by David Beem
“I mean, this whole plan you guys concocted. Gran to Pine’s Place. You and me moving in together as a, you know, a…pretend couple.” I gather a deep breath and swallow. “So did that plan come together before or after I bolted?”
“Edger—you do know you can’t tell anyone. About being Zarathustra. The whole point of this is to keep your identity secret. Not just for your safety, but for everyone close to you.”
“Oh yeah, yeah.”
“And you know Mr. Dame’s wrong about you.”
“Yeah,” I say, and my brain snaps back like a rubber band to the leg. “Wait a minute. Wrong about me. What do you mean?”
“It’s cruel. Mr. Dame making you think you’re throwing your life away.”
“Oh.” I shrug. “Yeah, well. I mean, you know. I’m a professional Dork. I’m not the Quarterback for the Chargers. I’m not the CEO of InstaTron—which, come on, is just a stupid name. I mean that is one seriously stupid name.”
Mary laughs. “It is a stupid name! Oh my God.”
“InstaTron? What the kumquat?”
“What the kumquat!”
“And Tron-Tron!”
“Oh. My. God.” Mary looks at me, her face serious. Something in her eyes, a tiny glint suggestive of the rascally little girl she may once have been, makes me totally lose it—which of course makes her totally lose it. And next thing, my cheeks are hurting. Her laugh is rising from deep in her belly like a kid’s laugh. It’s hard for me to breathe. She snorts. I snort. It’s fantastic. Her, the weather, the car, the football game, the superhero gig. We’re moving in together! Gran’s going to Pine’s Place! And I haven’t laughed like this since—since Kate.
The laughter dies down. Mary runs a knuckle under the rims of her eyes. After a few more short bursts of laughter, it runs its course. We sit in silence. Mary’s gaze is steady on the road. She has a faraway tint to her stare, the kind people get when they’ve gone inside their heads and forget the world is still operational. I wonder if she’s feeling what I’m feeling. I wonder if this pretend-couple idea really is pretend. Because, to me, this feels like Kate. I know that’s not fair. Mary isn’t Kate. And our dynamic isn’t the same. It’s just that it’s all so similarly improbable. Kate was out of my league too. Her charmed life swooped in and took over mine just like Mary is doing now. History’s repeating itself, and I hope it won’t end the same way.
“You know, this whole thing is making me think,” says Mary, stealing me from my thoughts.
“About?”
“About me. About what I’m doing with my life. I think I’m suffering from a kind of professional embarrassment or something. Oh, man. I’m sorry. It’s just… I guess…it’s just, I feel like I can talk to you. I guess.” She blushes and rests her forearm on the open window, her hand shielding the sun from her eyes, her hair streaming behind.
“Yeah, no,” I say. “It’s good. I like you talking to me. And you’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about. Are you kidding? You’re driving a Jag. You’re on the hunt for the world’s first supervillain. And you’re, like, what? Bodyguard to the world’s first superhero?”
Mary frowns, and the expression looks uncharacteristically flustered.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
“Well. I guess I’m saying you’ve got your priorities down better than most. Better than me. You lost your parents and have been saving for your grandmother ever since, far as I can tell. You could’ve taken that money and partied it away in Vegas. You could’ve blown it on girls. Bought a fancy car, or a nice home, or—”
“Hey-hey-hey,” I say. “That’s creepy. Okay?”
“What?”
“Knowing all the intimate details of my life all the time.”
“Edger, we talked about this. Secrets,” she says, her tone making it plain she means me respecting her secrets.
“Yeah, but why does your secret get to be the secret of how you know all my secrets? That seems kind of one-sided.”
“I can see why you’d think that, Edger,” she replies, smiling. “But it isn’t. Anyway, I guess my point is, if this whole experience has taught me anything, it’s taught me that not everyone in this world has an angle. You’re teaching me that, Edger.”
This time, we both blush.
“Well, thanks,” I reply. “But I should point out that as an orphan who just learned his dad is not only alive but is also somehow mixed up in all this, my lack of angle has become something of an angle.”
“Shut up and take a compliment. You’re a good guy. Leave it there, okay?”
