Free Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo Page B

lazily, grinning.
    "Sully, Sully, Sully."
    Bad mood or no bad mood. Sully couldn't help grinning back. Carl Roebuck was one of those people you just couldn't stay mad at. His father, Kenny Roebuck, hadn't been able to, and neither, apparently, could CCarl's wife, Toby, who had a world of reason to. The fact that nobody could stay mad at him was, perhaps, the source of Carl Roebuck's luck. No wonder he had his way with people, especially women. What he managed to convey to all of them was that they were just what he needed to fill his life with meaning.
    "What am I going to do with you?" Carl wondered out loud, as if it really were his decision.
    "Pay me the money you owe, and I'll let you alone," Sully offered. Carl ignored this.
    "Is your truck running?"
    "At the moment."
    "Then I got a job for you."
    "Not till you pay me for the last one."
    Carl stood up.
    "We've been through this. I'm not paying you and that moron Rub Squeers for that half-ass job. You dug a goddamn hole, stood around in it all afternoon, drank a case of beer, filled the hole, and left my lawn all tore up. And we don't have an ounce more water pressure now than we did before."
    "I never said you would," Sully reminded him. Carl became instantly red-faced, and this pleased Sully.
    "Don't get all bent out of whack, now," he added, knowing full well that nothing was more likely to bend Carl Roebuck out of whack than to be instructed by Sully to calm down.
    Along with Tip Top Construction, Carl had inherited from his father a heart condition that had already required bypass surgery.
    "You know the trouble with guys like you?" Carl stood, glowing red now, even though he hadn't raised his voice.
    "You figure you got a right to steal from anybody that's got a few bucks. I'm supposed to assume the posit ion because you got a busted knee and no prospects, like this is some kind of Feel-Sorry-for-Sully Week. Well, it ain't, my friend.
    This is Fuck- You Week." Carl was pacing back and forth behind his desk as he spoke, and for some reason his speech had a soothing effect on Sully, who put his feet up on CCarl's desk.
    "That was last week, actually. And the week before."
    "Then go away.
    You did shoddy work, and I'm not paying you for it. You think I got where I am doing shoddy work? " Sully couldn't help but smile at this.
    Maybe later in the day when he remembered it, this line of bullshit would piss him off, but right now, watching Carl Roebuck, beet red with trumped-up self-righteousness, constituted something like partial payment for the debt.
    And when Sully finally spoke, his voice was even lower than CCarl's.
    "No, Carl," he admitted.
    "You didn't get where you are by doing shoddy work. You didn't get where you are by doing any work. You got where you are because your father worked himself into an early grave so you could piss away everything he worked for on ski trips and sports cars."
    Sully let this much sink in before continuing.
    "Now personally, I don't care about the ski trips and the sports cars. I don't even care if you wind up broke, which you probably will. But before you do, you're going to pay me the three hundred bucks you owe me, because I dug a fifty-foot trench under your terrace in ninety-degree heat and busted my balls tugging on hundred-year-old pipes that snapped off in my hands every two feet.
    That's why you're going to pay me. " He got to his feet then, facing Carl Roebuck across his big desk. " I'll tell you another thing.
    You're going to pay for the beer. I just decided. It was only a six-pack, but since you think it was a case, you can pay for a case.
    Call it a tax on being a prick.
    " That seemed like a pretty good exit line to Sully, and he slammed the door on the way out. The glass hadn't stopped reverberating, however, before he thought of an even better way to leave, so he went back in.
    Carl was still standing there behind the desk, so Sully picked up right where he left off.
    " The other reason you're going to pay me is that