Quick Fixes: Tales of Repairman Jack by F. Paul Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

– which was as good a reason as any to be a Jets fan.
    “ Start dinner yet?” he asked.
    Gia shook her head. “Just getting ready to. Why?”
    “ Have to take a raincheck. I’ve got a few things I’ve got to do tonight.”
    She frowned. “Nothing dangerous, I hope.”
    “ Nah.”
    “ That’s what you always say.”
    “ Well, sure. I mean, after surviving the blue meanies last year, everything else is a piece of cake.”
    “ Don’t mention those things!” Gia shuddered and hugged him. “Promise you’ll call me when you’re back home?”
    “ Yes, mother.”
    “ I’m serious. I worry about you.”
    “ You just made my day.”
    She broke away and picked up a slim cardboard box from the couch. “Land’s End” was written across one end.
    “ Your order arrived today.”
    “ Neat.” He pulled out a bright red jacket with navy blue lining. He pulled off the fatigue jacket and tried it on. “Perfect. How do I look?”
    “ Like every third person in Manhattan,” Gia said.
    “ Great!”
    “ All you need is a Hard Rock Cafe sweat shirt and the picture will be complete.”
    Jack worked at being ordinary, at being indistinguishable from everybody else, just another face in the crowd. To do that, he had to keep up with what the crowd was wearing. Since he didn’t have a charge card, Gia had ordered the jacket for him on hers.
    “ I’d better turn off the oven,” Gia said.
    “ I’ll treat tomorrow night. Chinese. For sure.”
    “ Sure,” she said. “I’ll believe it when I smell it.”
    Jack stood there in the tiny living room, watching Vicky spread out her football cards, listening to Gia move about the kitchen over the drone of Eyewitness News , drinking in the rustle and bustle and noises and silences of a home . The domestic feel of this tiny apartment – he wanted it. But it seemed so out of reach. He could come and visit and warm himself by the fire, but he couldn’t stay. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t gather it up and take it with him.
    His work was the problem. He had never asked Gia to marry him because he knew the answer would be no. Because of what he did for a living. And he wouldn’t ask her for the same reason: Because of what he did for a living. Marriage would make him vulnerable. He couldn’t expose Gia and Vicky to risk like that. He’d have to retire first. But he wasn’t even forty. Besides go crazy, what would he do for the next thirty or forty years?
    Become a citizen? Get a day job? How would he do that? How would he explain why there was no record of his existence up till now? No job history, no Social Security hours, no file of 1040’s. The IRS would want to know if he was an illegal alien or a Gulag refugee or something. And if he wasn’t, they’d ask a lot of questions he wouldn’t want to answer.
    He wondered if he had started something he couldn’t stop.
    And then he was looking out through the picture window in Gia’s dining room at the roof of the apartment house across the street and remembering the bullets tearing through the hotel room less than twenty four hours ago. His skin tingled with alarm. He felt vulnerable here. And worse, he was exposing Gia and Vicky to his own danger. Quickly he made his apologies and good byes, kissed them both, and hurried back to the street.
    He stood outside the apartment house, slowly walking back and forth before the front door.
    Come on, you son of a bitch! Do you know I’m here? Take a shot! Let me know!
    No shot. Nothing fell from the roof.
    Jack stretched his cramped fingers out from the tight fists he had made. He imagined some vicious bastard like Cirlot finding out about Gia and Vicky, threatening them, maybe hurting them...it almost put him over the edge.
    He began walking back toward his own apartment. He moved quickly along the pavement, then broke into a run, trying to work off the anger, the mounting frustration.
    This had to stop. And it was going to stop. Tonight, if he had anything to say