I release a sigh and start picking at the weather stripping around the lowered window, trying to come up with something permissible to say after being told to shut up and take a compliment.
“You know, you never told me how you escaped that weird people zoo they stuck you in. The one where they ‘gave you’ a sister?”
“You’re right, I didn’t. That’s very astute of you to remember that detail, Edger. You’ll need to develop those skills going forward. But hey—good job.” She touches my arm and then pulls her hand away, and the butterflies in my stomach drive off any further questions. I close my eyes and tilt my head back, basking in the sun and enjoying the charmed life, riding in this hot car, with this hot girl, on this perfect sunny day.
Chapter Forty-Nine
In a maze of cars, minivans, pickup trucks, motorcycles, barbecue pits, soft-pretzel aromas, beverage hats, cheese heads, and a strikingly unusual concentration of fat, middle-aged men slathered in blue and yellow beer-gut paint, there sits the perfect replica of the cargo van used by the A-Team. Five trays of Very Special Brownies sit in the back. Wang and Shmuel sit outside. Presently, they are gorging themselves on Buffalo Wild Wings.
“Mm,” says Shmuel. “These wings are goo-ood?”
“Dude. Don’t be drippin’ your shit on Mr. Mxyzptlk,” Wang replies, using his foot to scoot the dog out from underneath Shmuel’s dripping plate of Asian Wing sauce. “Go on, boy,” says Wang. “Go find some nice guy’s leg to hump.”
Mr. Mxyzptlk trots off happily into the maze of good smells, tail wagging high.
“You know he only gets gay when he’s stoned?” says Shmuel.
“Then that dog is only gay one hundred percent of the time,” replies Wang, before sinking his teeth into another wing.
“Mm,” says Shmuel. “So, what’s the plan? Finish here and then go get everybody at the Cluck-n-Pray stoned?” Shmuel is fairly confident this is, in fact, the plan. But as he hasn’t had his morning joint, the details of the plan they’d sketched out when he’d been stoned are, by Stoner’s Natural Law, hazy. “I mean…dude. Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah, dude,” replies Wang. “Consuelo says all the employees snack on the brownies. That means everybody’ll get stoned. And once everybody’s stoned, we get the cow—boom—we’re gone. We’ll be like two ninjas. In and out. Nobody’ll know what hit ’em. You get your cow back. We stop Tron-Tron. We’re coming out ahead.”
“Ahead? Howdaya figure?”
“Duh. Debbie Three Holes, dumbass.”
Shmuel frowns and chucks a wing bone at the trash, which misses by a solid three feet. Mr. Mxyzptlk will get it later, he guesses. “Aw, dude. I don’t care about Debbie Three Holes. Wasn’t even that great a Murder Mystery Night.”
“Huh? Da fuck’s wrong now?”
“I mean, nobody did the mystery, for one thing.”
“We’re doin’ it now, man! Don’t you see?”
“It’s not really a mystery?”
Wang buries his face in his hands. “Oh my God.”
“I feel bad,” says Shmuel. “We made a bad guy, dude. We made poor, sweet Chicowgo a bad guy. Chicowgo did bad things. Our baby.”
“Hey—if that cow’s our baby, then it’s a butt baby. ’Cause last time I checked, two dudes cannot a baby make. All right? Now shut up about the butt babies.”
Shmuel stares at his feet.
“Fuck, dude. Cheer up. All those p
eople got their power back. No harm, no foul. Right?”
Still staring at his feet, Shmuel shrugs, then licks his fingers.
“Tron-Tron’s still out there,” says Wang. “It’s down to you and me now. Think about it. We’re the heroes San Diego deserves, but not the ones it needs right now, because they need us, I don’t know, like, an hour from now, because we’re the watchful guardians, with the pot brownies to get everybody high. Come on, dude. Get excited!”
But Shmuel can’t bring himself to get excited because Wang’s head is shaking again, as it does every time he gets hysterical. His bangs flop up and down, and Shmuel encounters another rare spotting of Wang’s eyes.
“You have pretty eyes.”
“Would you shut up about my pretty eyes! This is serious!”
“I know, I know,” says Shmuel. “You never quote Batman unless it’s serious.” He thrusts his chin in the direction of the Q. “You really think we’re gonna find Chicowgo at the Cluck-n-Pray?”
