Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo Page A

looked.
    â€œWhy not?” Sully said. “Just you and me. First dancing, then we’ll go over to my place.”
    A sly grin crossed the old woman’s face. “Let’s just go to your place. Nuts to the dancing.”
    â€œOkay,” Sully said, winking at Cass, who was watching now also, with solemn disapproval, as usual.
    â€œJust tell me one thing!” Hattie shouted. When she got revved up, her voice always reminded Sully of walruses at the zoo. “Who are you?”
    â€œWhat do you mean, who am I?” Sully said in mock outrage. “What are you, blind?”
    â€œYou
sound
like that darn Sully.”
    â€œThat’s who I am, too,” Sully told her.
    â€œWell, I’m too old to dance,” Hattie said. “I’m too old for your place too. You live on the second floor.”
    â€œI know it,” Sully said, massaging his knee. “I can hardly get up and down those stairs myself.”
    â€œHow old are you?” Hattie said.
    â€œSixty,” Sully said. “Except I feel older.”
    â€œI’m eighty-nine.” Hattie cackled proudly.
    â€œI know it. Aren’t you ever going to go meet St. Peter? Make room for somebody else?”
    â€œNo!”
    Sully slid back out of the booth, his leg straight out in front until he could get it safely under him and put some weight on it. “Take it slow, old girl,” he said, patting one of her spotted hands. “Can you still hear the cash register?”
    â€œYou bet I can,” Hattie assured him.
    â€œGood,” Sully said. “You wake up some morning and you can’t hear it, you’ll know you died in your sleep.”
    In fact, the old cash register’s ringing did have a soothing effect on Hattie. Together with the sound of dishes being bussed and the loud rasp of male laughter, the rattle and clang of the ancient register opened the doorway of Hattie’s memory wide enough for the old woman to slip through and spend a pleasant morning in the company of people dead for twenty years. And when her daughter closed the restaurant behind the lastof the lunch customers and ushered Hattie out back to the small apartment they shared, the old woman was exhausted and under the impression that the reason she was so tired was that she’d worked all day.
    A stool had been vacated at the end of the counter, so Sully slid onto it and accepted one of Cass’s dark looks. “How will you know when
you’ve
died?” Cass wanted to know.
    â€œI guess everything will stop being so goddamn much fun,” Sully told her.
    â€œThose don’t look like your school duds,” she observed. “No classes today?”
    â€œNone for me.”
    She studied him. “So. You’re giving up.”
    â€œI don’t think I’ll be going back, if that’s what you mean.”
    â€œWhat have you got, three more weeks till the end of the term?”
    Sully admitted this was true. “You know how it is,” he said.
    Cass made a face. “No idea. Tell me how it is, Sully.”
    Sully had no intention of explaining how it was to Cass. One of the few benefits of being sixty and single and without the enforceable obligations to other human beings was that you weren’t required to explain how it was. “I don’t see why it should frost your window, in any case.”
    Cass held up both hands in mock surrender. “It doesn’t frost my window. In fact, I may have won the pool. You lasted three months, and all those squares were vacant. Either Ruth or I must’ve won.”
    Sully couldn’t help grinning at her, because she
was
upset. “I hope it was you, then.”
    â€œYou and Ruth still on the outs?”
    â€œNot that I know of. I try not to have that much to do with married women, Cassandra.”
    â€œSometimes you don’t try very hard, the way I hear it.”
    â€œI’ve been trying pretty hard lately, not