Round Robin

by Joseph Flynn

  He sure as hell couldn’t record what he had to say with a kid present.

  He had to think — fast.

  The fat broad was staring at him.

  Hard.

  Had a knife in her hand like she might cut his liver out any minute.

  Bianca looked at the man with the darting eyes on the other side of the counter and tried to decide if he more closely resembled a weasel or a rat. It was a tough choice, but she really didn’t think that either of those animals could break a sweat on their upper lips as this creature just had. In any case, she didn’t like him, and she knew this was one place where she could freely display her disapproval.

  Bianca removed the grape Tootsie Roll Pop from her mouth and stuck a purple tongue out at Iggy.

  His writers had not prepared Iggy for this, and it showed in his disconcerted look.

  Nor was he ready when Robin burst out laughing at him.

  She slapped the countertop with her hand, threw back her head and roared. Iggy was finished before he’d gotten his first word out. A surge of volcanic anger turned his face the color of glowing magma.

  Suddenly, he forgot all his material, all his preparation, and even the last twenty-six years of his life. He was back in the schoolyard. He was once again the little bug-eyed geek the girls had always laughed at. They hadn’t even tried to conceal their ridicule for him; they’d pointed right at him and laughed out loud. Iggy’d never said a word in his own defense back then, but he would now.

  “Bitch!” he screamed at Robin.

  His feeble invective was blown away by Robin’s gale of laughter.

  “Whore!” he screamed.

  Robin’s laughter grew louder, more manic. It had made Bianca nervous at first but now she was swept up in the contagion of it, and she laughed at Iggy, too. And pointed at him.

  “Cunt!” Iggy shrieked.

  Robin fell silent as suddenly as if she’d been guillotined. Her eyes grew wide, and Bianca’s titters trailed off in the wake of a deepening hush. Robin’s mouth opened and her jaw began to tremble.

  Iggy Gross smiled. This was really rich, he thought. He’d paid big money to some of the top names in the business to give him their best stuff and all he’d needed was a four-letter word that every street monkey in the country knew. Well, he’d didn’t care. He’d found this fat broad’s weakness and now he’d use it.

  He hadn’t noticed that all along Robin was looking over his shoulder.

  A hand fell heavily on Iggy and spun him around hard enough to give him whiplash.

  The hand didn’t belong to Manfred, though.

  Phil Leeds had just arrived.

  “I don’t think a lady ought to be talked to like that,” Phil told Iggy. “Especially one of my old girlfriends.”

  Trying to ignore the shooting pain in his neck, Iggy looked at the creep who’d grabbed him. He wasn’t any taller than Iggy and he was just as skinny. He had thinning greasy black hair, crooked gray teeth, bloodshot blue eyes and the muscle tone of an overripe banana, all of it stuffed inside of a Salvation Army markdown suit. Iggy could take this guy.

  Mimi saw what was coming.

  “Hey, hey!” she said. “No fighting allowed, not in here!”

  The first knot of the breakfast crowd arrived at that moment, including David, and was riveted by this high and unusual drama — but Mimi’s usual centurion from among Chicago’s Finest had yet to put in his appearance. She looked to Manfred for help.

  But before he could reach his feet, Tone Morello stepped out of the growing cluster of customers and extended his hand to Phil.

  “Phil Leeds?” he said, shaking the man’s hand with a smile. “You’re Phil Leeds, right?”

  The sudden appearance of a fellow media-creature, someone who could cause him major public embarrassment, knocked Iggy for a loop. He started to slink away, but Tone let go of Leed’s hand and grabbed the shock-jock’s arm.

  “Where ya goin’, Iggy? Stick around. The fun’s just starting.”

  Everybody was watching. The crowd at the door was getting thicker by the second. No way Iggy could slip away now. He’d have to bust through that mob, and that’d look just like what it was, an abject retreat.

  Not good at all for his image.

  “Yeah, sure, Tone. I’ll stick around,” Iggy said, now trying to sound nonchalant. “So why don’t you tell everyone just what’s going on here, anyway?”

