Round Robin

by Joseph Flynn

  Dan smiled.

  “Sure, even you were overwhelmed. I was the same way with both my girls. There’s something special about daughters. You have a son, you’ve got to figure he’ll be a chip off the old block. You just take it for granted that if you give a boy a decent start, he’ll stand tall, and with his wits or his mitts he’ll make his way, he’ll do all right. But with a girl you always worry. This world is too damn mean for little girls, they oughta have a better place. So you do your best to protect them. You do your best.”

  Manfred saw that Dan Phinney had set foot in a painful memory. He took the two empty bottles from the table and returned with full ones. Dan poured the beer into his stein and sipped. He sighed deeply as though exorcising this particular demon for this particular moment.

  “But you can’t always be there for them. Sometimes, as hard as you try, they get hurt anyway. So what you have to do is two things: You love them, and then you love them some more. When you do that, when you keep that in mind, you won’t have any trouble deciding about anything else. You have a choice to make about how to behave with your daughter, you just ask, am I doing this out of love for her or something else for me? Choose love, Manfred. Choose it every time. Your daughter won’t reject you. Not for long, anyway. And once she sees how you feel, you’ll never lose her. She’ll always know she has you to turn to.”

  “I’ll never lose her?” Manfred asked hopefully.

  Dan Phinney shook his head.

  “Oh, she may move away someday. In fact, you can pretty much count on it. But she’ll always have a place for you in her heart, and no father could ever ask for more.”

  Mimi called Saturday night.

  Robin had spent that morning not doing her laundry, unsure if she wanted to bump into Manfred or his underwear. That afternoon, she’d talked for hours on the phone with Nancy about their parents’ upcoming divorce, agreeing that it was probably a good thing, but both of them admitting that they felt strange about it. That evening Robin had gone out for an early-bird special dinner with her dad, both of them taking it easy on the cholesterol, and she’d just returned in time to hear the phone ring.

  “What?” Robin asked Mimi. “You were so sure I’d be home, that I wouldn’t have I date?”

  “I’ve missed you, too, sweetheart. How’s the ankle? You ready to come back to work on Monday?”

  “Work? What’s that? Did I mention I won the lottery?”

  “No, you didn’t. Did I mention that Manfred’s strudel is a big hit?”

  “What?”

  “Yes, so far it’s sold out within an hour of opening every day. The breakfast rush must be up ten percent. He says he does some very nice cherry tarts, too. We’re going to try those next week.”

  Robin felt aggrieved. Sure, she’d been the one who told Manfred about Mimi’s business proposition, and she knew how good his strudel was —even though he hadn’t offered to bake her any lately — but the idea that he’d gone ahead and followed through on her lead without even telling her, that he was becoming important at the place where she had always been the star, it just plain put her nose out of joint. Strudel, indeed.

  She’d show him who mattered at Mimi’s.

  “I’ll see you Monday, Mimi. My ankle’s fine.”

  “I’m happy to hear it.”

  “But, Mimi?”

  “Yes?”

  “If that idiot, Ant-knee, tries to get back at me, I won’t cut him any slack.”

  There was a significant pause at the other end of the line.

  “Haven’t you heard, Robin?” Mimi asked.

  “Heard what?”

  “Tone Morello lost his job, he was fired. I don’t think he’ll be back.”

  “Oh,” Robin said.

  Well, she wasn’t going to blame herself for Ant-knee’s problems. The smug jerk had probably ticked off the wrong person at his television station with his stupid, macho, win-at-all-costs attitude. She hadn’t gotten him fired.

  And why should she care if, for some bizarre reason, she had? After the way he’d treated all those women, it’d serve him right if he wound up in a soup kitchen. Hell, it’d serve him right if he wound up in a soup pot — and if any of those other jerks who came into Mimi’s thought she was going to take it easy on them ...

  Robin worked herself up into such a fine lather that it took her several moments to realize that someone was knocking — banging by now — on her door.

  She yanked it open to find Manfred.

  “What?” she said testily.

