The Borer: A Captain Major Tale

The Borer: A Captain Major Tale Page 2

by Jim D. Scott

CHAPTER TWO

 

  Friday, September 9, 2011

  The staff at Romano Aviano were encouraged to wear a mustache and required to keep it neatly trimmed. There’s nothing quite so gross as a booger hammock. Diners even preferred mustache hair in the risotto to facial hair nets, though health inspectors disagreed. Staff were also reminded, repeatedly, not to think about the name of the restaurant. It sounded nice, and that was enough to bring in the swell kids looking for Italian food without endless bread sticks. If you hungered for chicken Marsala and knew that Chianti starts with a “kuh”, you headed to Romano Aviano. If you hungered as well for love, you requested a booth in the back.

  Dee Major was wearing a stunning black dress that Amy would have bought for her if she knew that Dee was on her first date of the decade. As a result, she felt more exposed than in any Danger Room session as Jordano escorted her directly to a booth in the back. She was pleased to find her date for the evening waiting for her in a romantic booth with a yellow candle flickering on the table and a framed dollar bill hanging on the wall.

  Dee didn’t get out much, but she could tell from the shade of red on all the booths and the absence of paper place mats featuring maps of Italy that her date had picked a classy (enough) place.

  “Thanks, Jordano,” her date said as he rose to greet her at the table. “Another glass of red for me, if you please. Something for you, Dee?” he asked.

  “I’ll need a minute,” Dee apologized. She loved wine, but she specialized in cheap wine. Ordering wine in a restaurant made her feel judged. Paying for wine in a restaurant made her feel poor. At least sliding into the high-backed booth brought her a sense of security. If nothing else, she was safe from Hail Mary, the villain who only attacked from behind. She was hanging out in Wisconsin a lot these days and so miles away from Metroville, anyway. The gentle lighting made her feel less anxious about the neckline of her dress, so that was another plus.

  Dee raised her hand just above the table to catch the waiter’s eye before he could leave. “I would love a glass of water,” she smiled. Jordano bowed his head and scurried on his way. Her date, Stefan, saluted her with the last drops of his glass: “Let our adventure begin!”

  Dee forced a smile before turning her attention to the menu. She quickly settled on the scallops. Scallops and butter and noodles. What more could a woman ask for? In answer to her question, she peeked over her menu at her date: Stefan. Stefan Something. She couldn’t remember the last name, but it had certainly seemed memorable when she first read it. It was something like a Bond villain, but not the juvenile villainess names. It wasn’t Scaramanga or Cowabunga, but it was close.

  For the moment, then, he would just be Stefan. Stefan, for the moment, was not looking at his menu, not at all.

  “Make up your mind?” Dee asked.

  “I’ll be having the usual.” As Stefan replied he tapped a finger like he was indicating where to make an incision for a tracheotomy. He let his index finger slide through the unbuttoned buttons of his gray Oxford to check whether his chest hair had come in yet. It hadn’t. Dee wondered again how old he was.

  “And what’s that?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s not on the menu,” Stefan breezed. “Something the chef,” he waved toward where the kitchen might be, holding his hand as if it cradled a slowly burning unfiltered cigarette as gently as a pamphlet of unpublished French poetry, “and I came up with together. He’s the talent, of course, but I have a special tongue.” Contrary to his affectation, Stefan had never smoked an unfiltered cigarette and could read neither French nor poetry. The only cigarette he had ever smoked was a menthol, which left him violently ill.

  Dee couldn’t decide if he was gross or nervous or lampooning bad first dates to ease the tension. She wanted desperately to give him the benefit of the doubt. It had been nearly 20 years since her last first date. Much, she was sure, had changed.

  Jordano returned with the water and wine. Stefan swirled the wine gently in his glass while caressing the heat above the candle with his free hand.

  “Were you ready to order?” Jordano asked.

  “The lady will have the...” Stefan prefaced Dee’s order.

  “Scallops, please,” Dee said. “With the salad. No croutons, house dressing.”

  “Very nice,” Stefan complimented. “And I’ll have the usual.”

  “I’m so sorry, sir,” Jordano replied. “We’re out of the veal. Perhaps you’d like the special?”

  Stefan never flinched from his smile, but Dee could hear the pinched sigh as he slowly released it between his teeth.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?” Stefan demanded.

  “We’ve only just run out,” Jordano explained. He hunched forward in an apologetic bow each time he spoke.

  “Why didn’t you hold the veal,” Stefan asked. “For a loyal patron?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Jordano’s forehead was nearing the edge of the table from the bowing at this point. “Chef’s policy is to serve in the order of the, well, ordering.”

  Chef's name, in fact, was Larry. Hence, he insisted everyone call him Chef.

  “Perhaps Chef’s policy should be to have enough veal on hand on a Friday night.”

  “I’m sure Chef is full of regret. He suggests the special, sir, which are lamb cutlets with rosemary, quite delicious, and a perfect match for your wine.”

  Dee began to be impressed with the flexibility of Jordano’s hamstrings. She thought again about signing up for a hot yoga class. Maybe Jordano could recommend a good teacher. She tilted her head to check whether he was bending his knees, but there was no way for her to be certain due to the loose cut of his black slacks.

  “I’ll be the judge of the pairing,” Stefan said. “I will have the ‘special’. Remind Chef...well, never mind. I’m sure he appreciates my disappointment.”

  “Very good, sir,” Jordano slowly straightened up. Dee flinched as he nearly banged the back of his head on the underside of the table. He took the menus and turned to take his leave.

  “Oh!” Dee called as Jordano was about to make good his escape. He didn’t seem to hear, so Stefan gathered his attention with two snaps of his fingers and a curt tone: “Jordano! The lady.”

  “Could I trouble you for a Manhattan?” Dee asked.

  “Certainly. Do you have a whiskey preference?” Jordano inquired.

  “Yes, lots,” Dee joked.

  Jordano smiled and paused before explaining his question. Dee interrupted him: “No, whatever you have is fine.”

  “Old Portrero, Jordano,” Stefan interjected. To Dee he sent his assurance: “You’ll love this. It’s the perfect rye for a Manhattan.”

  “I’m not fancy. Good enough is good enough for me,” Dee replied.

  “Here’s hoping the whiskey, and I, will exceed your expectations,” Stefan toasted.

  Dee was done with her scallops long before Stefan had even decided whether he liked his cutlets. He certainly savored every bite, like he was examining the meat for clues to a decades-old mouth crime. The only notable mouth criminal in Metroville history was the Palette. He was an unsavory character with a short-lived career. He was soft and investigations into his schemes were always open and shut cases. Captain Major had never encountered him, though Dee thought back to his dossier while she watched Stefan chew. She expected to be infuriated with his pace, but instead found that she was amused, at least at first. She grew bored after recognizing that Stefan was not a most curious creature; Lewis Carroll might have created him had a deadline been looming with the apothecary lacking laudanum.

  Stefan paused between bites to let his tongue investigate something new. “Do you date many younger men?” he asked.

  “To tell the truth,” Dee said. “This is the first proper date I’ve been on in a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Years,” Dee replied.

  “Sometimes something new can be a wonderful experience,” Stefan took another small bite, studied
it with the same intensity as every other bite and then pushed his plate an inch away but with portentous finality. Jordano hurried over to clear it.

  “How were the cutlets, sir?” Jordano asked.

  “Not to my liking,” Stefan replied.

  “I am sorry to hear that, sir,” Jordano effused. “May I offer you the Moscato d’Asti with the Chef’s compliments? Perhaps with tiramisu?”

  “That would be satisfactory, Jordano,” Stefan offered his grace.

  “It’ll be right out,” Jordano left his assurance and flitted for the kitchen or the bar or wherever he needed to go. Dee felt guilty for Jordano’s obsequious service and was simply glad whenever he was allowed to leave the table. Stefan had already turned his full attention back to Dee.

  “The tiramisu here is absolutely stunning,” he said.

  “I’m sure I could be tempted,” Dee agreed.

  The wine and tiramisu arrived a few minutes later. Stefan sipped at his wine approvingly, but didn’t touch his dessert fork.

  “This is delicious,” Dee mentioned. “Please, have some. It’ll embarrass me if I finish this all by myself.”

  “Thank you, but I prefer to stay a little hungry for what comes next,” Stefan’s voice trailed down a husky half octave as he spoke.

  “And what’s next?” Dee met his leer with skepticism.

  “We’ll have to wait and see,” Stefan said. “The night is young. We’ve got half a bottle of wine and a great opportunity to get to know each other better.”

  “You might want to temper your expectations,” Dee cautioned.

  “Come, now,” Stefan chided. “We’re adults. We see what’s happening here. A woman of your age with a much younger man. I’m not embarrassed that you want me for my young, fit body. I’ve read this tale before: I know well how this hunt ends.”

  “Tell me,” Dee said.

  “We thirst, we drink. We hunger, we eat. We hunger — well, we hunger more deeply. I’m here to satisfy your hunger.”

  “Are you real?” Dee wanted to poke him with a stick. A pointy stick that would reach from another table.

  Stefan nodded slowly with a steady, lecherous smirk.

  “I promise that I will not be having sex with you,” Dee replied.

  “Let’s not foreclose any possibilities. Let whatever comes, come in its due time.”

  Dee set her fork down and licked the chocolate from the the insides of her teeth. She appraised Stefan, with his neatly trimmed goatee and his long brown hair slicked back like a boring, greasy Sonic the Hedgehog. Stefan, unsurprisingly, did not know when to quit.

  “You’re confident. I like that about older women,” Stefan said.

  “I’m barely 40,” Dee said.

  “And you don’t look a day over 32.”

  “You have no idea what 32 looks like,” Dee said. “What being an adult looks like.”

  “Show me,” Stefan said.

  “Where? The bathroom? The backseat of your Honda Fit?”

  “I’m not here to judge you,” Stefan soothed. “Maybe you like it in the bathroom or want to do it in my Fit backseat. Like I say, I’m here to satisfy your every desire.”

  “My desires are none of your business. But they most definitely do not include sleazy, skinny rude boys,” Dee wiped the corners of her mouth and dropped her napkin over the dessert plate.

  “How do you know until you try?” Stefan asked.

  “You remind me of a charmless Kevin Smith,” Dee shook her head.

  “Who’s that?”

  “He makes movies. Has a beard. A little skeezy.”

  “You into mustache rides?” Stefan outlined the contours of his mouth with fingers. “I know one with an inverted corkscrew.”

  “Let’s get the check,” Dee said. She raised a hand toward Jordano. “I’m going home. Alone.”

  “I’ll drive you,” Stefan.

  “No, thank you,” Dee replied.

  “Oh, come on, Dee. What’s the matter? I can see you’re a cougar on the prowl. I’m just letting you know that I’m the kind of prey you don’t have to hunt. I’ll lay right down for you.”

  “Maybe I had too much tiramisu, but everything you say is making me feel a little bit sick,” Dee said. She stood to take the bill as Jordano dropped it off.

  “Thanks, Jordano,” she muttered as she looked over the bill.

  “It’s just Jordan,” he whispered.

  Dee shared a silent laugh with Jordan while she divided the check. “Criminey, how many glasses of wine did you have? You get here at lunch?”

  “I’ve got this, Dee,” Stefan said. “I’ll get this, you can get us a night cap at the bar. We’ll leave as friends.”

  “Counter offer: I pay for my dinner and we’ll do our best to never see one another again.”

  Dee dropped four twenty dollar bills onto the table. She remembered the electric bill coming up and folded one of the bills back into her purse before grabbing her jacket and heading for the door. With her jacket on and her purse over her shoulder, she felt her phone vibrating. She stopped to check the alert when she reached the entryway. Someone — and it wasn’t had to guess whom — had sent her messages on Choose Your Own Companion.

  She scrolled through the messages, deleting them as she went. He wasn’t much for spelling, but he certainly typed quickly. By the time she reached the fifth message calling her a cold bitch, a cock tease, a whore and worse, she changed her mind and stormed back to the table. She grabbed Stefan by his skinny silk tie and pulled him as close to standing as she could while he remained in the booth.

  “If you ever message me again, wanker, I’ll...”

  “You’ll what?” Stefan smirked.

  “You’ll regret it,” Dee said. She remembered his last name and dropped it as a parting threat, despite the fact that it sounded like a Pokémon. “Salachanga.” She let go of his tie and he slumped back into the booth. He poured himself the rest of the Moscato as Dee walked back toward the exit, her car and her home. She felt her phone vibrate before she reached the door and again before the crease from the edge of the table faded from Stefan’s pants. She turned her phone off when she reached the car and drove home wondering what she would do if Stefan didn’t stop.

  Leigh Major was the first to greet Dee as she came home. She was smiling from ear to ear, full of questions and demanding answers.

  “How was it? How was he? Is he going to be my new dad?” Leigh asked.

  “The food was fine. He was a dud. And, no,” Dee replied.

  “Was he gross? Did he have a tail?” Leigh asked.

  “A tail?” Dee asked. “No, he didn’t have a tail. But he was awful. Someone should send him to Peru without a toothbrush.”

  “Tell me all about it,” Leigh urged.

  “Please don’t,” Lou called from the kitchen. “I’m trying to do homework.”

  Dee begged Leigh for a moment of peace as she hung up her jacket and made her way into the kitchen. “What are you working on, honey?” she asked.

  “I told you. Homework,” Lou replied icily.

  “What kind of homework?” Dee asked.

  “It’s an essay,” Lou said.

  “Do you need any help?” Dee offered.

  “No, I just need quiet so that I can concentrate,” Lou said.

  “Okay. Well. If you need absolute quiet, you can use the office or your room. If you’re going to be in the kitchen, then we’ll be as quiet as we can. But we can’t be silent.”

  Lou didn’t respond. He stared at his textbook and tapped his eraser on its pages. Dee excused herself upstairs. She took a quick shower to wash the Salachanga off and was changing into her soft clothes when she heard a rap on her bedroom door.

  “Can I come in?” Leigh’s voice called quietly through the hollow door.

  “Yes,” Dee invited Leigh to join her. They sat together on Dee’s bed.

  “Is it bad that I don’t miss dad?” Leigh asked.

  “Probably,” Dee said. “But you just had a l
ong holiday weekend with him. So maybe not so very bad today.”

  “Why can’t we all be happy at the same time?” Leigh asked.

  “Jeez, kid,” Dee said. She gave her daughter a side hug. “I don’t know, but I’m glad that’s what you want.”

  Dee sat quietly, peeking from time to time at her daughter. She was fourteen and showing the blossoms of wisdom as she became an adult.

  “You know the famous Copacabana scene from Goodfellas?” Dee asked.

  “I literally have no idea what any of the words in that sentence even mean,” Leigh replied. “God, mom. Do you even speak English?”

  Dee laughed and rubbed her eyes. She realized how tired she was and ready for a good, long sleep. “Well, it’s the famous scene with lots of movement but no cuts,” Dee explained.

  “Wait, mom. Are you crying?” Leigh asked.

