Round Robin

by Joseph Flynn

Robin looked at Tone. “You want to say them, Ant-knee, or should I?”

  If looks could kill, Tone’s cameraman would have keeled over on the spot. A true professional, however, the cameraman kept his tape rolling.

  “You told, you rat!” Tone accused.

  “No, he didn’t,” Robin said.

  The crowd watched, mesmerized, as Tone turned his glare on her.

  “Then you found that fink kid writer I hired.”

  It took Tone a second to realize that he’d just confessed: He didn’t come up with his own putdowns. In Mimi’s, that was worse than admitting you had the hots for your mom.

  Robin rubbed salt in the wound.

  “I didn’t find anyone.”

  She took the index card out of her pocket, held it up for the cameras and then showed it to Tone. All it had on it were check marks, nothing else.

  “I was bluffing, Ant-knee. Nobody had to tell me anything. I knew you couldn’t come up with lines like that by yourself. You wouldn’t be the star pupil in a school of fish. No way you got so glib so fast. And why pay for more than the few lines you could memorize? My thinking was, you wouldn’t have more lines than you could count on the fingers of one of your tiny hands.”

  Tone couldn’t stand it. It was like this damn broad was inside his head, knew his every move before he made it. He started trembling. Not out of fear or with embarrassment but from rage.

  “You gave yourself away, Ant-knee,” Robin needled merrily.

  Tone clenched his fists.

  Stan Prozanski, sitting in the front row, noticed, and slipped out his billy-club.

  Tone saw Mimi’s pet cop, and he knew as bad as things were, they’d be infinitely worse if he got his nose spread out all over his face.

  Robin turned toward the cameras and the crowd.

  “Now, on occasion, I’ve mentioned that Ant-knee has a teeny wienie. Not subtle, but with a guy like him obvious is the way to go. Today, I’d like to say that Ant-knee’s penis is the size of a redwood compared to his sliver of a conscience. Why do I say that? Well, look at him. He’s a handsome man, I have to admit. And he has a glamorous job that pays him a small fortune. With all that going for him, you’d think he’d be the last guy in the world to be insecure. But I’ve watched him the past few years, since he started coming in here ... and he preys on women.”

  “Wait a goddamn minute!” Tone shouted.

  He started to make a move, until Stan slapped his billy-club across his palm.

  Robin gave Tone a dismissive glance and continued, “You’ve all seen it. He hits on women in here all the time, and has a lot of success. Now, he’s not doing anything illegal or anything a lot of guys wouldn’t do if they could. Ant-knee just charms the ladies. And some of them are tough enough or indifferent enough that they continue coming in here after he humps them and dumps them. They don’t let it bother them when they see him handing the same load of bull he used on them to someone new ... and ignores them like they’re snot-soaked Kleenex.”

  Tears welled in the eyes of more than a few women present; they knew just who Robin was talking about.

  “But these women are the survivors. They’ve managed to hang in there. But over the past few years I’ve counted maybe a dozen bright, spunky young women who used to come in here and give as good as they got ... and who just disappeared when this man was through with them. They couldn’t bring themselves to come back here and show their faces.”

  Robin turned to look at Tone.

  “What did you do to them, Ant-knee? What did you promise them? What lies did you make them believe? Where are they now?”

  Tone had no answer. He’d gone inside himself to the only depths he had: self-pity.

  Robin looked back at the crowd.

  And smiled.

  “All of you know what Ant-knee says about me. I’m fat. Well, I am. And I’m loud. And I’ll chew your backside off if you give me half-a-reason. Fat, loud and biting ... that’s me. And I’m proud of it. Because I’ll never have to worry about an SOB like him humiliating me and breaking my heart.”

  And when she turned to pick up her crutches, with her face away from the cameras, and in a voice too soft for anyone to hear, Robin added, “Ever again.”

  Nancy took Robin home early.

  “You want the tape?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Didn’t turn out the way you planned, did it?”

  “No.”