  “Yeah,” added Phil, “I’d like to know myself, and, by the way, where’s my money?”

  Tone handed him a hundred dollar bill, and that calmed Phil.

  Then Tone looked straight at Robin.

  “I just felt like playing Cupid, that’s all.” Tone turned to the growing crowd. “Phil here is Robin’s old sweetheart. They were real close once upon a time.”

  Robin’s soul froze. Ant-knee knew.

  He was standing here with Phil in the place where she worked and he was going to tell the world what she had done. It had taken her twenty years to confide her secret to anyone outside of her family, and now, just hours later, Ant-knee was going to tell the world.

  With a gleeful grin on his idiotic face.

  And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Except put her knife down.

  Because if she didn’t she was going to climb right over the counter and slit Ant-knee’s throat. Maybe Phil’s, too, while she was at it. But she didn’t want to do that. Because there were some people here who cared for her, and she wanted to have a life when all this was over.

  Robin lay her knife down atop the shelf of the in–your–face space, the blade pointed away from Ant-knee and toward her.

  The symbolism of defeat was not lost on Tone.

  He gloried in it.

  Others were not so ready to yield.

  Manfred stayed put, as he’d been directed, but he drew himself up. He narrowed his eyes, squared his jaw and clenched his fists. He caught Robin’s eye.

  “You are strong,” he told her. “Remember how strong you are.”

  Robin began to cry.

  “Don’t give in,” David pleaded. “Don’t let him do this to you. Don’t let him win.”

  Robin began to wail.

  “Robin, sweetheart,” Mimi called. She held the Heavyweight Champ robe up, urging Robin to win one last fight.

  Robin began to shake.

  “What, what?” Tone asked with his grin widening. He stepped to the customer side of the in–your–face space. “All I want to do is tell everyone a story of young love ... between Phil here ...” Tone spun the knife to point at Phil, who realized he’d sold out for far too little and was trying to disappear inside his shabby suit. “ ... and our own dear Round Robin Phinney.”

  Tone picked up the knife and pointed the blade at Robin.

  “Listen to me,” Tone said, “while I tell all of you just how Robin got to be who she is today.”

  But Tone never got the chance.

  A howl — the high, keening shriek of a wildcat — snapped everyone’s head around. All eyes locked on the source of that animal outcry. Bianca. The child’s face was a feral mask. Her eyes were flat and her teeth were bared.

  Now, Manfred rose to his feet.

  “Bianca!” he said.

  But the child didn’t hear her father. She was focused solely on Tone.

  “Hey, kid,” he said, warily, “take it easy.”

  Without conscious thought, Tone’s hand tightened around the knife handle.

  Robin saw this, felt something horrible was about to happen and knew she had to stop it. She couldn’t let her damn history be the cause of any more trouble. Her trembling stopped, her legs steadied. She turned toward Bianca.

  Who didn’t even see her.

  The wild–child focused like a death-ray on Tone. She cursed him in German, spittle flying from her mouth. She formed her fingers into claws and gathered her legs under her.

  “Bianca, nein!” Manfred yelled, bulling people aside.

  But he was too late. Bianca
leaped at Tone.

  Never seeing the knife that would impale her before she reached him.

  Never seeing Robin jump in front of her at the last possible second.

  Bianca weighed scarcely seventy pounds, but she had leaped with all her might, and with Robin already in motion, the child sent the much larger woman staggering backward.

  Impaling her on the knife that Tone held fast in his hand. The blade plunged deeply into Robin’s back. Tone looked on in horror. The knife was still in his hand. The blade ran red with Robin’s blood.

  He had his revenge at last.

  Chapter 33

  Tone released the knife, but otherwise froze.

  Everyone around him, however, moved with incredible speed. Already heading in her direction, Manfred vaulted his 300–plus pounds over the counter and caught Robin before she crumpled to the floor. Mimi was on the phone dialing 911 at the same time. She dropped the phone when she saw Stan Prozanski walk through the door. He was quickly turned around.