  “No,” Dee said. “I guess my eyes are just a little watery.”

  “Yeah, that’s called crying, ya weirdo. The cocaine and bananas scene must be very sad.”

  “I’m not crying!” Dee raised her voice in mock outrage. “I’m explaining, ya boob. In the movie, Henry Hill takes Karen for a date at the Copacabana and she’s all impressed because he’s a big shot. My date tonight was pretending to be a low-rent version of that. Of course, when the date was over, I felt more like the part where Joe Pesci comes back to the bar to beat that old guy to death. ”

  “So, like a bad fan edit on an old person’s YouTube channel?” Leigh asked.

  “I literally have no idea what any of the words in that sentence even mean,” Dee replied.

  “It means your face is about to have an accident,” Leigh squeaked.

  “An accident?” Dee wondered.

  Leigh grabbed a pillow from the head of the bed and whipped it around, catching Dee squarely in the face which a heavy whoompf. “Get your shine box!” Dee yelled before answering with a thudding pillow slam of her own, catching Leigh in the shoulder blade with enough force to tip her off the bed.

  In the kitchen below, Lou heard the thud of Leigh falling from the mattress to the floor and cursed softly. He put his paper away and started looking at his trigonometry notes. Nothing made sense as he listened to the laughter and heavy footfalls from upstairs. He slipped his ear buds in and turned his music up until he couldn’t hear the sounds of fun.

  “Do you give?” Leigh demanded as she stood over her mother. She had both pillows now, one at her side, the other cocked behind her shoulder, ready to strike.

  “I give, I give,” Dee said. “Mercy. No more. Bully.”

  “Yes! Now, I am the queen of the house. And I decree that you shall make me macaroni and cheese.”

  “Shells or regular?” Dee asked.

  “Only the shells are fit for a queen!” Leigh dictated. “They complement my crown.”

  “Yes, your highness,” Dee replied. “But don’t stand on my bed.” She rolled herself slowly off the bed, straightened her clothes and walked downstairs. She found Lou bent over his homework.

  “Do you want macaroni and cheese?” she asked.

  Lou didn’t answer. In the quiet after she filled the pot with water, she heard the rumblings of his headphones. She tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. “I’m making macaroni and cheese for your sister. Do you want any?” she asked when he looked up at her. He scowled and shook his head.

  Dee noticed that Lou was nearly motionless as she prepared the box of macaroni and cheese. She unloaded the dishwasher while she was waiting for the water boil, and he didn’t move. She loaded the dishwasher and cleaned the sink while she waited for the noodles to cook, and he didn’t move. He stayed still, a pencil in his right hand, his left hand balled up into a fist and his head bent far forward as if he had fallen asleep. She was draining the noodles when he finally moved. He turned his head so that he was nearly facing her, but not quite.

  “The Internet is broken,” he said.

  “Really? I didn’t realize you were using it.”

  “I’m not,” Lou explained. “Because it’s broken. But I need to, because this homework is impossible and I don’t understand it.”

  “Did you check the router?” Dee asked. “Maybe it needs to be reset.”

  “I don’t have time to do that, mom! I’m trying to do my homework.”

  “There’s no need to yell, Lou. Just calm down. It’s only Friday, for heaven’s sake. Nothing is due tomorrow. I’ll check the router as soon as I’m done making this.”

  “But I need to look this up now,” Lou whined.

  “Then reset the router yourself. You know how to do that. Or wait two minutes and I’ll do it. Either way, as soon as I set this down, I can help you.”

  “You never know the right way to do math. It’s all different now,” Lou complained.

  Surprisingly, math was different. From Pythagoras to Stand and Deliver, math was more or less the same. But by the time Lou was in sixth grade, the kids had to get the right answer, in the right way, and explain how they felt about it. The extra layer of abstraction surely served some pedagogical purpose, but when Dee was called in at the last minute to recite the quadratic equation for the first time in 20 years, pulling plus or minus the square root of B squared minus four AC from her butt seemed like accomplishment enough without having to write a one act about why it worked.

  “Why don’t you take a break,” Dee urged. “You seem really tense right now and it’s hard to learn when you’re feeling tense.”

  “I need to do this now, mom, because I have a meet tomorrow and you always yell at me if my homework isn’t done by Sunday, so I guess I’ll just have to reset the router myself like I have to do everything myself these days!”

  With that Lou slammed his books shut, snapping a pencil in half in the process. He scooped his books and papers into his ratty backpack and jerked the heavy load off the counter, knocking a half-full glass of milk onto the floor in the process.

  “Lou!” Dee called after him as he marched toward the router. He ignored her as he unplugged the router and counted to ten. “Lou!” Dee yelled. He turned away from her and glared at the corner, daring it to aggravate him. Fortunately, the corner knew to hide behind a spiderweb rather than engage. “You need to clean this up, Lou. Now.”

  Lou plugged the router back in and stomped up each stair on the way to his room.

  “And don’t slam your door,” Dee muttered to herself as Lou slammed his door hard enough to bounce pictures off the wall in his room.

  Dee stood. She looked at the blue plastic cup that had bounced and rolled most of the way to the living room after leaving a pool of milk on the kitchen floor. “I am aces with men,” she said to herself as she thought about rescuing a dog. Spilled milk is a delight for a dog. Resignedly, she decided it would be best if she cleaned up the milk rather than let it fester on the linoleum until Lou calmed down.

  Saturday, September 17, 2011

  The drizzle was mostly a steady mist, only allowing itself to be interrupted for interludes of a heavy, spitting rain that rang noisily off the puddles that covered the course at Amazing Man Regional Park, host facility for the annual Metroville invitational cross country meet. The spectators hunched together in the few high spots where the ground wasn’t completely saturated. Little brothers in bright yellow rain jackets with matching boots and red hats splashed in the biggest puddles near the playground equipment that was built to resemble Amazing Man’s famous Solar of Fortitude. Their parents were distracted by the second pack of runners who were chasing 100 meters behind the leaders at the first kilometer mark in the five kilometer race. Dee Major smiled as one little boy lost his boot in the suck of the mud at the bottom of the puddle, then immediately turned back to watch Lou Major running hard in the middle of the second pack.

  Leigh Major shuddered as she huddled beneath her mom’s umbrella, wondering how a September morning could be so cold and if it would ever stop raining. She stared off into the distance, looking numbly at the faces on the o
ther side of the course without seeing any of them. Her lack of focus was suddenly interrupted by Dee’s shrill shouts of encouragement as Lou reached hearing distance.

  “Go, Lou!” she yelled. “Goooooo, Looouuuuu!”

  Leigh elbowed her mom in the ribs and gasped, “Mom!” out of sheer embarrassment. Dee’s cheering continued unabated. “Catch ‘em, Lou! Run ‘em down! Go get ‘em, go get ‘em, go get ‘em!”

  Lou tried to break from his pack, but found himself boxed in on all sides. He tried to shoulder forward, but teammates from Metroville Southeast, bitter rivals to Lou and the other Panthers, yielded him no room. He tried to break to the outside around the gentle turn leading up to the first kilometer marker, but misjudged his steps and stumbled through a puddle. He bumped the runner next to him and they both nearly went down in a tumble. Each kept his balance as Lou finally won his escape from his mother’s encouragement.

  Five minutes later, Lou had faded far enough behind the second group that he lost contact with them. He struggled to find his own pace through the wooded course. He turned his focus to his calves at the halfway point. They felt tired and tight from the extra effort of lifting his feet from the muck and keeping his balance through slippery turns. Lou focused on picking his feet up and putting them down as efficiently as possible. He checked in with his lungs to assure himself that his wind was still strong even if his feet were failing him now.

  He was on the precipice of that peaceful point of concentration where all that’s left is the running, where the focus, will and expectation work together and the miles slide backward like special memories blindly forgotten, when he heard his name being yelled from up ahead. His mom, soaked and alone, stood just off a narrowing in the course, cheering loudly just for him.

  Lou stared down at the path one stride in front of him as her words grew louder in the approach. He ignored her as best he could and refused to look in her direction. Soon he knew he had to be past her, but her voice refused to fade. He shot a glance toward her voice. She was following him, running easily where he was pushing himself to his limit. His heart was thumping from effort and anger. He glared at her, deepening his darkest scowl. She slowed, but didn’t stop, and continued to clap and cheer. His temper burst. “No pacing!” he yelled.

  Dee pulled up short. She wasn’t sure what Lou meant, but took his meaning. She stopped her feet and clapped in place. Lou continued on, listening only to the slapping of two chilly hands fading into the damp woods.

  Lou ran the rest of his race in peace, though not in solitude. Despite his best efforts, his pace kept slowing over the second half of the course. Small packs of runners overtook him every 30 seconds or so. He was fading fast when a teammate passed him on the right. It was Dmitri Medvedev Chlenovich, the Russian exchange student. He was running in his knee-high gray socks with his stupid-looking old-school knock-off 1980s Adidas. He seemed a nice kid, but something about his face rubbed Lou the wrong way.

  “Khorosho,” Dmitri panted as he passed.

  Lou didn’t know the word, but could tell it was meant to be encouraging. It annoyed him. “Just run, DMC,” he muttered back as Dmitri left him behind.

  Lou saw the finish line at the bottom of a gentle decline and reached deep for any energy he could muster. He drew neck-and-neck with Dmitri before Dmitri took note. At first Dmitri seemed content to let him pass; they were teammates after all. Neither one would score points for his team on this day. Lou was two strides ahead when Dmitri’s Cold War pride lurched into gear and he joined Lou in a sprint for the finish.

  Lou and Dmitri ran stride for stride toward the vestiges of the white chalk stripe that marked the end of the race. Lou pumped his arms faster, trying to trick his legs into moving more quickly. He let his jaw hang loose and his face go slack, anything to distract himself from the pain he was inflicting on his body. From his left he heard Leigh cheering him on. She was smiling and yelling and jumping up and down, probably to try to keep warm in the miserable day. Behind her, Randy Major’s face was half hidden by the megaphone he was making with his hands. Lou heard his dad shouting one long “Looooouuuuu”. Then, a few feet away, he saw his mom, smiling excitedly, clapping so softly he couldn’t hear the sounds her hands made beneath the cheers for the finishers and the announcement of the passing seconds read by one of the officials.

  And then Dmitri was a half-step ahead. Not even that. A quarter of a step, maybe an eighth. Just far enough to be clearly ahead without being meaningfully ahead. Lou leaned. He leaned far over his feet to try to break the imaginary tape with his head, his neck, his chest, his anything before Dmitri got there first.

  Dmitri got there first.

  Lou crossed the finish line a hundredth of a second after Dmitri. No difference, but all the difference. Lou broke stride, fell to a slow walk and left the finish area to make room for the rest of the field to cross. He bent forward, his hands on his knees. He straightened up, interlacing his hands on the top of his head. He bent forward again and heaved, his entire breakfast seeming to come up in one continuous go. The smell was acrid and the taste got in his nose. His eyes watered. He wiped the vomit from his lips with the back of his arm.

  In a moment, he felt a delicate hand on his back. “You missed the garbage, Lou,” his assistant coach was saying. Ms. Betty Johnson was young and very pretty, still enthused about the opportunity to teach despite being overwhelmed by the difficulties of teaching. Still willing to get out and help coach the cross country teams for a few hundred dollars for the season. Still able to make a joke and smile while standing next to a puddle of beige vomit that was slowly washing into the muddy turf. Still unaware of the effect that her gentle touch and friendly smile had on a sixteen year old boy. “New PR, for you Lou. By eleven seconds. Keep it up!” she said. Feigning a conspiratorial whisper, she put her hand to her mouth and said, “But also work on keeping it down.”

  “Good job, buddy!” Randy Major grabbed Lou by the shoulder in a moment approaching genuine pride. Lou was feeling better, but unable to stand up straight in his cross country shorts, so he stayed bent forward, resting his hands on his knees and staring at the ground.

  “Thanks, dad,” Lou replied. No one recalling the moment in the future, including Lou, would ever be certain if his tone was trying to hide real gratitude or the result of being embarrassed by his father’s congratulations. On the other hand, when he turned his head and proudly effused “I ran a new PR, dad!” even passers by recognized that he was lashing out at his mom.

  “What’s a PR?” Leigh asked.

  “Personal record. Some call it a personal best, PB. But we say PR,” Lou explained.

  “You know why I was never a runner, Lou?” Randy asked.

  “Why?” Lou asked. He was too tired not to.

  “Because I liked PBR,” Randy laughed at his own joke. “PBR! Tall boys!”

  “That’s almost too dumb to be a dad joke,” Leigh complained.

  “That’s what dads do,” Randy replied. “So I guess it fits.”

  “Hey, dad,” Lou interrupted as he finally straightened up. “Did you think any more about whether the team can come over to your place for dinner before the next meet? It would be kind of a cool way to celebrate my PR.”

  “Damn, Lou, you know I’d love to celebrate your PR with a PBR, but I just don’t have the space. Maybe next year, if I get a bigger place.”

  “But you promised.”

  “I promised that I would think about it. And I did, Lou. It’s just not a good time for me to have the team over. Your mom has the big place. I’ll bet she’d be happy to feed the team and celebrate your PR.”

  “Sure,” Dee agreed in part before Lou cut her off.

  “Never mind, then,” Lou said. “I’m sure one of the other guys can host. I’ll tell coach that it doesn’t work.”

  Lou immediately turned and walked away to find his coach and report that his parents were assholes. Randy smirked smugly. Dee shook her head faintly but clearly while Leigh judged them both
silently for as long as she could. This proved to be just shy of four seconds.

  “You two both need to grow up,” Leigh demanded.

  “I offered,” Dee threw up her hands. “He wouldn’t listen.”

  “And I don’t have room,” Randy explained. “You know how tiny my place is compared to your mom’s.”

  “Whatever. You’re enjoying this way too much,” Leigh scolded her dad, then turned to her mom. “And you’re pouting like you’re the teenager. Of course he’s pissed off at you. He’s pissed off at everyone. And so am I. We’re from a broken home. Did you forget?”

  Leigh marched off toward the plastic and wooden tower atop the Solar of Fortitude. Thunder cracked in the distance and the rain began to fall harder as the sky darkened even more.

  “That went well,” Randy said.

  “Shut up, Randy,” Dee replied.

  They stood silently, turned toward each other at odd angles, not wanting to face each other directly, not wanting to be the first to turn completely away.

  “I’m getting wet,” Randy said.

  “I’ve been wet,” Dee said.

  “You’ve got an umbrella,” Randy pointed out.

  “You just got here,” Dee reminded him.

  “You’re a coward,” Randy said.

  Dee assumed she hadn’t heard him correctly. “What’s that?”

  “I said,” Randy repeated, “That you’re a coward.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You know what it means. The ink heist. A cop almost died because you’re a coward. A-A-A bitch-ass coward.”

  “I’m not a coward, Randy,” Dee hissed as she looked from side to side to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “I called in a crime. The gun went off accidentally. For goodness sake, it was his own partner who shot him. In the foot! Besides all that. Besides all that. I am retired.”

