Everybody's Fool

Reincarnation

ONLY CARL APPEARED disappointed when the game broke up an hour and a half after it started, with all the chips in front of Sully. Jennifer, quickly bored, had fallen asleep on the sofa, and Carl now stood over her with a look of profound sadness. “Have you ever made a rash promise?” he asked Sully.

“Oh, once or twice,” Sully admitted. “I was married, if you recall.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” Jennifer purred, when Carl put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m not in the mood anymore.” She rolled away from him, under the apparent impression that she was home and in bed.

“Let her sleep,” said Birdie, who had an apartment above the tavern.

“Really?” Carl said, looking for all the world like a man who’d just been granted a stay of execution.

Birdie shrugged. “The register’s locked.”

Outside, in the parking lot, they waved to Jocko, who tooted goodbye. Carl, nudging Sully, said, “A word in private?”

Hearing this, Rub’s face darkened. He was about to be dismissed, and he hated that. Worse, he’d be leaving Sully alone with Carl, who seemed to believe they were best friends and sometimes, like tonight, even said so. When Sully handed him the keys to the truck, Rub accepted them reluctantly.

“It was true, what I said earlier,” Carl told him when they were alone.

“You’re really broke?”

“And then some.”

“I don’t know what you think I can do, but I’ll help if I can.”

“Nah, I think we’re well beyond that.”

“What, then?”

“I am sorry about the rent.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll clear out if you want.”

“What’d I just say?”

Carl shrugged. “Okay.” Then, “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“You mean like we die and then have to do this fucking thing all over again?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Jesus, I hope not.”

“I don’t know,” Carl said. “Second time around we might be smarter.”

“We might be dumber, too.”

“I might be,” Carl admitted. “I really don’t see how you could be.”

“Would you want to live again?”

“Fuck, yeah,” Carl said, rocking back on his heels. “I mean, what a night. Look at that sky.”

Sully did, and in fact it was beautiful, the air crisp and clean, the sky full of stars and a bright three-quarter moon. He recalled that afternoon at the diner when everything had appeared to stop, and his life had suddenly seemed like the set of a low-budget movie. At the time he’d wondered if maybe that meant he’d had enough, but now he wasn’t so sure. “I hope you’re not going to tell me it’s the stars you’re going to miss when you’re dead.”

“I don’t know why I even talk to you,” Carl said.

“I don’t either. Are we done, or is there more to say?”

Apparently there was. “Why would I do something like that?” he said, genuinely perplexed.

“Like what?”

“Promise that girl.”

“How the fuck should I know? I don’t even understand why I do half the shit I do. I’m supposed to understand you?”

Carl thought about it. “You really never think about sex anymore?” he said. “Because I just find that so fucking hard to believe.”

—

DRIVING BACK TO Rub’s place, Sully handed him the money he’d lost playing cards so Bootsie wouldn’t get pissed off. “How come you didn’t drop when I gave you the knee?” he asked.

“I had three fuh-fuh—”

“Fucking queens, I know. But I had a full boat.”

“Didn’t look like it,” Rub recalled miserably.

“That was the beauty of it.”

“Sometimes you give me the nuh-nuh-knee and I drop and then it turns out you got nuh-nuh—”

“Nothing?”

“—and it would’ve been my pot.”

“Yeah?” Sully said, watching Rub stuff the bills into his chest pocket. “Well, cheer up. The money usually finds its way back to you.”

When they pulled into the drive and the headlights swept over the tree limb, Sully said, “When you get off work tomorrow, come find me, and we’ll cart all that off. Don’t forget, either, because I got a bet with Bootsie, and I can’t afford to support you both.” Then when Rub started to get out, he said, “Hey.”

“What?”

“What’s the matter with you anyway? You been acting weird all night.”

Rub began to cry.

Sully sighed, having known better than to ask. “You upset because I told about you getting stuck up in the tree?”

Rub stifled a sob. “Everybody laughed.”

“Well, it was funny. You laughed, too.”

“I know.”

“Well then?”

“I’m nuh-nuh—”

“Never gonna hear the end of it? That’s probably true.”

Rub wiped his nose on his sleeve. “I just wisht—”

“What?”

Rub sighed. Where to begin?

“That I’d be nicer to you?”

He shrugged again, but this was the gist of it, Sully could tell.

“I wish I would, too,” he said, and for some reason this seemed to cheer Rub up. He always liked it when they agreed, and it didn’t seem to trouble him that with a little effort Sully could probably make both their wishes come true. “And I’m not the only one who could be nicer, you know.”

Rub looked at him blankly.

“When I was here earlier, your wife was crying.”

“Buh-buh-Bootsie?” He looked genuinely terrified now.

“How many wives you got?”

“Why?”

“How the hell should I know? She’s your wife.” Because of course this was an invitation to think about Vera, his own wife, or ex-wife, out at the county home, muttering obscenities under her breath whenever she thought of him. Until recently he’d pretty much banished her from memory, but this was the third time he’d thought about her today. What the hell was that about?

“Wuh-wuh-what should I do?”

Sully shrugged. “Who knows? Take her out to dinner or something.”

He took out the money Sully’d just given him and counted it dubiously.

“Jesus,” said Sully, handing him another twenty. “Rub!”

“What?”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Rub, who’d been riding in the back, leaped out of the truck bed and up into the seat his namesake had just vacated.

“I wisht he had some other name,” Rub said.

“And so does he about you,” Sully told him, putting the vehicle in reverse.