  Stan, Bianca and Mimi piled into the front of the sergeant’s patrol unit. Robin, with the knife sticking out of her back, lay across Manfred’s legs in the rear. Lights flashing and sirens howling, they headed for nearby Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Stan radioed ahead for help.

  Robin was still conscious.

  “Mimi,” she gasped.

  “Yes, sweetie?” Mimi asked, doing her best not to go into hysterics.

  “I quit.”

  “Get it out,” Robin growled.

  She lay on a table in the emergency room. The ER physician and nurse tried to calm her. Instead of removing the knife, they’d built a dressing around it. A second nurse was putting an IV line into Robin.

  “The sedative will help you with the pain,” the doctor said. “We’ve got to do this the right way.”

  “Get it out, get it out, get it out!” Robin yelled.

  “We’ve called for the trauma team. There’s a surgeon on his way right now.”

  Manfred, Bianca, Mimi and Stan watched, not six feet away. The ER staff had tried to shoo them away, but, clearly, this group would not to be budged. And they were looking increasingly unfriendly.

  “Get it out!” Robin shrieked, but this time she seemed to be losing steam.

  Manfred caught the physician’s wrist. “You will remove the knife or I will.”

  “Sir, that knife has likely collapsed the lady’s right lung. Air and blood are where they don’t belong inside her chest cavity. There may be damage to her diaphragm and even her liver. We’re trying to — Hey, come back here!”

  But Bianca had slipped past the physician and the nurse. Using two hands and one mighty yank, she pulled the knife out of Robin’s back. The trauma team, and a crowd of patrons from the deli, arrived just in time to see this.

  Knife in hand, Bianca addressed the assembled medical personnel.

  “You will fix her! You will fix her now!”

  And just to let them know she was serious, she repeated herself in German.

  “Hurry,” Robin added, before she lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Epilogue

  Athens, Summer, 2004

  Robin shifted in her seat at Olympic Stadium, trying to find a position that didn’t press uncomfortably against the scar on her back.

  “Any minute now,” Bianca said excitedly as they watched the parade of nations at the Opening Ceremony of the Athens Olympic Games.

  Robin nodded, looking at the beautiful young woman sitting in the seat next to her and loving her with all her heart.

  Robin had spent nine hours in surgery. Pneumohemothorax and lacerations of the diaphragm and liver were serious business. At one point, she went into shock and her heart stopped. The surgical team was genuinely afraid they were going to lose her. But they didn’t.

  Later, her survival would be attributed simply to the will to live.

  This woman had not yet finished with her life.

  The first person Robin saw when she regained consciousness was her father. He sat in a wheelchair next to her bed. As ever, when Robin needed him, he put aside his own troubles and was there for her. Right next to him was her mother. And the sight of them together brought Robin a comfort she thought she’d never know again.

  Nancy and Charlie and their boys came.

  Mimi and Stan visited daily.

  David Solomonovich came and held her hand and kissed her — on the cheek.

  Manfred and Bianca became fixtures in the room. A cot was set up for Bianca, and Manfred slept in a chair. The only times they left were when Robin asked for privacy as her doctors attended to her needs.

  The last night in the hospital, as Bianca slept, Robin held Manfred’s hand and told him simply, “I’m healed.”

  They both knew what she meant.

  Dan and Patti Phinney were remarried by Monsignor Wrightman, whose angina pectoris was being controlled with medication. Robin and Nancy served as co-matrons of honor. Manfred was Dan’s best man. Bianca was the ring bearer. Dan and Patti moved to Lahaina, Maui, where Patti got a terrific deal on a darling condo. These days, they watch whales and Hawaiian sunsets and neither of them goes anywhere without the other.

  David Solomonovich forsook science for art, which partially explains why room-temperature-superconductivity still hasn’t been achieved. The muse that had found its way into David’s heart through Bianca’s erotic tales refused to yield to any other use of his time. In typical fashion, David had to carry things out as far as he could, and he became not an illustrator or a painter but a sculptor. He quickly gained a reputation for doing the most romantic and classical nudes since Rodin, works of which even his parents were proud. He now works out of both a loft in Chicago and his farm-studio in Galena. There have, of course, been rumors of affairs between the artist and his models, but those who know better understand that David is waiting for a certain young woman to finish medical school at which time her formidable father will allow her to marry.