  “I’ll sign your name to some flowers at the hospital. ‘Thanks for taking a bullet for me. I’m not a coward. I’m the retired Captain Major.’”

  Dee gave him a stare which once made Dr. Costive shit himself in the middle of a caper with the ferocity of a junkie white-knuckling it through the first night of withdrawal.

  “That look don’t work on me no more, Dee,” Randy said as he turned away. “You’re ‘retired’. And we’re divorced.”

  Saturday, September 17, 2011

  (continued)

  The Super Fun Zone was always the place to be, but especially so at a little after 2 on a Saturday afternoon. The place was crawling with cake-faced birthday-goers wandering in glazed circles from too much frosting, too much fruit punch and too many dodge balls to too many melons. Dee took great delight in watching it all teeter on the edge of disaster while knowing she wouldn’t have to pick up any of the pieces or dry off any of the tears afterwards. The rambunctiousness also helped distract her as she waited for Mike Ferris to arrive.

  Arrive he did, just a minute or two after the appointed time. Dee had the privilege of watching him pull up in his aging, but tidy, Honda Civic. His brown hair was graying at the temples and his face was soft and smooth as well-formed cheese. He had a wide smile that he wore even before he saw Dee walking toward him through the front door.

  “You made it!” Mike said excitedly.

  “I did,” Dee smiled. She recoiled instinctively from his friendly hug, then gave into the pleasantness as soon as he released her.

  “Sorry,” Mike said. “I’m a hugger. If the date goes terribly wrong, at least you got one free hug.”

  “Let’s hope for better than terribly wrong,” Dee said.

  “Total truth time, Dee,” Mike put on a serious face. “I’ve been on a few of these Choose Your Own Companion dates now. Terribly wrong is actually better than my average. God! I hope it’s not me.”

  “Couldn’t be,” Dee said.

  “Then who?” Mike answered. Dee stared blankly. “Camp song. Sorry. I guess you never stole the cookies from the cookie jar. You must be more honest than you look.”

  “I guess,” Dee said.

  “I’m making you feel awkward,” Mike observed. “Let’s go play some skeeball. If you don’t like skeeball, then you’re an asshole. We can do your asshole test next.”

  “I don’t have an asshole test,” Dee replied as they re-entered the Super Fun Zone.

  “Well, Dee, if you keep trying these dates, you’ll either figure out an asshole test or spend too much time with assholes.”

  “You talk fast,” Dee said.

  “I’m nervous,” Mike agreed. “I do that when I’m nervous. I deflect. I fire volleys of words to keep people off balance. I’ll slow down as soon as I get some quarters. Let’s skee some balls and win some shitty prizes!”

  Dee’s first ball barely made it the length of the table, while Mike’s scored 5,000 points.

  “Don’t look,” Dee chided Mike as he waited for her to roll. “It’s harder when you watch.”

  “Are you skee shy?” Mike asked.

  Dee frowned.

  “I’m not looking,” Mike said. He made a show of closing his eyes, covering them with his hands, then peeking between his fingers.

  Dee’s second ball landed in the bottom ring and scored 1,000 points. “You know,” Mike said as he took careful aim, “when I started playing skeeball, the most you could score was 100 points on a single ball. Of course, back then, pinball only cost a quarter and was considered a form of gambling.” Mike rolled another 5,000 point ball.

  “How often do you come here, exactly?” Dee asked.

  “Well, I couldn’t say, not ‘exactly’, at least. But I played a fair amount when I was a kid, then I brought my boys here while they were growing up. They’re gone now, but I guess the practice kind of stuck with me.”

  “Gone?” Dee asked.

  “Oh, sorry,” Mike seemed embarrassed. “They’re both in college now. Probably not playing skeeball any more. What is it the kids play? Beer pong?”

  “Their loss,” Dee said. She rolled her third ball and scored 4,000 points.

  “You’re getting the hang of it,” Mike noted.

  “I haven’t played since I was eight or nine,” Dee remembered. “My kids, and my ex, they all loved video games. When we came to a place like this, it was...” Dee struggled to remember the names of any of the games they played. “Pac-Man? Or something with guns. I guess there’s no guns in Pac-Man.”

  “Not that I remember,” Mike agreed. His next ball bounced off the lip of the 5,000 point cylinder, then rolled down to the 1,000 point catch-all. “The boys played the shooters, too, once they got a little older. I really don’t pick this place to get all melancholy and nostalgic. It’s just stuff to do without having to shout over the noise of a bar or try to have a conversation with pasta and chicken stuck between my teeth.”

  “No drinks, though,” Dee mentioned.

  “I always drink on the way over,” Mike said. “Helps keep me loose.”

  “I didn’t think to do that,” Dee said.

  “I’m a planner,” Mike replied. “Since the score is getting closer, I’ll try to distract you with questions. What do you like to do for fun? Any hobbies?”

  Dee rolled her first 5,000 point shot and pumped her fist. They continued to roll back and forth as they chatted.

  “I’m thinking about taking up skeeball,” Dee said.

  “You’ve got the knack,” Mike agreed. “I’m kind of a movie buff. What kind, you ask? A crappy movie buff. I’ll go see anything. The worse the better. But the high-minded stuff? The art part? That’s not really my thing.”

  “I guess I don’t see too many movies,” Dee said. “I can’t think of the last movie I saw in a theater. I was working a ton last year. That’s settled down, but we separated at the start of the year and the divorce was finalized over the summer. With all the moves and shuttling, not much time for seeing movies.”

  “And what do you do for work?”

  “I work for Fast Airborne VD. It’s kind of a specialty company, you
might not have heard of us.”

  “What do you do for them?”

  “General stuff, really. Administrative operations. Just general office stuff. Whatever they need me to, I guess. It isn’t much.”

  “That’s what was keeping you so busy last year?” Mike asked.

  “No, I was working a different job then. Well, two jobs. The other job was really stressful. I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure, sure,” Mike agreed. “What would you like to talk about?”

  Dee thought for a moment. Without paying much attention, she rolled her final ball and scored another 5,000 points. Her mind was peacefully blank. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “You’re good at making conversation. What do you want to talk about?”

  Dee and Mike were counting their tickets minutes later near the redemption booth. They waited patiently behind a boy deciding between a fake goldfish and a miniature water pistol on a key chain. The boy seemed years away from possessing any keys of his own, so Dee silently willed him toward the fake goldfish. The boy bought the water pistol, instead, probably swept up in the current of youthful defiance swirling around Dee in her daily life.

  Dee won the skeeball contest by better than 4,000 points and therefore had a few extra tickets to spend. Nevertheless, she deferred to Mike to make the first purchase.

  “Can I get,” Mike said into the air, but generally toward the teenage clerk behind the corner, “that bag of jacks?”

  The clerk turned up his nose as Mike tried to hand him his short roll of prize tickets. “We don’t take those here,” he explained. “You need to get a voucher.”

  “A voucher?” Dee asked.

  “Over there,” the clerk pointed with his chin, too lazy to move his arms and too busy being bored to engage any further.

  “New to me,” Mike shrugged.

  “It’s always been that way,” the clerk muttered so low that Mike couldn’t be sure he heard anything. Dee heard him perfectly well and shot a glare at the rudeness. The clerk was too busy trying to invent a way to slouch his torso free of his arms without removing his graphic tee to notice Dee’s disapproval.

  “I guess we just feed them in here,” Dee said as she stood in front of the change machine. Mike was skeptical.

  “I think that’s just for getting change,” Mike said.

  “No, look,” Dee pointed. “I think it does both.” Dee fed her tickets into the machine, which thought a minute and then spit out a printed receipt. “48 tickets,” Dee reported.

  “Wow,” Mike said. “I never noticed that slot.” Mike struggled to feed his tickets into the machine. “Does it have to go in a certain way?” Mike asked as he flipped the roll of tickets over and over like he was trying to plug his phone into a charging cable in the dark.

  “Nope,” Dee said. “You just have to stick it in a little further for it take.” Dee offered to take the strip of tickets. Mike handed it over and moments later he had his receipt.

  “Thanks. I have 44 tickets,” Mike noted as they walked back to the redemption counter and waited their turn again. The same boy was back, debating between the fake goldfish and a purple feather pen. Dee still voted for the goldfish. The boy went for the pen.

  “Sweet pen,” Mike encouraged the kid as he walked away. Upon his turn, Mike requested the bag of jacks. “A gift,” he presented the jacks to Dee. “If I won 10,000 tickets, you'd be getting that poodle skirt so we could finish the date cosplaying the 1950s. I've got a letterman's sweater covering up a stain on my back seat.”

  “Thanks,” Dee said, wondering whether there was a stain. She put the jacks in her purse after examining the bag long enough to know that she wouldn’t want to sit on the jacks. “I would love to get you this hand tattoo,” Dee lamented. “But it’s 50 tickets.”

  “Here,” Mike offered up his receipt with four tickets left.

  “Can I combine these?” Dee asked.

  “Of course,” the clerk said while wondering if he should dye his hair black or dark indigo. “Just put them in the machine.”

  “Really?” Dee asked. “Don’t you have the identical machine back there? The one you just used for the jacks?”

  “That’s not for customers,” the clerk replied.

  “Do you hate your job?” Dee asked.

  “No. I don’t hate the job,” the clerk deigned to make a flicker of eye contact.

  “Well, never mind,” Dee said. The clerk shrugged as if the whole business was none of his. Dee turned to Mike. “Do you mind if we do something else?”

  “Not at all,” Mike said. “What would you like to do?”

  Dee quickly looked around. “How about the batting cages?”

  “It’ll mess my hair,” Mike rubbed his high and tight haircut for effect.

  “Sorry about that,” Dee said.

  “I’m just joking,” Mike said.

  “I know,” Dee smiled. She led the way toward the cages.

  “Do you like baseball?” Mike asked.

  “Not especially,” Dee said. “But it’s close.”

  “I played a little bit of baseball in high school,” Mike offered. “Now I’m waiting until I’m 50 to play softball again.”

  “Why do you have to wait until you’re 50 to play softball?” Dee asked.

  “Partly because my body has always been best suited for the senior leagues,” Mike said. “But, also, they ruined it. It’s too competitive.”

  “I thought softball was mostly about drinking beer?” Dee wondered.

  “Maybe twenty years ago it was about drinking beer. Now it’s about drinking beer and expensive bats. By the time I’m 50, they’ll probably give up on pitching and just let the batters shoot their balls out of a cannon. I’d like to work a cannon.”

  “You could be a rec league Margaret Corbin,” Dee said.

  Mike grinned and thumped a red plastic helmet on his head, then walked inside the netting to take the first turn in the cage. The noise of the batting machines and the thumps of well-hit balls made conversation nearly impossible. Dee contented herself with cheering from the safety of the far side of the netting.

  Mike’s first swing was so bad he accidentally proved string theory. He missed the ball by a foot in at least seven dimensions. Sadly, Michio Kaku wasn't there to collect the evidence, or watch Mike still shaking his head at himself when the machine counted down the next pitch. He only had time to stick his bat out in a mock bunt. He barely made contact with the end of the aluminum bat. The vibration raced down to the thin handle and made his hands ache. He stepped out of the box and pretended to adjust his helmet during the next pitch to give his hands a chance to rest.

  He stepped back in and tried to remember what a comfortable stance felt like. If he bent his knees too far he felt like he was trying too hard. When he stood too straight, he felt like he wasn’t ready for the pitch and couldn’t catch up with the ball in time.

  Mike blew out a long breath and tried to relax. Swinging like himself wasn’t working. He thought back to the stars of his childhood and adopted a different stance, extending his left foot forward like he was being dragged across the floor in a dramatic tango, while bending his right knee deeply so that his profile became a gradual plane to his helmet, with his bat fidgeting like a puppy’s tale. He drummed his fingers on the handle for effect.

  To his surprise and delight, he made solid contact on the next pitch, driving it right back at the pitching machine. He lashed line drives on the next three pitches, starting to smile and even taunt the pitching machine between swings. When he saw one ball left in the hopper, he dug in grimly and swung as hard as he could. He popped the ball straight up into the air and twisted so far he staggered like a drunk across home plate. It was a fortunate trip, as the ball popped into the netting above only to fall into the batter’s box Mike had fallen out of.

  “Dodged a bullet on the last one,” Mike joked as he and Dee met outside the cage.

  “You looked just like the Magician’s Assis
tant,” Dee said, thinking back to one of her earliest encounters as an official Confederated Justice super. She trapped the villain in her own zig zag box and thereby rescued her career from the sidekick track. “Except, a man in regular clothes who was not robbing a pet store.”

  “Is she still around?” Mike asked.

  “Probably somewhere,” Dee guessed. “Maybe Vegas. Or Branson. Crime doesn’t pay, but stage work sometimes does.”

  “Did she really go straight?” Mike wondered.

  “She’d have to have, I think. Stealing rabbits and pigeons? I can’t imagine there’s much of a payday in that. She could be dodging knives at an amusement park for at least minimum wage.”

  “Sad, I suppose,” Mike said.

  Dee had no answer.

  “I guess it’s my turn,” Dee finally said.

  Dee fed quarters into the pitching machine and tested the cement floor with her walking shoes while the hopper filled up. She had played softball as a child, but hadn’t swung a bat since before she saved the school children from the meltdown and gained her powers. Although she saved an entire bus load of kids, it was only saving the last boy that caused her to gain her powers. Who knew she could even hold her breath for so long? It made living with Randy, who had spent that summer ‘perfecting’ the chili recipe he never did take to county fairs and amateur cook offs, seem fortunately fateful preparation for that momentous day.

  Like Mike, it took Dee a few swings to figure out how to feel comfortable in her stance. The more she relaxed, the easier it came. She simply flicked her bat toward the ball and sent it rocketing in one direction or the other. Dee began to enjoy herself and extend her swing with a balletic flourish. Before she knew it, the hopper was almost empty.

  “Last ball, slugger,” Mike called. “Make it count.”

  Dee smiled determinedly as she waited for the last ball. She kept her bat quick and her swing short, but popped her hips through contact and drove what was left of the ball into the back wall in a cataclysmic crash.

  “Whoa,” Dee and Mike said together, though neither heard the other. At Dee’s feet was the cover of the ball centered perfectly on the outline of home plate taped onto the floor. Dee kicked it to the side as she exited the cage.

  “You really got into that one,” Mike said.

  “Must have been a defective ball,” Dee suggested.

  “Even if it was, it was a hell of a swing,” Mike said. “Let’s find something where you can’t do quite so much damage. I’ve got a reputation to protect.”

  “You were good, too,” Dee said.

  “Sure,” Mike agreed. “One or two times I could feel like the cover was just about to come off.” He held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “This close. This close.”

  Dee smiled, abashed.

  After a long, awkward pause, Mike continued. “Lady’s choice. Dodgeball or miniature golf.”

  “Either one is fine with me,” Dee said.

  “Dodgeball you have to take off your shoes and bounce on a tramp,” Mike said.

