Nobody's Fool

my threat to shoot him a lot more seriously than you just did, Sully.”
    â€œI don’t blame him,” Sully said. “You got more reason to shoot him.”
    â€œDo I now,” she said, then after a minute added, “You ever get so mad you just wanted to shoot somebody and didn’t care who?”
    â€œSure,” Sully admitted, without feeling much urge to tell her that was how he’d been feeling about fifteen minutes ago at The Horse. “It’s the reason I don’t own a gun.”
    â€œYou should get one,” she suggested. “I’ve got Carl’s. The two of us could go on a rampage. Rob banks. Go out in a blaze of glory. Bonnie and Clyde.”
    â€œYou’d have to be Clyde,” Sully told her. “I couldn’t do much more than drive the getaway car.”
    â€œMen have no imagination,” Toby said, reminding Sully of what Vince had told him at the restaurant, that Toby Roebuck might be involved with someone from Schuyler Springs. Apparently not, to judge from this remark, unless the man in question didn’t have any imagination either.
    â€œWell,” Sully said, surprised to discover that he was about to stand up for Carl Roebuck, of all people, “don’t be too hard on him. The heart bypass is still on his mind. He’s probably just trying to do everything in six months. When it dawns on him he’s going to live to be seventy, he’ll slow down.”
    â€œHe pretty nearly didn’t live till Thanksgiving,” she said with what sounded to Sully like genuine conviction. Then, after a long moment of silence, she said, “Well, go ahead and steal our snowblower. You’re the slowest thief I ever saw. I don’t think you’d even be a decent wheel man.”
    Back at his flat Sully was suddenly exhausted again, having burned off the energy he’d derived from the half Snickers bar, and he was tempted to leave the snowblower right there in the back of the pickup, except he was afraid he might oversleep in the morning. When Carl Roebuck came over to find out where he was, he’d be just as liable to steal the snowblower back again before Sully had a chance to use it. So he unloaded the machine and hid it safely out of sight in the corner of Miss Beryl’s garage under a tarp.
    It turned out to be a good decision, because the first thing Sully noticed when he got upstairs was Carl Roebuck asleep on the couch, his mouth wide open, an empty pint of Canadian whiskey on the floor below his outstretched hand. For a brief moment, Sully wasn’t sure Carl was alive,thought perhaps he’d had his final heart attack right there on the couch. But then Carl snorted loudly and rearranged himself, and Sully was relieved that it was a living man asleep on the sofa and not a dead one, even if that man happened to be Carl Roebuck.
    Sully had an extra blanket around somewhere, but he was too tired to think where, so he covered Carl with the blanket off his own bed. His bedroom was often too warm anyway, and the sheet would be plenty. He was asleep before he could doubt it.

THURSDAY

    C arl Roebuck woke early. Sully heard him turn the TV on low, to an exercise show. The clock on Sully’s dresser said six-thirty, which meant that Carl was watching
Wake Up, America
, whose aerobic hostess, to judge from her face, had to be in her forties. Her body was pretty remarkable, toned and athletic, but it wasn’t a young body, Sully had noticed. When she danced next to her youthful assistants, she looked merely heroic. Maybe that was what made Sully sad when he watched her. The woman seemed to be dancing for her very life, and Sully would have liked to tell her to go slow.
    Carl Roebuck was watching her absently, half asleep, hand in the open fly of his boxers, when Sully looked in.
    â€œLose something?” Sully said. “Or have you just worn it down to a nub?”
    Carl betrayed not the slightest embarrassment. “This is the worst couch I ever slept on,” he observed sleepily without looking up at Sully.
    â€œHow old are you?” Sully asked, genuinely curious. Sitting there with his hand in his shorts, Carl Roebuck looked, despite his paunch, like a kid.
    Carl gave no evidence of having heard this question. In a minute he said, “You ever wake up horny anymore?”
    â€œNo,” Sully told him. In truth, he’d seldom woken up horny as a younger man, and morning lovemaking,