Round Robin (5 page)

Robin regarded the threesome bleakly.

“Look,” she said, “five boobs out for a stroll.”

Tone’s face flushed but he restrained himself.

“Five?” said the redhead, puzzled. “I don’t get it.”

Tone gave her a look, and the blonde shushed her. They were working from a script today, like the San Francisco 49er’s offense, and they couldn’t let themselves be distracted.

Tone asked, “What would you ladies like to eat ... anything at all.”

The cheerleaders went into their routine.

“I know what I’d like,” said the blonde with a nasty little grin.

“Me, too,” replied the redhead.

They both licked their lips with pointy pink tongues.

Hardly subtle, but it got all the male patrons giggling like sophomores.

“You think they got foot longs here?” asked the blonde. “Those all-beef wieners.”

“If they don’t, I know where we can get one,” said the redhead.

All the female customers jeered and booed. Manny Tavares had to wrest the knife out of Judy Kuykendahl’s hand.

Robin said, “You here to revive Vaudeville or you want something to eat, Ant-knee?”

The girls had been prepared for this slur on Tone’s name.

“Ant-knee?” said the blonde to the redhead. “You know any Ant-knee?”

The redhead shook her tresses.

“No, you know who I know?”

Together they let go of Tone, whirled around to face the crowd of customers and launched into a cheer routine as if they were leading a pep rally.

“Tone, Tone, he’s our man! If you can’t say it, we sure can!”

They spun Tone around to face his public, each did a cartwheel, high-kicked, bounced up and down and set up such a show of jiggling flesh that the men in the deli were left drooling and the women were agog.

“Yaaaaaaay, Tone!”

The cheerleaders jumped high into the air, came down to do full splits in front of Tone and bounced right back up to their feet, their faces flushed, the smiles wide and their bosoms heaving.

Every man in the place broke into applause.

At the cash register, Mimi urgently scribbled down a new rule: No indecent exposure. She didn’t like the way her Stanley was smiling at these bimbos.

Tone and the girls turned back to face Robin.

She ignored him and looked at each of his accomplices.

“He’s pretty big, huh?”

They knew what she meant.

“The biggest,” said Red.

“Even bigger than that,” added Blondie.

“You know this from personal experience?”

The two girls giggled and nodded.

Tone beamed.

Until he saw Robin nod, too, as if she’d come to some serious conclusion. Tone didn’t know what she was up to but his smile vanished under a wave of anxiety.

Robin reached into the display case. She brought out a hot dog. It was a fair-sized wiener, long and plump, but on one side of it Robin placed an uncut hard salami and on the other a full roll of bologna. Each of which made the hot dog look Lilliputian.

“Now, ladies,” Robin said, “in the interest of informing the public, without being totally indelicate, point to the item you’d say best represents your good friend here.”

Tone started smiling again.

The redhead looked at Tone for a hint. Would he prefer the salami or the bologna?

“Now, now. No cheating,” Robin said.

“That’s right,” Tone added. “Just be honest. Whatever you say is okay with me.”

“Of course,” Robin informed the cheerleaders, “I should warn you ladies before you indicate your choices that you’ll not only be revealing intimate details about the dimensions of Ant-knee’s anatomy ... but also about your own.”

Snap!

Everyone in the place heard the trap spring shut.

Even Red got it. Sure, she and Blondie could say Tone was hung like a Clydesdale, but then they’d be telling the world they were loose women in more ways than one. The bigger they made Tone, the more cavernous they made themselves. The two cheerleaders looked at each other with sick expressions.

All the customers and staff grinned like hyenas. Judy gave Robin a thumb’s–up.

Tone looked like he was about to blow a blood vessel. He grabbed the Boobsey Twins’ arms and squeezed, silently demanding that they sacrifice their own egos for the sake of his. But they shook him off, came to the same swift decision and pointed to the hot dog. The teeny-weeny hot dog. They ran jiggling from the deli, hoots and howls of laughter chasing them.

Robin looked at Tone and asked, “Something I can get you? To go with your humble pie. Ant-knee.”

Robin’s victory over Tone was forgotten by the time she got home that day. She went down to the basement and looked for something that was obviously wrong with her furnace: a plug that had been knocked loose, a broken wire that she could tape together, something. No luck. Being as bold as she could, she removed the metal panel that concealed the inner-workings of the beast. It looked like so much blackened, curved metal tubing to her, a colander of industrial spaghetti. She had no more understanding of how this thing was supposed to heat her house than if someone had told her it all worked by magic.

She was so angry and frustrated she wanted to kick the damn thing, but she thought better of it when she remembered it was a gas furnace. Kicking it might cause a leak that would result in the house blowing up or her being asphyxiated. Having no alternative, Robin screamed.

Then she went up to her park to look at her plants, hoping, praying that they wouldn’t all be dead soon. She took small comfort in remembering that at least the aquarium was heated electrically. Her fish should survive. Later, Robin went up to her apartment and didn’t eat the dinner she fixed.