  “Bianca is coming,” he said, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice. “Her airplane will arrive in one hour. Please. You will come with me to the airport.”

  In her current mood, Robin thought: Why the hell should I?

  But for reasons she was unable to articulate, she said through a humorless rictus, “Sure, why not? We can talk about cherry tarts on the way.”

  Manfred wasn’t in the mood for conversation. He was intent on getting to the airport. He found his way to the Kennedy Expressway and got on going in the right direction, but would have missed the feeder road for O’Hare if Robin hadn’t elbowed him out of whatever reverie was showing at the cineplex behind his eyes.

  “Danke,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Robin muttered.

  A plane roared overhead, coming in for a landing. Manfred leaned forward, his head over the steering wheel, turning sideways, trying to see into the aircraft’s windows.

  “Keep your eyes on the road, will you?” Robin said. “You don’t know that’s her plane, you can’t see anything anyway, and you don’t even know what she looks like these days.”

  Manfred turned a face to Robin that made her think: You really don’t want to get King Kong p.o.’ed at you. He might grab you with one hand, climb the control tower and fight off the Air National Guard.

  “I will recognize my daughter,” Manfred said stiffly.

  But he didn’t try to spot anymore in-bound aircraft. And he followed Robin’s directions to the proper parking structure and to the international terminal. Manfred had a whispered word with a Customs official, who checked a note on his clipboard and let them cross the barrier which held all the non-CIA-affiliated hoi polloi at bay. They stood side by side at the arrival gate not saying a word to each other.

  What a pair, Robin thought. Just what a little kid dragged away to a foreign country wants to see. The troll twins in a snit. They were enough to make a brothel look homey.

  After several minutes of waiting, Manfred trying not to fidget, Robin wondering, the way people did when their car was about to go off a cliff, what am I doing here, a plane taxied up to the gate. As the jetway goosenecked out to the plane, Manfred turned to Robin. His expression was different this time.

  “I am sorry for my rude behavior,” he said. He gave his little nod to make it official. “I am very nervous, and I am not good at being nervous. I have not had much practice. You are doing a favor for me, and I should not be cross with you. You were right: I have no idea what my daughter will look like.”

  For a moment, his face sagged. Then, as if he were lifting a barbell, he gathered himself and pushed his features back up into an approximately neutral position. A second effort raised them a millimeter higher, so Robin could see a flicker of hope in his eyes and the hint of an expectant smile on his lips.

  “She’ll love you,” Robin said. “If she doesn’t, she’s nuts.”

  Manfred looked at her with such pathetic gratitude Robin was almost sorry she’d opened her mouth.

  At that moment, the door to the jetway slammed open and a high, keening voice filled the terminal with curses that you didn’t have to be a linguist to translate. The raw venom in every shout and shriek was an idiom familiar to everyone. Robin and Manfred turned to see the source of the commotion. The point of origin was a thrashing dervish of a child being held and only partially restrained by CIA agent Warner Lisle.

  Warner’s face, while not cut to ribbons, was bleeding in se
veral places, including a point on his chin where the damage looked as if it had been inflicted by teeth. Spotting Manfred, Warner immediately thrust the child into his arms.

  “Your daughter,” he said to Manfred. “She’s all yours.”

  Warner took out a handkerchief and began blotting his wounds.

  The girl looked at Manfred, to see who her new captor was, and for a moment she was quiet. She had blue eyes, which nicely matched her spiky blue hair. She had a long straight nose and lips full and wide enough to put her on the cover of Vogue. She had a gold safety pin through the lobe of her left ear. She was long and slender in her steel-toed boots, torn jeans, “Eat Me” t-shirt and black leather jacket, but overwhelming the whole punk ensemble was a sense of malice so strong that Robin hadn’t seen anything like it since that kid in The Exorcist.

  If her head did a three-sixty, Robin was out of there.

