Round Robin

by Joseph Flynn

  As she walked over to pick up the note, Robin was pleased at how pain-free her stride was. Time to give the crutches to the Salvation Army. She bent over and grabbed the piece of paper, curious about what Manfred had to say.

  He’d given her a list.

  He wanted to know which of the following home improvements would be permissible:

  — Repainting the window trim

  — Replacing the walkway alongside the house

  — Weather-stripping all entrances

  — Putting new gutters on the garage...

  The list covered twenty-two items and went on to the back of the page. It was almost enough to make Robin think the guy was telling her that her house was a dump, almost enough to get her mad at the implication.

  Until she remembered that he was asking her permission first, as she’d demanded. The note requested that she check those jobs to which she was agreeable, and it said that they would, of course, discuss the cost of materials before any work began.

  She grinned as she imagined how earnest Manfred’s face must have looked as he composed the list; and she thought he’d really been considerate the past few days to make himself virtually invisible; and she thought he wanted to have the nicest place possible for the little girl who was currently living in a whorehouse.

  Manfred had written she could slip the note back under his door. He’d read it when he got home from school that afternoon. School? No ... no way he could be a student. So was he a teacher? Or a custodian? She’d never actually asked him what he did for a living. She leaned more toward the custodial job: that would explain his Mr. Fix-it skills.

  Then Robin thought she better not sell him short. The guy was full of surprises. He might be the school principal, and he lived rent-free in a basement apartment because — well, he had to pay $85,000 dollars to buy his daughter out of bondage.

  Who knew what he did?

  But whatever it was, she’d bet he was good at it.

  She had a pen in her pocket. She wrote on his note: “I think I can scrape up five hundred dollars for materials. Do whatever you can with that.”

  That ought to buy some more paint and polish, Robin thought. The big stuff would have to wait until later.

  Then she added a postscript that she knew someone who had a business proposition for him, and if he had any time to spare, he could see her about it.

  When she left the park, Robin didn’t slip her message under Manfred’s door, she left it sticking out of his mailbox.

  Robin spent the rest of the morning cleaning her apartment. She was normally a tidy housekeeper without getting obsessive about it. However, the past few days, involuntarily removed from her routine by Mimi’s edict, and the necessity of resting her ankle, Robin had let things slide. Now, she vacuumed, she mopped and she dusted. She rinsed all the things in the sink and stuck them in the dishwasher. She scoured the kitchen and the bathroom.

  Then she showered, put on her last pair of clean slacks and a sweatshirt that said: “I love my bad attitude.” The latter item a gift from Nancy.

  She loaded up all her laundry into two plastic baskets and headed down the backstairs to the basement. There was a nip in the air, and with her hair still damp, she shivered. Maybe she ought to have Manfred put in a laundry chute for her, she thought. See if he’d like to pick up a few extra bucks cleaning and pressing her clothes, too.

  Robin opened the back door to the basement, stepped into the laundry area and stopped dead in her tracks. Hanging from a clothesline — that she hadn’t put up — were three of the most colossal pairs of underwear she had ever seen in her life. Stripes, polka dots and little zeppelins respectively, she could imagine entire Third World villages taking shelter under them.

  She had, of course, seen Manfred in his underwear, but that had been only one fleeting, blushing glance, and having her father there in his boxer shorts had been a further distraction. Now, these great yards of intimate cloth confronted her directly, flaunted themselves and dared her to behold their stature.

  So what kind of man...

  Robin put her laundry down and looking around to make sure she was truly alone she inched toward the clothesline. Oh, sure, there were other things hanging from the line, old-fashioned ribbed T-shirts and such, but it was those incredible drawers that drew Robin to them hypnotically. Having a man, other than her dad, anywhere in her life was new and strange and sometimes frightening, but this, this gargantuan display of male underwear, brought out feelings in her — well, they were just sick.

  Looking around once more and being reassured that she was alone, Robin took a peek up the leg of the polka-dotted pair.

  “Woo-woo,” Robin said to herself, giggled and then blushed.

  She realized just how silly she was being, snorted with disgust, shook herself, gathered up her laundry and started to load the washer ...

  But she couldn’t keep from looking over her shoulder.

  They were just so huge. They weren’t decent. Why couldn’t the man wear white briefs? Probably because he couldn’t find them in his size. Well, she’d just have to tell him he couldn’t hang those things in here.

  Except if she did, he wouldn’t.

  Robin lowered the lid on her first load of wash and, oh so casually, strolled over to the clothesline. Her hands were a blur as she plucked the zeppelins out of the air. She unfolded the underwear in front of her at eye level. The sight made her swallow hard. Next she held them up to her own waist. It was the first time in conscious memory that a piece of clothing made her feel petite. She swayed back and forth, humming tunelessly, with the underwear billowing out to her sides.

  “Well,” came a voice from behind her, “now I’ll know what to get you for your next birthday.”

  Nancy!