  “That would be fine,” Dee agreed.

  “But don’t think I let just anyone talk about my mother that way,” Mike added.

  “Oh, I would never,” Dee said.

  “Or mini golf, where there’s a much lower chance that you hit me in the face,” Mike suggested.

  “That might be safer,” Dee agreed.

  After another pause, Mike decided. “Let’s play the front 9 and see whether we’re willing to risk our faces afterwards.”

  “Sounds great,” Dee smiled.

  Their scores were tied after the front nine, so they had no choice but to play through the second half of the course. They were neck and neck the rest of the way. Mike did well on the difficult holes, while Dee had a preternatural gift for putting that helped her whenever the green was flat and free of drawbridges, windmills and geometry. Her skill at putting had nothing to do with being a super hero; it was just something Dee Major was naturally good at.

  The final hole had two levels connected by a series of tubes, much like how the Internet works. Mike and Dee watched a family of seven or eight — really, after four kids, the parents aren’t keeping track, why should narrators? — muddle through the hole. Six of the seven, or seven of the eight, hard to say, took the left fork and carded twos for par. One took the right fork and missed the follow up putt badly enough that he threw his putter into the tepid, trickling stream of nonpotable water between the 15th and 18th greens. Dee and Mike waited, amused, as the parents sorted through the tantrum. When the ruckus was sufficiently quelled, they approached the tee.

  “It’s your honor,” Dee reminded Mike as he tried to defer to her on the last hole. Mike bowed modestly and placed his purple ball with a white stripe on the left side of the rubber mat. He struck his shot well. It rolled confidently toward the middle hole, dropped dramatically into the tube, rattled about a bit and then found its way to the lower green, coming to a stop no more than a inch from the cup.

  “This close,” Mike lamented, again holding his thumb and forefinger no more than an inch apart. “I was this close.”

  “You still might win,” Dee said.

  “Ah, but now I’ve shown you the way,” Mike said. “Gave you the secret.”

  “We’ll see,” Dee said.

  Dee, too, took the left side of the rubber mat for her starting position. She looked carefully over the course, then brought her focus back to her green ball with a yellow diamond on the top. She bent down, centered the diamond so that it was at the apex of the ball and wiped a fleck of dust away.

  She shrugged her shoulders and drew her putter back.

  “I won’t try to psych you out,” Mike said as she started her backswing.

  Dee stopped and looked up. Mike smiled.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t going to try to psych you out or anything. That would be bad form and I’m a good sport. Didn’t mean to interrupt. You go ahead.”

  “Thanks,” Dee replied.

  She readied herself to address the ball again. She brought her putter back and Mike began to speak to her in a golf whisper. “Don’t mean to worry you, but each time you bend over like that, every boy in the family in front of us starts peeking at your butt. Just thought you should know.”

  Dee took a practice stroke and responded without looking away. “Good to know.”

  “I can’t rattle you at all, can I?” Mike asked as he moved closer to the ball. He kneeled forward in front of Dee.

  “You might need more than that,” Dee said.

  “Okay, take you time,” Mike said.

  “Thank you, I will.”

  “You’re welcome. Pay them no mind. Don’t even listen to me.”

  Dee took her shot. Her ball rolled true to the middle cup on the top level, paused an instant for dramatic effect, then rolled down the tube and toward the ultimate cup. On its way it tapped into Mike’s ball, then deflected slightly to the left and wound up in the hole for an ace.

  “Beautiful shot,” Mike said as he tapped his ball in and carded a two. “You win by one. I tip my cap. A very well-played round.”

  “Yay!” Dee said. “That was fun.”

  It was after they turned in their tiny pencils and borrowed putters that it dawned on Dee that the date was ending, and she certainly didn’t want it to.

  “Any particular place you need to be?” she asked.

  “If the place was too particular, they wouldn’t take me,” Mike joked.

  “I know a place that isn’t particular at all,” Dee said, even though she didn’t. “Care for a drink?”

  Mike looked at his watch for a long, long time. Three seconds, maybe three and change. But as each second passed, Dee realized all the more that he wasn’t looking at his watch. He was looking for an out.

  “I should probably get home,” Mike said. “Get the place cleaned up.”

  “You sure?” Dee asked. “I felt like we were having fun.”
<
br />   “It has been fun,” Mike agreed.

  “So one quick drink?” Dee said. “My last date was a disaster. I could use a better ending this time.”

  Mike looked her in the eye for a long time. Dee couldn’t tell what the look meant. It was pity.

  “Let me be honest, Dee. You seem great, but I don’t think it’s going to work out for me in a romantic way. I’d love to have you on our kickball team, though.”

  “Is it because I beat you in skeeball?”

  “No, it’s not because you beat me in skeeball or hit the holy hell out of the baseball. That was awesome to see. If you ever see a movie, rent The Natural. But, you know. I’m not saying you’re doing something wrong, but it’s not right for me. I mean. Well, maybe I’m just particular. Maybe. We all are. If we weren’t we’d all be the same and that would be confusing.”

  Mike tilted his head in a universal sign of empathy and continued. “You’re great. You’re beautiful, like out-of-my-league pretty, and you seem smart and you laugh at my dumb jokes, but we spent two hours together and you didn’t have an opinion on anything. Until you said you had a bar in mind, you didn’t have a single preference.”

  Dee felt a fresh embarrassment for not having had a place in mind.

  “You’re hiding behind your smile, Dee. You didn’t show me anything about yourself that wouldn’t, I dunno, be written on your tombstone. God forbid. You’re divorced, you’ve got kids, but other than that, what do you like? What don’t you like?”

  Dee was too surprised to defend herself. “I like you,” she finally managed.

  “I’m sorry, Dee. I’m genuinely sorry. Forget I said anything. You know, I’m probably just projecting my own issues on you. In my marriage, I just went along with everything for years. I forgot I was even allowed to like a different kind of ice cream. I had chocolate and marshmallow ice cream on my birthday. On my goddam birthday. I had marshmallows in my ice cream. They’re ridiculous. In a ‘Smore, fine. In hot chocolate, a few of the little ones. But not in my ice cream. Not on my god damned birthday. I still can't believe that I smiled and said ‘Thanks’ as I choked that shit down.

  “So, yes. I’m still working through that. Sorry I said anything. Just forget about me.”

  “Was it a disaster? Did I improve your average?”

  “You are great,” Mike began. “Totally great. Opposite of a disaster. I really, really mean that. I need you to know how great I think you are. Just not for me.”

  “Enough,” Dee interrupted. “I appreciate the honesty, I guess. But you can’t talk me out of feeling shitty.”

  “I’m sorry, Dee,” Mike said. “I truly am.”

  “I understand, but if you apologize again, you’ll really make me feel bad,” Dee said. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been rejected. She tried desperately to figure out how to pretend to be an adult who handled rejection well. “I guess it’s better to say something now than to string me along. I don’t like what you’re saying, but I respect that you said it. Thank you?”

  “I guess this is goodbye, then,” Mike said.

  “Not necessarily,” Dee said. “What’s the name of your kickball team?”

  “We’re the Sith Kickers,” Mike said. “Like Darth Maul.”

  “Cute,” Dee said, who had seen that movie with Lou. “If I see you out there, I’ll be the one kicking your ass.”

  “I bet you will,” Mike agreed. Thanks, Dee.”

  Monday, September 19, 2011

  The halls of Fast Airborne VD were gently abuzz at all times now that everyone had something to talk about. Rumors circulated like flies at a dog park, while little pieces of truth fell unnoticed into the cracks between the cubicles. Paula Dundas kept her head down and avoided all unnecessary contact, possessing, as she did, the rare commodity of actual information about the near future. She had even taken to using a bathroom on a different floor to avoid indelicate probes.

  She was hustling down to the sixteenth floor to meet with her team when she nearly collided with Dee Major, who was hurrying in the opposite direction. At the last instant, Dee dodged like a matador to save her coffee and Paula’s collection of papers.

  “You seem to be heading the wrong way,” Paula’s friendly tone belied her annoyance. “Team meeting is about to start.”

  “Is it?” Dee was genuinely surprised. “I thought it was canceled.”

  “Nope,” Paula said. She picked up her pace as she pulled Dee along in her wake. They passed a clock on the wall telling them that the meeting was supposed to be starting already. “We’re meeting,” Paula continued. “Things to cover.”

  “Like what?” Dee asked as they reached the door to the meeting room.

  “Well, we’ll talk about it in the meeting,” Paula said. The lights in the room flickered on as they detected motion. Paula glanced up as the wall clock clicked ahead another minute. They were two minutes late, but no one else had managed to show up at all.

  Paula walked around the conference table to the far end of the room to take a chair on the narrow end of the rectangular table. She shuffled through her papers and reorganized the things she needed to cover with her team. She moved slowly, feeling Dee’s eyes on her and not wanting to reveal her anxiety. When she couldn’t shuffle and tap her papers any more, Paula began to fiddle with her phone.

  “Should I go get them?” Dee asked.

  “They’re adults, Dee. Thank you, but they should be able to find their way to a meeting. Lord knows y’all ain’t so busy that you can’t meet for a few minutes a week.”

  “You sure seem to be,” Dee noted.

  “Yeah, these one-on-ones have been nuts,” Paula mused. “With my new teams, I have 56 one-on-ones this month. And I still don’t know everyone’s name,” Paula tried to turn her complaint into a joke, but failed.

  “We’ll probably re-org again before you know everyone,” Dee added.

  “Probably,” Paula agreed while turning back to her papers.

  They sat in silence for a few moments listening to the ticking of the clock. Dee noticed the faint hum of the white noise coming from the ceiling. As soon as she noticed it, she couldn’t ignore it. Dee stretched her neck and looked toward the door, anxious for an escape from the buzz. Finally, she interrupted the white noise with a question.

  “When does the meeting end?”

  “11:30, but I have a lot to cover, so depends on when the team gets here.”

  “I’ll go find them,” Dee offered.

  “I just messaged them to come over,” Paula replied. “You’re in a powerful hurry to get started.”

  “I have a date over lunch,” Dee confessed.

  “Really? How’s that going?” Paula instantly brightened. She loved other people’s dates.

  “It’ll be my last online date,” Dee shook her head.

  “You’re giving up awfully quick,” Paula noted.

  “I keep getting messages from this one guy,” Dee said. “I block him, he creates a new profile and I block him again. Every time my phone goes off, I expect he’s reaching out to just to let me know he’s thinking about me and what a bitch I am. Or to send me another picture of his freckled penis.”

  “Any good dates, though?” Paula was hopeful.

  “Oh for two so far. You know, I thought adult dating would be easy,” Dee confessed. “I was a mess when I started dating Randy. Not a mess, just caught up in pretending to be someone I thought I was supposed to be. I didn’t get to be a mess until we were married. Then, somewhere along the way, I finally got comfortable with myself. I grew up. I figured it would be easy to put myself out there now. I know some people will like me and others won’t. But I would make sure everything was casual and low pressure. I’d look around and find someone I liked who liked me back. My first date was bad enough to put me off men forever. I liked the second guy, but it didn’t work out. I guess rejection sucks no matter how gently the rejection comes. And it sucks no matter how grown up we think we are.”

  Kramer ent
ered the room during Dee’s summary, followed closely by the rest of the team. “There’s no shame in being alone. Get a dog,” he said.

  “I’m not alone, I have two kids.”

  “So, you’re not alone yet,” Archer inserted. “If not a dog, kickball is great.”

  Dee rolled her eyes. She marveled that adults really played kickball. She associated it with pinning your bus number to your jacket and worrying about cooties. “So I hear.”

  “Let’s leave Dee be,” Winnie said as she patted Dee reassuringly on the forearm. “It’s hard out there for us successful, beautiful women.”

  “Successful?” Dee asked.

  “Yes,” Paula interrupted with a serious tone intended to bring the team back to business. They ignored her.

  “You work with us,” Archer said. “You can’t pretend to be successful.”

  “I feel pretty successful,” Kramer said. “Look how far I’ve made it. Eight years to retirement.”

  “We’re all successful,” Paula raised her voice and made her tone even more serious. “Or, we can be if we are aware of the current protocols and changes at Fast Airborne Venn Diaphragms, Inc.”

  “FAVDI?” Winnie suggested.

  “Actually, no,” Paula continued. “The new direction from corporate branding is to use the full name at all times, especially with outside customers. There’s been a bit of a splash in social media about different ways to abbreviate or truncate the name. So, use the full name whenever you need to use the name.”

  “Even in the URL?” Winnie asked.

  “Even in your thoughts,” Archer added.

  “Not in your thoughts, necessarily, but just a reminder that when spending company money, be sure to think of it as your own money and to treat it just as carefully.”

  “That’s why they pay us so little,” Kramer interjected. “To train us to be better stewards of the corporate dime.”

  Paula pressed forward. “Badgers, people. Badges must be worn above the waist at all times. If you lose your badge, there’s a fee to replace it.”

  “Did you say ‘badgers’?” Dee asked. “We have to wear badgers now?”

  “Red is not my color,” Archer opined.

  “Badgers aren’t red,” Kramer noted.

  “They’re cardinal,” Archer muttered as Paula pressed forward, talking over him.

  “Parking permits are required in the underground ramp. You’ll be issued a parking permit via interoffice mail. Hang the permit on your rear view mirror whenever you park in the ramp, including weekends. If you lose the permit, there’s a fee to replace it. If you park without a permit, you will be ticketed.”

  “Perhaps they can use all the money collected from fines to deal with this badger problem,” Archer suggested.

  “Enough,” Paula hissed through clenched teeth. “Just listen. Is that so hard? Listen to the information. Show up for meetings on time. Act like adults. Pretend like your jobs are important to you.”

  Paula stared grimly at the papers in front of her, refusing to notice the reactions of the team around her. They were bemused rather than chastened, but smart enough to hold their tongues, if only temporarily. Paula gathered her papers into a neat pile, pulled them to her chest as she stood and hurried from the room.

  “Things are getting bad,” Winnie noted once Paula had left.

  “I thought things were already bad,” Archer agreed.

  “Lower your expectations,” Kramer suggested.

  “That’s good advice for you, too,” Archer added as they all stood and began to exit the room. “Expectations can never be low enough when meeting men online.”

  “You’re the expert,” Kramer added.

  “Good luck on your date,” Winnie cheered to change the mood and divert attention away from Kramer’s use of implied homosexuality as a slur.

  Dee shook her head at Kramer and forced a smile at Winnie. She walked toward her cube for her purse wondering how brave her face would have to be to make it through lunch.

  As far as Metroville sea food bistros go, the Regal Seagull was far from the worst. The lunch buffet largely featured the bits of specials from the previous night which would otherwise have to be thrown out. The chef, though hilariously clumsy, did a solid job of picking out the brownish pieces and using those to stiffen the soups. Prices were therefore just shy of reasonable for a place which aspired to be fashionable despite lacking the appetite to invest in its own success.

