Chapter 12
The Searchlight Event: Another Magical Night
The buildup for the B.I.B. Searchlight Event was everything the mayor had promised, and it proved to be a boon for Dr. Jones and myself, being the only two bona fide B.I.B. experts available. He and I bounced from radio program to TV program, offering our opinions and knowledge of the B.I.B, sometimes even passing each other in the hall en route to one show or another. Jones was in heaven. From my first conversation with him at O’Malley’s, I’d suspected that being on TV was more important to him than winning the Nobel Prize.
Everyone eventually asked me, “So, do you think she will show up after the searchlight goes on?” I thought the mayor was an ass and the B.I.B. was calling the shots, so it was tough for me to answer diplomatically. I finally developed a spiel about how well the mayor was going about the preparations for the event, and who would be there, and how much I hoped she would turn up. I focused on the event and not on answering the question. At any rate, it it gave me an opportunity to plug the website. Hits on the site grew. Advertisers came a running; my income grew.
Rebecca had reworked the site just in time for the searchlight event She had turned my hodgepodge of windows, buttons, and text into a sleek, mysterious, and feminine tribute to the B.I.B. The colors of the backgrounds and headers were dark and secretive but never black. She used purples and violets and some neon tones. From somewhere, she got B.I.B. silhouettes in various positions that appeared and disappeared around the screen. I remember thinking at the time what a genius she was, and what a lucky find for me.
My favorite part of the site was the three video games visitors (and website owners) could play for free. With them, Rebecca definitely outdid herself. I didn’t even ask her to make them—that I can remember, anyway.
The first game was B.I.B. Rescue. In that one, your custom-tuned character walked through the realistic, high-definition streets of Scranton, avoiding speeding beer trucks, mob drive-bys, road construction, bill collectors, bullies, and did I mention speeding beer trucks, in the hope of being “saved” by the B.I.B. Around the next corner could be a twenty-ton diesel or the rescuing arms of a digital B.I.B., flying you off to add fifty thousand points to your score.
The second game was B.I.B. Pub Crawler. In that one, you went from Scranton pub to Scranton pub searching for the B.I.B. It was also done in fabulously detailed graphics. The graphics were so good we were able to customize each bar to its real appearance and sell ads on the game to the bars.
The concept was simple; you only had so much money to spend buying drinks. The more drinks you bought friends, the more clues you got as to her whereabouts. Unfortunately, the more drinks you bought, the more were bought for you to drink in return. If you found her drinking a Miner’s Lite before you got drunk or ran out of money,
you won. The game was adjusted for body weight and constantly showed a meter of your blood alcohol level. You could lower your alcohol level with costly coffee stops and earn or lose points by picking up the right or wrong person in the bar—adjusted for sexual preference, naturally. A drop-down menu of pickup lines was available. Funny faces and playing drinking games could also earn you points and clues.
The third was a real shoot ’em up version of the Antler Game. The user controlled the rifle and tried to shoot bar patrons wearing antlers. You got fifty points for each antler wearer you hit, but lost five hundred points for each person you hit without antlers. Hit the flying B.I.B. and you lost, for sure.
With Rebecca’s success and my lazy-grasshopper nature, I turned more and more of the site over to her. Now she was the first to receive any email leads, sightings, or documents sent in for the reward program. I let her view just about everything and decide for me if it was something she should handle or if I needed to deal with it. She ran the site completely remotely. She texted, emailed, and called me by phone, but never really needed to meet with me. Like an RFD with an antler helmet on backward, I had handed her a bullet and a rifle and was hoping all would go well.
Advertisers loved the site, and the local Miner’s Lite beer distributor not only advertised and linked to the site, but co-created a B.I.B. Miner’s Lite T-shirt that we sold on the site, based on the photo with her holding the bottle at Skelly’s. Owning the copyrights for the terms B.I.B. and We’re Not Afraid Anymore, we had a piece of all the T-shirt action as the Miner’s Lite and “Not Afraid” shirts became the unofficial official attire for the Searchlight Event.