“Hell yes I do.”
“And do you think she’ll…like…know how to…talk and shit?”
Wang frowns. “Maybe, dude.”
“Fuck.”
“I know.”
“And do you think she’ll…like…don’t laugh, okay?”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, no. It’s okay. You can tell me. Shmuel, you may be a total walking, talking human hemorrhoid, but, come on. We’re friends. Friends don’t judge.”
“You judged me about the Ness-crimes thing.”
“Jesus Christ himself woulda judged you about the Ness-crimes thing.”
“See? Judging.”
“Ah—come on,” says Wang. “This’ll be different. We’re friends.”
“And I appreciate that, dude. Really.”
“Of course, of course. So out with it. What is concerning you, my beautiful and boobalicious human hemorrhoid?”
“Do you think…do you think Chicowgo…will know…kung fu?”
“Shit,” says Wang, chucking the rest of his wing bones into the trash and ripping open a package of wet naps. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“I know, right?”
“Cow kung fu.” Wang sticks his bottom lip out appraisingly, then shudders. “Shmuel, my friend, that may be a real fucking possibility.”
Historic Sacking in the Qualcomm Stadium Visiting Team Locker Room, as Chronicled by Herodotus (c. 484—c. 425 BCE)
Green Bay Packers defensive tackle Yourmajesty Fapa’fapa-Bal’buster is six-foot-five inches tall, weighs two hundred ninety-six pounds, can dead lift nine hundred pounds relatively no problem—and is exceedingly uncomfortable in polite company.
This is because polite company lies like rugs.
Without exception, your high-society types, your governors, your politicians, your lawyers, your bankers and whatnot, tell at least nine lies a night.[1] But one lie in particular irks Green Bay Packers defensive tackle Yourmajesty Fapa’fapa-Bal’buster the most, and this is when polite company pretends to be shocked to discover he’d endured teasing as a child over his name. For the life of him, he cannot understand why anyone bothers.
On the occasion it comes up, which is to say—always—polite company tends first to turn extremely pale before conducting a hasty visual inventory of the room for the nearest door. When there are no obvious means of escape, polite company will display a resolute interest in discussing the weather. Especially brazen souls sometimes go so far as to claim to have gone to school with at least two other kids named Yourmajesty, or Fapa’fapa-Bal’buster. Sometimes polite company will make polite inquiries into his genealogy, and whether there were any Native American Fapa’fapa-Bal’busters sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner with the Pilgrims.[2]
None of this is to say Yourmajesty cares about the childhood teasing. Kids take crap for all kinds of reasons. Besides, playing in the NFL, he is hardly alone. His Green Bay colleague, Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, and other NFL notables such as C.J. Ah You, Craphonso Thorpe, Fair Hooker, Ben Gay, Guy Whimper, John Booty, Dick Butkus, Yourhighness Morgan, or fellow islander Chris Fuamatu-Ma’afala also took crap over their names. But Yourmajesty did sometimes wonder if, just to pick an example at random, polite company had ever asked John Booty how many Bootys had come over on the Mayflower.[3]
The point is, the names only mattered insofar as they, like he, had grown up searching for acceptable outlets for dealing with them. And they, like he, had done just that. Over the past decade and a half, Yourmajesty has learned a thing or two about fate and names. He’s learned he quite enjoys busting balls, for example. This, he does after the sacking of quarterbacks. He follows each with a swift, clandestine kick to the nuts. He just finds it to be satisfying, is all.
Sacking quarterbacks had turned out to be a lucrative form of violence. It’d earned him a college scholarship. Playing for USC, he finished with exactly thirty-four total quarterback sacks,[4] enough to put him into the record books. As defensive tackle for the Green Bay Packers, Yourmajesty Fapa’fapa-Bal’buster is determined to sack as many NFL quarterbacks (and bust as many balls) as possible. He even has a bounty going on the side, though the important people hanging around practice in suits tell him not to talk about such things where he could be overheard by the wrong ears.
