“I’m glad you did,” I said, keeping my voice as light as hers. “This superhero business, it sounds pretty dangerous.”
“Unfortunately, we do make some enemies,” she said. “It can’t be helped: it’s part of the job description. But it’s worth it, really it is.”
I thought I understood more of her that night. I thought I had figured out some of why she told me the stories she did. I knew at least that I loved her, and I thought that was what mattered most.
I sit on my bedroom floor, a ramen-crusted bowl at my knee, watching the snow crackle across the TV. A two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper sits warm in my lap, stained coffee mugs at the base of my dresser. I am determined to catch the next transmission.
There is a dark spot on the corner of the screen, and I start forward, then slump back in disappointment; it is only a cockroach. But there is something about the way it skitters across the screen … there could be a pattern there. If I unfocus my eyes, I can almost see it form.
Ofelia kept her head shaved, she said, because her hair interfered with transmissions. She told me that hair is the body’s natural defense against otherworldly communications, because the physical form wants nothing to do with the astral plane. Hair tries to keep the soul trapped, grounded. By shaving her head, she was opening her mind. I told her that my brother said the same thing about getting baked.
She wore a different wig almost every day. There was the sleek black bob, the frizzy short pink, the long elegant chestnut. Each date with her was like a rendezvous with an international spy who could not afford to be recognized in public.
When I first saw Ofelia, her name was Scheherazade (Hera for short), and she was strumming a battered acoustic guitar at the front of a coffee house, crooning an unfamiliar language into the mic. Her eyebrows were bubblegum pink, and she wore a tie-dyed babushka. I would find out later that her eyelashes glowed in the dark. She couldn’t play worth a damn, but her voice was haunting even over the sounds of the vampire crowd.
“It’s our native tongue,” she told me after her set. I ordered a coffee; she asked for tea. “The one everyone used to know.”
“You mean, before God struck down the Tower of Babel?” I said with a half smile. Even back then, when I was a religions major, I couldn’t help but sound sardonic when I talked about theBible.
“No, silly. Before the whales stole it and made everyone forget.”
Our drinks came, and we talked about Babel and mythic history and grisly alternative options for fuel, about how I couldn’t decide on a major and how she couldn’t decide on a name. We agreed at closing that the conversation was far from over, and she followed me home.
“But this language, the one we lost,” I said. “How do you know it?”
“Some of us still do. I could teach you, it’s easy.” She sealed her mouth around my navel and hummed a note into my belly that made my toes curl. “See? Your body wants to remember. All you have to do is let it.”
There are moments when I think that Ofelia was never here, but then I gather up the photographs, the doodles she left in my notebooks, the coded notes she slipped into my pockets, and I can remember the realness of her. How could I make up a person like Ofelia? Nobody could, but her.
Some days, she was so tired she didn’t want to move. She just slept, curled up on my futon for hours, looking as worried and frail as though she had the weight of an imperiled world on her slight shoulders. She blamed the distant stars for her condition, said they drained her of her life force so they could shine a little longer. She did not seem to mind.
I let her sleep, made her tea when she woke, and tried not to worry. I couldn’t help but think, though, that on those days she looked somehow two-dimensional, paper-thin, as though she might, without the proper attention and care, simply fade away.
“I’m from Atlantis,” she whispered one night.
“What?”
“Atlantis. That’s where I am when I go away for a few days. But I have to leave my physical form behind because the city is deep under the ice in Antarctica, and my body wouldn’t survive in the cold. Besides, I can travel faster that way.”
“I thought you were defusing a megabomb in Madrid.”
“That was last week. I’m learning how to stay outside my body for longer periods of time. Soon, I won’t need it at all.”
“I like your body,” I protested.
She said, “Well, it’s good for a few things,” and we took advantage of some then.
I cannot recall the last time I slept. Has it been a week already? Two weeks? Friends keep calling, so I unplug the phone, turn off my mobile. I don’t answer the knocks at the door. I can’t afford to be distracted now. I force myself to stay awake; I could miss a message if I sleep. It is becoming easier to find them tucked in foreign newspaper headlines, peeking out from the weave of my sweater. Hints of warning, threats of reassurance. A couple more days, and I know I’ll be able to read them as well as she did. I can almost hear her in the buzzing of the electric shaver. Just a couple more days, and I’ll know.
I grab another handful of caffeine pills.
I headed for the hospital as soon as I got the call, her best friend’s voice, shaky and strained, running on a loop in my head: she’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone. A clump of people huddled in the hall, their backs to an open door. I had been almost running, but I slowed when I saw them, or when they saw me. Something in the way they stood, the way they turned, almost in unison, made me want to run back the other way.
“How did … ” My voice caught, and I cleared my throat. “What happened?”
They stared at me with burnt coal eyes. “It was the cancer,” one of them said.
I felt hollow. They weren’t making sense. “Cancer?”
Some of them were glaring at me as though I was the one who had taken her away and brought back only that still thing in the bed in that room. “You didn’t know? It was what made her hair fall out. The chemo, I mean.”
“She said … I thought she shaved it,” I muttered.
