Round Robin Read Online Free PDF

company.”
    Mimi shrugged, looking like she’d lost the battle and it was breaking her heart.
    “Goddamnit, Mimi, I’m tempted to hire a lawyer.”
    “You can’t afford one.”
    Robin looked like she might have a stroke ... and then she put her face into her hands and wept. Mimi gave her a minute before handing her a tissue. Robin blew her nose and backhanded away her tears. She looked straight at Mimi and said, “I’m going to buy this place. I am.”
    She dropped the check on Mimi’s desk.
    “Give the ad a chance,” Mimi said.
    Robin squeegeed one last tear off her cheek.
    “I won’t have a man in my house.”
    “Of course not, sweetie. Just see what turns up.”
    Robin thought back over the course of her morning. She’d tried finding another heating contractor to fix her furnace but, as Charlie had said, they were booked solid for the next week. The weather forecast had predicted that the cold would be back in three days, four at the outside. Maybe Mimi’s idea would be her salvation.
    “I’ve got to get ready for the lunch crowd,” Robin said, standing up.
    “Sure,” Mimi said. When Robin got to the door, Mimi stopped her.
    “Sweetie.”
    Robin turned to face her.
    “I want you to know it was very hard for me to face the thought of losing you.”
    Robin barely nodded and left.
     
    Mimi slumped behind her desk.
    Oy! That was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Including her divorce.
    There was no way in the world she’d really have let Robin go. She’d have jumped over her desk to grab that check back if Robin had headed for the door. But Dan Phinney had told her it would take something drastic to get Robin to go along with her plan.
    Well, today she’d been as meshugge as she ever planned to be.
    If Robin’s ad didn’t find somebody for her, Mimi would just give her the deli and finally accept Stanley Prozanski’s standing proposal of marriage. That wouldn’t be exactly the retirement she had planned, but it would have to do.
    Be a crying shame though, if she went out known as a soft touch.
     

Chapter 4
    When Robin got home her phone was ringing. She was sure who was calling. Some pot-bellied, tattooed simian with dandruff, tufts of hair growing out of his nose and body odor that would gag an alley-cat, somebody who’d had the ad read to him and was eager to knuckle-walk right over and see if he might find a new lair. Well, no thank you. Robin would just let the phone machine handle that little chore.
    Except it didn’t. The tape was full.
    Robin had to wait until the phone stopped ringing.
    It started again thirty seconds later.
    “What?” she asked harshly, picking up the phone.
    “You the one with the ad in the paper for the handyman?” a male voice asked.
    “Handyperson,” Robin corrected.
    The guy laughed. “Yeah, right. Well, I’m a man and I’m a person and I’m handy. What I want to know, is it you I’d be workin’ for?”
    “I’d be very surprised if it was.”
    “Yeah, me too. ‘Cause I got one ball-buster at home already. I don’t need another.”
    The guy called Robin a dike and hung up.
    It made her pause and think. She was a master at face-to-face confrontation, but the telephone was a different medium. On the phone, she was either familiar with family or businesslike with business calls. With phone solicitors, she didn’t waste her breath and simply hung up on them. If she was going to make this interview thing work, she’d have to see these people in person.
    But not at her house.
    Nobody was getting that close until she’d had a chance to screen them. What she’d do was listen to the tape. If there was anyone who sounded remotely acceptable she’d invite them down to Mimi’s early, before the morning rush got going, buy them a cup of coffee and look them over.
    That seemed a safe way to do it.
    Robin listened to twenty-two messages. Seventeen callers were male, five were female. Six of the calls were obscene, including four in which the creeps were