Nobody's Fool

had put their clothes.
    â€œSee if I ever take you again,” his father said later, his breath boozy in the front seat of the car he had borrowed to make the trip, when Patrick told on him. Sully was shivering in the backseat of the car as they returned to Bath. He was sick the entire week that followed. “Just see if I do.”
    It didn’t take nearly as long to run out of hot water in Sully’s flat, and when he stepped out of the shower, he wondered if he was going to be sick, if that was why he’d suddenly remembered the YMCA episode after so many years in the limbo of his memory. He doubted it could be that he needed another reason to bear a grudge against his father, whose ghost, for some reason, seemed to be visiting him more often and vividly of late, starting right around the time he’d fallen from the ladder.
    The good news was that his knee didn’t feel too bad, and Sully considered for the umpteenth time the illogic of his own body. Immediately after hard work, the knee felt pretty good. Tomorrow morning, he knew from experience, he would pay.
    Which meant that he would have to go see Jocko first thing. He wasalmost out of Tylenol 3s, or whatever it was he was taking. Jocko did not always dispense his relief in labeled bottles. At least not to Sully. When Sully needed something for pain, Jocko didn’t stand on formalities like a physician’s prescription. When he got samples he thought Sully might be interested in, he slipped a bright plastic tube full of pills into Sully’s coat pocket and whispered verbal instructions for their use: “Here. Eat these.”
    Downstairs, Miss Beryl was waiting for him in the hall, dressed in her robe and slippers. She always looked tinier and even more gnomelike when she stood in the large doorway to her flat. She was holding a fistful of mail, most of it, Sully could tell at a glance, junk. He often went weeks at a time without checking his mailbox and then, after a cursory glance, tossed whatever had accumulated there in the trash. People who wanted to contact him left messages for him at The Horse. People who didn’t know him well enough to do that were probably people he didn’t want to hear from anyway. Sully had no credit cards, and since his utilities were included in the rent he paid Miss Beryl, he didn’t have to worry about bills. To his way of thinking, he had no real relationship with the postal service. He didn’t even have his name on the mailbox, refused to put it there, in fact, not wanting to encourage the mailman. Now and then Miss Beryl would gather what collected there and thrust it at him, as she was doing now, with communications she judged to be of possible importance on top. The envelope on top of this particular fistful of mail looked to be a tax document from the Town of North Bath, no doubt reminding him of his obligations on the property his father left him when he died. Sully did not bother to open it to be sure. He leafed through the rest to make sure his disability check was not in the stash. He’d already thrown that away once in his rush to dispose of all the junk.
    â€œYou got a pen handy, Mrs. Peoples?” he asked, knowing full well she kept half a dozen in a glass by the door. In fact, she had anticipated his need and was holding a pen out to him disapprovingly. On the tax envelope he wrote in bold letters RETURN TO SENDER and deposited the junk mail in the small decorative trash can just
inside
his landlady’s door.
    â€œYou’re the most incurious man in the universe,” Miss Beryl remarked, as she often did on these occasions. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that inquiring minds want to know?”
    â€œMaybe you just have better luck with the post office than I’ve had,” he suggested. “So for the mail has brought me my draft notice, my divorce papers, jury duty, half a dozen different threats that I can think of. And nota single piece of good news I didn’t already know about because somebody told me.”
    Miss Beryl shook her head, studied her tenant. “You look better, anyhow,” she said.
    â€œThan what?”
    â€œThan you did when you came in,” said Miss Beryl, who had been watching at the window.
    â€œLong day, Beryl,” Sully admitted.
    â€œThey get longer,” she warned. “I read about five books a week to pass the time. Of course, I read only half of some of them. I always stop when I