  Having given Manfred the once over, she rendered her opinion of him by screaming in his face. She tried to claw him, too, but he was made of sterner stuff than her last warder. One arm pinned both of hers to her sides and the other restrained her legs. That left her mouth. She opened it to flash a set of pointy little white teeth, but Manfred quickly raised his right hand. He didn’t strike her, he crooked his thick index finger and let her bite it. Which she did, to the point of drawing blood that flowed from the finger and out the corners of her mouth.

  “Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Warner asked.

  Manfred didn’t make a sound, didn’t even give a disapproving look. Just waited stoically, and until the end of time if necessary. The little girl saw that she was getting nowhere, her jaws were starting to ache and she realized that any further attempt at a physical assault against this monster would be futile.

  When she removed her teeth from his flesh, Manfred said, “I am your father and I love you.” He repeated the sentiment in German.

  Bianca stared at him a moment, then turned away, her eyes sullen and downcast. Manfred wiped his blood off her chin with his wounded finger.

  Warner took a long envelope out of a coat pocket and handed it to Manfred.

  “Here you go, buddy. Bianca Krump. All the necessary paperwork. Legal entry into the United States. Resident alien status, eligible for citizenship. Signed, sealed and delivered.”

  Manfred stuffed the envelope in his jacket pocket.

  “She has a bag?” Manfred asked.

  Warner shook his head.

  “She comes as is ... and one more thing,” Warner added. “We’re even now.”

  Robin drove home.

  Manfred and Bianca sat in the back of the old Mercedes. Robin listened to the kid. She wasn’t screaming anymore, she was talking, a non-stop snarl of German about everything that passed in front of her eyes. The disparaging tone made it plain that nothing she saw was as good as the place she used to know.

  Bianca noticed Robin sneaking peeks at her in the rear view mirror.

  “Fett und scheusslich,” Bianca judged Robin.

  Robin drove a mile trying to figure that one out. When she thought she had it, she asked Manfred, “Fat and ugly, right? The kid said I’m fat and ugly?”

  Manfred shook his head.

  “Fat and hideous.”

  He saw Robin’s jaw set, and knew she was making an effort to restrain herself.

  “Please don’t take offense,” he said. “She says much worse about me.”

  By a stroke of divine grace, Robin found a parking space just one house down from her place. She zipped into it, turned off the engine and the lights and flipped the keys back to Manfred. She intended to make a fast getaway and barricade herself in her apartment, putting a safe distance between herself and the wretched refuse that had washed up on her shore.

  But that was when the kid decided to pitch her latest fit.

  She went into hysterics. Not acting out anger this time, but fear and longing. She was crying for her mother. Robin didn’t know the words this pathetic child was sobbing, but the meaning was crystal clear. She felt she was about to enter a place from which she would never escape ... and she was pleading for her mother.

  Robin knew that Manfred wouldn’t have any physical difficulty carrying his daughter down into his apartment, despite the fact that the kid was clinging to the car’s upholstery with all her might, but she thought the least she might do would be to hold the doors for him. She closed the rear door of the Mercedes after he gently tugged the forlorn girl out of the car. She opened the outer door of her house and allowed them to enter. One more door, she thought, and that would be the end of it for her. At least for tonight.

  But Manfred asked, “May I show Bianca the park? I think it might help.”

  The request took Robin by surprise. And it wasn’t one she was inclined to grant — but she made the mistake of looking into Bianca’s eyes. The child was so lost, so frightened, so doomed.

  “Just for a minute,” Robin said grudgingly.

  She unlocked the inside hall door and made her way up to the first floor landing. After a moment’s hesitation, she inserted the key into the deadbolt lock and opened the door to the park. There were Gro-Lights on inside, working off their timer, and it gave the place the aspect of some magical jungle. The effect on Bianca was instantaneous: she fell silent and her eyes went round.

  She pulled away from Manfred’s arms and he let her go. Bianca stepped cautiously over to the wishing well and the fish pond which were always lit at night. She dipped her hand in the water. The piscine inhabitants fled from her intrusion, but she didn’t pursue them. She didn’t try to filch any of the coins, either, as Robin thought she might. She just rubbed the water she’d collected on her fingers all around her face. Then she turned to look at the rest of this fantastical environment.

