He’d been hoping, as he always did when he dropped by the Squeerses’ house, that he’d find Rub there alone, but the Subaru in the drive, its engine still ticking, meant Bootsie, whose car it was, had arrived home from work shortly before, and indeed it was she, clutching a fistful of junk mail, who answered his knock. She was still in her uniform, her thinning brown hair still clutched in the hairnet she wore to serve food in the hospital cafeteria.
“You,” she said, seeing who it was.
“Yup,” Sully agreed. “Sorry to disappoint.”
But she’d already turned away, leaving him to come inside and close the screen door behind him. “I keep hoping it’ll be Harrison Ford, but it never is.”
“Next time I’ll bring my whip. Where’s Dummy?”
“I thought he was with you. Didn’t I just hear you threaten to beat him with a shovel?”
“Nah, that was the dog,” he said, which seemed to satisfy her. “I haven’t seen your husband. I waited for him at Hattie’s, but he never turned up.”
“I thought you two were taking down that branch today,” she said, tossing the junk mail into a wicker basket the size of a bassinette that must have contained about a month’s worth. Everything in the Squeerses’ house overflowed, the sink with dirty dishes, the garbage can with smelly trash, the living room sofa with the romance novels Bootsie borrowed by the gross from the library. According to Rub, she read at least one a night.
“You’re right, we were,” Sully confessed. Last night, just before leaving the Horse, they’d agreed to meet here at noon. Sully was to bring his ladder. He’d even thrown it in the back of the truck when he got home, but by morning he’d forgotten his promise. Even noticing it there that morning had failed to jog his memory. Much as he hated to admit it, such lapses were becoming routine. Had Rub spent the whole afternoon waiting for him? Where was he now?
Bootsie, head cocked, was regarding him dubiously over the rim of her reading glasses. He’d paused in the dining room to lean on a chair. “What’s with that?” she wanted to know.
“With what?”
“You’re breathing like you just ran a marathon.”
Not quite, but close. Four little porch steps. Heart thumping in his chest like a sledgehammer. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”
“Are you like this all the time now?”
“Nah, it comes and goes. Tomorrow I’ll wake up fine.” He hoped.
“You still smoking?”
“I can’t remember the last time I bought a pack of cigarettes,” he told her.
“Okay, but that’s not what I asked. You think you’re talking to somebody who’s never bummed a smoke?”
No surprise that she hadn’t gone for his head fake. He had pretty much given up cigarettes during the day, but at night, out at the Horse, he’d cadge a few from Jocko or Carl Roebuck. “No,” he told her, “but I might be talking to somebody who should mind her own business.”
“Yeah?” she said, fixing him with her trademark stare.
“I didn’t say I was,” he clarified. “Just that I might be.”
She held his gaze a moment longer, then let him off the hook. “Men,” she said, causing Sully to wonder — and not for the first time — why so many women deemed him the personification of the whole infuriating male gender, an attitude he found it particularly hard to swallow coming from Bootsie and Ruth, given the men they were married to.
“I gotta get out of this uniform,” she said, heading up the stairs. “It’s rubbed me raw everywhere.”
He didn’t care to contemplate this chafing. With Bootsie, everywhere covered a lot of territory. In the kitchen, he sat down heavily in the only chair at the dinette that wasn’t piled high with crap, and after a moment his breathing returned to normal. One day, possibly quite soon, it wouldn’t. He knew that. What he couldn’t decide was how to feel about it. He still had three or four good days to every bad one, but his VA cardiologist said that ratio wouldn’t hold. Four would become three, then two, then one. Eventually they’d all be like today. That was assuming things happened slowly, which they might not.
From upstairs came a groan of pure pleasure, and before Sully could prevent it he was visited by an unwanted image of Bootsie stepping out of her uniform and examining the day’s abrasions. How often did he think about sex? Too fucking often.
“What’s this I heard about the old mill falling down?” she hollered, her voice penetrating the ceiling.
“Just the wall nearest the street,” Sully called upward.
“Yeah, but how does something like that happen?” she asked.
So, speaking through the ceiling, he told her what he’d learned over the course of the afternoon, how Carl, meaning to shore everything up again later, had severed the building’s collar ties and floor joists, leaving the long wall that bordered the sidewalk free to topple into the road on top of Roy Purdy, who conveniently happened to be driving by. Sully, who’d spent the morning daydreaming pleasantly about how he might murder Roy, couldn’t decide whether or not to feel guilty. If he hadn’t goaded Roy with his fake want ads, delaying his departure by a minute or two, the man likely would’ve passed through the area before the wall collapsed. Had Sully’s idle woolgathering somehow been mistaken for a prayer and answered? God’s answering prayers now? Since when?
Bootsie came back into the kitchen, clad now in one of the brightly colored muumuus she favored, beneath the fabric of which, to Sully’s eye, far too much violent pendulous motion was going on. “What do you want to bet they’ll be saying Carl did it on purpose, for the insurance?”
“They’re already saying it.”
“You think he did?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” he admitted, “but no, I doubt it.” Mostly because whenever Carl had dumb ideas, he ran them by Sully first.
“You want a beer?” Bootsie said, opening the fridge.
“No, thanks.”
“Good. We’re out.” Of that and just about everything else, judging by the empty shelves. Just how badly were they struggling financially, Sully wondered. Rub had steady work at the cemetery now, and Bootsie had her food service job at the hospital, but neither was overpaid. He had no idea what they spent their money on, but Rub always seemed to be broke.
When Bootsie pulled out the drawer under the phone book, Sully quickly turned away, because that, he happened to know, was where she kept her diabetes kit. The last time he made the mistake of watching her sink the needle into her belly, right through the fabric of her muumuu, he’d nearly passed out. In fact, just knowing what was going on behind his back caused sweat to bead on his forehead. “Tell me when you’re done.”
She chortled, clearly enjoying his discomfort. “For such a tough guy, you sure are squeamish.”
“If the Second World War had been fought with hypodermic needles, I’d have deserted in basic training.”
“Well, you can turn around. I’m all done,” she said. He waited, though, not trusting her, until he heard the drawer close again. When he finally ventured to glance, she was surveying the kitchen with the air of someone who was repulsed by the sight without being motivated in the least to do anything about it. “I don’t suppose you know how to fix a dishwasher.”
“You ask me that every time I’m here,” he told her. “The answer’s still no.”
“Maybe I could get Carl to come over and detonate the whole kitchen,” she said. “Just blow it to smithereens and start over.” When Sully didn’t offer an opinion, she regarded him through narrowed eyes. “Don’t say it,” she advised.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”