by Matt Carter
I grumble. “I’m gonna need a bigger drink.”
“That can be arranged,” she says, waving for a waitress.
This is gonna be a long night.
THE SUPERHERO
“I need another of these,” I say, sucking on the ice of my last drink, the name of which I can’t remember. I think it had coconut shavings in it.
“Check your blind spot,” Cory snickers, and I turn to find a fresh round on the table next to me.
Cosmic Rays. That’s what they’re called.
I must have blinked when he went to pick them up.
It seems Derek’s already been enjoying them, because he’s curled up sideways on the couch across from me, another empty glass added to his collection.
We’re squeezed together in one of the first floor lounge alcoves of the Silver Cowl, just off the dance floor. All the VIP lounges were already booked. We probably could have gotten somebody bumped if we’d tried, but this is fine. Better, in fact, closer to the action, and I’m less likely to run into someone who knows me, other than my teammates, if I don’t go upstairs.
Yesterday, I took my final patrol with the Justice Juniors, and tomorrow I receive my first official assignment as a Pinnacle City Guardian. But tonight? Tonight is just tonight, and I want to keep it that way … for as long as I can.
A pair of useless (but undeniably stylish) glasses and a black dress instead of purple have successfully camouflaged me into the crowd. All the capes, masks, and tight leggings on the staff and half the people on the dance floor don’t hurt, either. There are at least half a dozen people within ten yards of us who look more like Glitter Girl right now than I do.
I push the leftover ice aside and take a sip through the whipped cream on top of the new glass.
“Don’t you have to be up early?” Leah reminds me.
This clashes with my ideal of tonight staying tonight, so I shrug.
“Have you ever seen me hungover?”
“Never seen you trip in heels either, but there’s a first time for everything.”
In my defense, someone had spilled a drink on the floor when that happened. I might also have had a shot or two of that Wonder Whiskey stuff by that point in the evening, but I think I’m getting the hang of compensating for its effects.
“Hey, let her enjoy it while she can,” Cory chimes in.
“Thank you.” I take a sip. “What do you mean, ‘while I can’?”
“Didn’t we tell you?” says Leah. “This whole going away party was just a ruse to kidnap you and tie you up in the Juniors Ranch cellar so you can’t ever leave us.”
Her expression doesn’t budge under the curtains of dark hair she’s brushed forward over her face in lieu of her Gothique hood, but I can’t hold back so easily.
“Aw, guys,” I hold the glass close to my heart for the sake of holding something to that aching spot. “It’s not like I’m moving away away. We’re still gonna hang out. Every weekend. Or, whenever they give me time off, but every week. Promise. And we’ll do team ups! Loads of all-star team ups.”
“We might let you out every month or so,” says Cory. His poker face isn’t anywhere near Leah’s league, but he gives it his best. “Public appearances, just so people don’t think you’re dead.”
“And once you’re properly Stockholmed,” Leah jumps in, “Sunday walks in the park might be permitted. We’ll have to review your behavior when the time comes.”
I don’t want to cry right now. Tonight is just tonight.
“Okay, refreshment break accomplished, dance time!” I finish my drink and fly over the couch between me and the dance floor, bracing my hand on the back of it in vaulting posture as I pass, to make it look like I’m just reasonably athletic rather than super.
“I’m in!” declares Cory, already on my other side.
“Have to keep an eye on the hostage, don’t I?” asks Leah.
“You’re a freakin’ machine, Kimmy,” Derek moans, nestling further into the threadbare couch cushions.
Mason puts his feet up wordlessly.
I shrug, and the shrug becomes a shimmy, and in three steps I’m rocking to the rib-strumming bass, watching the lasers change color under my feet, and this song is just this song, and tonight is just tonight.
No matter the beat, Leah dances slow and Cory dances fast. So it’s not long before our perfect little triad of discord begins to bleed in and out of the undulating crowd around us.
A man with about a million piercings is eyeing Leah, and she’s eyeing him back, and Cory’s dancing with two different women who haven’t noticed how blurry he gets when he’s doing the two-places-at-once thing because of the low, pulsating light, so I’m wide open when a guy in a neatly pressed pinstriped shirt moves in.
“You’re pretty good at this, huh?” he shouts over the music, showing off nicely clean, even teeth.
“Yeah!” I shout back. “Need some pointers?”
He laughs. “So, fuck modesty is what you’re saying, right?”
“You asked the question.”
“True, true.”
He comes a little closer, syncing almost to my rhythm.
“Chad,” he introduces himself. “I can take pointers.”
Meh, why not?
“You’re thinking too much, Chad,” I tell him, taking one of his hands, which is pleasantly soft. “If you have to think about when the next beat is coming, you’ve already missed it.”
He takes the invitation to put his other hand on my waist, and we follow the song together, him without much improvement but with plenty of enthusiasm. He pulls me in close, and pretty soon he’s rubbing up against me in a rhythm that still has little to do with the music, and maybe it’s the cheesy would-be sexy song lyrics or the long day or Chad’s friends watching us from the bar like a panel of Olympic judges, but I’m just not feeling this at all.