Lying in bed, under the covers, she watched the weather forecast, hoping for a reprieve, a change in conditions that would give her more time to work something out.

But with even more glee than usual, the weatherman said the cold was now due to return tomorrow night.

There might even be snow.

Robin clicked off the set and pulled the covers over her head.

Chapter 5

Robin’s interviews the following morning were less unusual but no more productive than the previous day. The woman was technically competent. She was also a lesbian. Don’t worry about that, she’d said, because Robin wasn’t at all her type. She would have to hurt Robin, however, if Robin ever made a play for any of her girlfriends. The man didn’t want to harm Robin, he wanted to save her. He was a part-time minister, and he wanted to know if he took the job, could he use Robin’s laundry room for baptisms? He’d be honored to wash her sins away first thing. Right there in her laundry sink.

Robin was so depressed she couldn’t muster the energy even to defend herself. People would take shots at her and all she could do was take their orders and serve them their food. Everybody figured that Robin was setting some sort of trap for them, sucking them in by allowing them to take their little digs before she tore their heads off. So nobody pushed it too hard with her.

Still, Robin was glad Tone had decided to stay away that day.

David Solomonovich, however, showed up after the lunch rush.

“Hey, mama,” he said, “you sure are lookin’ —”

Then David got a good look at her.

“ Awful,” he finished. “Just terrible.”

“How nice of you to notice,” Robin said dully.

The realization that maybe he’d actually hurt Robin stunned David, made him feel worse than any insult he’d ever received at Mimi’s.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his fourteen-year-old voice small and hollow.

“What do you want, David?”

“Pastrami.”

“On rye?”

“What else,” he said. “Wonder Bread?”

He hoped Robin would rise to the bait, but she didn’t. David watched her work. She plodded through the motions and didn’t say a word to him. He thought what he was seeing was terrible. Robin was too young and vital to abandon her gift for vitriol. The world was losing something important here. It would be like ... like Michael Jordan retiring at thirty.

Robin gave David his sandwich silently, accompanied by nothing more than a dull stare.

David took one deep breath, another and then a third.

“Are you hyperventillating?” Robin asked.

David was just building up steam for what he had to say.

“I just want you to know,” he said, “that whatever’s wrong, I’ll do anything I can to help you. And I may be just fourteen, but you’d be surprised what I can accomplish.”

David’s pledge of help, friendship and, implicitly, love reduced Robin to tears.

Not that she let anybody see her cry. She couldn’t afford that. She turned, walked through the kitchen door and left work early. On the way home, she cried.

When Robin got home she found a man looking around her building. She’d first spotted him from up the block. He was bent over peering into the basement windows. He duck-walked from one to another. In that compressed posture, he made her think of an anvil, massive and dense, and his huge crew-cut head seemed a fitting platform on which to beat red-hot iron into horseshoes with a hammer and tongs.

As she came closer, the man stood up and Robin saw he was really huge, well over six feet tall and wide enough to cause an eclipse if he ever got airborne. The giant saw Robin approach, gave her a momentary stoic glance, then turned away and started walking toward the back of Robin’s house.

She figured him for a burglar.

It was a measure of her mental state that she decided to stop this guy by herself. She knew better than to call out. She’d need surprise on her side. She’d jump on the bastard from behind. He was big, but she wasn’t exactly Twiggy herself. Her weight would knock him down and she’d beat his head into the sidewalk with her bare hands.

Of course, it would have been better if he’d had some long hair to grab onto, but she’d manage somehow. Maybe grab his ears. Use them to get him kissing concrete.

Robin started to run on tiptoe, making the best time as quietly as she could. She got to within ten feet of the guy without him knowing it. She had to get to him before he got into the backyard where they’d be out of sight of the street. She had to take him down where one of the neighbors could see what was happening and call the cops. If she tackled him in the backyard, out of public view, and something went wrong ...

Robin picked up her speed. She was close now, only six feet to go, when her right ankle turned under. She shrieked in pain and stumbled forward out of control. The behemoth turned and saw her. She screamed again, raising both fists to pummel him before she fell flat on her face.

He caught her with no more difficulty than if he’d been playing oopsy-daisy with a toddler. His strength was beyond anything Robin had ever imagined. She must’ve been mad to attack this man. Why, he could drag her behind her house and do anything he wanted with her.

She was filling her lungs for one last yell — for help this time — when he stood her up, steadied her and asked if she was all right. He had a German accent.

“What do you want?” Robin asked, shaken.

He gave her a small bow. The guy was a real foreigner. Americans didn’t bow.

“I am here about the handyperson job.”

With that, he bowed again, turned and continued on his way to the back of the building.

“What?” Robin asked in disbelief.

The behemoth didn’t answer. Robin had to hobble after him.