  Dee waited in the foyer thinking about groceries and worrying about Lou. He needed something from her that Dee wasn’t able to provide. Or, maybe he didn’t. Maybe all he needed was time to adjust to all the changes in his life. Or, maybe that was a cop out and she was letting herself off the hook too easily. On the other hand, now that she had more time to spend with her kids, she didn’t seem to be connecting any better. That wasn’t true. She was connecting with Leigh. They had never been closer. And a good thing, too, because her impulsiveness required a close eye, particularly with the tumultuous onset of her powers. Maybe she was putting too much focus on Leigh rather than giving attention to Lou. Maybe Leigh’s powers were an excuse to spend time with her since that was, for the time being, so much easier than spending time with Lou. Maybe it was all excuses, all the way down, like a stack of uncertain, conflicted turtles. Meanwhile, Randy was still a dick, that was clearer now than ever.

  Max Depf, Dee’s date, walked right past Dee, who was too lost in thought to notice anything short of a punch from OctoTom (the eight-armed villain who wielded drum sticks like police batons and serially abducted children and forced them to listen to Rush), and requested a table for two from the hostess. Dee checked her watch more than five minutes later and, in leaving her name with the hostess on her way to the little hero’s room, discovered her date was waiting for her. Not waiting: Max was sitting at the table without her, but the half-empty schooner of Michelob Golden Lite indicated that he was not refraining from anything in advance of Dee’s arrival.

  Max bumped the table as he jumped up to greet Dee. After checking to make certain that his beer didn’t topple, he leaned in hard to kiss Dee on the cheek. The wool of his newsboy cap tickled her ear with the kiss. He smelled of after shave, something with mint, though he wore an immaculate five o’clock shadow which took three days to grow.

  “Hi, I’m Max,” he squeezed all three words into a single quick breath that fluttered the hair over Dee’s ear. She reflexively tucked her dark violet hair behind her ear as she willed the tickle away.

  “I’m Dee,” she replied while sitting down. Max handed her the drink menu. She took it reflexively. She glanced at it for a moment before remembering that it was a Monday and she was due back at work in less than an hour.

  She set the drink menu down with a brief apology: “I have to be back at work at one.”

  “Then you better hurry, or you’ll have to work the afternoon stone cold sober,” Max said.

  “Sounds like a nightmare,” Dee replied as she looked over the lunch menu. She was hoping for something with avocado, which against all odds she had come to enjoy, and without tomato, which she had always loathed. “Actually,” she added, thinking aloud, “if I had a drink now, I’d probably be napping at my desk.”

  The waitress came over to take their orders, which gave Max and Dee another few minutes worth of chit chat. Max requested a second beer with his chicken finger basket. He ate the chicken fingers with a knife and fork, but managed the waffle fries with his fingers. He was full of simple questions and seemed pleased with Dee’s answers. She worked for Fast Airborne Venn Diaphragms, whatever that was, she was recently divorced, she had two kids and had always lived in Metroville. She liked to travel, though she had only left the country once, to visit Japan where her years as a collegiate swimmer were put to the ultimate test as she swam into a flooding nuclear reactor to save two dozen field trippers from severe radiation exposure. The bulk of that story — from the flooding to the part where she gained super powers, heroed as an independ
ent for a bit, made the big leagues with Confederated Justice and finally retired after a series of deadly battles with hero turned pariah Amazing Man — went unsaid.

  Max was also divorced, but had no children. The marriage had lasted less then 18 months. She sounded like a real piece of work. Dee felt like she had to embellish Randy’s failings just to justify their split. Renee Lasso Depf had been both controlling and absent, as well as icy, cruel, frigid, dismissive and rambunctiously, abruptly, consistently unfaithful.

  Truly, she was history’s greatest monster and her expensive clothes didn’t even really fit.

  Max offered to share his fries with Dee, who declined. “You can afford to eat a few fries,” Max offered by way of a compliment. Dee demurred. She could eat whatever she wanted, but found it somehow impolite to pound through a 22-ounce porterhouse with cheesy potatoes and baked beans in public. Much better to eat a sensible lunch — a chopped salad with avocado, hold the croutons and the tomatoes — and to eat deep dish pizza by the yard when she was safely at home.

  Max glanced at his watch while nibbling at the last of his fries.

  “This is nice,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Dee agreed. “You’re easy to talk to.”

  “Thanks,” Max smiled. He caught his breath on the verge of a thought. He started again, then stopped. The waitress came by to clear his place. He gently slapped her wrist as she reached for the plate. “I’m still working on that, luv,” he said. He turned his face toward the waitress but not his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, looking to hastily back away.

  “Would you take my bowl, please?” Dee asked. “I’m all done.”

  “Of course,” the waitress replied. Dee saw how flushed her cheeks were as she came closer to take her bowl.

  “Thanks. It was really good,” Dee said.

  “You’re welcome,” the waitress replied. She stiffened her back and turned toward the kitchen with Dee’s bowl. Max glanced at his watch again, then called to her. “Hon? Michelle?” He snapped his fingers. “Could I get another draft? Just a short one. Running low on time.”

  “Certainly,” the waitress nodded. She turned back around far enough so that Dee could note her name tag: Melissa. “I’ll be right back.”

  Melissa took two steps toward the bar before Max called out again. “And the check!” Melissa turned, smiled and nodded: “And the check. Right away.”

  “I don’t know where they get these servers some times,” Max commented. “It’s like they don’t want to be here.”

  “I don’t always want to be at my job, either,” Dee said.

  “No, of course not. But you pretend, right? You pretend for your boss that you like your job. Hell, I’m going to pretend to be sober and working all afternoon. A brisk walk and a couple pieces of gum, then sit quiet and smile the rest of the day to make my boss happy. When you think about it, we’re not really her customers. While we’re here, we’re her boss.”

  “I’ve never waited tables,” Dee said. “I think I would be pretty bad at it.”

  “How could you be bad at it?” Max asked. Melissa returned to drop off the beer and the bill. “There’s nothing to it. You write down what people want and then you bring it to them.”

  “There might be more to it than that,” Dee suggested.

  Max smiled. “I’m sure you’re right,” he agreed. “I’ve never worked at a restaurant either. But she didn’t even take my plate.” Max took half a breath before offering his next thought. “I think I’d be a good bartender, though.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Max said. “I like to drink. Plus, I always wanted to learn to juggle. Oh, I’m also left handed.”

  “Really?” Dee asked.

  “Sure am. That has to be a big advantage, you know. If you have two people working behind the bar, you wouldn’t be bumping elbows all the time. Like Thanksgiving.”

  “You might be on to something there,” Dee said.

  Max smiled again, holding his grin until Dee laughed and smiled back. Max took a long pull at his short beer, nearly finishing it.

  “We’ve both been hurt before,” Max said, suddenly becoming more serious than the foam on his upper lip allowed Dee to take him. His face matched his tone: even his eyebrows seemed to darken as he lowered his head and looked up at Dee with his hands folded below his chin. “So I’m just going to put this out there and see what happens. I don’t know what you’re going to say, but I can tell that you could hurt me really badly if I let you. I really enjoyed lunch. I don’t usually drink this much, but you’re so pretty it made me nervous. Anyway, I would love to see you for dinner sometime, sometime soon, if you want. And if you don’t, just say so. Don’t say yes now and then ‘forget’ to answer my texts tomorrow or next week.”

  “I would like to have dinner with you,” Dee agreed. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  Even Melissa, while dropping off change, cringed as she heard the words escape Dee's lips.

  Saturday, October 1, 2011

  It was well after eight p.m. as Leigh Major waited and waited for the Snapchat that didn’t come. Todd. Todd was good at making promises, but terrible at keeping them. He loved his new twelve string guitar more than anything else in the world. More than keeping promises, that was for certain. Not enough to learn how to tune it himself, but he loved it enough to want to learn to tune it himself. Laziness trumps many a passion.

  She liked Todd. No sense in pretending otherwise. When he first approached her in the hall between classes she was beyond thrilled. His tattered tan cargo shorts revealed smooth, skinny calves and his tousled brown hair fell into his face over and around his eyes — they were blue, like the sea on a very calm, boring day when one wonders what’s so great, and what’s so blue, about the sea anyway.

  He was sixteen already, one of the older sophomores at Metroville East. He sang in the choir, skipped and pretended to skip just enough classes to seem dangerous, vacationed in Mexico where he had tried tequila, was definitely getting a tribal tattoo for his eighteenth birthday and could drive at night. A pentafecta.

  On the other hand, he couldn’t be bothered to follow through on a promise to chat with Leigh. Leigh had even sent one friendly message to remind him, then a really funny one a little bit later to show him what he was missing. She refused, now, to remind him any further. If he wasn’t going to chat back at her, she would find something to do without him.

  Leigh found herself in her mom's room in the time it took to check her phone for messages three more times. Wandering more than anything else. There wasn’t a ton of room in Randy’s apartment so when Leigh was with her mom she found herself walking around more than she used to, just because she could. Usually she wandered while eating, of course. Today it was Fritos. She was leaving a faint trail of corn dust up and down the halls and now across the carpet of her mom’s room. The only space that was safe was Lou’s room. He was locked in his room, as usual, doing whatever it was that he did these days.

  In the next moment, she found herself in her mom’s closet, wandering her hands over her mom’s clothes. It was like touching the exhibits in a museum and covering them in faint yellow dust. The clothes stretched deep into the crowded closet, traveling ever backwards in time. There, at the furthest back, was a garment bag that hadn’t been ignored long enough to begin collecting dust of any variety. Without opening it, Leigh knew what it contained and what she was going to do that night.

  Bo Tannie was born a bad seed. He was delivered with a yellow pallor common to jaundiced infants, but early rounds of phototherapy did nothing but mix a bit of blue into his unnatural pigment so that he spent the next nineteen years of his life with a slightly green complexion, as if he was perpetually seasick or recovering from grocery store sushi. With his long, lean build, stooped back and pompadour, he could be mistaken for steamed asparagus.

  He responded to this adversity aggressively from the start. Although punching the NICU nurse in the nose was purely acc
idental, it certainly presaged his behavior to come. At every stage of development following volitional movement he attacked all obstacles with the same flailing furor. He rained blows on lamps, dogs and his parents with equal vigor. His maternal grandmother pooh-poohed her daughter’s concerns over Bo’s behavior and bought him a toy carpentry set for his second birthday. She retreated into a more respectful silence on the matter after Bo hammered a plastic nail into her foot far enough to break the skin because she tried to move him away from the television during Power Rangers.

  As a senior, Bo had two hobbies. First, he tormented Lou Major who was suffering through a miserable freshman year as nearly the puniest student at Metroville East. By spring break, Lou was bothered enough that he fashioned archery targets featuring Bo’s smirking face. He was afraid to actually shoot them and couldn’t stomach steamed asparagus.. Bo’s other hobby was secretly playing Champions Online. He pieced his computer together himself through a series of crap jobs and petty thefts around Metroville. He had now moved on to Rift and was still working jobs just long enough to buy a new video card or power supply.

  Leigh was aware of the tormenting when she giggled at Bo’s attention before the Friday night football games. Even as a seventh grader, she had sense enough to stay with her friends no matter what Bo promised would be waiting for her in the back seat of his car. She had a good idea what it would be, even if she didn’t know the proper name for it yet.

  Bo was between things now — out of high school, not interested in more school and not yet required to work more than a few hours a week to keep his step-dad off his back. When his Rift rig was in solid shape, Bo spent his money on as much cheap beer as he could dearly buy from the guys who taught him how to smoke.

  Bo still divided his time equally between the thirteen-year-old girls who dreamed of nothing more than being older and the boys of gentle nature and any age who would be worth shaking down without making the effort of actually beating anyone up. His yellowing smile was far more grim when directed at the boys.

  It was Saturday night, so no high school football games to skulk around and scout for victims of opportunity. Instead, Bo was imagining how awesomely he could shred the strip mall parking lot in Tony Hawk’s Underground while eyeballing the girls on their way in and out of the Apple store.

  Not that Bo would have cared too much, but the girl he eventually moved on was buying a new three-pin cable for her fourth generation iPod Touch with a gift card she got at her eleventh birthday party. That she looked thirteen should have been little comfort to any man approaching his 20s. It didn't comfort Bo, either, but only because his conscience needed no comforting. Bo joked with her and smiled slyly as the evening grew darker, never taking his fingers off the front tire of her bike.

  Dusk gave way to night before she realized it. A joke or two more and she was confronted with the realization that she wasn’t comfortable getting home alone in the dark. Maybe, as Bo promised, her bike would fit easily into the trunk of his 280ZX, even though it looked like it had hardly any trunk space at all. If she took the front tire off, the front fork would still probably loll out the trunk like a panting dog’s tongue.

  He seemed friendly enough, though even at eleven, Molly knew he wasn’t harmless. Home wasn’t more than a couple miles away. She smiled as she played with the ends of her hair waiting for a decision to happen. Whether it was a hint or not, Bo was more than willing to take the opportunity. He took the bike from her hands and rolled it to the back of his car. He was fishing in the breast pocket of his faded denim jacket, half a size too small when he bought it, now a size and a half too small and practically unbuttonable, when he felt an unexpectedly strong hand reach up and grab him by the shoulder.

  When he spun around, he found Captain Major standing before him, but not quite up to him.

  “You’re short,” Bo mentioned.

  “You’re dumb,” Captain Major replied. “And butt ugly.”

  “What’s your beef?” Bo asked. “I’m just giving the girl a ride home.”

  “How about I walk Molly home,” Captain Major suggested. “And you find your way back to the first rock you can crawl under.”

  “Hey, man,” Bo pushed Captain Major’s hand from his shoulder. “I’m not doing anything wrong. So why don’t you leave us alone?”

  Captain Major grabbed the bike by the seat and handlebars and pried it away from Bo.

  “I’m sorry,” Molly was mumbling to herself now. “I should get home.”

  “I’m happy to walk you,” Captain Major assured her.

  “I’ll be fine,” the girl said.

  “’Cause you’ll be with me, sweetheart,” Bo offered a winning smile.

  “No, thanks,” she said. She slipped the bike from Captain Major’s hands and began to roll it away.

  “Come on!” Bo insisted. He grabbed her by the elbow. Captain Major grabbed his wrist. A jolt of energy surged through all of them. Molly jumped. She landed awkwardly against her bike and tumbled to the ground, landing on top of it. Captain Major reached toward her, trying to form an apology. Bo jumped back from the shock only long enough to ball his other fist and throw a haymaker into Captain Major’s skull, connecting just behind her right ear.

  Captain Major pitched forward, landing awkwardly upon the girl and pressing her further into her bike. Captain Major raised herself up to her hands and knees. Bo’s canvas shoes dug into her ribs with a ferocious kick. He was spitting curses at her now, his words unrepeatable and impossible to unsay. Captain Major saw that Molly was bleeding from her knuckles as she lay on her side beneath her. She ignored the kicks and worried over whether Molly had scraped her hands when she fell the first time, or when she had fallen on her. Bikes were awkward things when not moving. Anything could have happened in the off-balance moments as spokes, chains and fingers rushed toward pavement.