  “It was supposed to be more fun.”

  “Yeah, I was just going to disembowel him, not castrate him.”

  “Sounds like he deserved it, though.”

  “So many do.”

  “Not all of them. There are good men, Robin.”

  “Yeah, but you married the last one.”

  Nancy put a hand on Robin’s leg.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” Robin said, “but let’s not get into it, huh?”

  “Sorry, I’ve got to.”

  Robin resigned herself. The perfect end to the perfect day. She turned to look at her sister as Nancy pulled to the curb in front of Robin’s house.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Okay ... Where’s that piece of strudel you promised me?”

  Robin couldn’t believe it, and then she couldn’t help but laugh. She hugged Nancy and because Robin loved her sister so much she burst into tears.

  Crutching away from the car as fast as she could, Robin promised to ask Manfred to bake Nancy a whole plate of strudel.

  Nancy pulled her car door closed and wondered: Manfred?

  Who the hell was Manfred?

  Chapter 10

  The first thing Robin noticed when she entered the vestibule of her building was that Manfred had added his name to the mailbox. Right there, under the box for the mail, just above the button for the doorbell to the basement apartment, was his name. M. Welk. In some kind of Gothic typeface. Maybe the guy had learned calligraphy in prison, too.

  Robin just stared at the intrusion. Stunned.

  There’d never been any name but hers on her home before and she was having a hard time getting over it. She knew this was silly. The man had to identify himself to the Postal Service. He couldn’t just have his mail left under a brick out back ... No, as much as she’d like that idea, the authorities would never go for it.

  Robin was casting about for other possibilities when she noticed that the mailbox itself had been polished. The brass shone brightly enough that Robin could see her reflection in it. That was a heck of a tough job, polishing a mailbox like that. It took a lot of rubbing. Plenty of elbow grease. She knew because she’d done it shortly after she’d bought the building—but not since.

  Then she smelled the fresh paint, and noticed that the entry hall had been painted, too. It was the same shade of eggshell white she’d chosen, but it was clean and new. This was getting eerie. What the heck did this guy think he was doing? Taking her back in time, gaslighting her? Robin looked around, half-expecting Rod Serling to step out of the shadows.

  Except there were no shadows.

  Manfred had changed the light bulbs in the fixture, replacing the old ones with higher wattage substitutes that dispelled the late afternoon shadows and gave off a kind of pleasing pink tone that made the fresh paint look warm and the polished brass sparkle.

  Wait a minute!

  The guy was changing Robin’s home without even asking her permission. Who the hell did he think he was? Robin rang the doorbell for M. Welk’s apartment. It had never worked before, but she wasn’t surprised that it did now.

  But the agreeable three-toned bell brought no response.

  He was probably out in the garage lifting his damn weights, Robin thought. Well, she was going to tell him a thing or two.

  Robin crutched out of the vestibule and turned the corner of her building under a full head of steam.

  She didn’t find him in the garage; she didn’t have to go that far. She saw him on the backstairs. He was almost done painting the stairs and the landing
s in a fresh coat of gray. Robin was struck speechless, thinking maybe this was some kind of a German thing, this mania for home improvement. Maybe he’d tuckpoint the masonry next.

  Manfred sensed someone was watching him. He turned and saw Robin.

  With a bucket of paint in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, he asked, “Did you like the strudel?”

  “It was delicious,” she said.

  Robin couldn’t understand herself. She wanted to tell this oaf off, and here she was complimenting him.

  Manfred nodded and transferred the brush to the hand with the bucket.

  “It’s the air freshener that makes all the difference.”

  He kissed his fingertips in a gesture of gustatory delight.

  Robin bristled. This Teutonic moose was mocking her. Well, great. This was just what she needed to—

  But before she could tear into him, Manfred said, “We need to talk.”

  “You bet we do,” Robin agreed.

  He served her tea and cookies—homemade no doubt—in his apartment.

  They had to go somewhere. This wasn’t a neighborhood where you held a shouting match in your backyard, and Robin certainly wasn’t going to have him up to her place. No way.