A woman I had never met, her nose red and leaking, stuttered, “Would you … would you like to see her?” They were staring at me too intently.
Then I knew. It was a setup. Superheroes make a lot of enemies, it’s part of the job description, and bad guys make some low blows. They were trying to trick me, trying to use me against Ofelia somehow. But I wouldn’t do it, I wouldn’t look inside that room and be fooled by their homunculus, I wouldn’t betray her like that.
I turned and I walked and I kept walking. I walked away, and I never did look.
I didn’t attend the funeral. I knew it was a trap. And if it weren’t, what would be the point of watching them lower an empty shell into a hole marked with a stranger’s name? No point at all.
I did turn on the news, hoping, perhaps, to find one of the messages Ofelia always sought. Poison gas released on the Berlin U-Bahn; a hotel in Honolulu burned to the ground with guests still asleep inside; a flood in Morocco; a hostage situation in Kuwait. And I could almost tell, with a sense beyond the five I knew, which of those stories could have been prevented if only Ofelia had been around to save the day.
And I thought, Ofelia said anyone can learn the language the sea-beasts stole.
And I thought, Ofelia said she practiced leaving her body behind.
And I thought, Ofelia said.
The final few loose locks drift to the bathroom floor, and between the curls of hair I read, as clearly as though it were written there in permanent marker: ANSWER.
In the kitchen, the end of its cord trailing on the dusty floor, the phone rings.
SUPER. FAMILY.
IAN DONALD KEELING HE DOES NOT WANT TO GO HOME.
The man thinks this as he descends from the sky. He lands beside the abandoned industrial complex five blocks from his home. Changes into his street clothes.
He always walks the final five blocks to his house. It allows him to collect his thoughts.
Usually.
<
br /> The time-piece on his wrist chirps twice. “Jesus Christ, Max,” the man mutters, “I’m done for the day.”
“I know it’s late,” a voice from the time-piece says, “but we’ve got the Elastic Band holed up inside Studio 2. You seemed a little glum today. Nothing like a cakewalk against a couple of punching bags to brighten up your evening.”
For a moment, he thinks of going. The Elastic Band are the most incompetent super-villains on the planet. And they can take a lot of punishment. This makes fighting them one of the more satisfying methods of catharsis. As his wife was fond of saying, “They’re the most fun you can have saving the planet.”
They used to have so much fun …
“I can’t,” he says abruptly. “It’s closing time and, besides, I promised Jean … ”
He stops. Beside him, seven crumbling concrete silos stand in a row, stark against the shock-white of the moon. They mark the boundary of the industrial and residential areas of Archangel City.
“Oh, shit,” he whispers.
“What?”
“I promised Jean I’d be home early.” His head descends into the palm of his right hand. “I’m supposed to take Mel to a concert.”
“Really? Who?”
“Motorfinger.”
A laugh on the other end. “They’re pretty loud, Kirb.”
He watches the moon light up a fast-moving cloud. “I figured they would be.”
“Well, I’ll leave you to it. Say hi to Jeannie for me.”
“Right.”
The time-piece goes silent and the moon comes out from behind the clouds. And Kirby “Magnet Man” Walker begins walking again, stepping into the residential area of town.
He opens his front door to the sound of battle.
“You are not leaving the house wearing that, young lady!”
“Mom, I’m fifteen: I can wear what I want!”
Kirby pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his forefinger. Exhales. So it has come to this. Sit-com screaming and Daddy’s tired, home from work. He tries to remember the last time someone in this house wasn’t yelling at someone else.
Down the hall, a baby starts to cry.
“Now look what you’ve done.”
“Me? I’m not the one who started yelling.”
“Good evening, everyone,” Kirby says quietly, entering the kitchen.
His wife is by the stove, a nine-month-old infant in her arms. There’s spittle in her jet black hair and a burp-stain on her right shoulder. Her eyes are jade and dead-set angry. His wife is never more beautiful or frightening than when she’s angry. And she’s facing …
“You’re late.” His daughter turns, grabs two tickets from the kitchen table, and waves them in his face. “We have to go.”
Melissa. The first of his two daughters. For the first fourteen years of her life, Daddy’s Little Girl. The quiet light of his heart.
Now she’s standing there, arms akimbo, wearing too much make-up and not nearly enough of anything else.
He sighs. Mousy and cute, he could have handled. Awkward and shy, he could have handled. Even if she had gone punk—nose-rings, green hair, whatever—he could have handled it. He had prepared for some teenage adversity.
The only thing for which he had not prepared was for his daughter to turn out exactly like her mother.
He glances at his wife. His daughter’s skirt might be a little too high and those boots not nearly low enough, but he remembers what Jean used to wear when she was working. His daughter is wearing less than that, but not a whole lot less.
“In a minute, honey.”
“No.” His daughter stamps her foot. “We don’t have a minute. The Donkeys are probably already on stage.”
“The Donkeys?”
“Kirby, tell your daughter that she’s not—”
“I can wear what I want!”
