See?
“What?”
You’re better off. Now you know what time it is without having to ask.
Sully was forever making this claim — that Rub was somehow better off without him — as if he expected him to agree one day, which he never would. “I liked it better when you knew.”
Hey, Dummy. Look at me.
But Rub couldn’t. How could he bear to look where his friend used to stand and no longer did? Or be told he was better off by the person whose absence made him so miserable?
Fine. Be that way.
He still remembered his awful first day on the new job, how lonely it had been, how slowly the hours had passed. When it was finally over, after locking the shed like he’d been taught—
With your own keys…
— he’d gone down to the cemetery’s main gate to wait for Sully to pick him up so they could head to the Horse, like always. After forty-five minutes and no Sully, he’d hitched into town to look for him. Jocko was locking up the Rexall. “Hey, man,” he said, when he noticed a forlorn-looking Rub loitering at the curb, “you look like you lost your best friend,” intending the observation as a figure of speech, though for Rub it was anything but.
“You know where he is?” he asked.
Jocko consulted his watch. “Six-thirty? Well, if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say he’s right where he always is this time of day. In fact, I bet I could guess which stool.”
Rub was about to tell Jocko he was wrong, that Sully couldn’t be out at the Horse for the simple reason that, if he was, then Rub would be there, too, which he wasn’t. After all, they hadn’t discussed Sully not picking him up. He’d just assumed he would, because otherwise how could their regular evenings proceed? But suddenly he saw he was wrong. Again. He’d been wrong about everything else, and now he was wrong about this. He’d concluded it was only the days that were going to be different now that Sully didn’t have to work anymore, but it was even worse than that. Much worse. If he meant to join Sully at the Horse in the evening, he’d have to get himself there. And when he arrived, Sully would already be seated at the bar, showered and smelling of aftershave, like on the weekends. Before, nobody’d minded when they both showed up looking and smelling like men who worked for a living, but they would mind if Rub alone showed up in that state.
Standing there on the curb, Rub understood the full extent of his abandonment, which went beyond hours and days and weeks and also beyond physical proximity. Back when he and Sully had worked together, when they stood side by side, forty-plus hours a week, what Rub had enjoyed most was sharing his deepest, most intimate reflections about life and what would make it better on a minute-to-minute, real-time basis. Could he bear that loss? Possibly. But only if he believed Sully missed their friendship, too, even if maybe a little less. But what if Sully didn’t miss him at all? No sooner did this possibility occur to him than he was visited by an even-darker thought. What if Sully had gotten him the cemetery job to be rid of him?
“I’m headed out there now if you want a lift,” Jocko had offered, but Rub, feeling gutted, turned away so the other man wouldn’t see his tears spill over. Here was the terrible truth he hadn’t wanted to see: he was on his own.
We’re all on our own, Dummy. No exceptions.
“But—” Rub began.
Besides, you’re exaggerating. It’s not like I abandoned you.
Not completely, no. When Sully’s luck first changed, that had been Rub’s worst fear — that Sully would just move away, to someplace nicer, warmer, where Rub couldn’t follow. But so far he’d shown no such inclination. Sometimes out at Hilldale, Sully’s truck would pull up outside the tool shed on Friday afternoons as Rub was closing up, and they’d head for beer at the Horse like they used to. Other times he’d drive out to where he and Bootsie lived, and together they’d drive back into town and eat breakfast at Hattie’s and after that stop in at the OTB. But not often enough. Rub needed to know when Sully was coming, otherwise he’d wonder all day if he was. Only every night and every day would be often enough.
Noticing, finally, how dejected and listless Rub had become, Sully had tried to explain how he was staying home more now, not wasting so much time carousing. He wanted to set a better example for his grandson. It wasn’t good for the boy to see him coming home shitfaced every night after the bars closed, getting his name in the police log for some damned foolishness or other. Rub wanted to believe him. He truly did. But from small things Sully let drop, it seemed he was still a regular at the Horse. Suspicious, Rub sometimes called and asked for him, but Birdie, the regular bartender, recognized his stammer. She always claimed Sully wasn’t there, hadn’t seen him for days, in fact. But then Rub had heard her say similar things to the wives of men sitting right in front of her, so he could easily imagine her raising an eyebrow in Sully’s direction and him shaking his head no, just like these other men did.
“I just wisht you weren’t always in such a hurry,” Rub said weakly. He hated it when Sully went silent. It was bad enough when what he said was untrue or unfair, but silence was even worse, because to Rub that either meant he’d lost interest or didn’t think what Rub was trying to explain merited any response. These days Sully always seemed to be in a hurry, anxious to be off to the next place, as if he was being pursued by something neither of them could name. Was that how things would be this afternoon? Not if Rub could help it. Pruning the offending tree limb wouldn’t take more than half an hour, but he was determined to make an afternoon of it. With Bootsie safely at work and Sully’s son and grandson away, they could pull up a couple of lawn chairs and Rub could tell him all the things he’d been storing up, each thought leading to the next and then the next, until he’d covered all of it. Whereas if he sensed Sully was in a hurry, the words would get all jammed up in the back of his throat.
That had been the worst thing about being Sully’s friend: having to share him. At Hattie’s, the OTB, the White Horse Tavern? It didn’t matter. The cruel arithmetic of their friendship was such that while Sully was Rub’s only friend, Rub was one of Sully’s many. In addition to his son and grandson, both of whom Rub resented deeply, though he knew he wasn’t supposed to, there was Carl Roebuck, whom he resented even more. As their former employer, he had exactly no claim on Sully’s affection but seemed to have it anyway. And then there was Ruth, down at Hattie’s. Sully claimed they weren’t carrying on anymore, but if that was true, why was she still his friend? The list went on and on. Birdie out at the Horse and Jocko and all the other regulars. Also Sully’s Upper Main Street ladies, elderly widows who lived in decaying Victorians and counted on Sully to bring them to the hairdresser and fix their faulty plumbing, though they never paid him. Why did any of these people come in for a share?
Since it seemed to be a real math problem, for a time Rub had put his faith in subtraction. When Sully’s landlady died, Rub imagined he’d be first in line for the old woman’s share of his friend’s time and affection, but somehow that hadn’t happened. And he’d allowed himself to get his hopes up a year later when Wirf, Sully’s lawyer and boon drinking companion, had passed but again, no dice. Indeed, every time someone in his friend’s inner circle died or moved away, it was as if Sully himself was proportionately diminished, so there was never a net gain. This fall Will would head off to college, and Peter claimed that when this happened he, too, would be leaving town, news that once upon a time would’ve buoyed Rub’s spirits, but no longer.