Mr. Fix-It

by Crystal Hubbard

  I write books that let me dream about what I want…

  Khela’s confession moved through his head and settled deep in his chest. If her books held the key to unlocking her heart, then there was only one thing for Carter to do.

  “I’d like to go to Waterstone’s,” he called to the driver. “It’s a bookstore in Harvard Square.”

  Chapter 5

  “You are the most base of thieves, one who schemes to steal that which is freely given you—my heart.”

  —from The Pirate’s Princess by Khela Halliday

  “You didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Khela…you couldn’t have.”

  “I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “It’s not right.”

  “I was asked to make a cake, so I made a cake. There was no guideline as to what it could or couldn’t be made of.”

  “This isn’t going to do much to contradict the general perception that you’re a little bit weird.”

  “Are you going to bid on my cake or not?”

  “I don’t have much choice, do I? I’d hate for anyone else to cut into that thing and find out what you did.”

  Khela studied her cake with an unbiased eye as she and Daphne strolled side by side along the length of the display table. It was just as pretty as the others, though not as artistic as architect Jonathan Brady’s, which was a double-fudge masterpiece sculpted and frosted to look like Trinity Church. Nor was it as ornamental as fashion designer Katrinka Klinche’s chiffon-pink dome encased in a shell of spun-sugar threads sprinkled with genuine fourteen-karat gold flakes.

  Khela considered her cake far more interesting than cartoonist Ray Crowley’s effort, a 28-inch pyramid constructed of Twinkies cemented together with melted Hershey’s Kisses and mini marshmallows.

  The two-layer cake Khela donated looked like a typical, grocery-store bakery offering: smooth white frosting, puffy shell borders, red roses clustered on top.

  It didn’t matter which cake looked and tasted better or fetched the highest bidder. Boston “celebrities” had been asked to create them for an auction to benefit the Greater Roxbury Literacy Fund.

  Katrinka Klinche had been asked to create a “fashion forward confection.” Jonathan Brady had honored the Fund’s request to “build an edible example of form and function.”

  The Literacy Fund was one of Khela’s favorite charitable organizations, but having been asked to bake a cake “faithful to the spirit of true love and romance,” she had done almost the exact opposite.

  At least that had been her intent.

  Daphne nudged Khela’s elbow. “Looks like your abomination has drummed up some interest.”

  Khela looked over her shoulder. Through the crowd she saw two men examining the description placard set before her cake. They were both tall and broad-shouldered, and they seemed to know each other. The shorter of the two, an African-American man with nut brown skin, a shaved head and big diamond studs in his ears, stood out in a cream-colored suit with a cranberry square in his upper breast pocket. His taller friend passed a hand through his short, dark blond hair as he leaned over Khela’s cake. He grasped a shiny black paddle in one hand, the gold number 88 glinting from it. Wearing a smart white shirt, jeans and a snappy black blazer, he looked more relaxed than his companion. He was dressed with casual perfection for the event, and he blended with the chic artists and wealthy Literacy Fund benefactors milling about the Stahp/Geaux Gallery of Modern Art, which was hosting the auction. When he turned in her direction, Khela’s jaw dropped and her face snapped forward.

  “What’s he doing here?” she hissed at Daphne.

  “Sniffing at your cake, looks like.” Daphne grinned around the slim polka-dotted straw sticking out of her blue margarita.

  “How’d he know about this event?” Khela set down her cranberry, apple and honey “mocktail” on the nearest object, the flattened, feather-covered top of a giant yellow head made of plaster.

  “It was in the Herald-Star, the Globe, the Metro—” Daphne started.

  “But why is he here?” Khela ducked behind Daphne when Carter and his friend seemed to glance her way. She fluffed Daphne’s voluminous red mane, hoping it would act as an invisibility cloak.

  “Either he really likes cake or because you’re here. Duh.” Daphne finished her drink, set the empty glass next to Khela’s, and stepped to the side to expose Khela. “He knows you’re here. Quit acting like a child and let’s go say hi. I haven’t seen him in ages, and I need my fix.”

