I couldn’t contain myself any longer. Fire burned in my veins and my brain. “Maybe I just need to fight someone my own size, someone I wouldn’t mind hitting!”
Sensei caught the implication and smiled. “I’m your size. Would you like to spar with me?”
“Love too,” I said, pulling up my loose white karate jacket and pants, which badly needed tailoring, and tightening my white belt.
Sensei put the white flag on his black belt. He gestured slightly to Amy to come and judge the fight. Amy stood beside us then signaled us to begin, her face full of concern for me. Sensei circled around me, changing his stance before yelling “Iceeeea!” and leaping a spinning round house kick at the spot where I used to be. It was beautiful, athletic, quiet majestic, really, just not very effective, as I was no longer where his foot had targeted. He found me suddenly behind him saying, “Hammer fist,” and tapping him lightly on the head.
Amy erupted, “Punch point red!” When she saw the sensei’s reaction, she repeated meekly, “Punch point red, one to zero.”
Sensei steamed. Robby stood on his head. James got knuckle-deep into his nose. Megan blinked. Michael said, “Ohhhh,” dejected. And Amy tried to contain her smile while signaling for round two.
This time Sensei decided to use less flair and try to overpower me. He came at me in aggressive, deliberate strides, throwing punches at a remarkable speed as he came, sort of like a bull on speed. I side-stepped him and delivered another tap to his head saying, “Hammer fist.” Again Amy erupted, “Punch point red! Two zero.”
The sensei pushed my arm away from his head with a bitter, powerful sweep of his arm and stormed away for a moment. He snorted and wiped his nose with the back of his hand as he circled around the mat.
“You ready to quit?” I asked, while Amy struggled to contain her all-out laughter. Sensei waved to her that he was ready. I checked my fingernails and the clock before taking a ready stance.
Amy signaled us to begin round three. This time I shocked him by charging aggressively while punching, driving him back. Then I threw a spinning kick that placed me behind him and to the side, where I delivered another tapping blow to his head. “Hammer fist,” I said, finishing his humiliation. But this time it was not the bare touch of a tap I delivered, but a punch that sent his head jerking forward.
“Punch point red!! Red wins!”
Surprise, surprise, I no longer attend classes with Sensei. Nor do I imagine us exchanging Christmas cards any time soon. It’s okay, though. After all, I figured if I could easily defeat an ex-Marine black belt without using all my speed and strength, I already knew enough to handle the garden-variety street thug.
I did go to Amy’s tournament a few days later. When I had called Amy’s house to confirm the time of the tournament, I got her mom, and actually convinced her to meet me there. We sat on bleachers in a crowded gym where sparring matches were going on simultaneously on four different mats. Amy won her age and rank class, defeating a number of young men and women along the way.
When she stepped up to the presenter to accept her trophy, I could she her with uncertainty on her face scanning the crowd. Then she saw me, and a little smile came to her face. I pumped my arm in the air and cheered wildly for her. But then some people in front of us sat down and she saw her little mother standing beside me in tears of pride. A gigantic smile, unlike any I had seen from Amy, took over her entire face.
I knew Amy’s mother was glad she had come. Seeing her cringe or cheer at every punch and kick her daughter made or received, I knew she had come to realize the extent of Amy’s skills and the importance of karate in her life. I just hoped I could do the same for Paige.
Chapter 8
My Website Is Born: But No Seconds on Meat Loaf
Looking back now, had I known that the B.I.B. had started showing herself during the day only because she needed to be home at night to keep peace with her daughter, I might have acted differently. But under the bold assumption of a shift in the B.I.B.’s attitude, I took a radical approach.
I contacted all the fledgling beat writers who had each written a separate piece on the B.I.B. and offered them some of Jones’s cash to turn over any item to me that they might come across regarding a woman dressed in black doing any kind of unusual deed. I greased palms at any bar of consequence for any sighting of a woman in black, offering further grease if they notified me in time to get there before she left. I created a website, www.thebib.org. On the site, I placed copies of the articles about her, a blog, a bulletin board, an email exclusively for sightings, and propaganda I had written about “Scranton’s True Superhero.” As time went by, trying to keep the site updated with the latest events and respond to all the emails became a job in and of itself.
