It’s been about an hour with no movement, and I wish I knew if the surveillance equipment in the stakeout van was recording Bone Crusher’s voice. He may live in a building nearby. Perhaps he works as a bouncer at one of the bars, Rich and Ami’s Party House, or Club Dixon, which is pulsing with music. Maybe Bone’s taken a room in the towering hotel right across from me, the Metropolitan. Like most structures in this part of town, it’s seen better days. Or maybe he’s beating his way through an underground fight club nearby or acting as muscle for a local crime boss. A bruiser like Bone, just hitting his mid-thirties now, would still have plenty to offer to the right organization. Running through these possibilities, I find myself truly curious about how he’s managed to stay off the radar all these years, how he’s coped with life after being a full-fledged supervillain. But since I’ve all but lost the ability to see through bricks or tune in subsonic sounds, all I can do is wait, keep an eye on the surveillance van, and hope I get lucky. The only thing I want tonight is a glimpse of him, confirmation that the first part of my plan is within my grasp. I’ve been thinking of what Huan said about Gypsy, and I don’t want to bother her until I’m sure I need her help. Although I’m eager to act, age has taught me some patience. Besides, once again I’ve found myself with nowhere else to go. So far today it seems I’ve severed ties with not only my team but both my families. Maybe it’s pure momentum that led me here, feeling compelled to press on with a scheme I know to be fatally flawed. At this point, the notion that bringing in King Chaos could somehow bring order to my world is preposterous, yet some part of me clings to it. If I told all this to Dr. Janet, surely she’d finally decree that I am certifiably nuts. And I don’t know that I’d argue.
So I wait here on a rooftop, a place that has always brought me a certain sense of ease, if not peace. Long before my powers came on, I took any excuse to crawl up on my parents’ house—leaves clogging the gutter, a lost ball, a branch fallen from the oak tree. I’d sit in silence and enjoy the view. It calmed my spirit. Some of the most important experiences of my life have taken place on rooftops. Early lessons in how to be a hero from Titan, back in the days before he forgot. My first kiss with Sheila, who I’d just saved from the clutches of Killer Frost. Long philosophical discussions with Ecklar during breaks from nightly patrol. And of course, it was on rooftops just like this one where I had so many scenes with Debbie, who miraculously fell in love with me when I was supposed to be training her. I proposed at the top level of the Kingdom Tower, the tallest point in the city.
I’d been thinking that tonight, when we were supposed to patrol together again for old times’ sake, she and I could tap that faded magic, get back to a place where we could be honest with each other about the things that are wrong between us, maybe begin coming together again. That was all part of the plan. By now she’s heard from Clyde that I’ve quit the Guardians. In a way, she’s getting what she wanted. I’ve thrown in the towel, and soon enough I’ll be out of harm’s way, available for full-time dad duty. Of course, after today’s other revelations, I’m guessing she’s not so sure I’m the guy she wants to make babies with after all. It could be that as I sit here looking for an old adversary, she’s making phone calls inquiring about filing for divorce.
A stretch Hummer turns onto the dark street below, makes its way through the corridor of parked cars. It cruises past the bars and slows in front of the lights of the Metropolitan. A female driver jumps out and hustles around to the door, and for a moment, I think I’ll get entirely too lucky and Chaos will emerge. But he’s too smart for such an attention-getting vehicle. Instead, I get a gaggle of girls in lime dresses, followed by a tiny bride in a white gown. The bridesmaids hustle to bunch up the tail, and the doorman bows when he pulls back the door. And it’s right then, something about the way he hunches, the curve of his shoulders, that makes me realize who I’m looking at. Bone Crusher, who once took a bazooka shot to the head, who punched his way through the walls of Alcatraz, is now a doorman.
It occurs to me that Bone is likely content with this life. The manager explained the job to him. Simple—wait here for a car to pull up. Open the door and say hello. Carry in any bags. I’ll bet he makes great tips. And when he goes home at night, surely to some ratty one-bedroom within walking distance, he turns on the TV and watches old sitcoms and drinks beer. I’ll bet he has a girlfriend who rubs his shoulders. I’ll bet his neighbors know they can call on him to help with moving heavy things. I’ll bet at night, he sleeps the sleep of the just.
Some part of me is envious of the life I imagine for Bone Crusher. But one way or another, his days as a doorman are coming to an end. Somewhere in that thick head is the secret I need, the location of King Chaos. But I’ll have to get Gypsy to find it.
I read somewhere that when it was first built back in the eighteenth century, the New Horizons Addiction Recovery Center was a monastery. It was constructed on land donated by one of the town fathers, on what was at the time farmland well past the eastern edge of the city. As decades rolled by, the farms around it were transformed into factories, which were torn down to make space for condominiums, which were torn down for strip malls. A high stone wall encircles the center, a last attempt to fend off the reality of Dollar Stores and drive-thru pharmacies. But change, just another word for time really, won’t be kept out by rock and mortar. So I’m not surprised by what I see when I descend through the early evening cloud bank—a huge message posted on the billboard just outside the main gate: THIS PROPERTY FOR SALE.