  She stepped gingerly into the park as if strange creatures might lurk beyond the nearest clump of leaves and fronds. She carefully poked her nose around a curve in the plantings. Robin and Manfred watched with interest. With a sudden burst, Bianca ran toward the rear of the park. Robin thought she was trying to escape, find a back way out, but she dove under a thick schefflera. A little hand parted the leaves and the child’s eyes peered out at the grownups.

  She said something to Manfred in German.

  “Bianca has decided she will live here,” he translated. When he saw the alarm in Robin’s eyes, he shook his head. “You have been most patient. I will take Bianca downstairs now. Will you please turn on the overhead lights?”

  Robin did, but the lights were a big mistake. The kid knew the game was over, and her rage flared up once again. She bounced to her feet and started shredding the schefflera leaves. Before the destruction could go too far, Robin was past Manfred and upon the kid in a heartbeat.

  “Stop it!” she roared. “Don’t you dare hurt my plants!”

  Robin couldn’t have been more ferocious if Bianca had been attacking a child of hers.

  Bianca didn’t need any translation, either. She fled to her father’s arms and babbled at him while pointing at Robin, obviously urging Manfred to crush her. Robin wasn’t amused.

  She grimly said to Manfred, “You tell her ... tell her that if she ever tries anything like that again — if I ever let her in here again — you’re both out.”

  Bianca had been listening to Robin. Now she turned to her newfound father to see whose side he would take. When she heard what he had to say, she tried to attack him again, with the same lack of success. Bianca burst into bitter tears, until Manfred whispered into her ear. She stopped crying immediately. She looked at Manfred with wary, calculating eyes. Hopeful, but not daring to trust.

  Robin wondered if he’d given the kid her message.

  “She understands?” Robin asked. “You understand?”

  Manfred nodded.

  “She will behave. I have just promised her that if she is good, and if she so wishes, she may return to her mother in six months.”

  Chapter 16

  Robin heard the sound of the harmonic
a coming through the heating vent just as she slipped into bed. The music was slow and simple and so full of heartbreak that she thought she would cry, and then she did and felt better for it. As the tears rolled down her cheeks, she tried to identify the song, but she couldn’t. She wondered if Manfred’s repertoire was simply larger than her knowledge of the blues, or if the song was something he’d written to console himself during his stretch in prison ... and was now putting to use for his daughter.

  Not knowing the music, having no sense of where it might be going, made it more elemental as it rode up the current of warm air that also arrived courtesy of the man in her basement. He was a considerable assault on any number of her preconceptions. Here was a man who’d gone to extraordinary lengths to reclaim his child, and yet shortly after getting her back said he would relinquish her.

  Robin didn’t think for a minute that it was just a ploy on Manfred’s part just to get the kid to shut up — although the fact that she had closed her yap was a definite plus.

  She didn’t think it was a matter of cold feet, either. A guy who’d let a kid bite his finger down to the bone without making a peep wasn’t a quitter.

  No, he’d made his promise because the kid’s happiness meant more to him than his own. He’d given his word because he loved that little girl more than anyone. The harmonica moved into a particularly melancholy passage and Robin wondered why men couldn’t love their women as much as they loved their daughters.

  She hoped that his playing eased Bianca’s pain and fear as much as it did hers, but with a mild sense of shame, Robin had to admit that it wouldn’t break her heart if the little plant-shredding snot soon fled back to the Fatherland.

  To escape the guilt that followed on the heels of such an uncharitable sentiment, Robin fell asleep.

  Robin smelled the pastry before she heard the knock at her door. It wasn’t strudel, though. It was ... sniff ... cherry tarts? Then came the knock. A small knock from a small hand.

  The picture immediately formed in her mind: father and daughter had come calling on Sunday morning with a plate of fresh-from-the-oven, melt-in-your-mouth pastry. The day was sunny and pleasantly crisp in its autumnal fashion. Robin had just showered, put on clean clothes and brushed her hair. What a perfect setting for inviting her considerate tenants in to share breakfast with her.