they identified, judged and exacted punishment for his misdeeds in one swift, efficient motion. It didn’t make any kind of sense, Sully recognized, that this young woman, who could have any man in the county for the asking, would stick with one who kept giving her the clap.
    â€œI warned him last week to fire that little tramp at the office. She’s a walking incubator.”
    â€œThanks for the tip,” Sully said, though there was nothing to worry about. The only thing Ruby had ever offered him was her contempt.
    â€œYou tell me, Sully,” she said, studying him seriously. “What does it mean that he won’t fire her?”
    Sully shrugged. “I don’t think he’s in love with her, if that’s what you mean.”
    Toby considered this, as if she wasn’t sure what she’d meant.
    â€œTo be honest,” Sully admitted, “I have no idea why he does what he does. Most of the time I don’t even know why I do what I do, much less anybody else.” He’d finished his cup of coffee, pushed it toward the center of the table. “Thanks for the coffee. Hang in there.”
    â€œThat’s the sum of your wisdom on the subject?” she said, pretending outrage. “Hang in there?”
    â€œI hate to tell you, dolly, but that’s the sum of my wisdom on all subjects. You sure you don’t want to write me that check while you’re feeling rebellious?”
    â€œThat he’d never forgive me for.”
    Sully got to his feet, flexed at the knee. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll settle for a lift downtown.”
    â€œWhere’s your sad-ass truck?”
    â€œStuck in the mud,” he admitted reluctantly.
    â€œOld stick-in-the-mud Sully,” she grinned at him in a way that made him wonder if he
had
been given an invitation earlier. “That’s one thing I have to say about Carl”—pulling her parka off the hook by the door—“he never settles.”
    The “even for me” she left unspoken.
    Sully had Toby Roebuck drop him off in front of the OTB, which was a good place to look for somebody who probably wasn’t there. “You didn’t see me today, in case anybody asks,” he reminded her as he got out.
    â€œSee who?” Toby said.
    Sully started to answer, then realized she was making a joke.
    â€œCome see me in my play,” she suggested.
    â€œYou got any nude scenes?”
    â€œTell me something,” she said, before he closed the door. “What were you like when you were young?”
    â€œJust like this,” he said. “Only more.”
    The OTB was busy as usual, though a quick scan of the premises did not turn up Rub among the crowd. Between eleven and twelve on weekdaysthe North Bath OTB was always occupied by a small army of retired men in pale yellow and powder blue windbreakers who would disappear by noon, heading home to lunches of tuna-fish sandwiches on white bread and steaming