Because only two of the billboard’s three lights are working, the right third of the sign is cast in shadow, obscuring some of the letters. What does surprise me is that within that darkness, something shuffles. Gypsy rises from a seated position and steps briefly into the light, just long enough to wave me in.
I float down to the billboard’s platform and find her sitting again in the darkened third, her legs crisscrossed beneath her. She’s wearing not only her cape but her hood, so I can’t see her face or her wispy white hair.
“Don’t worry,” she tells me. “Nobody is seriously injured.”
She crazier than I am, I think, and she says, “Maybe so.” But in the next instant, a blaring car horn spins my head down to the intersection, where a minivan slams into the side of a UPS truck.
“Paramedics’ll be here in a few minutes. Right when we’re heading out.”
The driver of the UPS truck climbs out, holding a cellphone. I see movement inside the minivan. Gypsy says. “Really, there’s nothing you can do. We should go ahead and get started.”
“Sure,” I say. I look around and try to think of where to start. “What are you doing up here?”
She keeps her face aimed downward. “Waiting for you, what else?”
Below us, traffic starts backing up. Some folks have come out to help, but others are honking their horns, trying to get turned around to skirt the accident. “But why are you waiting up here?”
She shakes her head. “Because this is where we were going to meet. If I weren’t here, I might have missed you.”
I’ve forgotten what it’s like to converse with someone with severe personality issues and the ability to glimpse the future. I sit next to her, back against the board. My feet scrape broken glass, and my eyes fall on a smashed stage light in front of her.
“Damn thing was just about blinding me,” she says. “How’s the family?”
“Just fine,” I say. “You seem to be holding up well. I’d heard you were in a pretty bad way.”
Now she looks my way, and even in the shadows I can make out her sunken cheeks, dull eyes. “I’ve always been in a bad way, Vincent. You of all people should know you shouldn’t trust what you hear on TV. Listen, I should tell you right now that I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Don’t waste your time asking me to tell your fortune. The future comes and goes these days, like a radio station I can’t quite tune in.”
“That must be weird,” I say.
“It’s a bitch,�
�� she says. “Like going blind. Take us meeting. About a week ago all I saw was us up here in the dark. I even had to break the light to get the image right. Sometimes the future needs fixing, that’s the moral of the story. This is the third night I snuck out of my room and sat here in the dark, waiting. A curfew infraction means limited privileges.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I had no idea you were waiting.”
“How could you? Besides, it’s OK. I kind of like it up here. The people in that place are pretty messed up. Addicts have unstable personalities. Sometimes I have other people’s nightmares.”
“Right,” I say. It’s been a couple years since I spoke with Gypsy, and she always had a kind of witchy way about her, so I can’t tell if she’s stoned on meds right now, or coming out of a meditative trance, or 110 percent mental. Somehow, she seems more grounded than Huan. It seems impolite not to ask, so I say, “So how’s it all going, the therapy and stuff?”
“Like therapy always goes. I’m addicted, Vincent. To alcohol and antidepressants and, if you believe the good Dr. Heiner, reality TV. They’ve also added anorexia to my list of ailments, but you know I never had much of an appetite. I collect diagnoses these days like Girl Scouts collect merit badges. I should get a sash.”
The catalog of addictions was part of the letter she sent out her first week in this place. Addressed to “People I Love and Who Love Me,” it was composed in shaky handwriting and photocopied. There were stickers in the margins and a sprinkling of glitter. The note, part of her therapy, explained the importance of accepting one’s addictions and seeking forgiveness. These were the first two rungs of her Ladder of New Life. I’m wondering now—two months later—what number rung she’s made it to. I hike a thumb at the billboard sign. “Are they shutting down?”
She nods. “Five weeks, and the lights go out. I’m not so bad off. Close to completing my mandatory term anyway. When they lock the doors, I’ll go back to my cabin. With the foliage turning, the Appalachians are beautiful right now. By the time I get there, it’ll be all bare branches and snow. But I’ll be fine. Arthur’s guilt seems without limit, like his bank account. He’ll always send me checks. You should see Blackfire. Poor bastard spends most afternoons in the dayroom with crayons. He draws demons with flames coming out of their eyes, asks when he can go home to his aunt. Or Supersword. They put him on something so his arms would stop twitching, but now he hums constantly, even when he’s sleeping. It’s creepy.”
I wonder what the plans are for these patients in the wake of New Horizons. An idea passes through my head—I’ll become leader of a new team of superheroes composed only of retirees and addicts. The thought is so disturbing that I force myself back on task. “Grace, do you know why I’m here?”
“We’re not there yet,” she says. Now her eyes hold mine, and I wonder if she’s casting a spell. “You have to let me say a few more things. Then it gets to be your turn.”
“OK. No sweat.”
“Sorry if I seem rude. It’s just I’ve come to a few conclusions, and nobody in that place is sane enough to listen. I know all about your plan, Bone Crusher, all that. But first, I want you to hear me out and tell me if you think I’m really crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“You haven’t listened to me yet.”
I kick at some of the broken glass. Down below, the drivers have apparently exchanged insurance cards. They’ve taken the customary accidentvictim seats on the curb. I tell Gypsy, “I’m all ears.”
