The Fixer

50

He sat in the front passenger’s seat of her Volvo station wagon. He could barely keep his eyes open. He wanted nothing more than to drift off in a narcotic haze.

“I hope you don’t mind my getting you out of the hospital that quickly,” Andrea said. “I’ve got to get back to my office.”

“Happy to get out of that place. I couldn’t sleep with all the beeping.”

“I’ve got a big meeting this afternoon with a foundation that’s interested in giving us a multimillion-dollar gift. So I have to be on my best behavior.”

“That’s why the fancy suit?”

“You got it.” She signaled and sped up to pass a slow-moving truck. “Rick, what happened to you?”

“I… got mugged.”

“Mugged?”

“I made the mistake of trying to fight the guy off.”

A long silence followed. “You were mugged in Marblehead.” She sounded dubious.

“Right.”

Another pause. “Okay. So they took your wallet but they didn’t take your iPhone.”

“You can’t use someone else’s iPhone if it’s locked with a code.”

“Strange.” She glanced in the rearview mirror, then back at the road. “You want to stop by your house and pick up some stuff?”

“My house?”

“Clothes, whatever.”

“Oh, right. No, I’m not living there.”

“Yeah, all that plaster dust… can’t blame you. Where’re you staying?”

He couldn’t remember. There’d been so many hotels and B &Bs. “Oh, right, the DoubleTree. On Soldiers Field Road. But I’m okay for now.”

“Think you’ll be okay if I just drop you at home and leave you for a while?”

“I got my pain meds, I’m all set.”

A couple of minutes later she said something he didn’t quite get, and the next thing he knew they were pulling up to her house on Fayerweather Street.

Some time later-hours, probably, but he couldn’t be sure-he awoke to find a pair of eyes staring at him from a few inches away.

“Wow,” someone said. A kid’s voice. Probably the owner of the staring pair of eyes.

It was a mop-headed boy wearing a Red Sox T-shirt. Rick lifted his head off the pillow, which hurt. Moving his head hurt. It wasn’t just the physical act of moving his head, the muscles in his neck. That was bad enough, but then there was a headache from hell. His eyes felt as if there were needles sticking into them from behind.

“Gross,” the kid said. “You look like Jabba the Hutt.”

“Who are you?” he said.

“I’m Evan.”

“Evan who’s seven?”

“I’m eight now. I just had a birthday.”

“Right, with all the Goldfish. How was your party?”

“Good.”

“Get anything good?”

“I got Lego sets.”

“Yeah? Which one?”

“AT-AT Walker from Star Wars.”

“Cool. How come you’re not in school?”

“I just got home.”

“Where’s your mom?”

“She’s still at work. Most days she doesn’t come home till six.”

“She lets you go home from school on your own?”

“Grandma walks me home. Anyways, what happened to you? You look like a monster.”

“Thank you. I had a disagreement with someone who had a baseball bat.”

“Like a baseball player?”

“Not exactly. But he had a pretty good swing.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yep.”

“Where? On your face?”

“Pretty much everywhere. Which reminds me it’s probably time to take one of my happy pills. Also I need to use the bathroom. Evan, is there a bathroom around here?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Evan pointed to the door.

“Got it.” Rick tried to bend his knees, to lift his legs, but that apparently involved muscles in his lower back, which were too stiff and painful to move. They shot out warning daggers of pain.

“Can I help?” Evan said.

“I’ll be okay.” Eventually, Rick was able to get out of the bed by lifting the chenille bedspread and revolving his straight legs around and down. He was wearing hospital scrubs, which must have been put on him in the hospital. The clothes he’d been wearing when he was attacked had been given back to him in a plastic bag. They’d been cut up.

He limped, like a very old man, across the carpet into the hall and into the bathroom. There he discovered that it hurt to relieve himself-no doubt a result of the Foley catheter-and that his urine was pink. They’d warned him it might be pink because of the renal contusions: The bouncer from Jugs had walloped Rick’s left kidney. They said the pink would go away.

When he came back to the guest room, Evan was still there waiting for him, sitting on the floor.

“You must really hurt,” Evan said.

“At least I can walk,” Rick said.

“Not really,” Evan said. “Not so good.”

Rick smiled. “True.” He lowered himself to the carpet next to Evan, wincing and groaning.

“Grandma said you’re a friend of Mommy’s.”

“We went to high school together.” He reached around to the bedside table and found a pencil stamped GEOMETRY PARTNERS. “Wanna see a trick?”

“Yeah!”

He put his hands together as if he were praying and parked the pencil in the hollow at the base of his thumbs. His left hand wasn’t quite working right, and it was radiating spasms of pain. But it was like riding a bicycle: You never forget how. His muscle memory compensated for the pain. He swiveled his left hand around and ended up with his hands flat on top of the pencil, thumbs hooked underneath. Fast and mystifying.

“Cool,” Evan said, wide-eyed. “Let me try it.”

But he was to discover that the truly cool thing about the pencil trick was when you tried it yourself and found it impossible to do.

“Wait,” Evan said as he struggled with it. “Wait.”

Rick watched benignly, patiently.

“Wait,” Evan said again, slowly growing frustrated. “Wait. I can do it. Argh! Do it again!”

Rick took the pencil back, hooked his thumbs around it, rotated his hands smoothly, ending up with the backs of his hands up and the pencil gripped underneath.

“Can you do it slower?”

“Sure.” Rick swiveled and twisted slowly.

Evan tried several times. “What’s the trick?”

“There is no trick.”

“Yes, there is. Can you show me how?”

“Sure.” Rick took the pencil. “Start with your thumb crossing like this, okay?”

“Okay.” Evan watched closely, mouth slightly ajar, mesmerized.

It took around five minutes to teach him, which was about how long it took Mr. Clarke a.k.a. Antholis to teach Rick years ago.

“I’m doing it!” Evan said excitedly. “I got it!”

“You got it.”

“But there’s no trick! I thought there was a trick, but there’s no trick.”

Rick laughed. “Want to know something, Evan? You’re a lot smarter than I was when I was your age. You got it. The trick is, there’s no trick.”

“Hi, guys.”

Rick looked up and saw Andrea standing at the door. She was holding a big balloon glass of red wine. He realized she’d been standing there for a minute or two, just watching.

“Hi, Mommy!” Evan said, springing to his feet. “Wanna see a trick?”