That led Rebecca to create the B.I.B. online store for all the B.I.B. products people were coming up with. An Ohio company sold masks and capes. There were coffee cups, beer mugs, glasses, letter openers, and stickers, but most of all, there were T-shirts. Rebecca’s system directly referred all the orders to a subcontracted screen printer, but I knew they had a hard time keeping the orders filled. I still hadn’t been able to find the B.I.B., but she was already turning me into a surprising financial success. Nevertheless, more than the money and the notoriety, I hoped she would show up or, better yet, that I would somehow find her again on my own. The money and the celebrity were turning my head, but my heart and below were focused on finding her.
The preparations at the event site were elaborate, in more ways than one. The event had been timed to coincide with the release of the latest Batman movie. The mayor had received the searchlight movie prop he had requested from the movie studio, and it had been placed on a high balcony outside of the mayor’s conference room using a helicopter.
I covered the copter lift for the local news. The conference room had been turned into a media room, complete with refreshments.. The mayor made certain everyone knew that he was the one promoting the event—with the public demand for the B.I.B. growing, he was clearly hoping to skyrocket his popularity.
* * *
Gregorio Gambrelli had his own version of how the Searchlight Event would go down, and, as his right hand man, I was in charge of it. Gregorio relayed the basic plan to me over dinner at Giovanni’s and left the particulars up to me. (The best lasagna I ever had; just the right amount of sauce.) I designed a gem of a hit. The buildings across from the searchlight would be kept dark on that night. I would place four teams of snipers and a central spotter on the buildings at different heights from the spot where the Mayor and the chick would stand. This way, they would have a clear shot of the entire balcony. Where they put the searchlight and the podium was decided by me and the spotter to ensure our men would have the best possible shot. With the union crew in charge of setting things up, getting that arranged was a piece of cake.
The spotter would control all four teams of snipers via a radio link, not only to keep one team from going crazy, but also to put a lot lead in her face at the same second. Also, any cop with the nerve to raise his head after the shots were fired would be confused as to the number and direction of the shots, as they would echo off the buildings. I imported a team of snipers from Providence and Newark to go with my local guys that were supposed to be the best. The B.I.B. would be walking into the Searchlight Event, but they would be carrying her out in pieces—little baby superwoman pieces.
Of course, the mayor was left in the dark. I told him that this first meeting would be to make contact with this “super broad,” B.I.B., whatever, and taking her out would happen later, when he was not around. I did this based on experience: if he knew that bullets would soon be hitting the person next to him, he’d be a nervous wreck, and the douche bag would mess up the plan. If a stray bullet or ricochet were to also hit the mayor, I wasn’t gonna lose any sleep. He could be easily replaced. Hell, my dog could do a better job, and he looks better…even walking backwards, if you know what I mean.
Thirty seconds after the shots were fired, I would cue my guys to cut the power to the entire building, creating panic and chaos that would cover everyone’s escape.
* * *
There I was the night of the Searchlight Event, standing among the crowd on the balcony with my media badge on and a
glass of champagne in my hand. I had even worn an all-black outfit as a personal joke to the B.I.B., should she arrive and see me. She wore black. I wore black. We were a match. I hoped she’d get it.
We all stood in the cold night air, but no one was bothered by it. As I mingled, I could hear the greatest speculation was about how the B.I.B. would choose to arrive. Would she fly in, walk in, or just appear? Was she going to be a disguised member of the crowd, and then suddenly remove her street clothes to show her costume and reveal herself? Was she you? Was she me? Or, being that it was Batman premiere night, would she drive up in some high-tech car or motorcycle? Would one of those bat ropes suddenly raise her up to the balcony from the sidewalk below?