“Well, for starters, I don’t think any of us were supposed to get powers.”
“Supposed to according to what?”
“To God. It wasn’t God’s will for human beings to fly and be able to walk through walls and see into other people’s minds. It isn’t natural. This nonsense about it being the next step in evolution, that’s just absurd. We’re freaks of nature, plain and simple. I’m surprised any of us can breed. My guess is that we got screwed up because of toxins in the air, particulate matter in the water supply, maybe solar radiation caused by the diminished ozone. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. But none of this was supposed to happen, that’s the moral of the story. These weren’t the lives we were destined to lead.”
The hair rises on the back of my neck, and I shiver.
“Think about it. I can see the future. I can read people’s minds. That doesn’t make me superhuman. It makes me inhuman.”
“You don’t need me to tell you you’re human.”
“I need somebody to, and you’re the only other one on this billboard. I’m deadly serious now. Human beings, I’ve decided, need to not know in order to function. Knowing too much screws you up. We’re meant to stumble forward, blindly.”
If this is true, I may be the ultimate man. Gypsy goes on. “I remember your wedding day. Sheila with that antique veil, you in that atrocious tuxedo made of what back then—Lycra?—so your shoulders and biceps could fit. You were so young and bright. Bursting with promise. But while everyone was dancing and laughing, I was sipping my wine trying to force a single image from my mind: you on a high balcony, crying—she on the other side of a sliding glass door. I knew right then your marriage was doomed. I didn’t know how it would fall apart, and I knew you’d have lots of happiness, even joy, before that day came. So what could I do? I kissed you both and wished you well and tried to enjoy the chicken marsala. Maybe that’s the moral of the story: eat your dinner and forget what you know.”
In the distance, sirens cry out. We both listen to them coming nearer.
“At my wedding,” I say, “you taught me how to waltz.”
“It was the foxtrot,” she says. “And I didn’t teach you. I tried. I used to love dancing.”
“You were good at it.”
“How would you know?”
I laugh.
“I’m still a virgin, you know. Closing in on seventy and never been laid. Every guy I got close to, I’d see what he really thought of me, and sure, plenty of it was lovely and touching, warm, kind stuff. But mixed in with it, always, was how I kind of made them nervous or how my legs weren’t as fine as Miss Perception’s or how what they really wanted was someone more like Mommy. People think knowing each other’s thoughts would make it easier to communicate and understand, come together with other lost souls? It makes it impossible.”
If Dr. Janet were here, she’d argue with my friend, who’s making a whole lot of sense to me just now.
“After this, I’m going back on my meds for good. I’m going back to my cabin and waiting for my powers to fade completely. Then maybe I can have a decade or two to live like a normal person. Then, I’ll be ready for the old-age home. At least I can learn to play gin rummy or something, not know what cards are coming next.”
“You really think we’d all be better off as civilians?”
“Without exception. It’s made us all addicts, don’t you see? You, me, Arthur, the whole lot. God knows why, but we have these incredible freaky abilities, things no human should be able to do, and when we play hero we get a bona fide buzz. I’ll bet your brain floods with dopamine, just floods, every time you go into battle. I’m talking now about brain chemistry, Vincent, the most powerful and mysterious force on Earth.”
I nod and say, “Brain chemistry, I’m with you.”
“By comparison, the rest of life flattens out. It’s dull and dead, and it’s hard to even find meaning in it. You ever check the suicide rates of combat troops after they come home? Why do you think boxers keep going back in the ring till they nearly get killed? Whether they wanted it or not, they became addicted. And once you’re an addict, you lose the ability to make the best decisions.”
“But think of all the good we do. You can’t deny that.”
“You’re rationalizing. Maybe once you could argue that, but really, how long has it been since you did battle with a supervillain?”
The sirens are louder now. “Gypsy, are you saying you won’t help me?”
“Oh no, I’m wi
th you. I’m in. Bone Crusher might lead you to Chaos. It’s a grand plan. But I’m not deluding myself. This whole thing is a charade. I’m willing to play my part. After tonight, though, I’m out.”
“But tonight?” I ask.
She stands, peels back her hood, and shakes out her white hair. “Tonight I’m a Guardian.”
I rise, and below us, the paramedic trucks arrive. “Right on schedule,” I say.
She nods, fluffs out her cape. “One more thing. About that little show at the zoo this afternoon. Some mom with a camcorder’s got you and Huan on tape, talking about how you shouldn’t punch her too hard.”
“Shit,” I say. “This came to you in a vision?”
“CNN,” she tells me. “It’s all over the news.”
I shake my head. “Perfect.”
Gypsy steps into the light. Her eyes are glassy and far-off. “Something’s coming to pass,” she says. “The future is shifting right now.”
“Shifting how?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. Until a few minutes ago, it was clear that we’d apprehend Bone Crusher. All of a sudden, that seems like an uncertainty. We’d better hurry.”
“Right. We’re talking about four, five miles back to the Metropolitan. Can you fly?”
She nods and extends her arms, hands up. But then her wrinkled eyes pop wide open, and she stares at something over my shoulder. I turn.
The Midlife Crisis of Commander Invincible: A Novel (Yellow Shoe Fiction) Page 17
