Fixer (12 page)

On this particular occasion, he wasn’t staring. He was throwing snowballs.

At just shy of five years of age, Corry Bain was already big enough to pass for seven or eight. Sometime around his second birthday he’d shot up like a weed, as if someone were slipping him raw meat every night when Vi wasn’t paying attention. He had long black hair that she cut only once a year so that at full extension it draped past his shoulders. He tended to keep it tied back in a ponytail, as he’d seen so many of the men in his life do. With a different child, perhaps, this might have given him a girlish appearance. But he was so stocky nobody who wasn’t nearly blind would make such a mistake.

Since there was no coat his size in the house, he was wearing three sweaters and two pairs of pants. The boots he had on were women’s boots, but not obviously so. And he wasn’t wearing gloves, but despite handling snow, this didn’t appear to be a problem for him.

She watched as he bent down and packed together a snowball, checked it for weight and compactness, and then fired it at the tree closest to the base of the hill.

“Miss,” he said to himself, while the snowball was still describing an arc toward the tree. He leaned over to make another snowball without bothering to watch his projectile land. When it did, it missed the tree by several feet. Violet was so happy to hear her son using words she decided not to announce her presence right off.

Corry almost never spoke. When he was younger, it was no worse than a mild curiosity and at times a great convenience for someone who was trying to both raise a child and live her life as if she didn’t have one. But as he aged, the silence became a serious concern, to the point where she had briefly convinced herself he was retarded in some way. Except there was no way to look into his eyes and seriously think such a thing.

Having put together another snowball, he reared back and launched it at the same tree. Almost as soon as he let it go he announced, “Hit!” and then proceeded to make another one, again not bothering to watch the snowball actually reach the tree. As he’d predicted, it did indeed hit the upper trunk of the tree he was aiming for.

She wondered how long he’d been at it, given how accurately he was gauging his throws.

“Mommy,” he said without looking at her. He must have seen her from the corner of his eye.

“Hello, Corry. Are you cold?”

He turned and stared at her. “No,” he said. Then he threw the next snowball at the tree. “Miss.”

“How do you know it’s going to miss?” she asked, growing curious about the whole procedure. “It’s still in the air.”

He didn’t answer until after the snowball missed the tree. “Is it?” he asked.

“Not anymore, no.”

“Pretty deer,” Corry responded, which made no sense at all to Violet. As she walked to the edge of the hilltop, though, she spotted movement in the orchard some distance away. It was a deer, scampering through the snow and heading for the river. A chill ran up her spine, entirely unrelated to the temperature outside.

“Look at that,” she said. Corry turned completely around, which was the only way for him to gain a view of the animal. Before she’d spoken there was no way for him to have possibly seen it.

Don’t be stupid, Vi
, she said to herself. Obviously, the boy had seen the deer earlier and was just pointing out to her that there was one down in the orchard.

“You’re right honey,” she said, touching his shoulder gently. “It’s a very pretty deer.”

Chapter Eight

Now

“I don’t know what happened,” Corrigan said to Maggie. She was still a good six feet away and walking toward him on his blind side, but of course he already knew she was about to sit down at the outdoor table next to him. He sipped his now-cold coffee and continued to stare at the spot across the street where a woman named Maribel Kozminsky had been felled by a sack of dry cement. The police were still at the scene talking to the construction worker, who was trying to reenact his role via a complex series of gestures that did little to help his cause. Corrigan watched the gesturing through the blur of forward motion, focused on the little moments in time, took note of the current present, and reviewed everything as it played out to make sure the future was still going the way it was supposed to. He’d been doing this since he got off the phone with Maggie, and so far everything was working.

“Corrigan,” Maggie said. She’d sat down. “Talk to me.”

“Sure, I’ll have one,” he said, holding out his hand, his eyes still focused across the street.

Maggie was holding her pack of cigarettes. “I didn’t offer it yet.”

“You were about to. Now they lead him to the squad car. The big one radios ahead.”

“Could you . . . it would be nice if we were both in the present for this conversation.”