My money was on what I had seen outside O’Malley’s the first time I had seen her. A fog would appear and then she would appear from out of it. In my mind, she’d see me and I’d see her. We’d be drawn together, ignoring the madding crowd, while violins suddenly played. Then her eyes and lips would surrender to me and we’d fly off into the night and make passionate love…while all these losers stood on the balcony. (It could happen…right?)
With all the potential and excitement in the air, I could not help but feel a pounding in my chest. I had no clue what was going to happen and, for the first time in my life, I was quite happy with that. I felt vibrantly alive with expectation, completely exhilarated. Right there I should have known the rug was about to be pulled out from under me.
Finally, the mayor emerged from the media room to an enthusiastic round of applause. He walked over to the podium, accepted the applause, and opened his coat and jacket to expose a Miner’s Lite/B.I.B. T-shirt.. After milking the renewed applause, he began, “Tonight is an historic time. It is a proud moment for me as your mayor as, with the lighting of this searchlight, we invite the woman known fondly to us all as the B.I.B. to become our partner in moving our city forward into better and safer times.”
The applause spiked again. I stood and thought to myself, That T-shirt is mine. The B.I.B. name, that’s mine. It blew my mind, could this be happening?
“So without further ado, let me say here and now to the B.I.B., the City of Scranton needs you, wants to be your partner, and is asking for your help. Please join us, whenever you see this light.”
With that, the mayor nodded to a technician, who started the generator that ran the searchlight. When the generator had reached full power, the technician nodded back to the mayor, who dramatically raised a large lever on the electrical box that controlled the light. A huge beam burst forth several hundred feet into the sky, until the beam found enough cloud cover to support a gigantic, sexy silhouette of the B.I.B. surrounded in a white circle.
Even though it was just a silhouette, there was something unexplainably magnetic about it, about her. It was the same thing I had felt at O’Malley’s when she left me speechless. At first I thought it was just me, but the silhouette drew everyone standing around me like bugs to a light. The men were drawn by her mystical beauty, the perception of which was a magnitude higher than its fact, and even the women were drawn by the strength, power, caring, and control she projected. As they say, women wanted to be her and men wanted to be with her. Everyone in the crowd screamed joyously, but you could barely hear them over the sound of the diesel generator. With the sound and the fact that we were all staring up at the light, we were unaware of the response to the beacon in the city at large, but it was immediate.
From the streets below came the sounds of car horns and then the crashing of metal as drivers, whose attention had been drawn to the sky, plowed headlong into other cars and lampposts, ran up over curbs onto mailboxes, or into the windows of retail stores. There were shouts. There were screams. Virtually every dog in the city began to bark nonstop. Small fires erupted. City workers stepped straight into open manholes. The engineers of a freight train could not help but stare at the silhouette and ran a stop signal, derailing the engine and three cars.
At the air traffic control center that covered Scranton, controllers put down their coffee cups and spread the alarm as dozens of small aircraft and a few larger aircraft inbound to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport suddenly abandoned their flight plans and began converging in the air space above the city. The controllers became frantic, watching the blips on their screens leave their nicely spaced order and begin a beeline for one another. A squadron of fighter jets was scrambled in fear that a mass high jacking was underway. The aircraft were the bugs and her silhouette was the light.
On the balcony, I watched the mayor staring hopefully at the silhouette. When he noticed small orange and red explosions around it, he smiled and turned to his assistant, Edwards, and had to literally shout in his ear, loud enough for me to hear, “Good job. I think the fireworks are a great effect!”
After a second, I heard Edwards shout back, “Sir, I did not contract for any fireworks.”
I could see the mayor’s jaw dropped as he realized the “fireworks” were aircraft colliding after being drawn like moths to the B.I.B.’s image. He ran to the railing of the balcony, looked down into the street, and cringed. Looking over his shoulder at the totally stopped zigzag pattern of the cars below and the image of a city bus, driven halfway into a coffee shop, made me aware of his worst fears. As slowly and stately as an asshole can walk, he moved to the searchlight and pulled down the handle. He extinguished the generator and its beam, put his head against the searchlight and pounded his forehead on the cold metal.
