“As much as I want to say, ‘yes,’” she admits, “don’t hurt him unless he puts up a struggle. Then you can snap his neck, for all I care.”
Jason says nothing as Belle walks away from him.
17
The viking leads Jason out through the back, moving from the dance floor to the pool room to the mechanical bull room to kitchen.
Jason does not put up a fight and wonders if it matters.
18
Halfway across the small kitchen Jason sees a door open to an alleyway out back. He decides to make a run for it.
A decade ago, he would have jumped up and kicked the viking, then scattered over the kitchen counters to grab a weapon or five, then tossed them at the viking before blitzing out the door and to safety.
Now, without his powers, all he does is run straight for the door. The viking gives off an agitated, “You idiot!” yell. The last syllable still rings in the air as Jason’s feet exit the kitchen and hit the paved alleyway.
“Hey, stud,” the bartender from inside says from the middle of the pavement to his left. She waits for him to turn to her before knocking him out cold.
PART THIRTEEN
INTERLUDE
1998
1
He comes home via police escort one too many times.
“Where is Mr. Flack?” the SFPD patrol officer asks Winton at the door to Flack Mansion.
“I believe Mr. Flack is currently … entertaining a supermodel at a downtown hotel.”
“Which one?”
“Which supermodel?” Winton asks. “It is so hard to keep them straight.”
“Which hotel?”
“The answer is the same,” Winton says, his intense eyes burning a hole through Jason’s downturned face.
“Well, look,” the cop says, “this is the fourth time this month we’ve had to pull Jason off of someone. He can’t keep doing this.”
“Oh?” Winton raises an eyebrow. “Was young Mr. Kitmore in another fight? Because he does not look like he was in a fight. A bit sweaty, yes, and there is a small rip in his shirt, but who was he fighting that put up so little of a fight? A child?”
The cop frowns. “He was engaged in fisticuffs with DeMarcus Connick.”
Winton looks around, as if the answer were hanging in the air. “I do not know who this is. Is he a child?”
“No, he’s not a damn child!” the officer snaps. “He’s a football player! For the Niners!”
“You mean to tell me that this sixteen-year old boy engaged in fisticuffs with a professional football player and he looks no worse for wear than if he went for a bike ride? Is Mr. Connick the punter?”
“No, he’s not the punter,” the officer scowls. “He’s an offensive lineman. Damn near weighs 350 pounds.”
“And you say Mr. Kitmore was winning? I find that hard to believe.”
“My guess,” the cop says, shoving Jason inside, “is that you don’t find it hard to believe at all.”
“Is Mr. Connick pressing charges, then?” Winton asks as Jason slinks past.
“Oh, yes,” the officer says, rolling his eyes, “the starting right guard for the Niners wants to press charges against a high school junior for beating the shit out of him.”
2
“What did he do?” Winton asks.
“He called this guy a faggot,” Jason says, “and then slapped him in the face before —”
“Did you hit him in the face?”
“Yes.”
“Will he be able to play this Sunday?”
“What do you care?”
“About football?” Winton asks. “I don’t, but the rest of this city might. If you hurt him to the point where he cannot play, people will ask questions.”
“So I shouldn’t have hit him?”
“You shouldn’t have hit him in the face,” Winton corrects, putting a hand on Jason’s shoulder. Sternly, he says, “I am afraid Master Flack is failing in his duties as your mentor. I made it clear to him that if he was going to give you the Peak solution and teach you how to be a superhero after that Domina Tricks and Mrs. Overing affair, he needed to take the teaching seriously.”
Jason scowls. “He’s a terrible teacher, but I suppose I can’t blame him for fucking a supermodel instead of teaching me.”
Winton slaps Jason in the face. “Your language,” he grunts. “Watch it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Given how many times the police have brought you home after events similar to tonight, I highly doubt you have learned that lesson so quickly,” Winton says. “For the record, Mr. Flack is not with a supermodel. He is downstairs.”
“He is always downstairs.”
“Nonetheless, you are in need of new instruction,” Winton declares. “Go upstairs and pack your bags. You are transferring to a new school first thing in the morning.”
3
Francis does not see Jason off in the morning.
Nor does he ride with him and Winton to the airport.
Nor does he ride with him on his private jet.
4
The private plane lands twice for refueling before finally touching down in Zurich, Switzerland. Jason spends the entire time alone, without anyone to talk to or anything to do. The pilot keeps the door closed. There are no computers to use, no games to play, no books to read, no notebooks to write on. His luggage is stowed away. There is no stewardess. Jason is restless, tries to sleep as much as possible, but he is on edge and can’t settle down.
No one has told him anything about anything.
5
When the plane lands, the door to the cockpit opens but the pilot does not exit.
After waiting a whole fifteen, maybe twenty seconds, Jason moves to the cabin and discovers there is no pilot.
“Hello, Jason,” a male voice says over the radio. “You’re training begins now.”
Smoke is pumped into the cabin. Jason exits back into the plane and tries to open the door. He fails.
The smoke overcomes him and he collapses, falling into darkness.