He didn’t look away until the back door to the squad car closed. The spectators to the scene began to disperse in a sea of projected vapor trails. Maggie was lighting a cigarette and also handing it to him. He was taking it from her and inhaling the smoke into his lungs. He hadn’t done it yet, and he could already taste the smoke. Now he was exhaling and watching her light one for herself. He squeezed the filter of the butt between fingers that were really better with cigars. He took his first drag. She lit her smoke.

“So tell me—” she began.

“Don’t know.”

“Can you—”

“I’ll try.”

“Dammit! Wait for me, will you please?”

He closed his eyes and rubbed the stubble on his chin. He hadn’t shaved that morning. Why hadn’t he done that? Because he’d been following her ass out of the bathroom. That’s right. That had been only a few hours ago.

“Okay,” he said. “It’s . . . when I get agitated I lose focus.”

“I’m getting that.”

“I was about to save her. I was in position and everything. But then . . . there was a split.”

“A split.”

“Two things happened at once. Except only one ended up actually happening. Guess which one?”

It was Maggie’s turn to look perplexed.

“Has that ever happened before?” she asked.

“Not since I was a kid.” He took a very deep drag of the cigarette, exhaled, and tipped the ashes onto the ground. He was still holding the drag.

“What are we talking about here? Did you just lose focus or something? Follow the wrong . . . um . . . part? Of the future?”

“No,” he said, having exhaled, tipping the ashes. “I saw more than one possible outcome, and I didn’t know which one was right. I shouted a warning, but only in one future. But it was already different, that other future.”

“How?” she asked.

That was a good question. He looked up at the scaffolding and tried to remember what he’d seen. The guy didn’t drop the bag at the same moment; that much he knew. Something had distracted him. “He was looking over there,” he said, pointing. “No, that’s not right. He was looking that way in both futures. But in the other one there was something that made him pause for a heartbeat or two.”

Maggie looked where Corrigan was pointing. “And then what?” 

“Then nothing. That outcome disappeared when it didn’t happen.”

“Could have been anything. From that spot you can see right down the street.”

“I know, and with hundreds of people between here and there. It could have been anything. Except it wasn’t just anything.”

“What do you mean?” Maggie asked. She was beginning to regret having ever wandered into this conversation.

“It was nothing,” Corrigan pointed out. “It was exactly nothing. It never happened. He reacted to seeing something that he didn’t end up seeing. That was why the future played out the way it was supposed to.”

“So . . . okay, so we have to figure out something that didn’t happen and wasn’t supposed to happen but almost did happen.”

“Keeping in mind that this was a unique event. The thing that didn’t happen was significant in some way.”

“My head hurts,” she said.

“I know what you mean.”

Maggie flicked the remaining ash from her cigarette, which was now burning its filter. She resisted the urge to light another one—two in a row always made her nauseous—solely because the discussion seemed to warrant it. “Is it possible that this
has
happened before, and you just didn’t notice it?” 

“I doubt it,” he said.

“But it’s possible. It could have happened at an insignificant moment; one where you weren’t in the middle of saving somebody.”

Corrigan asked, “You ever see a glass fall off a table and then not hit the floor? Just float back up to where it was before it fell?”

“No.”

“And you’d probably remember something like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I probably would, yeah.”

“Well, that’s what it’d be like. I don’t remember it happening, but I’m betting I would if it had.”

She stood. “Hate to say it, champ, but it doesn’t sound like there’s any earthly way to investigate this. The woman’s going to live right? I say forget about it and move on.”

He stared at her. He wanted to point out that once you’ve seen the glass float back up to the tabletop, you no longer have complete faith that the next time it falls it’ll hit the floor. Instead, he just nodded. “Yeah. It’s probably nothing.”

*  *  *

Now

“So anyway,” Erica said excitedly, “after
that
everyone just
freaked
! We were all afraid to go near the place. I still haven’t. Not gonna, neither.”

“That is such a bullshit story,” declared Tanya, erstwhile Friend of Erica, current Ultimate Confidante of same.

“S’the truth, I swear,” Erica insisted. To emphasize the point she placed her right hand over her left breast.