“All right,” he says, trying to sound firm. The baby begins to cry louder. “I think we can dispense with the shouting.” He takes a breath. Looks at his daughter. “Melissa, your father is very tired. I’ve had a hard day … ”
Her eyes go wide. “You’re not coming.”
“I didn’t say that, I just need a moment—”
“You promised.”
“I know I did and we’ll go—”
“FINE!” his daughter screams. She slams one of the tickets down on the table. “I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO COME ANYWAY!” She storms down the hallway.
“Melissa, you can’t—”
“GO TO HELL!”
The front door slams like a gunshot. But it’s the words that stun him into silence. Just like that, the night spins out of control. When did his daughter get so angry?
“You … promised.”
He turns to find his wife glaring at him. “Jean, I’m going to go to the concert with her, I—”
“Really?” His wife glances towards the sink, stacked with pots. On the counter rests a dinner plate, still full.
“That’s why you came home early like you said you would?”
He closes his eyes. “It was the Ghetto Gang. We had to—”
“The Ghetto Gang are a joke. You could have passed them off to Flare or Burst or a dozen others. Or can’t the world survive without Magnet Man now? Funny, it seems to have survived without me.”
He goes still. This is very dangerous ground. He tries to change the subject.
“Where’s Rebecca?”
“Studying at Tiffany’s. Don’t change the subject.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You know,” his wife says, bouncing the baby in her arms, “I think maybe someone should go after our daughter. Someone who said he’d be home tonight. Someone who doesn’t have to stay at home with the baby.”
A silence, save the child, crying.
“Do you want to go after her, Jean?” He tries to sound reasonable. “If you want to go, I can stay with Michael.”
“No, I think I better stay.” She hurls it at him like a spear.
He takes a breath. “Jean … ” Another. “You can’t keep holding the baby over my head. It isn’t fair to Michael. It isn’t fair to the girls.”
Her eyes flash. She opens her mouth to speak …
He is standing, alone, on his porch in the moonlight.
He looks up at the moon. Twenty years ago, he had stood on its surface, Jean standing beside him. They had been married by the light of the planet they had sworn to protect.
A long time ago.
She is so angry. He knows why, he knows what he has done. Her anger is justified. He just wishes he could find a way …
He does not want to lose his wife. But it has been eighteen months. And she is still so angry.
As is, apparently, Melissa. He blinks and looks away from the moon. His wife can wait. He needs to find his daughter.
He shifts his perception slightly. And the world dissolves into light.
Every single electro-magnetic particle on the planet glimmers in his eye like a billion tiny diamonds. Each one unique. The houses along the street have been decorated by Christmas fiends. The trees lining the street are fountains of ice.
This is the world that Kirby sees, a world of patterns and light, a world that keeps him sane and reminds him, everyday, that there is something worth the fight.
The trail left by a human being—five minutes old, fading now—streams away into the night like stardust.
He could fly and catch her quickly, but he is fairly certain that his daughter remains unaware of her parent’s true identities. There will come a day, soon, when he will have to sit with Melissa and Rebecca and tell them that their mother and father are two of the most powerful people on the planet.
But, given the way the night has gone so far—he grimaces—tonight is not the night for revealing secrets.
His daughter’s last words, screamed at him as she storms out of the house. He feels the door slam in his bones. Melissa has never screamed like that at him. Ever.
Kirby Walker
is losing his wife. He can’t afford to lose his daughter.
Splash.
He takes two steps beyond the puddle and stops. Looks back. He looks up into the clear moonlit sky, the only strips of cloud high and in the jet-stream, whipping through the night.
Did it … ?
“Find your daughter, Kirby,” he says out loud, shaking off his shoes. “Focus on the problem at hand.”
The trail is getting brighter, the stardust thicker. She couldn’t be too far now, perhaps at the next lights …
Splash.
“That was definitely not there when I put my foot down.”
It could be nothing. It’s probably nothing, he thinks, approaching the traffic lights. He’s off-duty, in civilian clothes. Only four people know that plain-old Kirby Walker is actually Magnet-Man. One is his wife. One is Max. One was last seen being thrown into a black hole. And the forth, he is pretty sure, can’t make puddles. Still …
He widens his scan. No one in sight. His daughter’s trail brightens as it enters the park on the opposite corner. She must be …
A glimmering at his feet as he steps off the curb.
Plunge.
He’s down three feet before he realizes that he’s looking up at the surface. He can’t find bottom. The water is bitterly cold.
And that, Kirby Walker decides, is just about enough.
With a practiced assurance, he gathers the fields of energy surrounding him and rises to the surface. Walks across the water as if it were made of glass.
He stops at the opposite corner and looks back. The puddle is gone.
“What the hell?” He tightens the field and prepares to force the water from his clothes. He looks around.
Stops.
About forty yards inside Archeology Park, someone is standing still, looking in his direction. He recognizes the energy signature instantly. How could he not, he’s had it etched on his heart for fifteen years. Melissa.
Did she see him? He glances back at the place where he had exercised his power. It was a distance, and in darkness, despite the moon.
He enters the park, still dripping wet. The night is cold, almost bitter, but there is still a chance she doesn’t know who he is.
Superheroes Page 24
