Nobody's Fool

also thought you might let us in on how you got to be such a cheap son of a bitch.”
    â€œDon’t start this again,” Tiny warned.
    In fact, Sully’s complaint
was
an old one. He just couldn’t get over how cheap Tiny was, especially with regard to Wirf, who dropped a lot of money in The Horse every night. The regular bartender would buy every fifth round or so, but Tiny never sprung. He couldn’t even be shamed into buying a round by Sully, who was a past master at shaming bartenders.
    â€œLook at those fucking lights,” Sully said, pointing to the string of Christmas lights Tiny had just put up that afternoon. Nearly half were fluttering or dead out. “What would it cost you to put some new lights on that string. A buck?”
    â€œAnymore you can’t buy a candy bar for a buck,” Tiny said, and this observation produced general agreement, despite its being obviously anddemonstrably false. Tiny himself sold Snickers bars for seventy-five cents.
    Tiny’s bellyaching was also an old song, and tonight’s lyric had been about how expensive utilities were anymore and how it didn’t pay to keep the place open on slow nights in winter.
    â€œI got an idea,” Sully said. “Let’s take up a collection and help Tiny out. He’s beginning to look thin. I don’t think he’s got enough money for food.”
    â€œGo home, Sully,” Tiny advised.
    Sully returned to Wirf. “I just don’t see how you can let guys like him piss on your shoes. How much money have you spent in here tonight?”
    â€œNot a dime,” Wirf said. “I haven’t paid my tab yet. Besides, I don’t expect people to buy me drinks. I can buy my own drinks.”
    â€œThat’s not the point.”
    â€œWhat
is
the point, then?”
    Sully wasn’t sure, but he knew there was one. He wasn’t really angry with Tiny or Wirf, though he’d been bickering with both of them. The one he was really angry at, somewhat belatedly, was Ruth’s husband, Zack, whom he now realized he should have punched. And for reasons that made less than perfect sense to him he was also mad at Ruth, whom he’d never treated as well as she deserved. And he was angry over the general state of things. He’d allowed himself to start working for Carl Roebuck again after swearing he wouldn’t. And he was angry at himself for slipping back into his old infatuation with Carl’s wife. He was even mad and drunk enough to fight about all of this if he could find somebody to fight with.
    â€œI tell you what,” Wirf said. “Let’s call it a night before you get us eighty-sixed from the only bar in the county that doesn’t play rock-and-roll music.”
    â€œHell, yes,” Sully agreed. “I never wanted to come in here in the first place, if you recall.”
    They left money on the bar. “You must’ve,” Wirf pointed out. “Otherwise you’d have gone home.”
    On the way out Sully stopped at the end of the bar where Tiny had returned to his stool. “Let me have one of those Snickers bars if it’s not too much trouble,” he said.
    Tiny got up and handed Sully the candy bar suspiciously. Sully handed him two one-dollar bills. Tiny shoved one of the bills back at him, growling, “Seventy-five.”
    â€œNah,” Sully said, pushing it back. “You can’t get a candy bar for a buck anymore. You said so yourself.”
    â€œTake your fucking dollar, Sully. Don’t be a pain in the ass.”
    Sully put his hands up, as if he were under arrest. “Uh-uh,” he said. “That’s
your
dollar.”
    Tiny put it into his pocket. “That make you happy, you mallet head?”
    â€œYes,” Sully told him. “I’ve never been happier.”
    â€œYou remain the uncontested master of the futile gesture,” Wirf observed as they struggled drunkenly on with their winter coats by the door. “Give me half of that, will you?”
    â€œSure,” Sully said, breaking the candy bar in two. “You owe me a dollar. I’ll let it go, since I owe you about two thousand.”
    â€œWhy don’t you go back to school?” Wirf wanted to know. “You’re just going to get hurt.”
    â€œIt’s out of my hands,” Sully said before shoving his half of the candy bar in his mouth. Wirf waited for him to chew and swallow. “My