The Fixer

54

Jesus, Rick, what the hell happened to you?” Wendy said.

“I told you, I was in an accident.”

“Yeah, but… you look like you were in a fistfight and you lost, bad.”

Rick shrugged, then winced as his ribs shrieked with pain.

“I’d give you a hug, but I have a feeling that would hurt you.”

“Yeah, please don’t.”

They were in the lobby of Orlonsky & Sons Memorial Chapel, which, with its green wall-to-wall carpeting and framed paintings of fruit, looked like a suburban living room, the formal room no one ever uses.

Wendy was small and pretty but she was becoming stout, with a large, almost maternal bosom. She had the same build as their mother, but in her early thirties she already looked like their mother did in her fifties. Her eyes were red-rimmed.

“I think I cried the whole way here,” she said. “The guy in the seat next to me was getting nervous.”

Rick nodded. He wasn’t going to tell her he hadn’t cried.

“So much easier for you living near him,” she said. “At least you got to see him once a week. Me, I had to suffer the guilt of not seeing him for months at a time. I almost asked you if you knew what his last words were, but then I remembered his last words were eighteen years ago.”

The rabbi was young, too young to have the gravitas and authority his job required. He arrived a few minutes after they did, in a gust of cold wind. After introducing himself and saying he was sorry for their loss, he took them into a small anteroom next to where the service was being held-Rick could see the pine casket on a bier next to a floral arrangement-and talked them through the ceremony. “I didn’t know your father, of course, but he sounds like he was a wonderful man.”

“Yes,” Wendy said.

I didn’t know him either, Rick thought, but he said only, “He was.”

The rabbi tore a small black ribbon and pinned it on to Wendy’s lapel. Then he did the same with Rick. He said a prayer in Hebrew that Rick didn’t understand. The rabbi said the torn black ribbon was meant to symbolize their loss, a tear in the fabric of the family’s life.

They filed into the funeral chapel, where a smattering of people had gathered. He was surprised that anyone had shown up. Jeff Hollenbeck was there, in an awkwardly fitting gray suit he obviously didn’t wear very often. Andrea Messina, which surprised him. (Holly was in Miami, though she wouldn’t have appeared if she were in town.) Joan Breslin and her husband. The rest were people of around Lenny’s age, friends of his, a few of whom looked vaguely familiar.

And, just entering the chapel, Alex Pappas.