I gently peel his hands away, clasp them together between us, and give them a squeeze.
“Yeah no, that might be a lesson three move,” I say. “But keep on practicing those fundament—”
KLUDD!
I don’t even see the fist coming until it clocks Chad in the side of the head, and Mason steps in front of me to tower over him the only way Mason can tower over someone—when they’re sprawled on the floor.
“The lady said no.”
“Oh, for the love of crullers,” I bury my reddening face in my hand for a moment.
“Dude, the fuck?” yells Chad from the floor, clutching his ear on the side Mason hit.
“I am so sorry.” I push my way back in front of Mason and hold out my hand to Chad. “And also no. But also sorry!”
He gets to his feet without my help and makes for the far row of tables with only the briefest glance back to confirm his conviction that we’re both completely insane.
I don’t know if Mason would have graced me with a spontaneous whole sentence in honor of the occasion, but I don’t give him the chance.
“You. Me. Conference. Now.”
I shove him off the dance floor. He acquiesces, and I don’t stop prodding him forward until we reach the closest thing in the building to a pocket of quiet, which happens to be the corridor leading to the restrooms. There are queues of people spilling out of both doors, but I don’t care. It’ll have to do.
“Christ, Kim, I’m sorry for trying to help, okay?”
I ignore his pathetic plea. “Do you want to be with me?” I demand.
“What?” Mason sputters out, as if the question is absurd.
“Do you want to be with me? Really with me?”
The people in line avert their eyes, and a few begin to chuckle, but I ignore them and keep going.
“Because you’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t,” I go on. “Y’know, between all those other times when you’ve made it totally unclear, like all the times we were naked, but it still averages out to a positive net total of clarity.”
He might be about to say something, but I’m on a roll.
“I wasn’t jealous,” says Mason, and I feel a little bad that I’m not the only person in this corridor laughing at him, but not bad enough to stop me from laughing a little inside. “I was concerned. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”
“Oh, you were concerned. Leah’s out on the smoking terrace with some guy who looks like Marilyn Manson’s creepier little brother and Derek’s practically passed out drunk with no physical enhancements and no one watching him but you, yet you decide you’d better take care of the problem of someone else asking me to dance, because you’re concerned?”
“I care about you, okay? Is that what you want me to say?”
I catch one of the hands he flails irritably in the air, push it to the side, and hold it there. He pushes back, like arm wrestling without a table, and makes no progress. I can feel the fragility of the bones inside his hand, in spite of its roughness and size.
I don’t want to hurt him, just remind him that on the off chance I ever find myself on a bad date with someone stronger than I am, there’s zero chance he’d be able to do anything about it.
“Actually, I’d rather you go back to ‘it won’t happen again.’”
He pulls away from my grip and I let go, turn, and almost walk headlong into a bouncer. His badge reads S. WINTERS.
Chad is standing at the end of the hallway in a huddle with his friends and gives S. Winters a nod from a distance.
“Sorry, ma’am, but is this guy bothering you?” Winters asks.
“No!” I snap, take a breath, and remind myself he’s just doing his job. “No, sir. Thank you, but no, no one’s bothering me. Everyone’s fine.”
Chad looks like he wants Winters to do something more.
Mason breezes past them both.
“Don’t worry,” he mutters. “I was just leaving.”
“Hey, are you Glitter Girl?” someone in line for the bathroom calls out as I hurry out of the hallway.
“Nope, sorry.”
By the time I find our table to check on Derek, Leah and Cory have already beaten me to it.
Derek’s out cold.
“Where’s Mason?” asks Cory.
“Finding his own way home,” I say. “The usual.”
This doesn’t warrant any follow-up questions.
“We gotta get Derek to bed,” says Leah “You riding with, or flying?”
“You mind if I stay for a bit?”
I know Cory can carry Derek without breaking a sweat, but it seems only right to ask.
“Well, I guess we can postpone your kidnapping for a week or two,” says Leah. Then, with the tiniest transition from straight-faced to actually serious, she asks, “You sure?”
“Very.”
Usually, I feel awful being angry with anyone, but finally telling Mason off has left me strangely energized. It was all stuff I should have probably said years ago if I didn’t have to worry about coordinating a villain smackdown with him the next day, but now I don’t. That and the WW have made me invincible, more so than usual, and I don’t want to waste it.
Tonight is just tonight, and I want it to last.
When the others head out, I head for the bar.
THE DETECTIVE
For someone who doesn’t drink, Fadia still knows how to party. It’s probably all the vigilante training, but start her dancing and she just won’t stop. I don’t think I’ve moved this much all at once since boot camp, but she’s not even breaking a sweat. It’s a shame that she’s not out, because there’s a lot of pretty ladies here and she’d have her pick easy.
Easier than me, at least. I cleaned up as much as I could, but a lot of the girls here take one look and it’s like they can just smell the Crescent on me. Since I don’t really give two shits what EPC girls think of me (and have three double shots of whiskey in me right now), I don’t mind.
Fadia, unfortunately, does.