The beat writers remained greedy, and they fed me like Jabba the Hutt. By the time I had posted a beat writer’s article about the arrest of Tony Turtulio, “The Tool,” on Valentine’s Day, the site was starting to get a lot of hits. A local news channel then picked up the article from the website.
“Scranton police received a Valentine’s Day gift today as Tony Turtulio, also known as ‘The Tool,’ was escorted by a delivery woman to Third Precinct headquarters. To the amazement and delight of the officers, the Tool was delivered—as seen in this brief amateur video—unconscious, dressed as a strawberry, and wearing a floppy, leafy-green hat, and red clothes, with his torso dipped in chocolate, apparently in keeping with the holiday,” read the female anchor.
“Not just any chocolate, Maria. It was Gertrude Hall milk chocolate, made right here at their Scranton plant,” added the male anchor; apparently Gertrude Hall Candies was an advertiser.
“Thanks, Tom. The Tool has several outstanding warrants for his arrest and is reputed to be the number four man in the Scranton mob. With some of the federal warrants carrying twenty-year sentences if he’s convicted, it looks like The Tool will be spending a number of Valentine’s Days to come behind bars, where chocolate-covered strawberries will be hard to find…”
“Gertrude Hall chocolate strawberries, that is,” added Tom.
The video was priceless. That, along with my commentary attributing The Tool’s capture to the B.I.B. and speculation on how she had done it—the chocolate-dipping, I mean—the site began to flourish. Sure, most of the people contacting the site were whackos, but the sheer volume of hits was building.
By now, I was in love with her sense of humor; the giant strawberry on Valentine’s Day cracked me up. She was just doing it for fun, and to embarrass the crime boys. Having all that power and hiding it in her day-to-day life had to be amazingly difficult. Everything she did was so remarkable and significant, yet humble. By now I had to confess I was in love with her, all of her…crap. Did I just say all that? What’s wrong with me?
No way I’d let her read that, risk her saying something crushing like, “I’m sorry, I never thought of you that way.” Ouch! I remembered the six months and years of emotional energy I’d wasted on courting Karen, just to hear that one. When she got the flowers I sent to her office on her birthday she told me how I’d embarrassed her in front of everyone. Or how about, “You’re just not my type.” That came from Mia, the bitch. For a full year I was her type. Three or four nights a week, she screamed I was her type. Then a doctor winks at her and I’m no longer in the picture. Crap, if I wasn’t even Mia’s type, how could I be a superhero’s type? I was risking rejection by foolishly hanging out my feelings like that. If revenge is a dish best served cold, then rejection is a dish I just wasn’t prepared to even order. In fact, I make a point of leaving any restaurant that has rejection on the menu….even as a side dish…even if I have a discount coupon. No way, Jose, she’ll never read this.
* * *
I stood fifth in line at my bank like a regular, everyday woman dressed in black. As the line moved slowly, I glanced at my watch, not wanting to be late for work and earn the wrath of Old Prune Face. She had already written me up once for bei
ng late. One of the tellers was busy counting rolls of pennies and dimes for an old man, while the other was arguing with a man over bounced check charges. I sighed. No lunch again today.
That was when three men ran into the bank with ski masks, shouting, ordering everyone to the ground. One thug stood by the door and the other two moved toward the tellers. “Tellers, hands in the air where I can see them. Anyone touching a silent alarm is the first shot. Everyone else, get on the floor. Anyone who doesn’t get down right now is dead!” said the leader nearest the tellers.
People screamed and dove to the ground. The tellers nervously held up their arms and looked at one another for a clue as to what to do.
The leader seemed to be getting off on watching all those he commanded. When he saw me defying him, standing with my back to him in front of a fake potted palm tree, he was first surprised, then pissed off.
I dropped my bag and my deposits. When I turned to face the leader, I had the black mask over my face and said, “You’re gonna make me late for work. Do you really have to do this today?”
