The Fixer Upper

by Judith Arnold

  They sent out for pizza for dinner. Reva loved pizza, and Libby suffered a pang of regret that her daughter would not be enjoying this treat with Harry and Bonnie tonight. They would probably take her to some exclusive restaurant where she’d have to order something with truffles or au poivre, and Bonnie would glower at her throughout the meal to make sure she didn’t eat too much. But an extravagant and appropriately fashionable ensemble would be her reward for putting up with Bonnie.

  After dinner, Ned, Eric and Libby played a cockamamie card game that Libby never quite caught on to. Then Eric went off to read—he’d just discovered A Wrinkle in Time—and Libby and Ned played gin, which Libby knew inside out. She took great pleasure in trouncing him.

  Neither of them could concentrate fully on the cards, however. They were both thinking about the time, waiting for Eric to go to bed and drift into his nuclear-explosion-defying slumber.

  Less than a minute after Eric fell asleep, Ned and Libby were shut inside Ned’s bedroom, naked, going at it with the enthusiasm of lovers who had been celibate for years rather than not quite a full week. Libby didn’t care what Ned said; this was nothing like riding a bike. If it was, she would quit her position at the Hudson School and find a job as a bicycle courier, just so she could feel this spectacular every day.

  But of course, the only way she could feel this spectacular was if Ned was her bicycle, lean and strong, fitting so perfectly between her legs and carrying her to a gloriously carnal destination. He joined her there, groaning and pressing deep inside her, then nuzzled her cheek. “We’re good at this, you know?” he mumbled.

  “Yes,” she agreed. A single-syllable word was pretty much all she could manage.

  He rose slightly, propping himself on his arms. “You’re not sorry, are you?”

  She focused on his face above hers, his sly smile and his mussed hair, and gave him a shove, although he was too big and heavy for her to push off her. Not that she truly desired to have him off her. “Don’t you dare sing that song,” she warned.

  “Come on. I’ve got a great voice.”

  “Well, if you’ve got to sing something, choose another song. How about ‘It Ain’t The Meat, It’s The Motion’?”

  “How about ‘I’m On Fire’?”

  “Or you could do a few bars of ‘Whole Lotta Love.’”

  “Mmm.” He moved his hips, stirring inside her. “‘Gonna give you every inch.’ Now, that’s a song I can relate to.”

  She laughed, but when he moved his hips again her laughter faded. Even spent and half-soft, he could make her come. She gasped and let out a quiet sigh. Were other men so amazing in bed? If so, why hadn’t she ever felt like this before?

  He bowed to kiss her, slowly, softly, like Sleeping Beauty’s prince awakening her from her trance. She opened her eyes again and saw Ned, only Ned. And she realized, with an odd mixture of joy and dismay, that she was insanely in love with him.

  He eased off her, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. “Don’t run away this time.”

  “I didn’t run away last time,” she said.

  “No, you walked away—at six in the morning.”

  “Because Eric—”

  “The hell with Eric.” He laughed. “I don’t mean that. Eric can handle seeing you over his pancakes in the morning.”

  “Maybe he can. I’m not sure I can handle him.”

  “You ought to get used to handling him.” Ned twirled his fingers through her hair. Such a simple, casual motion, yet it very nearly made her come again. “We can’t keep sneaking around like a couple of kids, Libby. We’re grown-ups. We’re allowed to have sex.”

  “I know, but—”

  “And kids are smart. They can figure out what’s going on. Wouldn’t you rather be honest about it?”

  “Kids in the abstract is one thing,” she rationalized. “Eric and Reva aren’t in the abstract. They’re our children.”

  He stroked through her hair to her nape and traced gentle circles against her skin. “Is it such an awkward thing that you have breakfast with Reva and then you see her at the Hudson School?”

  “Reva is my daughter,” Libby argued. “It’s completely different.”

  “Would it be awful if you had pancakes with Eric and then ran into him at school?”

  “I don’t eat pancakes,” Libby muttered. “They’re fattening. And while I can’t say your scenario would be awful, it would be…uncomfortable.”