  Bo kept up the pace of his kicks, landing blow after blow, but each kick was less forceful and accurate than the last. He still aimed for the softness of Captain Major’s belly, but was starting to connect with the sharp hardness of her elbow and ulna.

  “You’ll be okay,” Captain Major promised. Molly looked up at the masked eyes and felt safe. She smiled gratefully. Captain Major shared a determined grin and began to stand.

  “Enough, Bo,” Captain Major easily blocked the ineffectual blows as Bo gave up on the kicks and started throwing wild, arcing punches. She moved forward, trying to corner him in the parking lot, but Bo scampered about, instinctively avoiding every trap that she set. Captain Major feinted a right hand. Bo cowered behind his forearms and Captain Major moved in to push him, reeling, into the far corner of the lot. Then she helped him stumble into the alley between the Apple Store and Taco and Vansghetti, a take and bake Mexitalian place that would stay in business for three more weeks before the owner skipped town without paying staff for their last month of work.

  Bo backed into a pile of untended garbage bags. He fell on his ass with a crinkly crash, then rolled to his hands and scrambled further away. He stopped and looked back at his patient pursuer when the tinkling sound of broken glass bouncing over the pavement was interrupted by Captain Major’s laughter.

  “You really are a coward,” Captain Major shook her head at him.

  “No, please,” Bo begged. He held a hand in front of his face for protection as he struggled to his feet.

  “That’s far enough,” Captain Major halted him as he reached a knee.

  “Please, please don’t hit me,” Bo pleaded. “Don’t hurt me. I didn’t do anything.”

  Captain Major pretended to think hard about what to do while she enjoyed the thrill of having someone beg for mercy. She picked him up by the denim of his jacket just far enough so that they were eye to eye.

  “Fine,” she said. “But if I ever catch you hassling girls that age again, I’ll cut off your dick and feed it to the raccoons.”

  She formed a delicate plasma blade extending from two fingers on her right hand. She meant to extend it
toward his throat (or his groin; she hadn’t fully made up her mind) but Bo rolled out of his jacket. The fall was short — more than six inches, less than a foot — but the pavement was hard and uneven. Bo cried out in pain, then flopped to his side, soaking his Slipknot t-shirt in the Mexitalian effluent of canned tomatoes and the juice of a thousand bulbs of garlic.

  Before Captain Major could turn to go, Philip Bottomest, Bo’s best friend since the third grade, swung the lug wrench from the trunk of Bo’s car at the back of her legs. With wide eyes and a silent smile he smashed her knee with a sickening crunch. Captain Major toppled. She fell to her side as Bo drew himself to his feet.

  Curly Quinn, who was really more of Philip’s friend than Bo’s, was there as well, carrying a tattered golf umbrella also from Bo’s trunk. He brought it down on Captain Major’s neck with a gleeful cry. She turned to beat back his attack only to feel the cold cut of steel as Bo sank the blade of a butterfly knife into her side.

  She reached back for the knife, but Bo fell upon her, pressing his weight against her, pressing forward on the knife with his left hand and grabbing a fistful of hair with his right. He pushed her face forward into the muck and awful of the damp street until a gesture from Philip broke his reverie.

  Still holding Captain Major down, he pulled back on her hair. Her face was dripping from the street, stinging her eyes as she tried to blink her vision clear.

  When she did, she saw Molly astride her bike, watching in horror. “Go!” she yelled. Molly didn’t move. Captain Major saw the wrench in Philip’s raised hand as he shuffled forward like he was trying to time the steps just right. “Now!” was the last word she managed before the wrench shattered her jaw. She felt the breaking of her bones from the moment of impact until Bo slammed her head back into the pavement and she slipped mercifully from consciousness.

  “She’s still breathing,” Curly nudged at Captain Major with his umbrella.

  “Fuck that bitch,” Philip wiped at the bloody edge of his wrench with his fingers. “We should probably finish her off. She knows you, Bo. If she wakes up, she’ll come after you again.”

  “Then I’ll take her down again,” Bo paced back and forth next to Captain Major’s still form. “As many times as it takes before she learns her lesson.”

  “And what if she goes to the cops?” Curly asked.

  “That’s right,” Philip argued. “Are you going to go spend the rest of your life as somebody’s bitch in prison because you don’t have the balls to be a man?”

  “Let me think,” Bo squared his jaw and stared back at his car. The trunk yet yawned open.

  “Bo, brother, you don’t have time to daydream about what could have been. I’m telling you what your choices are now.” Philip gripped Bo’s shoulder and squeezed. “Either we finish this, together, right this fucking second, or we’re going to wind up in prison. Or dead.”

  Bo stepped away from Philip’s hand and looked at him. Philip’s face lit up as Bo’s eyes dimmed from revulsion to resignation. “Yeah,” Bo muttered. “I guess yeah.”

  “No one would have to go to prison,” Curly argued while backing away. He accidentally stepped between Philip and Captain Major. He side stepped quickly as he aimed for any exit. “It was self-defense.”

  Curly’s next retreating step never reached the pavement. A sandy flow of fabric floated from the shadows to sweep Curly’s feet with a spinning kick into his calves. Curly lost his wind as he fell onto his back. A swift kick from a luxuriously soft leather boot curled Curly over his stomach, where he gasped for breath.

  “What are you doing here?” Bo wondered as he stared open-mouthed at the legend standing in a puddle of green chili and ravioli. The Immortal flexed his fingers inside his heavy leather gloves. The creak of the leather, desperate for oil, seemed to swirl around the alley. His face, that which was visible below his mask, was grim. With no words and no expression, he waited, the faint outlines of the symbol for infinity shifting as the breeze moved his heavy cape over his chest.

  With a whoop, Philip charged, his bloody wrench held high. He brought the wrench down hard. The Immortal easily dodged the blow and sent Philip tumbling forward before dropping a swift elbow to the base of Philip’s neck. Philip pitched forward, eyes open but unseeing, as his face splashed into a puddle of rain water.

  Bo looked to run to his car. He tried darting left and right, but The Immortal cut him off and forced him backwards into a corner between a dumpster and the Mexitalian wall. “Dude, it was self-defense. She started it.”

  The Immortal slapped the young man hard enough to twist Bo’s entire body like he was wringing out a wet towel. “Don’t call me ‘Dude’,” The Immortal said. Bo spit blood from a gash on the inside of his cheek. “And don’t tell me it was self-defense. You stabbed her in the back with a smile on your face recorded by three different surveillance cameras.”

  The Immortal wrapped his gloved hand around Bo’s neck and squeezed. He turned Bo’s chin up while he stared him down. “I can’t turn you in. I can’t kill you. And I can’t rip your dick off.”

  The Immortal grabbed Bo’s balls with his other gloved hand. “Actually, I could rip your dick off. I could,” he paused to squeeze as hard as he dared while Bo choked back a sob, “crush your nuts like tomatillos and serve them up to the alley cats. But I’m not going to. I’m not going to do any of that.”

  Bo collapsed against the wall as The Immortal released him from his grip. Bo noticed how loud his breathing was but couldn’t help but to continue gulping for air. He began to slide along the wall, feeling for a chance to escape. The Immortal took one step backward. Bo began to turn and run, but The Immortal stopped him with a word:

  “Now. I’m not going to do any of that now. But when that girl wakes up, I’m going to do whatever she asks me to do. I won’t feel the least bit bad about it. If she asks me to, your mother will spend each of her remaining birthdays opening a finely wrapped gift box with another piece of your body inside. Go.”

  Bo, feeling clammy and faint, ran to his car, started it, backed up without looking and raced off into the night. His flapping trunk finally slammed shut as he bounced over a curb and accelerated toward Fourth Street.

  As Bo sped away, The Immortal glanced at the other three bodies still littering the alley. Two were slowly crawling away, afraid to look in his direction. The other remained far too still.

  The Immortal knelt at Captain Major’s side, checking her limbs and the knife wound before contemplating her broken face. Her mouth was a bloody pile of teeth, so confused he couldn’t tell which belonged where and which were in their original places. The left side of her face was swelling enormously with the skin turning almost black in places.

  He felt her pulse at her neck and counted her breaths. Despite everything else, her heart was strong.

  He bent forward and brushed the hair from her forehead. He intended to kiss her, but the fall into the pavement left her forehead cut, bruised and dirty. He found no place safe for even the gentlest kiss.

  “You’re going to be fine,” The Immortal patted her hand. “I’m taking you somewhere safe. We’ll make sure you’re fine. You’re going to be okay.”

  Captain Major’s eyes fluttered open, then fell back nearly closed. She tried to speak, but the pain in her jaw and the disaster in her mouth meant that she couldn’t properly form any words.

  “Hush,” The Immortal quieted her. “My ‘copter is on the way. We’ll take care of the pain, then fix you right up.”

  Captain Major continued to breathe words, moving her lips around them, trying to whisper them through her broken face. Seeing she wouldn’t be dissuaded, The Immortal bent forward, placing his ear directly over her lips. He shut the world out around them, straining desperately to understand what she needed to say. Finally, as the helicopter began to land and all hope of hearing was lost, he pieced together what her raspy whispers meant to convey.

  “Don’t tell my mom.”

  Dee Major was doing her best to
focus on the finishing touches of the early dinner for Lou and Leigh rather that stew in her anger at Randy for having changed plans at the last minute — again. It was his weekend for the kids, but he had dropped them off that morning with vague reports that he felt like he was coming down with something and didn’t want to expose the kids. Suddenly, and for the first time, he was very, very concerned about their academic progress. Of course, part of the subtext in his complaint was that his place was so small and they all shared a bathroom, and so on, so they couldn’t help but infect one another. Just one more reminder of the petty jealousies he was nurturing. There was a lesson in there for Dee about forgiving, forgetting or just moving forward, but she was having trouble remembering to see it among the flurry of pots and pans as she tried to make tacos and grilled cheese without spilling anything on her new dress. If she dated more, she’d figure out these simple logistics.

  Lou was in his room. He was ever in his room, when he was home. He was out more these days, running or hanging out with his new friends on the team whose names he never seemed willing to share. Dee was initially happy that he was spending more time with the runners. Anything seemed better than moping around the house. Surely it was better, for him at least, to spend some time with his peers. Dee simply regretted that she saw him even less than before and that his attitude, toward her at least, was just as brutally shitty as before. She gave him life. She probably deserved all the pain he offered her in return.

  Leigh’s attitude remained dangerously exuberant. She seemed alive to all the new possibilities that life had to offer. As if the divorce freed Leigh to explore her own life. Perhaps it wasn’t nearly so complicated. On net, the separation and divorce, combined with retiring from heroing, had reduced the base level of stress and anxiety in the house from Apollo 13 to Rocky 2. Even Dee couldn’t help noticing, from time to time, the absence of the resentment which she had been carrying around for years. Perhaps, just perhaps, the mere absence of misery was a positive change for her children. At least one of them.

  Leigh continued to take a strong interest in Dee’s dating life. The dates she had arranged had in some way worked out. Stefan was an obvious miss, but Leigh took one glance at Stefan’s profile after the date and came up with half a dozen warning signs that she would be wise enough to spot in the future. Mike seemed a good guy even though he was overwhelmingly interested in lame kids activities. Leigh was very proud of Max, though, as Max had been Dee’s highest match on the site and they were already going on their third date.

  “I like your outfit, mom,” Leigh said as she waited for her dinner to be ready. “It’s really pretty.”

  “Thanks, Leigh. That’s nice of you to say.”

  “Do you think you'll marry Max?” Leigh asked.

  Dee’s whirlwind of stirring and chopping snapped to an immediate halt. She felt the clammy grip of panic on her neck for another instant before deciding that Leigh was back to teasing her.

  “Probably,” Dee answered.

  “Really?” Leigh asked. “Will you change your name? Will you be Dee Depf?

  “I don’t think so. I’m already sorry I didn’t go back to my maiden name. It would have been easier to get rid of you.”

  “Drum?” Leigh said. “Your maiden name sounds weird. ‘Dee Drum’. No wonder you changed it.”

  “Your dad really wanted me to hyphenate it so I’d be Dee Drum-Major. How ridiculous would that have been?”

  “And then when you married Max, you would be Dee Depf-Drum-Major,” Leigh marveled. “You’d have to move to the island of misfit toys.”

  “That’s not how it works, dear.”

  “You don’t know how the island of misfit toys works. No one does. It’s a mystery,” Leigh feigned amazement, then shifted gears. “Are you going to have another baby? Or babies?”

  “You’re about to get your permit. I don’t think I could handle those worries on top of baby worries.”

  “Really?”

  “No,” Dee said. “Honestly, Leigh, I don’t think I’ll ever marry again. I certainly won’t have more kids. I love both you guys, of course, but I wouldn’t have had kids if I knew what I was going to become. I put everyone at risk. I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

  “Where are you going tonight?”

  “Some place that Winnie recommended. Max is making me pick. Like I know restaurants.”

  “Respect yourself,” Leigh adopted a mock serious tone. “If you don’t, no one else will. Make good choices. I’m proud of you. Use a condom. Practice on a banana if you're not sure how. You’re still my special girl.” She waggled a finger menacingly at her mother who shook her head and seasoned the simmering meat.

  Dee was nervous as they walked into the brightly lit restaurant for the first time. She gripped Max’s arm a little more tightly as a strange wailing came from somewhere beyond the hostess stand. A flash of fire grabbed her attention from the corner of her eye. She turned quickly and flexed toward a battle stance. It wasn’t easy in her new dress which fit her so well she could barely bend her knees.

  Her alarm subsided as soon as she noticed that the fire was nothing more than the extravagance of a hibachi chef with an over-sized onion volcano erupting to delight a 10 year old’s birthday party.

  “Seems like a fun place,” Max said as they waited for their turn with the hostess.

  “What else would you expect from Sushi and the Ganges? Winnie loves this place. The food is great. They’ve got the best Indian-sushi-hibachi fusion in town,” Dee recited all the facts she knew about the place.

  “Reservation for two,” Max held up two fingers on his right hand for the hostess.

  “Name?” she asked.

  “Max. Max Depf.”

  The hostess scanned her book for the reservation. “Ah, yes,” she said as she found the reservation. “In the Taj Mahal. Very romantic.”

  Max grinned slyly. “Very romantic,” he repeated.

  “Very long walk,” Dee noted. “From the Ganges to the Taj Mahal.”

  “Then we’ll have quite the appetites,” Max agreed.

  The walk was, in fact, quite short. In no time, they left the louder parties behind and entered a new, cozy room.

  “This is nice,” Dee admitted as she surveyed the private room with pale yellow light hiding in the curves of heavy red drapes hanging on three walls. In the center of the room was a warm teppanyaki griddle. Dee and Max took their seats opposite another couple and peaked at them over the griddle while pretending to look at their menus. The other couple was young and immune to the judgments of the rest of the world. They held each other close, always touching, hands on faces, noses to necks, caressing and nuzzling between sips of sake.