  Robin froze. She felt enough heat in her face to roast a turkey. Taking a deep breath she carefully hung the underpants back on the line and waited for the blood to drain from her face before she turned around.

  When she did turn, she asked, “Don’t you believe in knocking?”

  “The door was open.”

  “You could knock anyway.”

  “I guess I better learn,” Nancy agreed with a grin.

  Nancy had come over to see if Robin needed anything from the grocery store. When she hadn’t gotten a response to the doorbell, she’d come around back. Now, the two sisters were on their way to the supermarket in Nancy’s car.

  “So, you going to tell me about Manfred?” Nancy asked directly.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Robin said.

  “Dad says he’s a nice guy.”

  Robin had no doubt that Nancy had pumped their father for all the information he had.

  “I suppose,” Robin allowed.

  “And handy, too.”

  “He knows how to fix things.”

  “I noticed he re-did your vestibule.”

  Nancy would, of course, notice something like that.

  “Yes, he did,” Robin said.

  “Looks very nice. He painted the backstairs and porches, too, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  Robin was still seriously embarrassed about what Nancy had seen and didn’t want to give her anything with which to embroider a relationship that didn’t exist.

  They rode in silence until Nancy stopped for a red light.

  Then Nancy said, “I used to get turned on by Charlie’s underwear.”

  Robin blushed furiously. She didn’t want to hear this.

  “Sometimes I even put them on. For him.”

  “Nancy!”

  Robin was mortified ... and, okay, a little fascinated, too. Nancy the control freak letting Robin see a little of what she had hidden behind her curtain, admitting that she had a kinky side.

  Nancy looked at Robin with a bland, challenging expression.

  “What?” Nancy asked, daring Robin to crack wise.

  “The light’s green,” Robin replied, still uncertain she wanted to hear more.

  Nancy didn’t giv
e her a choice. She continued her story as she stepped on the gas.

  “Charlie wears boxer shorts, too. The first time he saw me in them, he said, ‘So, you want to fight, huh? See who wears the pants around here.’”

  Robin was surprised there was any question that it wasn’t Nancy.

  “The next day,” Nancy said, “when we were getting ready for bed, Charlie threw a pair of his underwear at me. Once I got them on, he brought out these absolutely enormous boxing gloves. It was like wearing a big pillow on each hand. He said we should go three rounds.”

  Unable to restrain herself, Robin asked, “What did you use for a ring?”

  “What do you think?” Nancy smirked. “Our bed.”

  She pulled into the supermarket parking lot.

  “We had a little trouble tearing each other’s shorts off wearing those ridiculous gloves, but we managed.” As they got out of the car, she added. “Went all three rounds, too.”

  Robin snorted.

  “You were young in those days.”

  Nancy snorted right back.

  “Why do you think Charlie and I work out so often?”

  Robin didn’t feel it necessary to answer that one.

  As they walked toward the store, Nancy said, “Robin, let me tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “It’s time you saw a penis again.”

  “Nancy!”

  “A big, hard one wearing a smile.”

  “Stop it,” Robin hissed, looking around to see who might be overhearing them.

  Undeterred, Nancy said as they entered the store, “Listen, men’s underwear is fun, but what’s inside is even better.”

  After they’d shopped and were on their way back to Robin’s house, Nancy dropped the bomb.

  “Dad came into the office today.”

  “So?”

  Their father often stopped in at the real estate agency to see Nancy.

  “He spent half-an-hour talking to Mom alone in her office.”

  “What?”

  Robin was shocked. Their parents hadn’t spent a cumulative thirty minutes talking to each other in all the years they’d been separated. For the first five years, when they’d happened to be in the same place, they’d walk right past one another without batting an eye. Even now, all these years later, “Hello, how are you?” was about as far as it went, and that was on a good day.

  “What did they talk about?” Robin asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You couldn’t worm it out of either of them?”

  Unlike Robin, Nancy still talked with their mother.

  “No, and I tried, believe me.”

  “I’ll ask Daddy.”

  “Let me know if you find out anything.”

  “Sure.”

  Robin got out of Nancy’s car in front of her house, pleased that she was able to carry two bags of groceries without difficulty.

  “Thanks for the help,” Robin said.

  “I’m always here for you, kiddo. You remember that.”

  Robin nodded and then she said, “I have to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “How can an erection wear a smile?”

  Nancy grinned, answering as she drove away.

  “That’s the part you provide.”

  Chapter 12

  David Solomonovich, boy genius, finally cornered the wily international desperado, Manfred Welk, in the pages of Sports Illustrated. He’d found a dated copy of the magazine in the on-line archives of the Library of Congress that told Welk’s tale. The story intimated that Welk had, indeed, been spying for the CIA. While the details of the former champion power-lifter’s trial had been kept secret, it was thought that he had been turning over the training secrets of the East German athletic juggernaut to the Americans. This information, it was said, would be useful in detecting drug-doping by the German Communists, would threaten that nation’s future as an athletic powerhouse and would be an altogether crushing propaganda defeat for the GDR.

