“Yeah, you were. You were going to say that a month from now I’d be right back in the same place.”
“Not true,” he said. A week from now was more like it.
“I’m not stupid.”
“Did I say you were?”
“No, I guess you didn’t,” she answered. “Must’ve been something I heard in my head.” Going over to the window, she peered out into the darkness. “You ever hear things in your head, Sully?”
All the time, Dolly, he was about to say, but suddenly she said, “Son of a bitch,” with her voice so full of genuine wonder that he joined her at the window. There, lying on the ground, its outline unmistakable even in the dark, was the tree limb he and Rub were supposed to have lopped off that afternoon. Had the fucking thing fallen of its own accord? No, lying there at the base of the tree was the chain saw Rub had rented the day before. Had he gotten tired of waiting for Sully and borrowed a ladder somewhere else? Their nearest neighbor lived a good half mile away, too far to walk carrying a ladder, even an aluminum one. Had he called a tree-pruning service? Highly unlikely. Not after renting the saw. Besides, Bootsie would whack his peenie if he paid somebody else to do a job he’d promised to take care of himself. It was possible he’d called his cousins, who owned Squeers Refuse Removal, or maybe they’d driven by en route to the dump and offered to lend a hand, but he doubted it. Rub wasn’t on good-enough terms with his cousins to ask a favor, and they weren’t the sort to offer unasked. Sully himself was, so far as he knew, Rub’s only friend.
“That’s my dimwit husband for you,” Bootsie said, shaking her head in disbelief. “It takes him a month to finally do what I ask him and cut the freakin’ branch down, then he just walks away like the job’s done. What do you want to bet it’s still sitting right there a month from now?”
It was on the tip of Sully’s tongue to say Like all these dirty dishes? Like that tower of pizza boxes? but he was wise enough to hold it. “Nah, we’ll cart it off tomorrow, I promise,” he assured her.
Her purse was on the counter, and she pulled out a ten-dollar bill, then stuffed it into a glass on the sink that was crusty with orange juice. “My last ten bucks,” she said, holding up the glass as Exhibit A, “says this time tomorrow that tree limb’s still right there.”
Which pissed him off. “If you think I won’t take your money—”
“You won’t win it, is what I think,” she told him, the picture of confidence, and her sly, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is grin annoyed him sufficiently that he peeled two fives from his money clip. “Easy pickin’s,” she said, slipping the bills into the juice glass and setting it on the windowsill behind the teetering pyramid of dishes in the sink. “I know who I’m betting with. I just wish there was something else for us to bet on.”
“In that case I’ll get out of your hair before you think of it,” he told her, heading for the door. “If Dummy shows up, tell him I’m sorry I stood him up. I’ll be down at the Horse for a bit.”
He hadn’t made it as far as the living room when she said, “I got a question for you.” When he turned to face her, he saw that her eyes, dry a second ago, were now full — indeed spilling over.
Jesus, he thought. Not this. Yet again he’d allowed himself to be bushwhacked by a woman’s unhappiness. For this to happen, over and over, he had to be some kind of stupid. It had been going on his whole life, starting with his mother, the poor woman. Being married to Big Jim Sullivan, she came by her despair honestly, God knew. Though Sully wasn’t its cause, he’d nevertheless taken her grief to heart, thereby learning at an early age that responsibility for feminine heartbreak would somehow attach itself to the male closest to hand. That said, he would end up far from blameless in this respect. It wasn’t long after his mother was in the ground that Sully started disappointing women in his own right. One after another, actually, no stopping that runaway train once it got pointed downhill. Sometimes he was the sole source of disenchantment (as with Vera, his ex-wife), other times just a contributing factor (as with Ruth). The thing to do, once you saw it coming, was make tracks, but too often you didn’t. They had a way of sneaking up on you, these disappointed women, dry eyed one minute, leaking prodigiously the next. And frozen in place, like Sully was now, you waited patiently for them to explain your part in their sorrow.
“What?” he said, because he had to say something and was, like always, curious as to what he’d done wrong this time.
“How come you never invite me out?”
He cocked his head at her. “You’re a married woman, Dolly.”
“The two of you, I mean. You and him. You’re down there most nights, drinking beer. How come you never invite me to come along?”
“I had no idea you wanted to,” he said. A lame response, but he was still stuck on you and him. When, exactly, had his best friend’s wife become their shared responsibility?
“I don’t,” she said, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her muumuu. “That place is depressing.”
“Well?”
“A girl likes to be asked occasionally, is what I’m saying.”
Huh, Sully thought. A girl, unsure why he should be so surprised that this was how Bootsie thought of herself. Because she wasn’t one anymore? Because she was too overweight and unattractive? What bearing did mere facts have when it came to how you saw yourself? If Sully never thought of himself as seventy, even on days like today when he felt eighty, why shouldn’t a lonely married woman who read romance novels every night think of herself as a girl?
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe next time, if you feel like—”
“I just said I didn’t want to, all right?”
They faced each other for a long moment until Rub began barking outside. Good dog!
Sully coughed. “I’m sorry—”
“Go,” Bootsie told him, making one hand into a whisk broom and brushing him toward the door. “Forget I said anything, okay? It must be the heat…”
“It is brutal,” Sully allowed.
At the front door she turned on the porch light and followed him out onto the steps. To Sully’s amazement, Rub was still in the truck, but Sully’s reappearance drove him into a frenzy of improbable laps inside the cab, as if he were sharing the small space with a vicious ferret. One moment he appeared on the dash, the next he was gone completely, the whole truck quivering from his idiotic exertions.
“Jesus,” Bootsie said, shaking her head. “Look at that crazy little fucker.”
“Rub!” Sully called to him. “Knock it off!” The dog whined once and went still.
Sully strongly suspected that something further was expected of him where Bootsie was concerned, some act of kindness or understanding of which he was incapable, but before he could think of some other lame thing she said, “Pizza. I just decided that’s what I’m hungry for.”
“They deliver out here in the boonies?”
“You have to order at least a large.”
“All right, then,” Sully said, everything settled now. A minute ago they’d been faced with a thorny existential dilemma, possibly spiritual in nature, only to have it unexpectedly redefined as an urge that only a delivery pizza could satisfy.
As Sully made his way over to the truck, though, the screen door slammed, and a moment later there was a loud crash. His first thought was that Bootsie had tripped and fallen, but then he realized that the pyramids of dishes in the kitchen must’ve collapsed. He heard Bootsie say, “Fine. Terrific. You think I fucking care?” It took him a moment to realize it was the mess she was talking to. At some point she’d have to separate what was broken from what was merely gross, toss the shards of glass and ceramic into the trash and return whatever could be used another time into the sink. But not tonight. That was what she was announcing to the cosmos. Sully thought about going back inside and offering to help clean up, then reconsidered. Granted permission to flee, you’d be a fool not to.