She waited a long minute and stared off at a distant speck before answering. “Are you the one who took the picture off?” she said, turning to stare right through me.
“Yes.”
“I wanted to thank you. My friends and family know that face and they were sure…”
I held up my hand to stop her. “I know who you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were born January 18, 1976, during the Super Bowl, around halftime. You have growing powers you can’t understand and aren’t sure you want.” I lowered my voice. “You’re the B.I.B., and now it seems everyone is after you, me included.”
“So that’s it. You think ‘I’ am the B.I.B.?”
My heart stopped flopping and I became deadly serious as I fixed my eyes on her. “I know you are…but don’t worry. I’m the one who took the picture off the site. Remember? I won’t tell anyone.”
“Then what’s this all about? You’ve got your story, don’t you?” she grew angry. “Are you the one who’s got the dogs on me? Was that woman outside my apartment working for you?”
“What woman? No one knows but me, not even Dr. Jones knows about you. And you might want to keep your voice down.”
“She was sitting outside my window for an hour. I haven’t been able to go back home since. That’s why I’m hiding here. Everyone knows only morons come here.”
I ignored this comment. “Describe this woman.”
“Well, about my age, well dressed, short dark hair, rose-colored glasses…definitely not the mob or a cop. She could have been a reporter. She kept talking on her cell phone. She was arguing with someone on the other end. She was alone…little economy car.”
I began to match the description to all the reporters with whom I’d worked, no match. Clearly, this wasn’t Jennifer Lowe—even a woman couldn’t have failed to notice her looks. I drew a blank until I matched the rose-colored glasses to Rebecca. How could it be mild, sweet, efficient Rebecca? Then it hit me like a ton and a half of bricks. “Goddamn it!”
“What? What is it?” the B.I.B. wondered, concerned at my extreme agitation.
“God fuckin’ damn it.” I slammed my fist on the table. “I am such a friggin’ sap!”
“You know her, I take it.”
“Son of a bitch!”
“Okay, you really do know her. Who is she?”
I continued in my self-pitying rage, shaking my head and staring at the ceiling.
“Okay, now. Let’s focus here.”
“I don’t believe that bitch set me up!” It all flashed through my mind and connected, like the last ten minutes of an old black-and-white detective movie. I’d thought I was hunting the Super Bowl born with my little survey and list of women born on January 18, 1976, and all along, Rebecca had been playing me. It was too easy that I’d needed a graphic designer/computer geek for the website, and up pops Rebecca, the perfect candidate. She’d put the site together so well and so quickly, I was willing to bet it had already been planned and programmed. She’d taken over full control of the site and all its information, no problem, because she knew I was a lazy asshole, just counting my money and TV appearances. I was the front that kept her out of sight.
All along, she’d been monitoring the website for a way to locate the B.I.B.—and, like the patsy I was, I handed her to Rebecca with the goddamn fish-face picture. She had traced that contact from the B.I.B. even before I asked her to do it. She’d fed me the wrong address to try to dead-end my lead and to try to give me finger herpes, I guessed, but Rebecca? What would she want with the B.I.B.? She seemed so sweet and…and what?
Then the mobile phone calls while Rebecca was watching the B.I.B.’s apartment hit me. Sure, one may have been the call I’d made to her after almost being forced to get lucky in the Eastern European jungle—I’d known she wasn’t in her house; I’d heard the cars go by. But we hadn’t argued, and that was just one call. She was working with or for someone else. It had to be Jennifer Lowe. Hadn’t she told me, point blank that she was looking for the B.I.B., not once, but twice?
My god, were all the Super Bowl born working together? Why? What did they want with the B.I.B.? How many of these “mothers” were there? Then I remembered the two Super Bowl born that had died mysteriously, and, with a face frozen in fright, I looked across the table at the B.I.B.’s soft features and shimmering eyes, afraid of what they might have planned for her.
“What?” she asked. “You have to tell me.”
“I know who was at your house, and I know how she got your address. She’s the Web designer who manages my website.”