The leader’s eyes turned to fire. “You don’t wanna listen, do ya, bitch?” he said, determined to make an example of me. “Just who do you think you are? Maybe you think you’re that woman in black everybody’s talkin’ about…What da they call her?…The Bib. You the Bib lady?”
“It’s not Bib. They call her B.I.B.,” the thug nearest us corrected.
“My mistake,” the leader said sarcastically, moving in closer to me and raising his gun, “You the B.I.B. lady? If not, you’re in big trouble. Now, sit your ass down!”
I moved slowly toward him. “Oh! This must be what they meant by ‘stupid is as stupid does.’”
He aimed his gun at the center of my body. With his veins full of adrenaline and a sadistic grin on his face, he pulled the trigger of his 9 mm four times. His shots totally wasted the plastic palm tree and pot that had been behind me. As he felt his wrist break and watched his gun drop to the floor, his expression changed to shock and amazement. After I delivered a hammer fist blow to the back of his head, he slipped down to the floor.
The thug by the door watched in horror. Seeing what I had done to his friends, he tore off his mask, pulled open the bank door, and was gone in a flash.
The third thug looked at the limp body of the leader with his badly mangled wrist as he lay unmoving on the floor. He dropped his gun and put his hands out in front of him. “Hey, I don’t want no trouble!”
“Then I guess you picked the wrong career, the wrong bank, and the wrong woman,” I said, moving in on him.
He raised his arms to protect his face as I delivered another sharp blow. He fell limply to the ground.
I stood behind him, looked around for any more of the gang, and then walked over to recover my bag and deposits.
With the shots having been fired, no one else moved. They just whimpered or listened with hands over their heads.
I grabbed my things and started toward the side door as the police stormed through the front. A commander saw me walking away and gestured to a patrolman beside him. “Go stop her and bring her back,” he said as he pointed at the side door.
But I was long gone.
* * *
I don’t think my supervisor liked me much. She had seen me come back from lunch fifteen minutes late, then corralled me into her office. From behind her desk, she looked at me with her sour puss and tapped the end of her pen on the desktop. Then she pointed her evil wand at me. “I have warned you about this over and over. You’ve already been written up once for being late…Tell me, do you like your job here?”
I had to think about it too long. “Yes, I do.”
“Do you know the company policy regarding tardiness?…We do not tolerate it!” She said waving her wand in my face not waiting for my response.
“It really wasn’t my fault. You see, while I was at the bank…”
“Tut, tut, tut! Don’t waste my time explaining. You are either here at the appropriate time or not. There are no excuses!” She said, waving her wand at me again. “Do you think you can do whatever you want like that Bib woman whose running around all over town?”
By now I’d decided that I liked the sound of being called B.I.B. but Bib twice in one day was irritating. In my mind I imagined holding her out the fourth floor window by my little finger, listening to her screams.. But then I thought of how bad I needed this job, so I said, “I am sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Missy! I have not missed a single day of work in twenty-two point three years!”
With that number of years I couldn’t help but imagine her dressed in colonial clothes lighting a pile of wood to set a witch on fire.
“Tell me, what you would do if I were late and not here to lead you and the other lolly-gagging members of my staff?”
Cheering was my instinctive reaction to that thought, but I knew that was the wrong answer. In my head I wondered what it would look like if I were to crush her between my hands down to the size of a talking head that I could just leave on her desk, bitching. “We would be totally lost if you were not here on time to lead us,” I said, trying to keep my mind on the fact that my rent payment was due. “That is correct. Finally, you are getting the point!” She stood up and creaked around her desk toward me. She peered at me through slit, reptilian eyes. “I like you, Allie. You sometimes are perfectly adequate.”
I held back my clenched hammer fist by thinking of rolling her up and bouncing her like a basketball, which I then tossed into the nearest trash can. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“I am going to let you pass with a strenuous warning this time. But in return I expect you to make up your time and then some.”
I wondered how loud her bones would crack if I snapped her in two and how many times I could fold her in half.