  The story concluded that as punishment for his acts Welk had been given an indeterminate prison sentence, and might never again be a free man. Without saying so directly, the story made clear that Welk, the only East Bloc weight lifter believed to train drug-free, was a genuine hero.

  The accompanying photos of Welk in competition showed that he was of heroic proportions, too. The kind of figure, David thought, who might slay thousands on the battlefield before the Valkyries carried him off to Valhalla.

  The thought of this guy living in Robin’s house made David intensely jealous. David might be too smart to take on the CIA but, with his teenage hormones raging, he was going to find a way to keep this Kraut away from his Robin.

  Robin had put her groceries away and eaten a light lunch. She’d been thinking about her damn doctor’s admonition to lose weight and now she was peeking through the foliage to look out the park’s front windows and see if Manfred might be arriving home from school. She noticed the car parked out front next to the fire hydrant.

  The car was a Porsche 911, nondescript gray and in need of a wash. In Robin’s neighborhood, it blended in as easily as if it were a Chevy. Actually, on her block, it would be the domestic car that stuck out like a sore thumb. There was a man sitting in the driver’s seat, not doing anything in particular. Robin thought he might even have been sleeping, but she couldn’t see if his eyes were closed.

  In their eternal search for wrongdoers and parking fine revenue, a patrol unit of the Chicago Police Department soon pulled up next to the Porsche. The cop got out and tapped on the driver side window of the Porsche. The guy had been sleeping and woke with a start. He lowered his window and smiled at the cop. Robin could see from where she was that the guy had nice teeth.

  He took something out of his pocket and showed it to the cop. The cop reached for whatever the guy was showing him, but the guy shook his head and put the object back in his pocket. Playing keep-away from a Chicago cop is not a course of action taught in Driver’s Ed. So Robin was surprised that the cop didn’t yank the guy out of his car and throw him in the back of the patrol unit.

  Instead, the cop got on his radio, all the while staring at the guy in the Porsche, who was still smiling pleasantly. A moment later the cop apparently got some news he didn’t like because he flipped off the guy in the Porsche and drove away at high speed.

  All without giving the guy a parking ticket.

  This was a bit of street drama that Robin had never seen before.

  The next thing she knew the guy got out of the Porsche and was walking right toward her building. He was a nice looking guy, average appearance, neatly groomed and wore a good suit. He could have fit into the neighborhood as easily as his car. Better, actually, since he didn’t need a wash. He shocked Robin by waving at her as he entered her front hall.

  Robin backed away, not knowing how he could have seen her through the foliage.

  She retreated further toward the rear of the park when the doorbell rang.

  How had he known she was here?

  She decided to wait him out, not answer the bell. Even when it rang the second time. But on the third try, the guy rang “Shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits.” Something about that told her that the guy had a sense of humor, that he was probably all right, and maybe she should at least listen through the outer door to what he had to say.

  Robin opened the front door to the park.

  The guy looked at her through the panes of glass in the outer door and smiled at her. He really was good looking, like the boy-next-door all grown up and making his way in the world quite nicely, thank you.

  “What do you want?” Robin asked brusquely.

  “A good German beer,” the guy said, still grinning, though up close Robin could see deep circles of fatigue under his eyes. “I’m reliably informed I can find some in your basement.”

  How did he know that, Robin wondered in amazement. That Manfred lived here and that he drank German beer.

  For that matt
er, how had he known she’d been in the park? Robin asked.

  “Your camouflage is pretty good,” the guy said, “but I saw your breath condensing on the window pane.”

  Somebody’d notice something like that?

  “Who the hell are you?” Robin asked.

  The guy reached into the same pocket he’d used for the cop. He brought out a little ID folder and flipped it open.

  “Warner Lisle. CIA. I’ve been flying most of the past 24 hours. I’m here to see Manfred. Now, may I please come in and have a beer before I pass out?”

  “Now, I remember,” Robin said. “You were here before, but you were wearing different clothes. I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Thank you,” said Warner Lisle.

  Robin let him into Manfred’s apartment. True to his word, Warner found the fridge, pulled out a beer, opened it and plopped down on the living room sofa. He took a long drink, sighed contentedly and renewed his smile in Robin’s direction.

  “You’re not my idea of a spy,” Robin told him from where she stood near the front door—the better to make her escape, should it prove necessary.

  “Thanks again. That’s just the way we like it.”

  “Why?”

  “Think about it. What you want in a spy is someone who’s easy to accept and hard to remember. That’s me. You’ll have a hard time describing me an hour from now. And tomorrow, forget about it. Still, I looked agreeable enough that you let me in here.”

  That last bit made Robin uneasy again.

  “Why’re you telling me all this? Why did you even admit you’re a spy at all?”

  Was he going to kill her?

  It didn’t appear likely when he put his bottle of beer on the floor, stretched out on the sofa, and closed his eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter who knows I’m a spy anymore because I’m about to retire.”

  That would never have occurred to Robin, that spies could retire like anyone else.