  “You go. I’ll wait here.”

  “What is with you?” Daphne stamped her foot. “There are too many hot, available, employed Beantown bachelors here tonight.”

  She grabbed Khela’s upper arm and turned her toward a giant sheet of glass two inches thick hanging from the ceiling. A wide stripe of black acrylic paint divided the panel into equal halves. Titled Parallel Perspectives, the art piece made an impromptu mirror for the two women to inspect their reflections.

  “We look amazing, if I do say so myself, and I’m not going to waste this Zac Posen on you.”

  With a twirl of her flirty cocktail dress, Daphne left Khela alone with her reflection. Khela watched her friend’s disappearance in the glass. Male and female heads alike turned to track the diminutive redhead. Daphne cut a striking figure with her flaming hair and the Kelly green baby doll dress that complemented her fair complexion. Givenchy heels undercut the sweetness of the dress, leaving no doubt that Daphne was a kitten on the prowl.

  * * *

  Alone in the crowded room, Khela studied her reflection, deeming it more panther than kitten. She had chosen one of her little black dresses, a fitted, brushed cotton jersey soft as cashmere. It was sleeveless with a high collar and armholes cut deeply, fully exposing her shoulders and shoulder blades. The dress was a fine advertisement for her boxing coach’s push-up regimen.

  The skirt hugged her hips, the hem resting just under her knees. Two notch pleats in the back allowed for walking ease and continued the line of Khela’s seamed stockings. Her upswept hair was casual but chic, and with the modest champagne diamond studs in her earlobes, her whole look was sultry sophistication. The finishing touch wasn’t the light application of nude lip gloss and smoky eye paint, but the black, four-inch Roger Vivier heels on her feet.

  Fine, double straps circled her ankles to fasten with delicate, diamond-studded buckles. A satin rose, too big to go unnoticed yet too small to be considered ostentatious, decorated the narrow vamp. From head to toe, Khela was classy and provocative in equal measure.

  Yet she would have given anything to be back at home in her office, slogging around the house in jeans and a T-shirt, lost in the pages of her current writing project. Her feet wandered along with her mind as she moved through the gallery, scarcely noticing the wacky, whimsical and ridiculous works for which the Stahp/Geaux Gallery was renowned.

  She would never have done what Carmen had done at the awards dinner—discuss her storylines with others. Other than her editor, her books had only one reader before publication, Daphne, and even after ten years, it was still hard to turn a manuscript over to the best friend who was her best editor and harshest critic.

  Daphne’s first serious crush was on William Strunk Jr., the Cornell professor behind the classic grammar guidebook The Elements of Style, and she had spent a week in mourning when an illustrated version came out in 2005.

  “What’s next?” she’d ranted. “Dr. Seuss illustrating the Bible?”

  Daphne’s eagle eye for typos, grammatical mistakes and incongruities was the secret behind Khela’s reputation for highly polished manuscripts.

  The story occupying Khela’s mind now was a brand new ‘what if?’ Most of her books began with a ‘what if?’ Her current project had its genesis in a fight she witnessed while walking home from the Boston Public Library a few weeks ago.

  A wiry man and a squat woman stood on Boylston Street. The man bent over her, angrily jabbing his finger at her
as he spoke words that Khela couldn’t hear. It was raining, cars packed the street, their drivers honking as if that would decongest traffic, pedestrians moved in steady currents along the slick sidewalks, and no one seemed to notice the man and the woman.

  Khela wouldn’t have noticed them, either, if she hadn’t been trying to wrestle open her stubborn umbrella. Once she saw them, she couldn’t look away. She had scoured them with her eyes, noting every detail.

  The greasy dirt ground into the knees of the man’s jeans. The torn pocket on the woman’s poncho, which looked as if it had last been cleaned when the poncho was first fashionable. The way the hard raindrops matted the man’s thin dark hair to his skull, and how the woman’s dark hair, heavy with rain, hung lifelessly from her bowed head. The way the man used his sleeve to wipe spittle from his mouth, and how the woman hunkered away from him, her shoulders hiked up to her ears. Khela especially noted the way water flew from the ends of the woman’s hair after the man slapped her hard across the face, sending her head rocking violently to one side.

