The Fixer by Joseph Finder Read Free Book Online

her kerchief and finger-combed a few tendrils of hair behind her ears. He noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
    “Not even close,” Rick said. “You look terrific. You live around here?”
    “Off Fresh Pond, yeah. Don’t you live in Boston? Not around here . . . ?”
    “I’m doing some work on the old house on Clayton Street.”
    “Is your dad still . . .”
    “He’s still alive, yeah. In a nursing home.”
    “I heard he had a terrible stroke.”
    He nodded. “It sucks, but it is what it is.” He hated that empty phrase—what did that mean, anyway,
it is what it is?
—but it had just slipped out. It was what it was. He’d once done an interview for
Back Bay
with a local hip-hop celebrity who kept saying
It is what it is
and
haters gonna hate
and
I just want to live my life
. “Your mom and dad okay?” he asked.
    “Charlie and Dora are still Charlie and Dora, so . . . yeah.”
    He looked at her grocery cart full of Goldfish and graham crackers, juice boxes and applesauce, peanut butter and Fruit Roll-Ups. “Crazy guess here, but you’ve got a kid?” He bypassed the question of whether she was married or not; the absence of a wedding ring seemed conclusive. “Or maybe you’ve just gotten into snack foods in a big way.”
    “Evan is seven.” She smiled. “It even rhymes. But not much longer—he’s about to turn eight.”
    “Evan eats a lot of Goldfish, I see. The five-gallon carton.”
    “He’s having a birthday party. And you’re still a health-food nut.”
    “You mean Tostitos aren’t a basic food group?”
    “It’s got the hint of lime, so you’re getting your vitamin C.”
    He squinted, tilted his head. “Why did I think you were in New York?”
    He remembered she’d gone off to the University of Michigan but lost track of her after that. He thought she might have made the obligatory postcollege migration to Manhattan.
    “Yeah, I was with Goldman Sachs for about like two seconds.”
    “Goldman Sachs?” Not what he’d expected. He’d pegged her for a more modest career track, working for the state or an insurance company. Less high-powered, anyway. Goldman Sachs seemed pretty high-test for the Andrea he knew.
    “Yep. How’s the magazine business?”
    “Eh, I’ve moved on, I guess you’d say.”
    “Oh yeah? What are you doing?”
    “Bit of this, bit of that.” He put his Golden Grahams and Cheerios and Tostitos on the conveyor belt and put the green plastic divider bar at the end of his items like a punctuation mark. He glanced back at her again and smiled. “Hey, are you ever free for dinner? Like maybe tonight?”
    “Tonight? I mean . . . no way I could get a babysitter last-minute.” She blushed. He remembered now: Whenever she was embarrassed or excited, she blushed. Her translucent skin displayed her discomfort like a beacon. She could never hide it.
    “Tomorrow night, then?”
    “I could . . . I could ask my sister . . . but the thing is, I can’t stay out too late. My day starts ridiculously early.” She fingered a tendril of hair. “How about I let you know?”
    Usually, he knew, that formula meant
no
. But something about her told him that this time it meant
yes
.

7
    R ick’s ex-fiancée, Holly, had a small studio apartment on Marlborough Street in the Back Bay. She’d moved back into it once their engagement was broken. He should have realized from the glaringly obvious fact that she insisted on holding on to it even after they got engaged that she’d always had one foot out the door. She’d claimed one day they’d be glad “they” had the extra space, for storage and such. Maybe an office.
    They’d lived together in a spacious three-bedroom condo on Beacon Street, in the same building where Tom Brady, the Boston quarterback, had once lived with
his
fashion-model partner. When Rick and Holly broke up, neither of them could afford it. They could scarcely afford it even when Rick had a job.
    Holly’s tiny apartment was