And although Yourmajesty Fapa’fapa-Bal’buster can’t wait to bust Caleb Montana’s balls, he has nevertheless dallied in joining his team on the field for the pregame warm-up. This is because of the presence of a cow inexplicably loitering near the locker room vending machine. He does not know that the cow has an artificial intelligence in it; he does not know it has snuck off because it is curious about the Nostradamus plot involving a disco ball Chinese Water Torture Chamber with a bomb strapped to the bottom; nor that this device is hidden in the visiting team storage closet. No, Yourmajesty only knows he has been told earlier in no uncertain terms he is not allowed to have more performance-enhancing drugs today. He already has enough anabolic steroids coursing through his system to literally drop a cow. Which, he reasons, can be the only explanation for why he is staring at one right now.
Chapter Fifty
The cow is leering.
Twirling a strand of his dark, curly hair, Yourmajesty leers back. He pulls on his helmet and snaps the chin guard. He locks eyes with the animal. He drops to one knee, grinds his white-knuckled fist into the carpet, and digs his cleats in for a clean launch.
The cow copies him. That is, in its cow way: it bends its front knees and extends one hind leg, like a human. Like it knows how football works. Like it is preparing to sack him.
Yourmajesty’s eyebrows lower. A droplet of sweat courses down his forehead, escapes his prominent eyebrow, and hits his face guard. He swallows; his stomach gurgles; a dangerous glint is in the cow’s eyes.
Yourmajesty relaxes. He imagines Caleb Montana’s voice. Yes, the game. The cow is preparation for the game. Sack the cow, then sack Montana. Then bust some balls. All in a day’s work.
The locker room fades away in his mind’s eye as he waits for the imaginary snap. His coiled muscles prepare to spring.
Now!
Yourmajesty releases a battle cry.
The cow releases a battle moo.
Helmet collides with the cow cranium, emitting a spectacular crack. He wraps his massive arms around the beast’s neck—heaves leftward, muscles straining like hydraulics. His neck and back flex. The beast is hot and, oddly, smells like chicken. Its legs buckle. It falls, he falls. They crash into the vending machine. It tips, wobbles—and everything seems to happen at once.
He collapses onto the cow. A glob of snot fires out of its nose. He rolls onto his back, his wind knocked out and mouth reflexively springing open. The glob of snot makes an arc in the air as a can of Coca-Cola falls into the vending machine’s receptacle. The snot glob plummets into Yourmajesty’s gaping mouth. He swallows, chokes, gags. He rolls off the cow. He can’t breathe!
The cow lurches to its feet, duc
ks its head, and staggers away from him. He hacks and spits. He spots the can of Coca-Cola; the cow trundles into the showers.
Gasping, he unsnaps his chin guard and rips off his helmet. He snatches the soft drink, pulls the tab, and chugs it back. Syrupy cola spills down his cheeks and neck, washing away the remnants of cow snot. When the can is empty, he releases a satisfyingly loud, long, and deep belch. His chest swells. He stands up straighter and turns to face the cowering beast pressed against the wall in the showers.
He stands still for a moment, his chest rising and falling as he basks in victory. He really does have enough performance-enhancing drugs in his system to drop a cow. He smiles. His stomach rumbles. His mouth begins to produce an abnormal amount of saliva. He swallows and licks his lips when, inexplicably, he’s overcome by the enticing aroma of really great grass. Not that chemically fertilized stuff on the lawns back home. Not the Astroturf either. No, this is the good stuff. The hills-are-alive-with-the-sound-of-music stuff. Tasty, green, endless, peaceful.
He shakes his head to clear it.
Weird.
He looks down at the empty can of Coke in his hand, surprising himself he’s still holding it. He drives it hard into the center of his forehead, crushing it paper thin, and tosses it into recycling.
His stomach rumbles again.
He frowns. Probably he’s had too much protein in his diet recently. Yeah, he’s sure that’s it. A little nibble of grass ought to settle it. Sparing one last look at the cow, he tugs his helmet back on and snaps his chin guard, then begins the jog up the hallway to the field. He sets aside his newfound hankering for grass and focuses on the important point: game day, and he’s already laid out a cow.
Chapter Fifty-One
“But our seats aren’t anywhere near here,” says Mary for the third time. We crest Section UV45. I turn to face her.