  “For you. Not for Eric.”

  “How do you know? Some kids would die of embarrassment if they realized their parents were having sex.”

  “Eric’s not like that.”

  Libby wished she could believe Ned. Eric was his son, after all. Perhaps he was right and Eric wouldn’t think twice about the Hudson director of admissions sleeping with his father.

  “Okay,” Ned said, relenting. “If you don’t want to deal with this yet, we won’t. But sooner or later we will. Because I think we’ve got something special, Libby. I’d like Eric to get used to your presence in his life. And once Eric starts attending Hudson, you’ll be seeing him there.”

  A tickle of cold ran down Libby’s spine, not from Ned’s teasing caresses but from his words: once Eric starts attending Hudson…He sounded as if this was a given, as if not a single question existed, but that Eric would be accepted into the Hudson School.

  Libby was the director of admissions, and much as she hoped he’d get in, even she couldn’t predict whether he would.

  She eased back from Ned and sat up. “Ned,” she said. “I’d like to believe Eric will be attending Hudson next year, but he hasn’t been accepted.”

  He blinked, his smile fading, his eyes quizzical. “Yet,” Ned said. “He hasn’t been accepted yet.”

  “If I had anything to do with it, Ned, he’d be in. No doubt about it.”

  Ned sat straighter, too. A line dented the bridge of his nose. “If you had anything to do with it? You run the show over there. You’re in charge of who gets in.”

  “Yes, but I’ve recused myself from Eric’s application.”

  “What?” The word burst out of him with the force of a nuclear explosion. She glanced at the door, half expecting Eric to stagger in, rubbing his eyes and whining about having been awakened.

  “I won’t participate in Eric’s application decision. I can’t, Ned. The process has to be objective, and I’m not objective about him. If I pushed for him, when we’ve got a personal relationship…it wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Wait a minute.” Ned appeared outraged. “You’re telling me that you could get Eric in and you’re not going to?”

  “I’m going to step aside and let the rest of the admissions committee decide.”

  “Libby. Attending Hudson is Eric’s dream. He’s never asked for anything, but he asked for this. He deserves it. He should go there.”

  “I agree—”

  “But you won’t lift a finger to help him.”

  “I can’t, Ned.” His anger unnerved her. Surely if he looked at the situation logically and dispassionately, he’d understand her dilemma. She was a professional. She had to be objective. It was her job. “What if everyone on the committee had personal connections with some of the applicants? Getting into Hudson would be about nothing more than who you knew.”

  “Isn’t that the way the world works?” Ned raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if it might contain instructions for how to regain control of his temper. Apparently, it didn’t, because when he leveled his gaze back to Libby his face was etched with anger. “For once in his life, my kid asked for something. For once in my life, I knew someone. And you won’t do a damn thing for him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Shit.” He spun away from her, swung off the bed and stormed out of the room. She heard him in the bathroom, banging things, slamming things. Several minutes passed and she began to wonder whether he planned to remain in the bathroom until she was gone.

  She began to wonder other things, to
o. For once in my life, I knew someone. Was that why she was in Ned’s bed now? Was that why he’d made such sweet love to her? Was that why he’d fixed her fireplace and persuaded Harry to honor his promise of financial assistance? Was this all Ned’s way of “knowing someone,” someone who could get his son into a highly selective private school?

  Some people gave her flowers and candy to ease their children’s entry into the Hudson School. Some people gave her gift baskets and loofahs. Ned had given her a rehabbed fireplace, restored funding for her apartment and mind-blowing sex.

  And she’d given him her heart.

  Her heart wasn’t what he wanted, though. What he wanted was a guaranteed slot for his son in next year’s fifth-grade class at the Hudson School.

  That was something Libby couldn’t give him. As she gathered her clothes from the floor where they’d fallen when Ned had torn them off in a frenzy, she fought back the tears that pressed against her eyelids, and tried to assure herself that she wasn’t stupid. Godiva chocolates and pandering she was used to. Bouquets and bath oil she could cope with. Being bribed with love was way beyond her experience, though. Just because she’d fallen for Ned’s con didn’t mean she was a fool.