“So it was you,” she glared.
“No, no, she only does the Web design for me. She is working with another woman behind my back, using me, using my site to gather information about you. I didn’t realize it until just this second. To get to you, they used me and my website, and I fell for it like a one-legged Irish dancer. That’s why I’m so mad. I swear I didn’t know what they were doing, until you told me about the car outside your apartment. But it all makes sense now.”
“Who are they? What do they want with me?” she asked.
I sighed, realizing how big the answer was. “Dr. Jones’ theory is that women born the same day as you have a very high chance of developing superpowers. The others I’ve met seemed normal to me at first. I thought you were the only one. Now I see that you probably all have superpowers, but have just chosen different ways to use them. You stand up for the defenseless, the underdogs, for all-American morals. One of them is using her powers to make money; she’s a multimillionaire, at least, but acts like an everyday woman. The other is the one you saw outside your apartment, Rebecca. She’s somehow mixed up with the rich one, Jennifer Lowe. I didn’t think Rebecca had any powers, but now I have to wonder. She acts like any average woman you’d see anywhere.”
“This rich bitch, Jennifer—what powers does she have?” the B.I.B. asked, seriously concerned, apparently believing my spiel.
“Well…I’m not a hundred percent certain…She melted my pen.”
“Melted your pen?” she almost laughed. “What kind of power is that?”
I shook my head. “Tip of the iceberg. This woman owns real estate all over the world. Who knows where else she’s connected. I just know she’s not the kind of person you are.”
“What would you know about the kind of person I am?”
I dropped my gaze to the table, wanting to tell her how she made my body rebel against my control, how much I admired the things she had done, and how I could think of little other than her since the flashes of blue then green from her eyes had hit me. I looked up at her, wanting to tell her how beautiful she was, how her scent was driving me wild, how I wanted my mouth on her lips that instant, and how I had done all this just for this opportunity to see her again. I wanted to tell her how important this meeting was to me, explain how I had risked my life in the Eastern European jungle to find her. But it all sounded too childish to believe. I fumbled for the words. Her face slowly switched from a smile of warm anticipation to one of concern that I had a bomb to drop on her.
Luckily, I didn’t have to answer. The barkeep came through the front door with a couple of plastic bags and plunked them down on our table without much regard for their contents. “There ya go,” he said putting out his hand.
I handed him some cash. When he started to walk away, I had to grab him. “Hey, hey!”
He stopped. “What is it now, sire?”
I started taking containers of food out of the bags, real food. “You have any plates, spoons, forks in this dump?”
“Next you’ll be wantin’ a wee rose for the table, I suspect.”
I snapped my fingers, as if to say, give me back my cash.
“Oh, bloody hell, I think I can find something.”
“Good lad,” I said. He responded with a disgusted wave of his hand.
“What’s this?” asked the B.I.B.
“I felt bad about the chili fries
and asked him to pop around the corner for some real food from Michael’s. Hope you like shrimp and chicken.”
She looked taken aback at first but then started checking out the food as I unpacked it. “That smells great.” (I soon learned that food was an easy sell to a Super Born.)
The barkeep shuffled back with some old, unmatched plates and silverware and dropped them on the table as a small group of RFDs started gathering around, staring at the food, pointing at it and discussing it among themselves. I called to the barkeep, and he returned with some empty chili fry baskets and plastic forks. I made up four or five baskets with small amounts of the courses of our meal and handed them out to the RFDs, along with the cold chili fries. That seemed to satisfy them, and they drifted away, chuckling—except one that dumped out the chicken and shrimp on the floor, preferring the paper basket as a more valuable prize.
When the barkeep returned again with a red plastic rose and a small candle and held his hand out again, I filled it again so he would leave us alone. What a romantic he was, I thought, as he walked away with a pocket full of my cash.
When I looked back to the table, the B.I.B. was already into her meal. “I haven’t eaten all day,” she said, loading a forkful. “Well since lunch I mean…and that snack.”