“Honey, you are too drunk to know what you’re talking about,” Tanya said, which was also the truth, although it conveniently sidestepped the undeniable fact that Tanya was herself thoroughly plastered, liquored up, tanked, and otherwise feelin’ it at that moment.

“No, no,” Erica said, grabbing onto Tanya’s shoulder. This was a problem, as her right hand was still placed over her left breast, so removing her left hand from the handrail meant that Tanya was suddenly in charge of keeping both of them from falling over. Since the subway car was pitching in an irregular left-to-right motion while hurtling madly down the underground tracks on its way to parts unknown and also Kendall Square, the sudden shift in equilibrium was nearly more than she could handle. Erica continued, ignoring the potential risk to life-and-limb. “Serious now. This is me being serious.” She leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered in Tanya’s ear. Unfortunately, the train was loud and Erica wasn’t. Tanya caught just the last part of it. 

“. . . only ones left,” Erica said. “ ‘S true.”

“Will you hold
on
, girl.”

“Right.” Erica reacquired her hold on the handrail, which she admitted to herself was probably the smartest thing she could be doing. And Erica almost always eventually came to the smartest conclusion, albeit not necessarily at first blush, and not necessarily at all when sufficiently inebriated. 

Smart things were what Erica was best at. Although delightfully ego-less most of the time, if pressed she would probably not be able to name more than one or two moments in her life where she was not the smartest person in the room. It wasn’t the sort of thing most people would have guessed when meeting her for the first time, largely because she also had auburn hair, chestnut eyes, and a devastating pair of legs she was not ashamed to reveal—even in winter, when doing so might encourage frostbite. She looked as though she should be on page ten of a Sears catalogue showing how the latest pleated skirt looked when modeled by someone much more attractive than the average housewife, rather than discussing superstring theory or speculating on the shortcomings of muons. This was not to say that attractive women could not also be highly intelligent; it just seemed a bit unfair. 

“I can’t believe you, Rickie,” Tanya said, using a nickname Erica hardly ever heard any more.

“What? What can’t you believe?”

“That you’d make up a piece of bullshit like that to justify going out, that’s what. I mean Jesus, girl. You wanna go out, just go out. This Mummy’s curse crap is low.”

Erica looked at her seriously for a good three seconds before bursting into laughter. “ ‘Mummy’s curse’! That’s funny! I never
thought
of that!”

The train’s loudspeaker chimed, and an extremely garbled prerecorded message declared that they were coming up on the Kendall Square station, which pre-empted any further commentary from Tanya. “That’s our stop,” she said instead, taking her friend’s elbow and leading both of them out onto the platform. Erica lost all trace of giddiness as soon as her feet were off the train.

“C’mon!” she shouted, suddenly breaking into a run for the stairs. In no particular mood to run, Tanya took her time reaching the surface. She found Erica waiting for her there.

“What was that for?” Tanya asked.

“Nothing,” Erica claimed. 

“Mummy’s curse stuff?”

Erica just smiled and took her friend’s arm. She didn’t want to think about what happened to Dina any longer than absolutely necessary. The same went for Jimmy, and El, Dr. Decaf, and all the rest of them. It was enough to drive a young woman to drink. Which was what she’d been doing.

Tanya led her much drunker friend along as they made the five-block trip back to their building. Being shorter and more than a little heftier than Erica, Tanya was the perfect drinking companion insofar as she was very difficult to outdrink, and at the end of the night her shoulder was just the perfect height for leaning. “So, what’s it really?” she asked Erica. “Bad breakup or something?”

“Hmm?” Erica asked. “What’s what really?”

“Sweetie, I’ve been out with you before, but tonight? You were nuts! You know where you’d be right now if I hadn’t been along?”

“Where?”

“Somebody’s back seat is where. You had the whole bar ready to take turns on you.”

“Ooh. That sounds like fun!”

“Rickie . . .”

“And you stopped them? Why’d you stop them?” She jerked Tanya back toward the train station. “C’mon, let’s go find a boy!”