  So she sat across his kitchen table from him while he poured tea for her and asked if she preferred lemon or milk with it. She muttered lemon between her teeth and wondered how this man could be such a mountain of contradictions. He was as big and strong as a gorilla but he could have the manners of a Junior League debutante when he wanted. It was maddening trying to get a handle on him.

  But Robin wasn’t going to let her anger go, not this time.

  After sipping the tea, and refusing to tell him how good it was, she said, “Just what do you think you’re doing, messing with my building?”

  “Messing?” Manfred asked puzzled, familiar with the word but not her usage.

  “Painting, polishing, changing the damn light bulbs.”

  “Is that not my job, how I earn my keep?”

  “Your job is to fix things.”

  Manfred shrugged.

  “I didn’t think it would hurt. You don’t like things to look nice?”

  “Yes, I like things to look nice, and I like to make them look nice. Myself.”

  “But I—”

  “But nothing. This is my house. The next time you improve it without my permission, you’re out.”

  “Improvements are a bad thing?”

  He wasn’t that dumb, to ask a question like that. And Robin was far too savvy to fall into such an obvious trap. Then she got it ... she finally understood what he’d been up to, and why he wanted to talk with her. He wasn’t sprucing up the place for her, he had somebody else he wanted to impress. Somebody he wanted to move in with him.

  Robin told him so directly.

  “You want me to let somebody else move in here with you.”

  Manfred nodded his massive head.

  “Ja.”

  “Well, you can forget it. No girlfriend. No aunts and uncles. No—”

  Manfred held up a baby picture and it hammered Robin’s heart like a twelve-pound sledge. A little pink angel with downy brown hair and huge blue eyes. She looked to be about three months old. Robin felt the echo of a pain that was decades old and with her every day of her life.

  “My daughter,” Manfred said. “I live for her. For her, I survived the years in prison.”

  He extended the picture to Robin, but she refused to take it. She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry ... I can’t, I just can’t.”

  “I am buying her back from her mother.”

  Robin’s jaw dropped.

  “What? Who could sell that child?”

  “My ex-wife. I am paying her $85,000.”

  “No, no ... nobody could sell that baby, not for all the money in the world.”

  Tears welled up in Robin’s eyes.

  “My daughter is living in a bordello now. Her mother is the madam. My daughter is learning how to live her life from whores.”

  Robin took the picture, looked at it with tears streaming down her face.

  Then she asked Manfred, “You’d do anything for her, wouldn’t you?”

  “Ja.”

  So she had him, Robin thought. All she had to do was tell him tough luck, your kid can’t stay here, and he was gone. Out of her life. She’d have gotten her furnace and plumbing fixed on the cheap. With a couple of nice paint jobs thrown into the bargain.

  She looked at him and knew he wouldn’t argue, either. That big square face was as stoic as if it grew out of the ground on Easter Island. He wasn’t going to plead, no matter how dainty a tea party he put on.

  All she had to do was say the word and she’d have her old life back.

  Robin handed the picture back to Manfred and got up on her crutches.

  “Just your daughter,” she said. “Nobody else. Ever.”

  “Danke.”

  When Robin got to the door, she turned to look back at him.

  “And short of putting out a fire, don’t you dare do another thing to my home without asking me first.”

  Manfred didn’t say a word, just gave his little nod and clicked his heels under the kitchen table.

  A minute later, Manfred was washing the teacups when he heard Robin enter the park above him. There was a moment when the rush of water from the tap was the only sound, and then his ears were filled with the most heart-wrenching sob he’d ever heard. It was all he could do to restrain himself from running up there, ripping the door off its hinges and vowing to do anything, including taking the world onto his shoulders, to ease her pain.

  But he knew she would only reject him.

  Would have good reason to throw him out.

  And he didn’t want that, not when he was making a home here for Hannelore.