“And yet you could somehow resist those chili fries,” I joked. “Well, they’re an acquired taste.”
She only nodded as she chewed.
It felt good to watch her doing something so normal and everyday as that. I smiled, but couldn’t escape the thoughts that the meal had interrupted. Hopefully she would forget what we were talking about. I fought with myself to keep from getting too melancholy and overthinking things. I decided to throw off my analytical uncertainty and just enjoy my time with her.
That’s when I realized, hell, she was eating everything! She was packing it away like a busload of tourists at an all-you-can-eat buffet! My first instinct was to start loading my plate too, but then I stopped, took only a few bites, and watched her smiling, enjoying her food. Eventually the chewing slowed and she began a light conversation with me. My stomach calmed, and I smiled in the back of my mind. Hell, was I doing something right for a change?
With the RFDs as a constant sideshow, we were soon laughing together as we ate and downed Miner’s Lites. She ate everything in sight, including a few forkfuls off my meager plate. We bantered questions back and forth about our lives and ourselves. I was tactful to avoid questions about her as the B.I.B. She told me about her daughter and of the rigors of becoming a mother as a teenager. She talked about her job as if her superpowers didn’t exist.
When the RFDs started a chair race—one young man being pushed around the bar on a chair, with another two as engines—I quickly grabbed her hand, found a chair, and entered her in the chariot (or should I say chair-idiot?) race. When the B.I.B. pushed over our nearest competition, we were home free for the win. Our prize? Miner’s Lite’s, presented to us with chili fry baskets as our crowns. We gave them both to the runner’s up. What class!
Two Miner’s Lites later found both of us wearing the antlers from the Antler Game in the back room. As an RFD struggled to load the rifle, the B.I.B. and I scurried around the bar. Sometimes she hid behind me and other times I hid behind her as we darted around the room, hiding behind chairs and tables. The B.I.B. cracked me up with a great fish face just before the RDF fired. There’s something about a woman doing a fish face while wearing antlers that hits a primal cord in every male; or is it just me?
He missed us, of course, with the new law requiring blanks, but we dropped and rolled on the floor anyway as if hit by the same shot. We both laughed and rolled up on our sides facing each other. Even in an antler helmet, her gray eyes glistened and the shimmering smile on her lips was lovely to behold. The intimacy between our eyes was so intense that it awed me—you know, like the real meaning of awesome? I had to look away, and fast.
Back at the table, she suddenly seemed to sober up. “I’ve got to get to my sister’s house. Thank you for the info on those two super bitches, the food, and a fun night. I needed it.”
I panicked. “You can’t go.”
“I’ll be okay. I know who they are now. I just need to find a new place to live, and make them start looking all over again. I’ll find a way to get my stuff without them following me…Paige will be pissed, but what can you do?”
I grabbed her arm. “You can’t go. How am I gonna find you again?” Before she could answer, I felt how warm her arm seemed, but then the feeling changed. She noticed it too. I could tell by the surprised look on her face as she looked down at our entwined arms. The intensity grew and I soon learned why the cat in the news article had risked being run over by the beer truck just to get back to her. My entire arm began to feel like, well, like another part of my anatomy, let’s say. A casual brush didn’t seem to do it, but a solid contact for several seconds brought the feeling to life.
She dropped my arm, took a step back, and let out a deep breath. I pushed lightly on her shoulder. “It’s just your sister. You can be a little late.” She hesitated for a moment as we traded glances, but this time I wouldn’t look away. Finally, she slowly sat back down. “Okay.”
* * *
Two hours later we were sitting on the toxic floor beneath the nasty plastic tablecloth of our booth at O’Malley’s with our backs to the wall. We’d literally drunk ourselves under the table. Several Miner’s Lites to the good, we had both become quieter and subdued. Despite the alcohol running through her veins, she kept space between us, avoiding a repeat of the arm incident. Somehow our conversation had become more and more full of expletives as the night wore on.
