LITMIR.BIZ

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speaker system. “You’re wanted on line one.”

      Vic looked apologetically at the couple. His football days were long past, but his large shoulders and massive build tended to dwarf those who stood next to him. “I’m sorry, but it seems I’m needed elsewhere. I tell you what. I’ve got your order information here—” he held up the clipboard “—but feel free to go ahead and take a look around. If you see something else you like, we can always change it. And when you’ve made your decision, just check back at the reception desk. That way we can finalize all the delivery arrangements.”

      He shook hands and nodded goodbye before heading to the door. As he moved along the cement floor, he winced. His lower back was reminding him of last night’s pick-up game of basketball at Baldwin Gym, the basketball arena at Grantham University. It had been a mistake to play given his knees, but he hadn’t been able to resist.

      He pushed open a heavy door and entered the front office space. To the left, behind a decorative wall of marble stone with a cascading fountain, were the showrooms. Mosaic patterns, multi-patterned stone floors and walls displayed a seemingly endless variety of inventory. To the right, on the other side of the long reception desk, was a warren of cubicles and some larger offices along the front wall of the building.

      Two women, both talking into headsets, were stationed to greet customers. One, Abby—a middle-aged woman with raven-black hair that Clairol needed to retool—looked up when Vic passed by. As she provided directions over the phone for the warehouse’s location on Route One in central New Jersey, she raised her penciled eyebrows and made a circular motion by the side of her head, indicating that the person on the other end of the line was loco. Abby didn’t believe in subtlety when dramatization was so much more satisfying. True to form, she snapped her fingers and pointed with her manicured acrylic nails—snowflakes adorned each tip—in the direction of his office. Pronto, she mouthed emphatically.

      Vic nodded but only marginally picked up his pace. He’d long ago learned that whenever anyone wanted him, somehow it was ostensibly always a crisis. That seemed to be the best job description for his position. In his opinion, there simply weren’t that many crises in the world, let alone at Golinski Stone International. And if it were a real crisis—a cave-in at a mineshaft or flames engulfing an apartment building—the chances that a washed-up football player who was now a natural stone distributor was the man for the job were slim to none.

      So with his usual display of understated calm he headed for his office prepared to deal with whomever was having an anxiety attack.

      No doubt it would be his brother, Joe—or maybe his father. Though Pop rarely showed at the office these days. Ever since his sister, Basia, had started divorce proceedings against “The Lousy Scumbag” and moved in with Vic’s parents, his mother and father had been drafted for babysitting duty for Basia’s three-year-old Tommy. That way, Basia could juggle waitressing at a diner in Grantham with going back to finish up her degree in accounting. Vic was convinced though that the real reason their parents—more specifically, their mother—had jumped at the idea was because she wanted to keep an eagle eye on her only grandson.

      Anyway, his kid sister had had to abandon college when she’d gotten married and had a baby, which was a real shame in Vic’s opinion. Not that he didn’t think his nephew was aces. It’s just that of all Golinski siblings, Vic had always thought Basia was the one most deserving of an Ivy League education. She was scary bright, and he’d never understood why she refused to take advanced placement courses in high school.

      “I want to be in classes with my friends,” she’d say with a yawn. “Don’t bug me. I’m not you.”

      “No, you’re smarter than me,” he’d reply. Fat lot of good it did him. Only thing she didn’t fight him about was the violin lessons. He even paid for them to make sure she kept at it. Instead, it was his mother who hadn’t seen the point.

      “The violin? How’s that going to put food on the table or help her find a husband?” his mother had repeated whenever anyone was in earshot.

      “Mom, she’s got a gift. Leave her alone,” he’d responded.

      His mother had just shaken her head. “I could understand if it was an instrument that she could play in the band at high school football games.”

      Vic would let the matter drop.

      When Basia had graduated high school, Vic had taken comfort that she’d enrolled at Rutgers, the state university in New Brunswick. Then she promptly dropped out when she got pregnant, and then got married. Vic had had the decency not to point out to his mother that, see, Basia found a husband anyway—for all the good it did her.

      But before Vic could get to his office, his brother accosted him outside his own, one door down from Vic’s. “Vic, some guy from a private equity firm in Manhattan has been trying to get you for the past half hour. He said it was urgent,” Jozef or “Joe” announced, practically treading up the back of Vic’s brown Rockport shoes.

      Vic didn’t respond and instead headed through the open glass door to his own modest office. The wall facing the hallway was also glass, but blinds provided partial privacy. He maneuvered past a coat stand with his blue blazer and North Face jacket and headed around to his plain wooden desk. Then he squatted down in the back corner to greet the one member of his family who never failed to live up to expectations. “Hey, beautiful girl, Roxie. How ya doin’? How’s the ear feel, huh?”

      Two of the saddest brown eyes in the world looked up at him. A thick white bandage stuck out from one ear. A large white cone circumscribed her head, and in silent protest Roxie lifted her head and banged the hard plastic against his knee. But even that seemed to require too much energy, and she ended up dropping her head to her pillow.

      Vic patted the long flank of the eight-year-old white golden retriever. “You’re a good dog, Roxie, and I promise you I’ll get that collar off your neck as soon as the vet gives his okay.”

      “Geez, you’re more attached to that dog than any human being,” Joe complained.

      Vic looked over his shoulder. “That’s because she’s a better listener and certainly more loyal than just about anybody out there.” He turned back to the dog. “Aren’t ya, sweetheart.”

      Joe rolled his eyes. “Please, you’re making me ill. Just because you were taken to the cleaners by Shauna in the divorce is no reason to go all gaga over a dumb dog.”

      “My ex was welcome to anything she could get her hands on—anything except you, Roxie, right?” He scratched behind the dog’s good ear. “That’s why you’ve got to look after yourself.”

      Joe circled the desk to get closer to his big brother. Roxie immediately inched away on her belly. “Geez, you’d think after all these years she’d be used to me.”

      Vic went on petting the dog. “She can’t help it. She had a hard life as a puppy, kicking around all those shelters. You’ve got to give her some slack.”

      “So what did the vet say?” Joe asked, making an effort to show some concern.

      Vic rested his hand on Roxie’s flank. “He said that the kind of tumor she had is ninety percent cancerous and spreads through the bloodstream. That’s why he also took a large part of her ear in case it had already gone beyond the lump. But we won’t know for sure until he gets the results of the biopsy in a couple of days.”

      “Well, until then, you could get Mom to pray for her. Light a candle, do the whole bit. You never know.”

      “Mom has her ways of dealing with problems, and I’ve got mine. I keep my nose to the grindstone and just do my job. Whatever happens with Roxie, happens. In the meantime, I’ve got the family to think about—and the hundreds of employees who depend on this company running smoothly.”

      “And don’t think we’re not all eternally grateful. It certainly saves me from having to be the responsible son.” Joe commandeered Vic’s desk chair and swiveled it around to face his brother. Then he crossed his legs, the tassels on his

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