Nobody's Fool

another semester at SUNY and RPI and Russell Sage, taking their bizarre, cheery optimism with them, Tiny knew that the gig was again up, and he allowed the establishment to slide again into gentle decline. For Tiny, the worst day of each year was the one when he let the regulars talk him into lugging thepool table back into the bar, where it stayed until the following July, when he would again need the space. The big round table in the dining room, the one he reserved for parties of eight to ten, got centered under a chandelier and became a poker table. It was all very depressing. For the winter holidays Tiny ran a single string of festive lights along the back bar, and each year the string contained fewer lights that worked. After New Year’s, nobody was able to summon the energy to take them down.
    Tonight, despite his steadfast intention, Sully had gone to The Horse and gotten involved. Tiny had given his regular bartender, a man he suspected of stealing and giving away too many free drinks, the night off and was being a pain in the ass as usual. He didn’t know why he bothered to stay open in the winter, when he lost money. As soon as The Ultimate Escape opened, he was going to sell out and take his money and go live in Florida. If there was any money left after so many winters of bad business. For the past two hours Sully had half listened to Tiny bellyache, and he was now tired of it. Wirf had been listening to the same shit, but Wirf was impossible to bend out of shape, this night or any other. The more Wirf drank the drunker he got, and the drunker he got the more tolerant he became, and by this time of night he wouldn’t have said shit if he had a mouthful.
    â€œYou know what,” Sully told him, not bothering to conceal his irritation. “You wouldn’t say shit if you had a mouthful.”
    â€œWouldn’t be much point,” Wirf observed. He was wearing his postmidnight grin, and this grin had been known to get Sully worked up. It wasn’t really a grin at all. Past a certain point of intoxication, Wirf had imperfect control of his facial muscles, and this was just his rictus face. A big shit-eating grin.
    â€œWhen was the last time you won a case?” Sully asked him.
    The question surprised Wirf without, apparently, angering him. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
    â€œYou let everybody piss on your shoes is what it’s got to do with,” Sully explained. “They walk right up, unzip and pee. And what do you do? Stand there and grin at them.”
    Wirf chuckled good-naturedly now. “Who pisses on my shoes, Sully? Besides you, I mean.”
    â€œExactly,” Tiny said from down the bar, where he’d retreated to avoid Sully. Tiny, at nearly seventy, was huge, and when he sat on the stool he kept behind the bar on slow nights like this the stool disappeared, creating the illusion that Tiny was being magically supported on a pillowof air, like the puck in a game of air hockey. Tiny’s obesity was another thing that irritated Sully after his fifth or sixth bottle of beer. That and the fact that Tiny kept reminding him of the fact that he’d run his father, Big Jim, out of The Horse when Sully was a boy, thrown him out bodily into the street more than once, and was publicly on record as saying that one asshole Sullivan was pretty much the same as the next.
    â€œCome here a minute,” Sully suggested.
    There were only a half-dozen customers in the bar. Carl Roebuck had left before Sully and Vince came in. Vince had drunk one beer, handed Sully, like a baton, over to Wirf and then left. Tiny was comfortable right where he was. “What for?”
    â€œJust come here,” Sully explained.
    Tiny hated this shit. He hated having his chain yanked, especially by Sully. On the other hand, he was tending bar and Sully was with Wirf and Wirf was Tiny’s best customer. He climbed off his stool. “What do you want?”
    Sully waited for him to come all the way down the bar, then said, “How are you?”
    â€œWhat do you want?” Tiny repeated.
    â€œI was just wondering how you are,” Sully said. “Doing well, I hope?”
    Wirf gave Tiny a don’t-blame-me look.
    â€œI don’t get a chance to talk to you that much,” Sully explained. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. You need any money or anything?”
    When Tiny turned and headed back down the bar, Sully said, “I