Fixer

by Gene Doucette

  It took him a full ten minutes to bring order to his chaotic necktie, and then he was down the stairs. Veronica, as always, was at her pre-party finest.

  “No! It doesn’t go there! Are you insane?”

  “Dear . . .”

  “We need people to be able to pass freely through this point, do you see?”

  “Dear . . .”

  “Oh, Archie! Thank God you’re here. Tell them where the tables go in back before something horrible happens.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders, which was where her brake pedal usually could be found. “I’m sure they know what they’re doing, Ronnie,” he said, while the woman in front of his wife quietly scurried off with a small table that would have to serve a purpose elsewhere in the house.

  Veronica sighed under his ministrations. “It was so much easier when Eric was catering,” she said.

  Archie did not point out that his wife was no less impossible to deal with now than she had been when Eric Harriman’s catering business was still operational. “You look nice,” he said instead, which was just the thirty-six years of experience talking. Not that she didn’t look nice. She had on a smart lavender skirt suit with a low-cut white shell beneath, her neck adorned by a pearl necklace. It was a message outfit. It said, “My husband may be important, but I’m still in charge.”

  He found she had a tendency to dress more businesslike since retiring from her administrative duties than she ever did when she was still working at the university. The small part of his brain that devoted itself to socialization took note, and decided to bring it up sometime. Possibly, his wife was having trouble adjusting.

  “Thank you,” she answered, turning to look at him. “You look as if you dressed in heavy winds.”

  “I have a tie,” he pointed out helpfully.

  “That you do,” she agreed, even as she adjusted it so that it no longer pointed toward magnetic north. “Now see about the tables in back. You remember how they were last year?”

  “They were fine last year.”

  “Yes. Make sure they’re set up the same. I have to go find that girl and make sure she positions the drink table with some semblance of rational thought.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Veronica Stanford-Calvin’s head had not yet spun completely off, which Archie considered a sure sign that the party was going well. He was standing to one side in his garden, which was no more a garden than was the lawn at Fenway Park, but it was what one called it when one installed things such as trestles, stone paths, and what-have-you. Most of the Truly Important had already arrived, including the president of the university, who was currently standing directly in front of Archie and engaging him in conversation. He was telling some sort of joke.

  “So I said, ‘How do you know it’s cheese when you haven’t even tried it yet!’ ”

  Having gone utterly adrift in the middle of this story, Archie could only rely upon unspoken indicators, and those indicators suggested this was time to laugh. So he did. The president joined in, which Archie took to be a good sign.

  “Anyway,” he said. “Tell me, what are you up to nowadays?”

  “Ah! Well, our department—”

  “No, no, no. Not the department. You.”

  Archie smiled. Despite being at his core a man of politics, the president of MIT still took himself to be something of a scientist, or at least a man whose interest lay in the sciences, even if his talents did not.

  “I have been thinking a lot about time,” Archie said. This was not the sort of thing one casually admitted to. Fully three-quarters of the university’s Physics Department was working on various renditions of the beast known collectively as string theory and other Grand Unified Theory variants. Archie was no less interested in this pursuit, provided it didn’t end up trampling all over the Standard Model, which he was always rather fond of. The problem was, when it came to superstrings, branes, and so on he often felt as if he had little left to contribute. These were things for younger, nimbler minds—minds that weren’t fighting the urge to declare the entire enterprise specious, as his mind so often was. But time? That was something he always enjoyed thinking about, and almost nobody else was.

  “Time, you say?” the president replied, attempting to look intrigued.

  “You’ve heard Hawking’s thoughts on it, I trust.”

  The briefest look of panic suggested that no, he had not heard anything of Hawking’s thoughts on it. Archie optimistically assumed the president at least knew who Stephen Hawking was.

  “He asked the question: why do we see time in one direction, but not the other direction?” Archie explained.

  “Ah. Um . . .”

  “You see, the obvious answer is, because one cannot see something that hasn’t happened yet, which is certainly a decent response from a philosophical standpoint, but in many ways either direction is just as good.”

  “Well,” the president responded, trying to catch his footing now that he’d gone and awakened the science geek inside his host, “that’s preposterous. If I were to drop this glass, not only would I spill this really excellent scotch, I’d likely break the glass. If time could flow in either direction equally effectively, then the glass might reassemble itself.”

  “Very true!”

  “So have I solved your puzzle?” he asked.

  “No, not at all. But you have raised a much deeper question regarding the second law.”

  “Entropy?”

  “Yes. The natural course of events in this universe is for order to move toward disorder in the same direction as the arrow of time. Now, does the arrow of time point in that direction because that is the same direction in which entropy flows, or do we see entropy because we can only view time in one direction?”

  The president smiled in such a way as to suggest he was either lost or unwilling to take this any further. “I’m sticking with my first answer,” he said.

  “That’s probably for the best.”

  “Ah! There’s Michael.” He put his hand on Archie’s shoulder. “Fantastic gathering, as always. Do come out of the corner for a while, would you? For your wife’s sake?”

  Archie faltered. “She didn’t . . . send you over here, did she?”