He had gone up the back stairs to the first floor landing. He was looking in the rear window at her park. She couldn’t believe the nerve of this guy.

“Hey, what the heck do you think you’re doing?” Robin asked, looking up at him. She wasn’t going to go charging up the steps after him, not the way her ankle was throbbing.

He saw how she was favoring it.

He said, “Rice.”

“What?” Robin asked, more confused than ever.

“Rest, ice, compression and elevation. That’s what your ankle needs, and quickly.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

He missed the sarcasm. Or ignored it.

“Would you like me to carry you to your apartment?”

Suddenly the fear was back, and it must have shown on her face. The tiniest hint of a smile played on the giant’s lips.

“I do not bite ... unless requested. I am here about the job.”

Robin had good reason not to yield all of her suspicions.

“How did you know where to come? The address wasn’t listed.”

The guy shrugged. “It isn’t hard if you know how. I wanted to look at the building. Check the apartment. See if it is a fair trade.”

She couldn’t believe this man’s gall. Intruding on her privacy. She wanted to tell him off so bad it hurt. Worse than her ankle. Which was killing her. And that was his fault, too. But looking at him, one flight up, so massive, with that deadpan mug, it’d be like insulting the side of a mountain.

Robin was about to find her voice when he beat her to the punch.

“You have a very nice space in there.” He nodded over his shoulder to the park. “The plantings are lovely. But they look like they’re withering. Are you having problems with your heating?”

The guy stabbed her in the heart with that one.

He walked down the stairs to stand next to Robin.

“You will show me the garden apartment?”

Phrased as a command—in that damn German accent—with just a hint of intonation to make it a question. Robin gnashed her teeth and hobbled down the outside stairs to the basement. The guy blotted out the sun behind her.

She opened the door and they stepped into the back of the basement, the working area with the furnace, the circuit breakers for the electricity, the water main, and the laundry facilities.

The giant noticed that the face-plate of the furnace had been removed.

Robin saw him looking at it.

“May I see the apartment please?”

“Can you fix that furnace?” Robin countered.

Ja.

“Can you do wiring?”

Ja.

“Plumbing?”

Ja,
he could do that, too.

Robin stared at him hard, trying to make him crack if he was BS-ing her. All she got for her trouble was that infuriating little smile again. She turned gingerly and opened the rear door to the basement apartment.

There were only half the rooms of her own apartment, but they weren’t tiny spaces. Still, with the two of them there, with their combined sizes, she thought there was hardly room to breathe. And Robin realized she hadn’t been this physically close to a man in a private setting for a very long time. Her face turned a bright red.

He saw her discomfort, of course, probably guessed what she was thinking, but Robin had to give him credit for not saying anything or even smirking. Which made her even angrier, because she didn’t want to give him credit for anything.

Robin said, “As you can see, there’s a living room, a bedroom ...” She opened the door so he could look in. “... a dining-L and kitchenette and a bathroom.” He looked at this, too.

Robin had furnished the apartment over the years with her castoffs. She hadn’t ever expected to rent the space. She just used it as a place to crash when she was doing yard work or had several loads of laundry to do. Now, she watched this monstrous schnitzel sit on the sofa, click the TV on and off, check the bed’s firmness with his hand.

She felt as if she was losing control of her home.

“I will take the job,” the giant announced.

“I don’t think so,” Robin replied, shaking her head. “I don’t think I can do this.”

The guy looked at her, not trying to be intimidating in any way. Just looking to see what he could see. He shrugged and walked toward the open door at the rear of the building. He stopped in the doorway and looked back at her.

“So, tonight the cold will come and all your plants will die.”

“Damn,” Robin said.

He was right and she was right back where she’d started.

“A pity,” the giant agreed and started up the stairs.

“Wait!”

He turned and waited for Robin to hobble over to him. This time she did her best to see what was inside of him.

“You married?”

Nein.

“Girlfriend?”

Nein.

“Boyfriend?”

The giant just gave her a look.

“Pets?”

Nein.

“No drugs.”

Nein.
No drugs. This time with the smile.

“Noise?”

He said, “I’m told I snore.”

“Thanks for sharing, but down here, I don’t think I’d notice.”

The giant shrugged.

“You’re not an illegal alien?”

“I’m a resident alien.”

He showed her a green card.

Just when Robin thought it might work, at least for a little while, he added, “I was sponsored by the CIA.”

“What?”

“I was a political prisoner in East Germany.”

“Are you kidding me?”

He shook his head.

“I was a spy.”

“That does it,” Robin said. “Get out of here.”

Instead of leaving, he stepped over to the furnace, reached in and did something Robin couldn’t see. Then there was a click, a thump and the furnace came on. The giant turned toward Robin like a magician waiting to see how his trick had been received.

Robin beamed with joy.

Until he turned and shut the furnace off.

“I’ll leave now,” he said.