6
He wakes up to find himself sitting in a chair in the middle of a gigantic gymnasium. All around him, teenagers and working out on a wide variety of equipment, and he guesses there must be 100 students and nearly twenty instructors.
“Oh, hey, the new guys is awake!” a young woman calls to the nearest instructor before turning to look at Jason. “Hi!” she says cheerfully as she starts walking towards him.
She is older than him, he sees. College aged, with a beautiful round face and golden hair that falls to her shoulders. She is wearing a white gi that draws his eyes to the edges of her chest. She is the most beautiful girl he has ever seen and she seems to move in slow motion.
“My name is Belle,” she smiles. “Belle Flower. How do you do?”
PART
THIRTEEN
2013
continued
19
Jason regains consciousness in a hotel room that reminds him of his suite at the Grand Vegas. For the briefest of moments, he’s back there, a 20-year old kid out on his own for the first time with a new city to protect and a hot girlfriend to have ridiculous amounts of dirty sex with. He smiles.
“The hell are you smiling at?” a woman’s voice — the bartender’s — says to him.
Jason blinks his eyes as a tall, strong blonde in a pink and white outfit with guns and knives strapped to her arms and legs moves into his line of sight. “Who are you?” he asks, and then recognizes the color scheme. “Wait, are you … um … Bubblegum Girl or something? Duplication Girl used to have one of your t-shirts.”
The woman raises her fist to punch him, but Belle Flower steps in to hold the bartender’s hand back.
“Easy, Gunner,” she says. “Jason is harmless. A complete fool, but harmless.”
Belle is out of her red, singing dress and back into her superhero costume: a red left half, a white right half, with an image of a long-stemmed rose that goes from her lower
leg before finishing on her upper chest set against the white. She’s older now, of course, but there’s still a soft, roundness to her short, athletic frame that breaks his heart today as much as it did when he was sixteen and she was twenty.
“I don’t know what’s more surprising,” he says, rising to his feet and rubbing his jaw. “That I found you here, on Gratify, or that you’ve hit middle age. I guess I always think of you as —”
“Shut up, Jason,” Belle says, then points to the woman in pink. “This is Bubblegunner, and that,” she points to the viking behind him, “is Viking Vot. They both really love violence, so behave. Forgetting for a moment that your presence here threatens to ruin our operation, what are you doing running with Zenaforn Guez and his pirates?”
“Your operation?” Jason asks. “What are you —?”
Viking Vot steps in and hits Jason in the kidney, knocking him to one knee.
“Fuck!” he grunts. “What the hell is —?”
Belle steps in and kicks Jason in the chest, knocking him back against the wooden chair he was sitting in when he awoke, and sending both chair and person tumbling onto the gray carpet.
“Fuck’s sake, Belle!” Jason yells, putting his hand to his chest and pushing himself into a sitting position. “What the hell’s happened to you?”
Belle takes a few steps towards him and stops, letting him know she’s choosing not to step right to him. “You don't get to ask questions,” she says through a snarl. “I haven’t seen you since 9/11, though I am well aware of your exploits on Faunakyat.”
“Not all of what made the tabloids is true,” Jason says defensively. He sees Vot and Bubblegunner share an amused glance between them, and the woman takes a seat on a large, high-backed chair while the viking crosses his arms. “Just … just tell me what this is,” he says, making a circling motion with his index finger around the room, “and I’ll tell you anything and everything.”
Belle says nothing, but Vot answers for her. “We’re ORION Patrol. Special unit. Undercover.”
“I thought Gratify was a planet where everything was legal?”
“Not human trafficking,” Belle answers, offering Jason a hand up, which he takes. She points to a comfy chair and he sits in it, and she plops herself down on the foot of the bed on the opposite side of the room. “Last I heard of you was ’03 or ’04. The Revolutionaries had finally given up on you and blocked your access to the Peak formula.”
“That was 2003.”
“How’d you spend 2004?” Belle asks. “And keep it brief.”
“I cleaned up and went to work as a TV commentator,” he answers. “For American News Channel. Then later, RED News.”
Belle looks neither surprised nor impressed nor distraught by this. “2005.”
“I published my memoir,” he says, coughing with slight embarrassment. “It was called Sex, Drugs, and Capes, which got me fired from RED because it was … well, it was about sex, drugs, and capes. Very salacious. I was trying —”
“2006.”
“Two for one,” he says, not bothering to do anything but be compliant. This new, harder Belle was scaring him. “I spent most of 2006 and 2007 doing the convention circuit, selling and signing memorabilia.” He purses his lips and his eyes drop to the floor. “I … uh … well, it was a miserable life and I started hitting the coke, again.”
“2008.”
“Fuck, Belle,” Jason says, throwing up his hands. “What turned you so damn cold? I mean, I own my mistakes, but —”
“2008.”
Jason sighs. “After I published my memoir, no one in the superhero community wanted anything to do with me, so I couldn’t appeal to anyone for help. I, uh … oh, hell, I checked myself into a rehab clinic. I mean, it was also a reality television show, but I needed a way to pay for it, so —”
“2009.”