  “Of course she did. Now mingle.”

  “Right away.”

  As the president went off to greet Michael Offey, Archie scanned the growing crowd for someone with whom he could successfully mingle. He did know most of his guests well from a professional standpoint, so there was little need for extensive introductions. It was the small talk that always ended up being a problem. He simply didn’t have a vast pool of minor subjects to draw from.

  There was one man he did not know. He noticed him standing in the opposite corner of the garden. Dressed casually in jeans and a brown sweater that only adequately covered a white T-shirt, he didn’t seem to fit in with the tastefully appointed crowd or with the uniformed catering crew. Archie scanned his memories for some sort of template upon which to place him, but found he didn’t fit anywhere within his circle of associates. Perhaps he was a driver for the catering truck.

  As the host, Archie was fairly sure he was supposed to do something about the stranger. Ask him his business, perhaps. Politely. He was, after all, a very large person—cheerful in expression, but large. So he began elbowing his way through the center, a path that would take him past the catering table. In hindsight, this was not the most intelligent route, direct only in the geographical sense.

  “Professor Calvin!” someone exclaimed. He turned. It was Hanna Lu, Professor Lu’s wife. She had planted herself firmly at the center of the buffet table and was guarding the territory with the same conviction as a lioness before a fresh kill.

  “Hanna!” He smiled, a learned response transmitted in emergency form from the socialization sector. “How are you?” he asked, kissing her on the cheek.

  “This food is wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Have you even tried any of it yet?”

  “Not
yet.” He tended not to do much eating or drinking at these events until after the bulk of the guests had departed. He had plenty of time to do so, but since Veronica was busily hostessing her way about the place—and not eating—he felt some need to starve out of solidarity with her.

  “Try this,” Hanna said, holding out a cracker with some manner of brownish substance smeared upon it. “It’s delicious.”

  He took the cracker and was about to pop it into his mouth when a voice he didn’t recognize said insistently from behind him, “Don’t.”

  “Excuse me?” he said, turning. It was the strange man in the sweater.

  He stared at Archie for a few seconds without responding, which was just long enough to make things very uncomfortable. Finally, he said, “You have food allergies.”

  “Eh, yes, yes . . . how do . . .” he looked down at the cracker. “Hanna, you wouldn’t happen to know what’s in this dip?”

  Hanna stood there, mouth open and mute, so the tall man took the cracker from Archie’s fingers and slipped it into his own mouth. He chewed appreciatively for a few seconds. Archie just stared, wondering why it was he found the chewing so fascinating. He could feel his own second hand slowing down.

  “Peanuts,” the man said finally. “Just a trace.”

  “Archie?” Veronica called. She had wandered over to the scene looking concerned. “Do you know this . . .” Her hostess light flared on suddenly, and she turned to her large guest. “Hello, I’m Mrs. Stanford-Calvin. And you are?”

  “Ronnie,” Archie interrupted. “There are nuts in the dip.”

  “Oh! Oh my God!” Veronica shed the happy hostess role immediately and turned into worried wife. “How do you feel? Should I call the—”

  “I’m fine,” he said while she busied herself with putting her hands all over his face and neck to check for swelling. Which was unnecessary because it was obvious he hadn’t eaten any of it. If he had, he’d be on the ground and dying or dead already.

  The scattered guests in the garden pressed toward the buffet table almost instinctively at the noise Veronica was making, two dozen PhDs waiting for someone to ask if there was a doctor in the house. “I’m all right,” Archie insisted again. “This . . . gentleman stopped me before . . .” But the man was gone.

  “I told the caterer.” Veronica was half-shouting as she made a new transformation into righteously angry woman. “I told them not to—”

  “Ronnie, I’m . . . excuse me for a moment.”

  He pushed his way through the gathering and caught a look at the man, who was now walking calmly toward the street, having elected to take the most direct route along the side of the house rather than through it. Archie squeezed around the bush that defined the garden area and straight through the begonia patch to catch up to him.

  “It’s a new caterer,” he said loudly. “The old one, he knew not to prepare anything with nuts.”

  The man turned. “Ah,” he said simply. “That’d do it.”

  “I’m Archibald Calvin,” Archie said, having reached his improbable savior, and extended his hand.

  “Corrigan Bain,” he replied, shaking his hand. “You have a shot or something?”

  “Pardon?”

  “For the allergy.”

  “In emergencies, yes. It’s . . . upstairs. New suit,” he explained lamely.

  “You should remember to keep it in your pocket next time.”

  “Yes, thanks . . .”

  Bain started to walk away again, heading, Archie realized, to the motorcycle parked at the edge of his driveway. A stray wind carried the scent of exhaust, suggesting a recent arrival.

  “Mr. Bain!” he shouted.

  “Yeah?”

  “How did you know?”

  He rubbed his temple and gave a practiced aw-shucks look back. “It’s complicated,” he said.

  “As it happens, I’m very good at complicated things. Have you eaten yet?”

  Bain looked at his watch, did a few mental calculations, shrugged, and said, “I’ve got a couple of hours. I could eat.”