We’re back on the second floor by her table, leaning over the dance floor.
“We need to find you a girl.”
“I do fine on my own.”
“Prostitutes don’t count.”
She’s probably right about that. While I don’t do it that often, acquiring the services of a lady of the night every so often (always gotta make sure they’re free agents and not one of Milgram’s girls first; I’m no monster) is easily my third or fourth worst habit, so I don’t argue with her.
“This ain’t exactly the best place for me to pick up girls.”
“Not the kind you usually go for. See, the girls who look trashy here aren’t really trashy, they just put on the trashy look because they think it makes them look edgy. No, what we need for you is … a good girl. One who might be interested in taking a walk on the wild side.”
“I’m wild?”
“As wild as most of them will ever see,” she says, scanning the crowd. Her eyes stop, and she stifles a giggle of what looks like a bad, private joke.
“Her,” she says, pointing to a girl at the bar.
Fadia has good taste. The girl at the bar is tall and pale, with straight red hair down to her waist. Her little black dress shows an impressive and no doubt very expensive bust, while her glasses, which probably cost more than my car, give her that naughty librarian look. It’s a crime she doesn’t have a line around the block, though how modestly dressed she is compared to the rest of this crowd might explain why.
“Introduce yourself. Make small talk. Offer to buy her a drink. Do all that, and I’ll give you what you want.”
“I can do that with my eyes closed.”
“And, no powers. You don’t get to cheat by reading her, not even if she says you can. You go in there like anybody else who can’t read people at a touch.”
My head is swimming, but the alcohol’s given me that sweet swelling of false confidence. “Fine. I’ll play your game, vigilante, but let it be known you can be one sadistic bitch.”
“Thanks. And enjoy!”
There’s another shoe about to drop, but what it is, I can’t guess.
Fine.
She wants to play games, she can play games. This one at least looks more fun than her usual picks for me.
I make my way across the dance floor, glad for the pick-up the whiskey’s giving.
Finally, I make the bar, and luckily get a spot next to her.
She notices and offers a polite smile.
Here goes nothing.
“So, I was debating between three different lines to break the ice. Would you be up for hearing them and telling me which’d work best?”
“Sure. Why not?” she says, amused.
“Alright. Now, the first one’s a classic.”
“I like classics.”
“Good. So, you come here often?”
She’s still smiling politely, but no more than that. “What’s the second one?”
“What’s your major?”
“Sorry, not in college anymore. Next?”
“You gonna make me bust out the big guns?”
“After this much buildup, how can I not?”
“Then here goes nothing: What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
This one gets a short bark of a laugh.
“So, any winners?” I ask.
“Sorry, but thanks for trying.”
“Wait!”
“What?”
“I’ve got one more. Just came up with it. Might be brilliant, might not be. Since you’ve been so honest with me, let me try it on for size?”
“Well, I don’t have anything better to do, so go for it.”
“Now you sure you want to hear this? It’s something you probably don’t hear very often around here; I think it might be too powerful for an average night out at the club.”
She’s laughing now, whether at me or with me, I can’t say.
“Go for it.”
“Hi,” I say, holding out m
y hand. “Would you prefer it if I left you alone?”
She considers my question and my hand for a long moment.
Then, still smirking, she reaches out and takes it in hers. “You’re right. That isn’t something I hear very often.”
“Strong handshake,” I say, withdrawing my somewhat aching hand from her grip.
She eyes me, curiously. “You really don’t—you know what, scratch that. I’m super.”
“Nice, me too.”
“Really?” she perks up. “What can you do?”
I refrain from telling her I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, because I’m not fucking twelve, but it’s really hard—er, difficult.
“I need to be a little drunker before I start showing that off in public. But it’s impressive.”
Bet she’s never heard that one before.
“I’m pretty sure mine’s cooler.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” I say, scanning the bar area. “So, you here with friends?”
“Was.”
“You and me both.”
“Really? What happened to yours?”
“I’m hoping they’ll take a hint and not interrupt me while I’m trying to have a conversation with the most beautiful woman in the bar.”
A brief silence passes between us as she looks down at her drink, then up to me. “Smooth. How long were you hoping to work that into the conversation?”
“Since the beginning. What do you think?”
“Not bad. A little forced, but it came off pretty natural considering how many it looks like you’ve had.”
“So, yay?”
“I’m not sure if I’d go full yay with an exclamation point, but I’d say you’ve earned yourself a drink,” she says, calling the bartender over.
She’s buying?
She’s kind of funny?
She’s got a killer body?
She’s buying?
I might be in love.
THE SUPERHERO
He’s got one of those faces that was probably a little too pretty, too bland, before taking a few heavy blunt impacts. I’m betting on a full-contact college sport or maybe even low profile crime fighting. The little scar cutting through the stubble at the left of his chin supports the latter theory.
His long, dark hair is neglected but suits him, and with his trench coat off and draped across his lap, I notice part of a geometric tattoo climbing his nicely defined right bicep into the sleeve of his T-shirt, and I’m interested in seeing the rest.