  Manfred dried the cups and saucers with a clean white towel and put them in the cupboard. Looking at the ceiling above his head and nodding once more, he made a promise to himself that someday he would help this woman, would set things right for her.

  Whatever the cost.

  Chapter 11

  The next morning, Robin overslept.

  When she finally pulled her head off the pillow, wondering why she hadn’t heard the alarm, she saw it was 9:30. She’d already missed the breakfast rush! She couldn’t believe it. Until last week, she’d never missed a breakfast or lunch at Mimi’s. Now, she’d missed two.

  She grabbed the alarm clock and shook it, tried to wring from it the reason for its treachery. Then she saw the clock wasn’t at fault. She hadn’t set the alarm. That oversight appalled her more than anything else.

  Until the phone rang.

  Robin swung her legs out of bed and picked up the phone.

  “Mimi,” she said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it again. I’ll be right down.”

  It hadn’t entered Robin’s mind that the call might be from anyone else, and she was right. But, much to her surprise, Mimi wasn’t angry. Wasn’t even sarcastic.

  “Robin, honey, it’s all right,” she said. “It works out better this way.”

  A chill passed through Robin.

  “What works out better?”

  “I was thinking about yesterday and I want you to take some time off.”

  “But I don’t want—”

  “You need to, Robin. If nothing else, you’ve got to rest your ankle, let it get better. And I don’t like being away from my cash register so much.”

  That was only part of the reason, Robin knew. She waited to see if Mimi was going to tell her the whole truth. After a long pause, Mimi continued.

  “Robin, what happened yesterday was my fault. I never should’ve set things up the way I did. Staging some cockamamie debate. Who am I, Hal Prince? I’m going to start producing musicals next? I should’ve told that bozo, Morello, to keep his lousy camera out of my place. If he wanted a go at you, he’d have to do it like anybody else, ordering his food on one side of the co
unter with you on the other. But I made a mistake. I gotta watch myself.”

  “You think I went too far, don’t you, Mimi?”

  Mimi’s voice was sad and carried a plea for understanding.

  “Honey, you know how it is. People come into Screaming Mimi’s, they know they’re liable to get sliced up faster than the cold cuts, but there has to be ... what ... the feeling that the pieces will fit back together when they walk out the door. There has to be a sense a fun to it. There has to be a possibility that they’ll look back at themselves and laugh. I don’t think Tone Morello’s going to be laughing at anything real soon.”

  “He got what he deserved,” Robin said stiffly.

  “Yes, he did, but he didn’t have to get it at my place. And that’s why I blame myself for letting the whole thing happen. Helping it happen.”

  “Mimi, I want to come to work.”

  “Take a week off, Robin. You need it.”

  Mimi’s voice was soft, but Robin knew there was no way she’d change Mimi’s mind.

  “I love you, honey,” Mimi added.

  Then she hung up.

  Robin watched television, every channel that was on, even the foreign-language stations, none for more than five minutes at a time. She read both newspapers, the Trib and the Sun-Times, cover-to-cover. She did the same with the Reader’s Digest and Newsweek. She tried listening to talk-radio, but even after all her years at Mimi’s, the level of discourse on the airwaves made her gag in the first thirty seconds. All poison, no panache.

  When she couldn’t make any further attempts at distraction, she sat in her park and thought. About her life. About her tenant. And about the child who would soon appear — for whom she’d have to make a place in her life, if only on the periphery.

  Three days passed, and the best Robin could say for them was that after repeated icing and very little weight bearing, her ankle was feeling much better, a working part of her body again, no longer a bloated sausage casing filled with shooting pains.

  Robin was sitting in the park on the fourth morning, having just dropped a coin in her wishing well, asking for forgiveness as she did daily, when a note was slipped under the door. It had to be from Manfred. She’d spoken on the phone to both her dad and Nancy, and had told them she was going to spend her time off sorting herself out — Ha! — so give her some time alone. That meant they wouldn’t be mousing around sliding notes under her door. Which left only one possibility. Der Grosse Kraut.