  Tone Morello suffered another career setback that day at Mimi’s. His job with the network affiliate disappeared when he was found to be in violation of the public morals clause of his contract. He did beat the rap on the assault with a deadly weapon charge when Robin refused to file a complaint. In due time, Tone regained his place in the scheme of things when he became the sports–scandal reporter for a national tabloid. There was no shortage of material for him to exploit, and he had a flunky who did all of the actual writing. Tone had been scheduled to cover the Athens Games — the Olympics always being a fertile field for sports shenanigans — but the preceding winter while vacationing in the Caribbean he went fishing with a group of Canadian businessmen and fell overboard. His body was never recovered.

  Phil Leeds scurried back to the margins of society where he was most comfortable, taking with him that day at Mimi’s the wallet he picked from the pocket of the stunned Tone Morello.

  For a while, Iggy Gross regained his popularity as a radio loudmouth. He even got a brief bump in his ratings when someone started a rumor — Iggy swore it wasn’t him — that what had happened to Robin was an example of what people got if they messed with him. Iggy lost his life when he literally could no longer stomach himself. His digestive system turned on him and refused to absorb any of the food he gave it. Everything he ate slipped right through without providing any nutrition. Some observers felt this was a sure sign that everything Iggy touched turned to shit.

  Warner Lisle slipped into the seat next to Robin. She was amazed at how the ex-spy hadn’t seemed to age at all. He was still easy to look at, easy to forget, and could still blend into any crowd at will. But Warner’s spying days were well behind him. He was a Hollywood special effects legend now. His company was even doing consulting for the laser shows and pyrotechnics being used at the Athens Games.

  “Haven’t missed anything, have I?” he asked.

  Robin smiled and shook her head.

  “Any second now,” Bianca said, quivering with excitement. “Any second.”
/>   “You leave your place in good hands?” he asked Robin.

  “The best. Nancy’s.”

  Screaming Mimi’s Deli had closed forever the day Robin was stabbed. Mimi never set foot in the place again. She, too, considered herself guilty for what had happened, running a business where people were encouraged to scream at one another. She and Stanley retired to Florida, where he finally made an honest woman of her. She sold her place to Robin as planned, Robin completing the purchase with Manfred’s help. The new establishment was reopened as the Continental Cafe, the place with the best baked goods and friendliest service in town. Nancy had changed jobs to manage the cafe’s business — and she constantly battled to keep her weight down, having become addicted to Manfred’s baking.

  Bianca jumped to her feet.

  “I see it! I see the flag!”

  Robin and Warner rose to their feet, as did the sizable contingent of other Americans in the stadium. Many of them began to chant, “U-S-A, U-S-A...”

  The American team stepped proudly from the shadow of the tunnel and into the bright light of the track. At their head, holding the Stars and Stripes, was an enormous man.

  The press had been telling his story for days now. Denied the chance to compete for the East German team at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics because of the Soviet boycott — and his political imprisonment — he now carried the American flag as the honorary team captain, a tribute to the fact that five members of the American weightlifting squad, three wrestlers, a shot–putter, and the power-forward on the basketball team had all been coached by this man in high school.

  The crowd roared as Manfred Welk stepped into the stadium.

  From the stands, Robin Welk beamed at her husband.

  Bianca threw her arms around Robin.

  “Oh, Mom,” she cried. “I’m so proud, I’m so happy.”

  Robin nodded as tears ran down her face.

  “So am I,” she said. “ So am I.”

  About the Author

  Joseph Flynn is a Chicagoan, born and raised, currently living in central Illinois with his wife and daughter. He is the author of The Concrete Inquisition, Digger, The Next President, Hot Type, Farewell Performance, Gasoline Texas, The President’s Henchman, The Hangman’s Companion and more titles to appear in the near future.