  There were four empty chairs left at the griddle when the chef appeared. He confirmed their orders brusquely and in choppy English, then set up his work space. Dee was startled at the noise from the start, as he banged his knife and spatula against the grill. Max pulled heavily at his bottle of Sapporo while watching the chef work with great interest.

  “I could’ve been a chef, I think,” Max said dreamily as he idly fiddled with his black cashmere fedora.

  “Do you like cooking?” Dee wondered.

  “Oh, no,” Max said. “But I like fire.”

  Sure enough, the chef was lighting small fires across the griddle like a Vegas showman. He ran through all the usual tricks, including catching a bit of egg in his hat on the second try and, much to Max’s delight, soaking Dee’s face with a squirt of sake from his squeeze bottle.

  Through it all the other couple hardly seemed to pay attention so focused were they on one another. They shared smoldering looks, but not just with each other. They seemed to want everyone at the restaurant to know that they were fighting every instinct in their bodies just to keep their pants on until they tumbled into the backseat of a taxi to take them home for the night.

  Max was mesmerized by the carrying on. He ordered another beer to go along with the show while De
e tried to focus on her grilled chicken and fried rice. The woman whispered something that made her date smile. He kissed her and took his wallet out. He left several folded bills next to his plate, bowed slightly to the chef and escorted her from the room without another word, his hand trailing gently from the skin of her neck below her neatly trimmed pageboy haircut all the way down to the butterfly tattoo hidden beneath her blouse as he gently walked her through the beaded curtain that gave the room a sense of intimacy. Max watched the proceedings with open-mouthed fascination.

  In the next moment, Dee noticed the chef was finished cleaning up the grill. As she nibbled at her dinner, he, too, departed. Dee and Max were alone in the dimly lit, velvety room.

  She almost had time to enjoy the mood before she felt his hand grab her breast. His touch was less eagerness than desperation. She didn’t react, not even to flinch, and he squeezed, too hard. She shook her head to wake herself up from her own thoughts. “Too hard for what?” one of her internal voices berated the one that had given the instruction not to flinch. She pushed his hand away.

  “Why don’t me and you go back to my place?” Max asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Dee said. She checked her mood carefully, following her training to keep her anger and confusion under control.

  “Nothing has to happen, Dee. Unless you want to. And you might like it,” Max moved his hand to tickle the back of her neck. She shrugged and twisted away.

  “Nothing like that is going to happen. Not tonight,” Dee said.

  “I think it would be good for you,” Max said. “See how it feels to be with a man who cares for you.”

  “If you cared for me you’d be using your words rather than your hands. And if you listened to me you’d know that groping me in a restaurant is absolutely not how to get me into bed,” Dee stood up and took a step back. She felt like she needed a little more room, more air of her own to breathe. The cozy room now felt small and too warm.

  Max sat for a moment. He swirled his bottle of beer and tossed back the last few drops. He slammed the bottle back down on the table hard enough that Dee wondered whether it would break. He pushed himself away from the table and out of his chair. He stood and stepped toward her. She noticed for the first time how much taller she was than him. He raised a finger to point toward her chin as he spat his anger at her.

  “Listen? I’ve listened to all your stupid stories about your stupid boring kids. ‘Wah! My son doesn’t like me anymore.’ Boo fucking hoo. I take you nice places, I give you compliments, bring you gifts, buy you meals. And no pressure from me. But as soon as I have a need, you turn into a frigid fucking bitch.”

  “I liked you,” Dee replied. “But you don’t get to buy me like a fried rice or a Dos Equis. Don’t you dare think of me like that.”

  “You’ll take everything I give you, but you won’t give anything back in return. You’re just another thieving skank. Lead me on, take advantage that I’m a nice guy. Well, not one penny more. This well is dry. You stupid slut. So ungrateful. Guess fucking what? You’re buying me dinner tonight!”

  With that, Max turned and marched to the beaded entryway. Without paying attention to where he was going, he nearly crashed into the busboy coming to clear the plates.

  “Idiot,” Max hissed toward the busboy.

  Captain Major’s phone buzzed in her pocket. Dee answered it as automatically as she had grabbed it on her way out that evening. She heard The Immortal’s voice. His tone grabbed her attention. She didn’t fully understand what he was saying, but a million questions immediately rushed through her head. She squeezed out two, getting even those in the wrong order: “Where? What?” She heard the location but couldn’t remember where it was. “Send it to my map,” she said. Not even knowing where she was going, she made one more promise before she hung up: “I’ll be there in five.”

  Max returned and poked his face through the beaded curtain. “Enjoy walking home, you worthless bitch.” Max paused long enough to delight that she seemed totally shattered. There were even tears. He smiled and was nearly whistling as he walked back to his car.

  Dee heard not a word he had said, but waited for him to leave before racing to the kitchen and out the back door and then into the darkness beyond.

  Dee Major clambered up the fire escape at the back of the Sushi and the Ganges. She ditched her shoes at the top and ripped her dress to the top of her thigh so she could run. She rushed from rooftop to rooftop, following the directions fed to her from the nav system on her phone. Barefoot and barely clothed, she felt neither the touch of the night air as it rushed over her skin nor the stabs and pinches of the rough and pebbled roofs as she willed herself ever forward, taking risks, never looking back, inviting any hurt that might come her way.

  Finally, in the distance, she saw The Immortal’s new commercial building — Intie Tower. An immodest building that towered over the rest of its block, it was slowly being finished, floor by floor, from the bottom up and the top down. Dee was 40 floors from the top when she landed on a convenient scaffold and pushed her way through plastic sheeting into the steel and cement skeleton of the building.

  She knocked over sawhorses and dodged between piles of brick waiting to be laid and refuse waiting to be disposed to reach a stairwell. She opened the door and felt her heart change. It shifted from 210 beats per minute of cardiovascular efficiency to half the rate and twice the strength as fear gripped her. She lost her breath and heaved next to a bucket of broken timbers and random sweepings.

  She was on the 32nd floor. She had never been to the building, despite a few requests from Phil Intie, the now-reputable alter ego of the once-villainous Immortal. She knew vaguely of the plans from conversations long past when they drank coffee together and searched for anything to talk about except Phil’s grotesque success and Dee’s failing marriage.

  The thirteenth floor of Intie Tower was among the first completed and the only one hidden. It was assembled by microbots directed by The Immortal’s advanced artificial intelligence engine. The thirteenth floor held all the remnants and memories of The Immortal’s career and the most salient feature of the moment: a fully equipped, largely automated medical bay. That’s where Leigh would be, if she were alive. She had to be alive.

  Dee bounded down the floors, sweeping her legs over the safety railing to save steps. She reached the fifteenth floor and slowed, not knowing exactly how to proceed. She thought of Lou. If Leigh was dying, she had to call him, but she couldn’t think of how to say anything to him. She couldn’t talk to him about washing his crunchy socks or taking care of his cereal bowls. She couldn’t possibly tell him about this.

  She moved cautiously now as she continued to descend. She studied the walls with her eyes and fingers, hoping to see some evidence of the floor she knew to be there. Nothing in the walls betrayed anything. She reached the landing of the twelfth floor and looked out at the city that had betrayed her. It was busy in the street below. The lights of cars lit the pedestrians milling on the sidewalks and walking in all directions. From this height, everyone seemed peaceful and in control.

  Dee punched the wall next to the stairwell window in frustration, angry at the instructions she had been too upset to understand. The punch failed to reveal anything. Her damaged daughter was nearby, but as lost as if she were stranded in Hannibal Caverns. She suppressed a scream and turned to work her way back up the steps.

  A bright, yellow light began to leak out from the bottom of the window. The window itself rolled up like blinds to reveal Phil Intie wearing fresh scrubs and a very concerned look. He held out his hand and beckoned Dee forward. She followed, not marveling at all as the window rolled back down and resumed concealing the secret entrance with a live projection of the outside world.

  Intie led her in a quick circle. Three right turns through a narrow, utilitarian hall led them to a doorway on their left. He scanned his retinas to release the locks, then opened the door. They stepped into a blindingly white room. There, but ten yards away
, in a bed surrounded by monitors, Leigh Major lie.

  Phil opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came. He stood silently, looking out over the machinery his wealth and genius had created. The steady beeps of the many monitors were tuned to be calming, but did little to lessen his worry. Everything was out of his control now and all his jobs were done. There was nothing more but to wait.

  Dee no longer saw her friend Phil or the expanse of white flowing outward in all directions. She saw her little girl, battered, bruised, unconscious, lying in a hospital bed, her body feeding signals to a dozen monitors that perched around her like scavengers. She rushed to her daughter’s side and grabbed Leigh’s clammy hand. She squeezed until she imagined that Leigh was squeezing back.

  She wasn’t.

  An automated voice began to speak. Its tone was programmed to be reassuring, but it sounded droll and mocking to Dee’s ears as it reported its latest findings. Blood pressure was low, pulse ox was low, respiration was low, brain activity was minimal. “Minimal!” Dee seized onto that word. She whipped around to glare at Phil. He patted the air between them, urging her to stay calm.

  “There’s no sign of brain damage,” he soothed. “She’s just drifting in and out of consciousness. She’s been on a morphine drip while we stabilized her.”

  “Is this where she should be?” Dee asked.

  “Look at her,” Phil said. “It’s the only place she can be.”

  An image flashed across Dee’s mind. The roundabout for dropping off at Metroville East. Yes, of course that’s where Leigh should be. Off at school or at a friend’s or in the kitchen whining for Dee to make a third supper. Dee pulled the light sheet back and looked down at her daughter’s body. Leigh still wore remnants of the new Captain Major kit, though it had been torn in the fight and then cut to ribbons to examine the wounds and attach the monitoring strips.

  “I should have put her in a gown as soon as I got her here,” Phil continued. “But I couldn’t. I don’t think she’d forgive me for taking it off.”

  “I don’t know if I can forgive her for putting it on,” Dee said.

  “Of course you can,” Phil said. “You will.”

  “I don’t mean her,” Dee said.

  “I know,” Phil softly agreed.

  “What happened?” Dee demanded.

  Phil scratched his head hoping that the motion would shake the details into order. He started with a confession.

  “The suit I gave you,” he began. “I had a way to track you. I didn’t expect to use it. I didn’t know that I would ever use it, but I thought it might be handy, in case we were ever working together again. That was before you left the business. Of course.”

  Phil waited a moment for that to sink in, but Dee declined to react. She stayed quiet and willed him to get on with it. “The system,” Phil waved airily to indicate the latest revision to the artificially intelligent systems which managed most of the building and lived in another part of the thirteenth floor, “alerted me when you went out on patrol. I’ve watched you a few times when you’ve gone out, but I’ve never wanted to interfere. You weren’t in any of your usual places tonight, which caught my attention. Plus, I had heard you were on a date. So I thought I’d check it out.”

  “Why didn’t you see this coming, Phil?” Dee asked. Phil recognized the real question that was just below the surface. Why hadn’t he stopped it? Phil Intie, The Immortal, had his wealth and his genius, but what had made him a super villain and then a super hero was his ability to see the future. He didn’t see the future that would be. He saw all the futures that could be. With his super computer, and its predecessors, he had become very good at focusing on the futures that were most likely to be. The ready excuse, the honest answer, was that even though the system hadn’t filtered out this possibility, Phil had ignored this outcome because it seemed so unlikely to happen. The unlikelihood was of no comfort to Phil and would be worth even less to Dee now that it had happened. The truth being desperately unpleasant, Phil wanted to lie.

  So he did.

  “I didn’t see this, Dee. Maybe I don’t see all the possible futures. I guess I just see many of the possible futures. I had no idea that this could happen, or I would have stopped it.”

  “You would have told me about it, right? I mean, you would have let me know that my daughter was going to be...” Dee trailed off as she stood and pulled her hand away from Leigh’s. She gestured back at her daughter’s body, unwilling to look at her while she was unable to name what had happened to her.

  “She’s going to recover, Dee,” Phil said.

  “Don’t make me any more promises,” Dee said. “Ever.”

  Stillness fell between them. It lasted for beep after beep. Dee held onto her anger and Phil respected her rage. He invited it. It was satisfying to feel her blame and anger. He didn't deserve it, but he welcomed it all the same.

  “I’m sorry, Dee. I’m so, so sorry,” Phil said. He reached toward her, gently offering his hand. She turned away and folded herself over Leigh’s body.

  Dee watched Leigh’s breathing and took some comfort in the regular rise and fall of her belly. More minutes passed in that way: Dee watching Leigh’s breath, Phil standing behind Dee and watching the monitors. “It’s not your fault,” Dee finally responded.

  “I’m still sorry,” Phil said.

  "Thank you."

  "You know you're welcome."

  That’s all they said for a long while. Phil kept talking himself out of putting his hand on Dee’s shoulder. His feet began to ache. He walked away to get a chair.

  Dee heard him walk away. She stood. She leaned forward and closed her eyes like she was blowing out birthday candles, then kissed Leigh as gently as she could on the forehead. She looked down at her beautiful daughter’s face — bruised and bloody with ugly sutures closing one large gash across her cheek. She returned to watching the rise and fall of Leigh’s breath and everything else seemed to drift far away. “Leigh, Leigh, Leigh,” was all she could think to say.

  She sat back down and took Leigh’s hand in both of hers again. The IV taped to her daughters wrist seemed enormous and delicate at the same time. She wondered what time it was and thought again about whether she should call Lou or Randy.

  Leigh gasped. It was a deep, sudden breath in and then a labored wheeze out. A sudden, guttural gasp. A broken breath from a broken girl.

  Dee jumped to her feet. Phil returned with his chair and saw the panic on Dee’s face as her eyes darted from her daughter to the various monitors. Dee found a green line bouncing wildly on a small, round screen. She pointed at it. “Something’s wrong!” she yelled at Phil.

  “She’s fine,” Phil said. He left his chair at the foot of the bed. “Her brain activity is picking up. She might be waking up.”

  Dee sat down and stared, expectantly, holding Leigh’s hand again. She felt the clamminess of her sweat going stale between their palms as she waited and waited for another reaction that didn’t come.

  Twenty minutes passed before Phil made to leave. “I’m going to get us something to drink,” he said. He didn’t know if he meant coffee, whiskey or a bit of both.

  “Nothing for me,” Dee muttered softly.

  “Are you sure I can’t get you something? A bite to eat?” Phil implored.

  “All I want is my daughter to wake up.”

  “She will, in her own time.”

  “And I want to know who did this,” Dee finally turned away from Leigh to assess Phil with her eyes, to see what he might know and what he might be trying to hide.

  “It was boys, Dee, just boys,” Phil explained.

  “How did boys do this to my little girl?”

  “I don’t know what happened before I got there,” Phil lied. “But it wasn’t a new villain or an old enemy. She was wearing your costume and three boys had her in an alley. They were mean. They weren’t evil. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I don’t care what they were, Phil. I want you to tell me who they w
ere. The rest will take care of itself.”

  “I don’t know their names,” Phil said. He turned to get the drinks. Whiskey for himself, coffee for both.