  Khela had used her cellphone to summon the police, who’d been nearby, fortunately. As the man was led off in handcuffs, still cursing, Khela watched the woman. Her assailant was long gone by the time a female police officer touched the woman’s chin, raising her face. And then it happened. Khela’s ‘what if?’

  What if she’d hit that son-of-a-bitch back? she had thought.

  All the rest of the way home, Khela kept having to stop to scrawl notes on the tiny pad of paper she kept handy for just such occasions, no easy task with her heavy book satchel and umbrella in her arms. She had the bones of a story by the time she’d arrived home. She was soaked through to her underwear, but didn’t bother to change until she had the first rough draft of an outline. The best stories were always the ones that wouldn’t let Khela go, and this was one of them.

  Working on the story had been so fulfilling that she’d hardly thought of Carter in the weeks since they’d last seen each other. Hardly meaning only once…or twice…a day.

  She had declined Daphne’s repeated requests to visit following the convention, because she knew that Daphne would lure Carter to her apartment. Her new book was the perfect thing to keep her isolated—from Daphne, Carter and everyone else.

  * * *

  Khela paused in front of a seven-foot sculpture of an old-time baseball player. The placard in front of the work read that it was Red Sox legend Ted Williams in his classic batting stance. The piece was made of Big League Chew bubble gum, personally chewed by the artist, an ardent Sox fan. Khela circled to the rear of the grayish-pink creation. To onlookers, she might have been studying the work from its other side. Khela was actually scanning the crowd for the man she desperately tried not to think about.

  He stood at one of the chest-high, white melamine tables near the bar. While his friend drank one of the garish, glow-in-the-dark martinis specially concocted for the auction, Carter had his hand loosely curled around the neck of a Sam Adams. He and his friend had been at the table for all of three seconds before they were joined by an older woman in a long black dress that fit her as closely as her own skin.

  The woman’s frosted blonde hair was styled in what Daphne called the Cougar Do—the sporty but sophisticated flip that certain plastic surgery patients get because it showcases their rejuvenated, mask-like faces while hiding nip-and-tuck scars.

  Khela was trying to shake off the first pricks of jealousy when a grinning man seemed to materialize right out of Ted Williams’s back pocket.

  “Boo,” he greeted pleasantly.

  “Blecch,” Khela grunted at the truly terrifying sight of her ex-husband, Jay Frederickson.

  Jay straightened his purple silk tie, and the chunky gold rings on three of his fingers glinted in the track lighting. “It’s so good to see you too, Khela,” he said, his voice syrupy. “Don’t worry. I’m not here for anything from you. I was in the mood for a new piece, so uh, I thought I’d come by. Do a little shopping.”

  She tugged the program that he’d curled into a loose tube from his hand. Three of the Literacy Fund organizers’ publicity mug shots were circled in blue ink: Constance Nearing-Cook, the widow of one of Boston’s most successful and respected attorneys; Jamie Shouten, an heiress whose family fortune had been made in Boston shipping; and Esmé Wilhoite, the Latina divorcée famous for walking off with half of her banking magnate husband’s half-billion dollar fortune upon their divorce.

  “Shopping?” she snorted. “Looks more like you’re hunting.”

  He raised his half-tone Gucci sunglasses, resting them on his head. “Are you jealous?” he whispered, girlishly batting his long, thick eyelashes.

  “Please,” she retorted. “Come on, let me introduce you to those chippies.” She took his purple silk cuff between her thumb and forefinger and dragged him forward. “The sooner you marry some rich sucker, the sooner you’ll stop sucking alimony out of me.”

  “Hey, beautiful, where’s the fire?” snickered the man Khela almost trampled in her haste to get rid of her ex-husband.

  “Holy—!” Khela gasped. She looked from the stranger to her ex and shuddered. They could have been twins, right down to the cut of their suits, their Gucci half-tones and their preference for silky, disco-shiny shirts.

