Chapter 71: What Friends Are For
Susan was already on the third floor when Andrew got there, wrapping her hands at the bench with the efficient routine of someone who'd been doing it long enough that it didn't require attention.
She looked up when he came in. The Vermont trip had done something good for her — not rested exactly, more like clarified. The particular tension she'd been carrying since December had settled into something more resolved.
"Morning," she said. "You look like you have something to say."
"I do." He set his bag down. "Give me a minute first."
He went to his locker, pulled out the folded document he'd been carrying since Miranda handed it to him, and came back.
Susan looked at it the way people looked at things they recognized before they'd finished reading them. Her expression shifted — not panic, something more controlled than that. The specific composure of someone who had already considered the possibility of this moment and had a response prepared.
"Miranda Walsh," Andrew said. "She's Ross's attorney. Was his attorney — he fired her yesterday. She found this through a background check she runs on all parties in divorce proceedings. Standard practice, apparently."
Susan set the document on the bench between them.
"Does Ross know?" she said.
"No. Miranda gave it to me because she thought I should know. I'm telling you because I think you and Carol should know what's in circulation." He sat down on the bench across from her. "I'm not going to tell Ross. That's not my call to make."
Susan was quiet for a moment, looking at the denial stamp at the bottom of the page.
"We filed in February," she said. "Carol wanted — we both wanted to try the direct route first. Before anything else." She folded the document and held it. "Obviously it didn't work."
"I know why you filed," Andrew said. "And I know what you're trying to build. I'm not here to tell you it's wrong." He leaned forward slightly. "I'm here to tell you that whatever you and Carol decide to do next — about a child, about the divorce, about any of it — Ross should be part of that conversation. Not because he has a right to control it. Because he's going to find out eventually, and finding out from you is better than finding out from anyone else."
Susan looked at him.
"You know he's not going to make it easy," she said.
"No," Andrew agreed. "He's not. Ross makes almost nothing easy. But he's also not a bad person, and he loves Carol, and eventually that's going to matter more than his initial reaction." He paused. "He needs to hear it from the two of you. Not from a court document and not from his mother calling him on a Sunday."
Susan was quiet for a long moment. She had the quality of someone running a real calculation — not performing consideration, actually doing it.
"Carol doesn't know you have this," she said finally.
"Correct."
"And you're not going to tell her either."
"That's between you and her." Andrew stood up. "I've said what I needed to say. The rest is yours."
Susan looked at the document in her hand, then at him, with an expression he'd seen from her before — the recalibration of someone updating their model of who Andrew was and finding it didn't quite fit the previous version.
"You're an unusual person," she said.
"I've been told." He picked up his wraps. "You want to spar or not? Because I drove across town for this."
"I'm going to hit you very hard," she said, standing up.
"You're welcome to try."
She couldn't hit him very hard. This was an established fact of their sparring relationship that neither of them discussed directly — Susan was technically proficient, well-trained, and hit with real intention, and Andrew moved around most of it with the specific economy of someone for whom defense had become structural rather than reactive.
What she could do was make him work, which was the actual point.
They went three rounds. Susan called corrections on his guard between rounds the way Bolton did, which he appreciated — she had good eyes for the technical details and no investment in flattering him about them.
In the third round she caught him with a right hand that landed cleanly enough that he had to acknowledge it.
"There," she said, slightly out of breath.
"Good hand," he said.
"Don't patronize me."
"I'm not. That was a good hand." He reset his stance. "Come on."
She came on.
At the end of the session they sat on the bench with water bottles and the particular companionable quiet of two people who had just spent forty minutes trying to hit each other and were now fine.
"Bolton's leaving the gym," Andrew said.
Susan looked up. "What? Why?"
"The divorce." He gave her the short version — Patricia, the mortgage, the child support, the math that didn't work on a gym salary. Susan listened with the focused attention she brought to everything that required it.
"He's going to fight in Red Hook," Andrew said. "Thursday."
"The underground circuit." She said it flatly, without surprise, which told him she knew what Red Hook was.
"You know it?"
"I know of it." She turned her water bottle in her hands. "My first year in the city I had a client who fought there. He was fine for about four months and then he wasn't." She paused. "He recovered eventually. But it took a long time."
Andrew nodded.
"Bolton's better than most of the people he'll face there," he said. "He knows the risks."
"People who know the risks still get hurt." She looked at him steadily. "Are you going?"
"Thursday. As a spectator."
"As a spectator first," she said, parsing the distinction correctly.
"Yes."
Susan looked at him for a moment with the expression she wore when she was deciding whether to say the thing she was thinking.
"Be careful," she said. It came out simply, without the weight of a warning — just a statement of what she wanted.
"I will be," Andrew said.
He meant it. And also: he had three points left to Mastery, and Red Hook was where those points were.
He left the gym at ten-fifteen and walked to Kessler's office on 57th.
Howard Kessler was exactly what Miranda had implied — thorough in a way that preceded good, the kind of accountant who found the thing you hadn't thought to mention and made it into either a problem you needed to know about or a deduction you'd been leaving on the table.
He went through Andrew's bank statements from January forward with the methodical attention of someone reading a text he expected to find interesting. He made small sounds that communicated neither alarm nor enthusiasm. He wrote things on a yellow legal pad in a handwriting that was clearly organized even from the other side of the desk.
At the end he set down his pen and looked at Andrew.
"You've been running a cash-heavy operation for four months," he said. "Your gross is solid. Your expense tracking is genuinely excellent — most first-year operators come in here with a shoebox and a prayer, so I want to acknowledge that." He tapped the legal pad. "You owe estimated taxes quarterly. You've missed the first two quarters, which means we're going to catch you up and put you on a proper schedule going forward. The penalty is manageable."
"How manageable?" Andrew said.
Kessler gave him a number. It was not comfortable but it was not catastrophic.
"Additionally," Kessler said, "the fund disbursement you receive monthly — is that documented as income from the estate or as a trust distribution?"
"I don't know," Andrew said. "Charlie Harper manages it."
"I'll need to see the estate documents. The tax treatment is different depending on the structure, and getting it wrong in either direction creates problems down the line." He made a note. "Do you have Charlie Harper's contact information?"
Andrew wrote it on the notepad Kessler pushed across the desk.
"One more thing." Kessler looked at him over his glasses. "Miranda tells me you're thinking about expanding the operation."
Andrew paused. "Miranda tells you a lot."
"Miranda is one of my best referrals and we have lunch occasionally. She mentioned it in passing." He set his pen down. "If you're thinking about a second truck or a brick-and-mortar, the tax structure changes significantly. You'd want to talk to me before you do anything, not after."
"I'll talk to you before," Andrew said.
"Good." Kessler pulled a sheet from his printer and slid it across the desk. "Here's what you owe, here's the schedule going forward, and here's my number. Call me when you have the estate documents."
Andrew looked at the sheet. Folded it. Put it in his jacket.
"One question," he said. "Separate from the truck. If I were going to participate in an event that paid cash prizes — not a regular income source, just occasionally — how does that work?"
Kessler looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone who had been asked variations of this question before and had a calibrated response.
"Legally, all income is taxable income," he said. "Cash prizes included. Whether that income is reported depends on whether the event issues a 1099, which informal arrangements typically don't." He paused. "What I would say is that if you're receiving cash payments of any kind on a recurring basis, you want them documented somewhere — even informally — because the alternative creates problems that are significantly worse than paying the tax would have been."
"Understood," Andrew said.
"Whatever the event is," Kessler said, going back to his legal pad, "keep records."
Andrew left Kessler's office at eleven-thirty and walked to the subway in the March cold, thinking about Thursday.
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