  As he stepped away, Dee returned her attention to Leigh.

  “Three boys,” Dee whispered toward the floor. “Who did this to you, Leigh? Who did this?” Dee gently brushed the bangs back from Leigh’s face so they weren’t hanging in her eyes.

  Leigh’s eyelids fluttered, then opened.

  She looked back at her mom. Dee felt a surge of tears as she saw the strength in her daughter’s eyes. Leigh licked her lips and swallowed with effort.

  “Hey,” Dee smiled and patted Leigh’s hand enthusiastically. “Are you waking up?”

  “Bo,” Leigh said.

  “Oh, I think you are,” Dee said. “It’s time to wake up. We’ll get you something to drink in just a second. Let me look at you first.”

  “No,” Leigh argued, shaking her head subtly but firmly. “Bo.”

  “Bo?” Dee prompted. It was difficult to understand the soft, unformed words. “Bo who?”

  “Tannie.”

  “From school?”

  Leigh nodded. Phil returned with a tray of coffee, milk and sugar. He set it down in his chair and began to check the monitors while giving vague reassurances about all the good things he was seeing.

  “I should call Lou,” Dee stood to go.

  “Call him from here,” Phil said. “Let him talk to Leigh for a bit.”

  “She should rest,” Dee said.

  “So should you,” Phil argued.

  “I have to tell Randy, too,” Dee added.

  “Of course,” Phil agreed. “And he’ll want to talk to his daughter, I’m sure.”

  “I’ve got business to take care of,” Dee said. She set her phone on the bed near Leigh's feet as she walked away. “There’s nothing more I can do here.”

  Phil grabbed her by the arm to keep her from walking by. “There’s everything more you can do here. You can be her mother,” he begged with his face turned to Dee but his eyes fixed on his patient.

  “I don’t always get to be her mother,” Dee said. “Justice is everyone’s mother.”

  “Justice can wait,” Phil said.

  “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Dee said. “And if you put your hands on me again, I’ll leave you in a bed just like this one. If you’re lucky.”

  Phil let her go. He watched her walk hurriedly down the hall, then break into a run as she neared the exit. He slumped and sighed and turned back to his patient. She looked just like her mother after a battle not so long ago — a face full of determination, resolve and scars that might never heal.

  Max Depf drove straight from Sushi and the Ganges to his happiest place on earth: The 10,000 Inches, a sports bar at the intersection of two highways that offered 100 televisions each measuring over 100 inches in length. His mouth was already watering from the anticipation of a basket of walleye fingers as he mashed the key fob to lock his car.

  He found a seat at the bar and decided to treat himself to a tower of onion rings in addition to the walleye fingers. He began washing it down with a white ale garnished with an orange slice because life was too short for bad beer. He didn’t really know what good beer was, and didn’t like white ales, but he did like the commercials and the busty lady on the bottle.

  All the games were on, but Max didn’t really watch. He had never played any sports and owed no allegiance to any particular team. On the other hand, he loved expressing opinions, especially ones he didn’t know he had. Max delighted in how easily sport lent itself to uniformed opining.

  A women’s college softball game was on one of the small televisions above the bar. Max wasn’t particularly interested. So much bunting and hustling and fundamentals. And visors. The only real sport where people wore visors was high stakes hold ‘em, and if any of those dudes were sporting pony tails the studio producers had the good sense to keep them out of frame.

  Ultimate fighting was coming up, but the previews all looked the same to Max. One guy lying atop another guy and punching him over and over in the head until he couldn’t defend himself. Three or four punches after that and the fight was over.

  Max was looking around for something interesting to stare at when the guy two stools to his right loudly yelled “Holy fucking Jesus!” That grabbed Max’s attention by the balls.

  “Did you fucking see that?” the guy swatted toward Max with his free hand, making no contact, while cradling his beer with the other. “That fucking chick took a laser right in the fucking melon.”

  “What the fuck?” Max inquired.

  “Here, here, here,” the guy replied. “They’re showing the fucking replay now. Watch. Just watch.”

  Max watched. In slow motion, the pitcher released the ball. The batter swung and drove a line drive right back through the box. The pitcher brought her glove up, but too late. Her face was still contorted from concentration and effort when the softball struck her somewhere over her right eye. Her visor went pinwheeling toward second base as she fell to the ground like a burst sack of string cheese sticks.

  “That’s so awesome!” Max laughed as the broadcast cut to the medical staff attending to the pitcher on the mound. The infield gathered closer and everyone took a knee while the doctor worked through her exam.

  “Right in the face,” his new buddy added. He used his palm to mime the ball striking his own eye. “Thwak!” he said to mark the noise, then he slumped heavily into his chair as if he had gone unconscious.

  On the television the batter took a few tentative steps away from first base, not sure what she should do. Making up her mind she trotted to the mound and sank to a knee between the first and second basemen. The batter whispered something to the second baseman, who nodded. In another moment, the players were holding hands in a circle around the pitching mound where the doctor and trainer worked. The benches slowly cleared as the coaches and both teams stood in solemn semi circles with their heads drawn down.

  “I wonder if she’s fucking dead,” the guy said.

  “Nah, they couldn’t show it if she was dead,” Max opined. He pushed the brim of his hat back to show his seriousness. “That would be pretty awesome if they did, though. Like fucking Saudi Arabia.”

  “I think she’s moving.”

  On the screen, the camera switched to a different angle and it was clear that the pitcher was alive, but only marginally alert. Her eyes were as glassy as the worst drunk at the bar, who contemporaneously continued his commentary: “Chicks playing sports, am I right?”

  “You are so fucking right, brother,” Max said.

  “Hey, can you spare an onion ring?”

  “Sure,” Max pushed his plate over.

  “Thanks. Sweet lid, by the way.”

  Max smiled. “What’s your name?”

  “Randy,” Randy Major gave his name. The jukebox kicked in, playing a Thin Lizzy tune.

  “Good to meet you, Randy,” Max handed over the ketchup bottle so Randy could dip. Having no plate, he drew a thin line of ketchup over his onion ring instead, then held it up over his right eye.

  “Guess who I fucking am?” Randy asked.

  Max got a real kick out of that one.

  Dee was nothing short of grateful when Randy didn’t pick up and she got his voice mail. She left the calmest, vaguest message she could muster then hung up the land line. She walked into her closet and made for the satchel in the back. She slid through the numbers on the lock then clicked open the latches. She gravely opened the brown leather bag.

  No music played and no mystical light issued forth. Inside, balled at the bottom of the bag was her well-worn Captain Major costume, exactly as she left it. Ratty, dirty, creased, torn and familiar. The fabric belonged to Confederated Justice, but the memories belonged to her. She slipped it on piece by piece. The baggy harem pants, then the slightly oversized tunic. The night was warm enough that she didn’t bother with a thermal layer. She laced her purple trai
ners up over her favorite socks and secured her mask over her eyes.

  She looked herself over in the mirror. She stared a long time at the face she hoped she had buried. She wasn’t out for exercise. She wasn’t out for the rush of dancing over the rooftops of the world. She tore herself away from the mirror and doused the lights before creeping out the window. She listened once to make sure that Lou hadn’t stirred from his room. Satisfied that he was still safely ignorant of all the night’s events, Captain Major slipped from shadow to shadow until it was safe to be seen. When no one would know where she had come from, she darted across rooftops and patios, through backyards and cul-de-sacs, heading directly for Bo Tannie’s last known address, found in a middle school parent roster that she had forgotten in the mail sorter for nigh a decade: 1369 Maycomb Lane.

  Captain Major skulked in the shadow of the chimney above 1369 Maycomb Lane waiting for Bo to return, not even knowing if he still lived there. A call to The Immortal would get her his address in an instant, but she had a feeling Phil wouldn’t be taking that call right now. Sweet guy, Phil, but he didn’t understand that when you mess with the cubs, you face the grizzly.

  It was a nice neighborhood. Winding, tree-lined streets and well-groomed lawns. A few of the houses had pools in the backyard, but not 1369. Lots of fences, very few dogs. It was late in the year and late in the day, but it still smelled a bit like sausages and burgers cooking over charcoal. After picking discretely at her food in the restaurant, Captain Major’s stomach grumbled with desire for a well-prepared cheeseburger.

  Cars passed, but none stopped. Captain Major wished she had her phone so she could check the time. A minute later, she checked her pockets for her phone again, then was distracted by the muscular sound of an approaching car.

  The tires on Bo Tannie’s 280ZX chirped as he turned tightly into the driveway. The undercarriage complained as he hit the poorly graded curb cut and banged against the blacktop. Bo parked well into the grass by the garbage cans so that his dad had room to back out in the morning.

  Bo staggered out of his car and fumbled with his keys. He dropped them as he tried to shove them into the breast pocket of his jacket. He bent forward to pick them up from where they glinted in the street lights.

  He stood up and turned around to find Captain Major standing directly in front of him. She was half a head shorter than he was and far thinner, but he still fell back against his car in fright.

  Captain Major used a fan kick to send his keys flying toward the street, then moved effortlessly through a spin to sweep Bo’s legs from underneath him. Bo fell to the ground, hard, his head bouncing off the pavement. He tried to crawl under his own car, but was too big to fit more than his arm behind the left front tire. Captain Major dragged him away from the car by his pant leg. Bo kicked and squealed like a piglet being separated from his mother as his fingers slipped away from the tire.

  “What did you do today, Bo?” Captain Major asked, standing over him like the Colossus at Rhodes minus the eternal impassivity.

  “I didn’t do shit,” Bo replied. The odor of stale beer followed his words as he looked up from the driveway. “It was Philip who bashed you with the wrench.”

  “Your bad luck. Philip isn’t here,” Captain Major replied.

  “The hell he isn’t,” Bo betrayed his friend for a second time in the same evening. “He’s hiding in the back seat.”

  “Don’t move. Not even a little,” Captain Major bent far forward until her face was inches away from Bo’s. “Not even to breathe.”

  Bo put his entire focus on not pissing himself. He closed his eyes and screwed up his face in the effort. Captain Major casually kicked Bo in the ribs as she walked over Bo on her way to the back seat of the car. The door was locked. Captain Major knocked on the window and watched as Philip tried to pull a blanket over his head to pretend that he wasn’t there.

  It took Captain Major half a second to charge her plasma power from the surrounding air, then the glass of the back seat window shattered most satisfyingly as she punched her first through the middle. She unlocked the door and grabbed the brown and orange afghan blanket with both hands. She dragged it and Philip out of the car and onto the driveway. The sound his head made as it bounced against the pavement was even more satisfying than the shattered window.

  She kicked Philip firmly through the blanket, rolling him over until he was side by side with the obediently immobile Bo. On the last roll, the blanket began to unravel. A metallic clang clued Captain Major into a foreign object hidden among the folds of the blanket. She dropped into a full squat and picked up what Philip was hiding: a heavy lug wrench, crimson and brown with blood. She recognized the bend of the wrench from the sutures on her daughter’s face.

  The lights came on inside the house. A moment later, the outside lights snapped on as well. The lights were bright and blue and placed to light up the basketball hoop Captain Major now noticed looming over all of them.

  Philip struggled to his feet and began to run toward the street. Bo stood a moment later and ran for his front door. Bo was too slow and couldn’t elude Captain Major’s swift left hand. She grabbed him by the collar and jerked him backwards. He lost his feet and she slammed him hard against the black top. Philip continued to flee, his arms and legs flailing out of rhythm like a middle school marching band with the drum line hopped up on Red Bull and salt water taffy. Captain Major picked up the bloody wrench, took two steps to get clear of a young willow tree and threw the wrench with perfect aim. It struck Philip between the shoulder blades. The impact — and the case of Busch Light he and Bo vanquished while victoriously cruising around town — caused him to lurch forward. His face met the curb before he could raise his hands to protect himself.

  Captain Major didn’t stay to check on either of them. She turned to walk down the street toward home. She was a block away before Bo made it to Philip’s side, turned him over and watched him spit out bits of his broken teeth.

  The bartender in the turquoise suspenders rang the bell above the register to announce that it was last call. Randy Major and Max Depf treated it like a starter’s gun and glugged through the rest of their beers. Max finished first. He pointed and laughed as Randy struggled through the last few swallows, until he finally coughed and spit up enough beer to soak the bar and his shirt.

  “Last round’s on you!” Max laughed.

  Randy struggled up to his elbows and leaned over the bar looking for a rag. The bartender swept over and began to clean up the puddle of spit and beer. Randy kept leaning over the bar, looking for a fresh rag. The bartender influenced Randy back into his seat by wiping the bar closer and closer to Randy’s elbows.

  “Hey,” Max called to the bartender. “Two more beers. This mook is buying.”

  “Sorry, guys, last call,” the bartender explained. “I can’t serve you.”

  “That’s not what last call means, buddy,” Randy argued.

  “Yeah,” Max agreed. “It’s last call for alcohol. That means time for one last round, and we’re having one last round and this pussy is buying.”

  “How about I call you a cab instead?” the bartender asked.

  “How ‘bout we figure that out after you serve our drinks,” Max said.

  “I don’t think I can do that,” the bartender said as he finished cleaning the bar and edged away.

  “Be a pal,” Max urged. “One more beer isn’t going to hurt anybody.”

  “I’d have to ask my manager,” the bartender explained.

  “Ask your mommy if you have to,” Randy said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  The bartender turned his back to pick up the phone and call to the manager in the back office where they also stored the bathroom supplies. “And how ‘bout a fresh towel?” Randy called after him.

  “Jesus, can you believe this guy? He’s breaking our balls like my fucking bitch date,” Max said.

  “Let’s just get the fuck out of here,” Randy added. He wobbled as he stood and was surprised b
y the sound of his bar stool falling over behind him. He left it on the ground. “I’ve got to get home anyway. Lots to do tomorrow, you know.”

  “Me, too,” Max said. He stood on steadier legs, but still involuntarily leaned against the bar when he stuck his hand out to shake.

  “It was good to meet you, Max...” Randy trailed away.

  “Depf. Max Depf,” Max introduced himself formally.

  “And I’m Randy Major, at your service,” Randy feigned even greater formality.

  “That’s hilarious,” Max replied. “My date was a Major.”

  “Yeah, a major bitch, from what you said.”

  “No,” Max corrected. “That was her name. Dee Major.”

  “Jesus fuck me in the ass!” Randy blurted in shock. “You were trying to fuck my ex-wife.” Randy began to laugh hysterically.

  “What the fuck is so fucking funny?” Max asked.

  “It ain’t funny, man. It’s fucking tragic,” Randy said. He threw his arm around Max and they staggered toward the door. The bartender hung up the phone and hurried to finish cleaning up, grateful that his night was finally ending. “What’s funny, Max? You thought you had a chance of scoring with that frigid bitch. Three dates? Christ almighty, I put in months, months, of hard time just hoping for a half-assed hand job.”

  “I bet it was worth it, though,” Max said. “She was smoking hot.”

  Randy put on his studliest smirk. “Best hand job I ever got that I didn’t have to give myself.”

 

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