  “I said,” Jay’s doppelganger licked his lips, “where’s the fire, baby?”

  “Excuse me,” Jay grinned, pulling his cuff from Khela’s weak grasp. “I see someone I’d like to know.” With that, Jay made his way straight to Constance.

  “Miss Halliday,” the stranger greeted, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips. “What a pleasant surprise to run into you here tonight.”

  “I’ll bet,” Khela mumbled skeptically. She wriggled her hand free and absently wiped the stranger’s kiss on the back of her skirt.

  “I tend to be more of a homebody, but when I was invited to attend this event, I knew I had to come out and support the efforts of this group,” he went on smoothly.

  “Wonderful.” Khela tried to move past him, but he stepped in her path.

  “I’m Sheldon Perry.” He extended a hand. “It’s truly my honor to meet you, Miss Halliday.”

  Khela gave his hand a curt shake, pinching her lips to suppress a grimace at the sight of the clear polish glossing his fingernails. Everything about him—his peanut-shaped head, yellow-brown complexion, glib manner of speech, tailored sharkskin suit and yellow silk shirt—reminded her so much of Jay that she wanted to slap him on principle.

  “You know, you have really beautiful eyes, Khela,” Sheldon grinned, revealing capped teeth the size of piano keys. “I know where the fire is now. In your gorgeous eyes.”

  “Thank you,” Khela said, not meaning it one bit. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find my friend.”

  “I could be your friend,” he oozed, pitching his voice low into the Barry White range. “Who knows? In time, friendship could lead to more.”

  Real or imagined, Khela tasted vomit at the back of her throat. “I’m not looking for more right now. I won’t be looking for it later, either.” Especially not with the likes of you.

  He threw his head back and laughed. “I love a woman with spirit. A challenge!”

  I think I’m gonna be sick, Khela thought.

  His laughter abruptly stopped. Staring her in the eyes, he said, “So where’re we going for dinner?”

  “There’s a buffet next to that blue display,” Khela told him, referring to the series of blue light bulbs mounted on a wall-sized board on the other side of the gallery.

  “I thought you might like to take me someplace a little nicer.” He stepped close enough for her to count the hairs rimming his nostrils. “Someplace more intimate.”

  “I haven’t asked you out,” Khela pointed out.

  “It’s the twenty-first century, baby,” he grinned. “I don’t mind when a woman takes charge and tells me where and when we’re going.” He ran his tongue over his lips again.

  “E
w,” Khela grimaced. “I won’t be taking you to dinner, Mr. Perry.”

  “Sheldon,” he cooed, audaciously stroking her upper arms. “You got something better planned? Excellent! I’m free, baby.”

  “I doubt that,” she muttered under her breath, shrugging free of his loose grip.

  Other women might have considered Sheldon Perry attractive, well-spoken and charming, but Khela was all too familiar with his type to stumble into his sticky web of flattery and confidence. The suit he wore was probably his nicest, an Armani or Calvin Klein he’d purchased secondhand online, at a consignment shop or borrowed permanently from a friend. He likely scoured the newspapers and local magazines looking for events such as the Literacy Fund auction, events where he was sure to encounter wealthy women lonely or stupid enough to fall for the reptilian charm wrapped in his discount designer duds.

  Khela knew Sheldon Perry even though she’d only just met him.

  She’d been married to a man just like him.

  “What do you do for a living?” she asked him, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

  He shifted his gaze from her eyes to a point between them. “I’m a broker with Manulife Financial.”

  Khela remembered his hands on her upper arms. His nails were tidily manicured and polished, but his palms were calloused. His hands had the look of someone who pushed a desk but the feel of someone who pushed a shovel.

  She studied him closer. “You look familiar. Have you ever been to Buscador de Oro Island?”

  “That sounds so familiar,” he said, his brow knitted in thought. “Is that one of the Bahaman islands? There’s so many of them I haven’t been to, that—”

  “It’s off the coast of Spain,” Khela said.