A mobile phone rang; Edwards answered it and handed it to the mayor. “Sir, it’s the Federal Aviation Administration for you.”
The mayor pounded his forehead again and again.
Edwards stammered, trying to make sense of events. “I…I guess we hyped this a little too much.”
I watched the mayor turn to Edwards, then come at him like an attacking wolf. “Ya think?”
* * *
While the Searchlight fiasco was in progress, Paige, Kelly, and I were attending the Batman movie premiere; none of us were crazy about superhero action movies, least of all me, but the latest installment was supposed to be filled with hunks. We sat watching the movie, wearing the B.I.B. T-shirts we had purchased from a street vendor just before the searchlight was turned on. I wore the Miner’s Lite/B.I.B. version while the girls wore girly colored versions of the “We’re Not Afraid Anymore” shirt. It was hilarious for me to be the B.I.B. and wear a B.I.B. T-shirt with no one the wiser. How they had expected their lame event would motivate me into the public eye was beyond me.
I had a hard time containing myself during the movie, though. Every time Batman took a punch from a henchman or pulled some gadget off his belt, I sputtered, shook my head, and mumbled “wimp” or “pansy.” During the fight scenes, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Paige glared at me, embarrassed of her mother’s weird behavior in front of Kelly. Eventually, she gave up and just tried to distance herself with a tilted body lean. I tried to stop, but I mean, seriously, Batman wouldn’t last a day in my world.
On the way out after the movie, Kelly asked me if I’d liked the movie. “It was okay,” I said, and sneezed. “I didn’t know it was a comedy.” Kelly looked at Paige, who just shook her head and shrugged.
When we got to the lobby, it was as if we had entered a different world. The first set of doors to the theater was just so much broken glass, and a car with flat tires had crashed into the lobby. The second set of doors was blocked on the outside by a car that had struck one of the building’s exterior columns and turned broadside against the doors. Everyone was filing out slowly, uncertainly, through the third, undamaged set of doors.
“What happened?” I asked a theater worker who had begun sweeping broken glass.
“When the mayor’s searchlight went on downtown tonight, everybody was looking up, I guess. They say it was hypnotizing. Nobody was watching where they were going. I heard it’s like this all over town.”
“Looking up at what? Did the B.I.B. show up?�
� asked Paige, excited.
“I was behind the counter and didn’t see anything. I heard no one who saw it could take their eyes off it.” He shrugged and kept sweeping.
I led the girls out into the street as a panic-stricken man ran by in the cold night air, tearing off his coat and shirt, and was gone. Out in the street, men from the bars had moved their Antler Game out into the street. They wore their leather helmets with antlers on them, and ran, beer bottles in hand, then ducked behind the cars that were parked the sidewalk or had hit one another. Other Morons chased them with rifles, shooting off blanks. They were all grinning hugely at having found an exciting new venue for their game.
Drivers stood around arguing and trying to reach 911 or a tow truck on jammed mobile phone lines. Other drivers whose cars were not that badly damaged tried to maneuver with dangling bumpers or tires rubbing on crumpled fenders. What a bunch of assholes, I thought.
“It may take awhile, but we’ll get home, girls. Don’t worry,” I said in a hoarse voice, feeling a sore throat coming on, and my nose beginning to run.
Kelly asked, “Did the B.I.B. show up or not?”
“No, she didn’t,” I answered without any apparent way of knowing.
“How do you know that, Mom? Mom?”
I just kept walking. “This way, girls,” I said, wishing I had a tissue.
“Mom?”
* * *
At the searchlight event, it took a long while for the crowd to understand that they were being told to leave, most having no idea what had happened on the streets below. What had happened wasn’t wasted on Megabyte, the mayor’s assistant who’d come up with the searchlight idea. He crept along the wall until he had passed the mayor, found the door, and then he was gone in a flash.
Super Born: Seduction of Being Page 11