“God fuck it, Belle!” Jason yells, to the amusement of Vot and Bubblegunner. “It worked. Finally! It worked. I got off the coke and haven’t been back on it, since! That’s almost five years now!”
“2009.”
He slumps back in his chair.
“Well, that’s where things get complicated.”
“You’ve got,” she glances to the clock on the wall above him, “one hour, six minutes before we have to move. Unless your pirate friends find us first.”
“Look, they’re not —”
“Jason,” Belle says, rising to her feet, crossing the bedroom floor, and leaning down to stick her face in his, “you are not nearly smart enough to tell us what’s going on. If you’re running with the Temperance, you’ve either gone bad or you’re on your way or you are the dumbest piece of crap on a planet made of crap. Now, tell me what happened to you in 2009.”
PART THIRTEEN
INTERLUDE 2
2009
1
Jason has never felt more uncomfortable in his own uniform.
It’s been six years since he was officially Kid Rapscallion, but while the Revolutionaries cut him off from his steroid serum, they did not confiscate his uniform. He wears that red, black, and white uniform on this night, as he sits at a table and signs autographs for his latest book, The Good We Did.
He has a call in to Nancy and a call in to his attorney. Tonight is the penultimate stop of this increasingly disappointing book tour, and after hitting Oxford in two days, he’ll be heading back to Las Vegas. He’ll see Nancy, if she lets him, because there isn’t anyone else to see. Hopefully, he’ll hear back from his attorney in the next few days about Rapscallion’s will. It’s been tied up in legal red tape because of Colbie’s disappearance, but he’s hoping it’s finally time to let him have his money. Jason doesn’t know how much money he’s getting, but hopes it’s enough to buy a small house somewhere and drop off the grid.
But tonight …
“Thank you,” Jason says to the heavyset guy wearing a t-shirt two sizes two small for him as he hands back a copy of his book.
Three and a half years earlier, he had published a scandalous account of his life as a superhero entitled Sex, Drugs, and Capes. It was a brief New York Times bestseller and helped re-stock his bank account, but it also ostracized him from most of the superhero community.
“Why did you write it?” the bookstore’s assistant, a somewhat attractive woman in her mid-30s asks him. Her job for this signing is to sit next to him and make sure the autograph seekers have a copy of the book out and turned to the correct page; she also writes their name on a Post-It note that she slaps on the book so Jason knows how to spell their name. When the signing started 23 minutes ago, there was a decent crowd, but the line has already been exhausted, and most of the people milling about the chain store now have little interest in Jason. As a result, the woman — her name tag reads, “LYDIA” — has decided it’s okay to engage Jason in conversation, even though she is not supposed to engage him in conversation.
Jason decides not to complain about it; it’s his agent’s decision to include that rider and Jason isn’t in the mood to enforce it. Besides, LYDIA looks like a bit like Rachel Ray and that works for him, even if the accent is wrong.
“Which book?” he asks, knowing that most people still want to talk about Sex instead of Good.
“This one,” Lydia says, tapping the new book.
“My therapist thought it was the right thing to do,” Jason says, offering a small smile.
“Your TV therapist or your real therapist?” she asks. “I saw Super Addiction,” she adds, though she doesn’t need to. “I thought Prospector Patty was awfully mean to you.”
“Well, she does think of me as her nemesis,” Jason adds, taking a sip of water as his eyes scan the bookstore, hoping to draw anyone to him so he can sign another copy. The eyes that do meet his from passers-by are either quickly averted or look at him through a cloud of confusion, trying to remember who he is. Wanting to change the subject, he says, “I was born a couple hours from here, you know. Topha, Mississippi.”
“You don’t
sound southern,” Lydia says, increasing her own accent in the process.
“We moved around a lot when I was a kid.”
“Say,” Lydia says, adjusting herself on the seat, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” Jason says politely, knowing this question is going to be something about Belle or Becca or Duplication Girl or maybe whether or not Rapscallion ever buggered him because of course he would deny it to everyone else but sure, what the heck, I’ll tell you, woman I’ve known for 27 minutes. “What would you like to know?”
Lydia gives the store a quick scan to make sure no one can hear her, then leans in, smiles, brushes a stray piece of hair off her face, and asks, “Do you want to fuck my tits?”
2
“Ready for round 2?” Lydia asks.
“Yeah,” he says as she rises from her knees and and turns around, placing her arms on a stack of books in the store room. “Oh, and put your mask on. It’s hotter that way.”
3
“God, that was good,” she says, smiling as she pulls her clothes back on. “Just, make sure you don’t tell anyone, okay? My husband is the jealous type.”
“Not a problem,” he says, thinking this woman has, without question, the filthiest mouth he has ever heard in his life. For the first time since his youth, the just-completed sex feels dirty in all the wrong ways, and shame descends on him. He wants to be out of this bookstore and away from this woman.
“I mean, if you want to include it in your next book, that’s totally fine, just change my name to Lynda or Lisa or something, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, with no intention of ever writing anything about this moment.
Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story Page 19