As she took a long sip from her beer, I had to ask, “You know…why haven’t you done that thing tonight…that thing you do with your eyes?”
“What fuckin’ thing with my eyes?” she said, leering over at me.
“You know…that thing! Like you did the first night I saw you.”
“No, I don’t know. You wanna fuckin’ enlighten me?”
“You know what a fuckin’ lighthouse is?”
“Do you know what my fist is?” she said, putting up a low, unthreatening fist.
“Okay, you know a lighthouse has a light on top that rotates around? You know how the light turns away and you don’t see it, then it gets brighter and brighter as it turns toward you, until it flashes right in your eyes? Then it spins around again?” She nodded. “When I first saw your beautiful gray eyes…”
“My eyes aren’t fuckin’ gray! They’re hazel…everybody says they’re hazel.”
“Get the fuck out! Hazel, my ass! They’re gray…gray with little specks of blue and sometimes green floatin’ around.”
She shook her head. “No fuckin’ way. They’re hazel!”
“Okay, okay…when I first saw your hazel eyes, they flashed blue then green, like a light on a lighthouse. It was fuckin’ amazing. Jones, he couldn’t see it. But I did…right in the old eyeballs,” I said, pointing two fingers at my eyes.
She didn’t say a word and her expression was hard to read..
“You know what the weird thing was? No one else can see it but me. That’s how I knew that there was something special between us,” I added, pointing a finger at both of us repeatedly. She drank from her beer and stared at her feet. “What’s that shit all about? Why do you do that shit?”
She was silent for a long moment, and then tried to take a drink from a bottle that was already empty. “I marked you.”
“Marked me? What the fuck does that mean?” I asked.
She looked up at me. “It means none of those other bitches can get to you. Jennifer fuckin’ whoever can’t have you…you’re mine,” she said in a low tone.
I laughed, “What?”
“No other woman can have you,” she said, “cause I already have you marked. Even those super bitches. Have you met this Jennifer yet?”
I nodded, before taking a long sip. “Well, did she put any moves
on you? Did she try to get you to do something you didn’t want to do?” I shook my head. She pushed the bottle in her hand forward. “That’s ’cause I marked you.”
I laughed. “She did try to put some moves on me.”
“And?”
“And I walked the fuck out!”
“What’d I tell you?” she said, again sucking on the empty bottle.
I thought it was funny, until it dawned on me how nonexistent my sex life had been since being “marked.” I stared at my bottle and then took my last sip, uncertain about this “marked” thing. Even drunk I had to say,, “Wait just a minute there, Missy.”
She looked over her shoulder at the wall, as if I were talking to someone else behind her. “Who the hell is Missy?”
I pointed an accusing finger at her. “You…you’re Missy, Missy.”
“Oh,” she said, making a face like I was crazy.
“How do you know about how this marking thing works?”
She laughed like she had just told herself a joke. “Let’s just say …‘cause I’ve fuckin’ tried it!…Never on a guy before, you understand. I didn’t know that would work till you just told me. Good to know…But when I want something, the feelings…” She patted her chest. “…inside just project out of me through my eyes. The flash implants energy on whoever is willing to receive it. Engrains a connection,” she said, flipping a finger she pointed in the general vicinity of the two of us, “between us.”
“Implant energy? I’m sorry, but- what?”
“Oh, fuck it. You just think I’m crazy,” she said, shaking her upraised hands as if frightened.
I felt sorry for turning her off. Then I thought about what she’d said, my thought process delayed by the beer. “Wait—you flashed me ’cause you wanted something?”
She tapped my arm and almost knocked me out from under the table. “Go fuck yourself! You don’t wanna know! I’m not talkin’ about it anymore…I fuckin’ marked you. Live with it.”
I looked over at her for a moment, surprised at how real she was now. Drunk or not, it was obvious that she didn’t want to admit that she’d marked me because she liked me. She wouldn’t say it, but I felt better knowing.
Super Born: Seduction of Being Page 22