  “Then please, join us. My wife gets very upset if I let any of our guests leave hungry.”

  * * *

  The garden scene regained a semblance of order once someone thought to fetch Veronica a large and strong drink. As most everybody there knew most everybody else very well, the gala didn’t actually require a hands-on hostess, so while she sat down to rest and devise creative ways in which to destroy the lives of the caterers, the party continued to run all by itself.

  While not expected to perform any formal hosting duties in Ronnie’s absence—it was understood by most that this was simply beyond his ken—Archie did perform one minor host-like duty by throwing Corrigan Bain into the mix, introducing him as “a fellow who does some house work for us from time to time.” He assumed that his new friend would appreciate the necessity of providing him with a baseline social standing to put the guests at ease. And Bain seemed willing enough to go along with it, calling himself a “fixer” when asked.

  So Bain headed for the buffet table while Archie, ostensibly checking on his wife, watched.

  He was never a fan of the behavioral sciences, having argued on more than one occasion that anything wherein predicted results varied from event to event did not deserve association with the word “science.” But as he watched Corrigan Bain shoehorn his way into the party, he found himself wishing he’d taken a little time to expand his knowledge base. Because there was something very different about Bain. He just couldn’t tell what, exactly.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Ronnie was asking. The whiskey sour in her hand had calmed her considerably. She was a lightweight when it came to drinking and tended to teetotal at these events, so this was a significant departure for her.

  “I’m fine,” Archie said. Or rather, his vocal chords intoned without first checking with the brain, it being otherwise occupied.

  Bain was speaking with Igor Maskeyevich, the head of the Chemistry Department, while chewing on a shrimp kabob. Archie was interested in whatever common ground the two might have uncovered but could not hear the discussion over the background chatter and the Mozart Ronnie had playing on a continuous loop on the outdoor speakers she’d rented for the day. What he could tell was that Corrigan Bain seemed tense—no, that wasn’t quite right. Agitated? No, that wasn’t it either.

  He searched his personal data banks for analogous behavior, but drew a blank. Maybe it was because Ronnie was talking again.

  “What’s that, dear?” he asked.

  “I said I’m not going to pay them.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. “It was a harmless mistake.”

  “Harmless?” she roared, well exceeding the Mozart threshold.

  “Innocent,” Archie corrected himself quickly. He reached for the brake on her shoulder. “I meant innocent.”

  “Still! I did tell them.”

  “I know you did, dear. Are you all right? I have to—”

  “And who is that man talking to Igor?” Ronnie asked.

  “A friend of mine,” Archie said. “His name is Corrigan.”

  “From where?”

  “The university. He’s . . . he’s a fixer.”

  “Well, I’ve never seen him before. Why on Earth—”

  “I’m sorry, can you excuse me, my love? I really should mingle.” It was a callow appeal to her host reflex, but it seemed to work.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’m sorry. We can talk about this . . . disaster later.”

  He stood, kissed her on the forehead, and tried to mingle his way back to Corrigan.

  He got close enough to pick up the subject matter, at least. Bain and Igor Maskeyevich—labeled somewhat unfairly by his postgraduates as “Igor the Terrible,” a moniker that Archie found amusing in spite of himself—were discussing decorative plaster molding. It sounded as if Igor were looking for a way to wheedle a price estimate from Bain, which was problematic given that so far as Archie knew, the professi
on he’d randomly chosen for Corrigan was entirely fictitious. He might have inserted himself in order to rescue Corrigan from Igor, but he could get no closer without being rude to the dean of admissions and her husband. She was a notoriously long-winded woman and almost impossible to interrupt. But fortunately, she didn’t really seem to notice how carefully anybody was listening to her, so Archie was free to keep one eye on Corrigan. And that was when he identified the anomaly.

  Archie remembered exactly when he became a scientist. He was five. His father, on returning from a business trip, had brought him a set of small magnets. Archie became endlessly fascinated with the magnets and intensely curious about the nature of magnetism in general, and ran simple experiments to better understand them. One such experiment involved using other magnets to identify which magnet’s polarity was different—which one was facing the “wrong” way. He’d moved the positive side of one magnet toward another and watched as the second magnet skittered across the tabletop, running away from the first magnet due to some invisible impelling force. He’d tried it with two and three magnets to see if the quantity altered the results in any way, perhaps forcing the “wrong” magnet away faster or farther. And so on.

  And that was very much like what was happening with Corrigan Bain. The garden area had become crowded around the buffet table, where everyone was rubbing shoulders and elbows with everyone else. But not Bain. That could have been explained away by the tendency of strangers to circumnavigate one another, except that it was almost entirely his doing. He was stepping aside, continuously in motion, dodging contact. Future contact. Contact that would have occurred from behind, where he couldn’t have possibly seen it coming.

  Corrigan Bain was reacting to stimuli a priori.

  The dean before him finally ran out of air, and as she paused to reload, he took the brief pause and excused himself as carefully as he could.

  “Can I have a moment with Mr. Bain?” he asked Igor, dropping into the middle of their discussion.