  But she felt pretty damn foolish as she stalked down the hallway of his apartment, through the living room and out the door without a glimpse of him, without even a goodbye.

  The sound of the front door slamming shut jolted Ned into action. He yanked open the bathroom door, raced down the hall, checked his bedroom to discover it empty and Libby’s clothing gone, then continued to the living room. His hand was on the doorknob before he remembered that he was buck naked. He couldn’t very well chase after her in his birthday suit.

  Why the hell had she bolted on him? He’d been gone only a few minutes, figuring they’d both be better off if he got his anger under control before they continued the conversation. His justifiable anger. How could she abandon Eric to the whims of some anonymous school committee? How could she toss Ned’s son away like that?

  His anger surged and he wrestled it back down. He had to go after Libby, bring her back here and work this thing out. But he couldn’t very well go after her with smoke pouring from his ears and rabid foam spilling from his mouth—and his butt exposed for all of Manhattan to see.

  He couldn’t very well go after her at all, he realized back in his bedroom as he tugged on his jeans. By now, she would already be halfway home—either in a cab or walking up West End Avenue. He glanced at his clock radio: 10:35. Not too dangerously late for her to be walking home alone, but he sure as hell hoped she’d found a cab. And anyway, before he could pursue Libby, he’d first have to see if Lindsay from down the hall could come over and stay with Eric. Sure, Eric was asleep, and he’d probably never even know that Ned had stepped out for a few minutes—but this was New York City, and Ned would never leave Eric, not even for the time it took to find Libby and return with her.

  He lifted his shirt from the floor and slid his arms through the sleeves. It seemed inconceivable that just a half hour ago she’d been unbuttoning this shirt, pushing back the fabric, running her hands over his torso and pressing a kiss to his chest. His groin twinged at the memory.

  “Fuck,” he said. The anger was back, full-bore. He couldn’t believe she’d run out on him—especially when she was in the wrong. She should have been waiting to greet his return from the bathroom with an apology and a vow to secure a place for Eric at the Hudson School.

  He sprawled out on the bed and smelled her on his pillows. Then he jumped off the mattress as if it were on fire, grabbed the phone, dialed her number and leaned against the wall while he listened to it ring unanswered at her end. At least Reva wasn’t home, so Ned wasn’t disturbing her.

  When her answering machine clicked on, he hung up and left his bedroom for the kitchen, where the cordless phone had a redial button. He dialed Libby’s number again, let it ring four times, disconnected the call, waited a minute and hit Redial. Four rings, disconnect, count to ten and redial again.

  On his fifth attempt she picked up. “Hello?” She sounded leery. She must have guessed who’d be calling her at this hour.

  His anger rose again, swelling like an approaching storm cloud. That image reminded him of the time he and Libby had walked home from Hudson in the rain, sharing his umbrella. She’d already had him by then. One brush of her shoulder, one shared smile and he’d wanted her.

  And now she was there when she ought to be here, in his bed, with him. He prayed for the cloud to keep its distance, because if it started flinging daggers of lightning, he wasn’t going to accomplish much with this call. “Libby.” He swallowed to smooth out his voice. “Come back.”

  “I don’t think so.” She sounded a little uneven, a little uncertain.

  “Libby, I don’t understand why you left.”

  “Well, you shut yourself up in the bathroom and didn’t come out. I assumed you were throwing a tantrum.”

  “A tantrum?” Thunder rolled off the cloud. He took a deep breath and clung to what little control he had. “I was upset, so I went somewhere to cool off. That was no reason for you to disappear on me.”

  “It was one reason. There were others.”

  Patience, he ordered himself, even as he felt the first splatters of rain on his soul. “What other reasons?”

  “Do I have to spell it out? You want your son to get into the Hudson School. Lots of parents want their children to get into the Hudson School, and they ply me with goodies. They try to bribe me to admit their kids. They send me gifts.” She paused, then said, “You renovated my fireplace.”