Then she held up three fingers, thin rods with saggy, puckered skin. “Three write ups and you’re gone,” she said. “Remember that. Now, out of my office,” she said, pointing to the door and then creaking back behind her desk. “You’ve already wasted enough time with this foolishness.”
As she turned her back to me, I wondered if I could kick her into orbit or just the next county with one swing of my leg. “I will try to do better.”
She grumbled some sort of response as I turned and scooted out of the office back to my cubical. I sat and looked at the girls around me, knowing the fifteen minutes I had been late didn’t matter in the least. I could do the whole department’s work for the day in a few minutes, but my reward for doing so would be to see all my friends laid off and be given even more work to do. So I crawled at a snail’s pace and put up with Prune Face’s ancient little ego.
****
The security camera tapes were gold. I won’t tell you how much it cost or what laws I bent to have them anonymously emailed to the site, but it was worth it. Suddenly, the site was racking up thousands of hits. Advertisers were contacting the site for ad space. B.I.B. sightings were pouring in, most of them trash. The video turned the website into a real job.
When the security tape first arrived, I was disappointed and almost deleted it in disgust. The beginning part was full of digital static; I could barely make out the fact that it was a bank, and the people were all foggy. But then, as the gunmen entered the bank and began the robbery, it all went suddenly clear. The image of the B.I.B. moved from the palm tree to the first gunman in just a frame or two—it was the same when she moved toward the last gunman. But that wasn’t what I loved most about the video. When I replayed it again and again, frame-by-frame, I discovered that there was one frame at the beginning just before the static started that showed a woman dressed in black entering the bank from the street. When I froze that frame, I saw a grainy image that I felt certain was the blond I had seen at O’Malley’s that night. Delusion can be fun.
There was a growing sentiment among the people posting on the website that the city authorities should be embracing the B.I.B. and encouraging her efforts. M
any said the mayor should invite her out of the shadows to work directly with police.
A day later, as I was digging through the email leads people had sent in, in response to my reward program, I knew I was on the right track. A young man from Texas, on temporary assignment working the oil fields in the mountains above Scranton, sent in a picture of a woman dressed in black with blond hair. She wore a black mask over her eyes, a gigantic, decorative-only bit of bling on her finger, and she was smiling, proudly displaying a bottle of Miner’s Lite beer in her outstretched hand. Again, it was a very grainy picture, taken in a dark bar using a cell phone, but her image leaped out at me the second I saw it. The young man claimed to have taken the picture at a pub called Skelly’s several nights before. He said he had partied with the woman and her friends there. After a few beers, she had brought out the mask and worn it for a few minutes, saying she was the B.I.B. He took the picture, sure she was joking, and thought nothing of it until someone had introduced him to our website and told him to send the picture in for the reward. He said he also had some pictures of her later that night making a really good “fish face,” if I wanted those.
I immediately contacted the young man, sent him the reward, and offered more for the fish-face pictures. I asked him if he had her number or address or had seen her again, and he replied that they had parted ways just after the pictures were taken and he had no way of getting in touch with her again.
Next, I put the picture of her wearing the mask and holding the beer front and center on the Web site home page with the title, “This is the B.I.B.!” Then I used my contacts at the Times Tribune to get me a meeting with the Managing Editor. It was a hard sell, back then, but I got him to agree to let me create a B.I.B. column in the paper. He balked a bit when I told him what the name meant, but he liked the amount of traffic the site was seeing, and that was, after all, the url: www.thebib.org. I gave him the picture and my first feature, which I had compiled from various things I had already written for the website. He buried it on page eight the next day.
* * *
Once or twice each week, Paige and I have dinner at my sister Lori’s house, which is located near our apartment. It was convenient, saved on the expense of cooking for only two, and allowed us some time with the family. On this night, I had worked late to make up for the time I had missed the previous day, trying for some brownie points with Ol’ Prune Face. By the time we arrived at Lori’s, her husband and kids had finished their dinners, so it was only Paige, Lori, and me at the table.
Super Born: Seduction of Being Page 8
