Free Round Robin by Joseph Flynn Page A

every day that he’d failed her.
    So, now he wouldn’t consider calling on anyone who would say so much as an unkind word to his daughter.
    What he’d do, since he had a key to her house, was go over to Robin’s place while she was at work, fix the furnace before she knew it, look around and see what else he could do and be back home before she could say a word about it.
    Dan Phinney had no idea as he left his house and got into his shiny new Camaro that Robin had hired a handyperson.
     
    Manfred Welk sat on the toilet in his new apartment, never the most comfortable of experiences for a man of his size. He always felt as if he were trying to drop a five-hundred-pound bomb into a thimble.
    Still, things had improved since he’d had to take care of his business in front of Billy Tuxton in their cell in East Berlin. Billy had been decent about it, being as discreet as he could, affording whatever sense of privacy was possible, but one time the little Brit had been unable to bite his tongue and had offered the opinion that Manfred could supply the cannonade for the bloody “1812 Overture.” That and the smell of death on the battlefield.
    It was true. Manfred didn’t actually know how bad his snoring was because he slept through it, but he was aware that he could be very loud in other ways. He wasn’t always the most fragrant of fellows, either. But what could anyone expect? He was very big. He was an athlete. He worked hard, he sweated, he ate a lot and he kept his bowels moving. A healthy life, but not always a decorous one.
    Which was why he was glad that his new abode was so nicely tucked away from anyone else. Down here he shouldn’t be a bother to his new landlady. Now, there was a strange one. Not a bad sort really. But hiding something. Not nearly so tough as she acted. What she’d reminded him of was the Wizard of Oz. (A movie he’d had smuggled to him in the GDR while he was still a teenager.) Not the wicked witch, but the wizard himself. A small person hiding behind a curtain and an amplified voice.
    He wondered who she was behind her facade, and then decided that, no, it was really none of his business. After all, he felt sure she would never snoop on him.
    Manfred finished his business and wrinkled his nose. Sometimes he was a little too much even for himself. He’d have to install a vent in this bathroom if his plan succeeded. That and buy some air-freshener, he decided.
    Manfred flushed the toilet … and heard a pipe burst.
     
    Robin was riding the bus home, and was in far from the best of moods. She’d just left her family doctor. The same quack her father saw. He’d told her that her sprain wasn’t serious but that she should keep her weight off her ankle as much as possible for the next two weeks. He’d given her a pair of aluminum crutches to help accomplish that goal—and the damn chintzy things had started to creak and bend the moment she’d put any weight on them.
    Her doctor had given her a look and asked her to step onto his scale. Robin had refused. Knowing he couldn’t very well force her to comply, he’d given her another look, and a lecture. One that she felt certain he’d been dying to give her for many a year. About obesity and the increased risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes. He’d told her that if she wasn’t careful and started losing weight soon she could develop a host of very serious problems and shorten her life expectancy significantly.
    She’d replied that the way she lived was her choice to make.
    Then the crusty old croak had rolled out his heavy artillery. He’d leaned in close, smelling aptly of some medicinal-scented soap, and told her that she could have a fatal heart attack in the not too distant future, and the way her father felt about her that might be enough to do him in, too.
    He’d slapped some weight-loss brochures in her hand and left to dispense brimstone to some other unfortunate soul. Then, to rub salt in the wound, the miserable little