  “You think I renovated your fireplace so you’d get Eric into Hudson?” A cold gale blew the cloud back, hinting at a different kind of storm. Now Ned wasn’t just angry that she’d walked out on him. He was furious at what she was implying.

  “It’s not just the fireplace.” She paused again, then continued. “You went and patched things up for me with Harry, and…and other things.”

  Other things. Like making love to her. Apparently, as the song said, she was sorry now. Rage buffeted him with hurricane-force winds. This was one ugly, destructive storm.

  “Libby,” he said, forcing his voice out around the knot of bitterness clogging his throat. “Where I come from, if someone you care about has a problem and you’re in a position to fix it, you fix it. Your fireplace had a problem, and I could fix it, so I did. You had a problem with your ex, and I knew I could fix it, so I did. This is what people do for the people they—” He couldn’t say love, not now, not when he was drowning in a deluge of fury. “Care about,” he murmured. “My son has a problem with public school, and you’re in a position to fix it.”

  “I’m sure that’s what all the parents who send me gifts and flattering notes think, too. They’re in a position to send me chocolates, so they do. And I’m in a position to get their kids into Hudson, so in exchange for the chocolates that’s what I should do.”

  “You think this whole thing was quid pro quo? You think…what? I seduced you to get my kid into Hudson?”

  “Right now, that’s how it feels.”

  Ned didn’t know enough curse words to cover how it felt to him, but he mouthed a few of them. They didn’t bring catharsis, though. They only made him feel as if he should suck on a bar of soap.

  “So now what?” he said into the phone, once he was sure the words emerging from him wouldn’t leave blisters on Libby’s ear. “Are you going to tell your department that Eric Donovan shouldn’t be admitted to the Hudson School because his father tried to bribe you by rehabbing your fireplace and giving you multiple orgasms?”

  There was a really long pause this time. Maybe he’d blistered her ear after all. Finally, she spoke. “I told you, Ned, I’m going to recuse myself from Eric’s application. That means I won’t ease him in and I won’t ease him out. The rest of the committee will decide.”

  “Fine,” he growled. “Let the committee decide. You want to break my kid’s heart,
go right ahead.” Break my heart, too, he almost added, but the storm was inundating him. He shivered in it. Deafening thunderclaps echoed inside his skull. He couldn’t talk anymore.

  He hit the off button on the handset and put the phone on the stand. Then he staggered down the hall. He stopped at Eric’s bedroom, opened the door and saw the lumpy, motionless silhouette at the center of the loft bed. A whispery snore filled the room and he closed the door.

  Oh, God. He was the world’s worst father. Not because of anything he’d done but because he couldn’t fulfill Eric’s wish. Eric wasn’t like most kids. He didn’t pester Ned for expensive toys, video games, overpriced sneakers. He didn’t march through life acting as if the world owed him something, even though it did. Eric had lost his mother and yet he refused to use that tragedy as an excuse. He simply accepted it and got on with things.

  All he’d ever asked of Ned was the right to be happy—and a place at the Hudson School.

  Ned had done his best to deliver on the first item, but the second—not only was it beyond him, but he might have ruined the kid’s chances forever. He couldn’t believe Libby was so vindictive she’d punish Eric for the sins of his father, whatever they were. But who the hell knew?

  That stupid song drifted through his head: Who’s sorry now? Easy question. Lousy answer. Ned returned to his bedroom, pulled a rolled-up pair of socks from a bureau drawer and slammed them into the wall.

  Twenty-Four

  Hey, Riva, whassup? The Web site is working its magic, thank your little buddy Eric for me. So this dude who says he knows your father got in touch with me, he’s in the music business and he wants to book me into some small clubs and see what happens. When I got his e-mail, hey, maybe you heard me screaming all the way from Brooklyn. And then we met and made arrangements. Once I have the dates I’ll be performing, I’ll send you the info and you can get Eric to put them on the Web site. I am so incredibly grateful, Riva. Your dad turned out to be not such a bad dude after all, hey?