Less Than Hero

by S. G. Browne

  “I don’t know,” Randy says, scratching the back of his head. “That could work.”

  “One way or another,” I say. “We’ll get our chance to talk to him tonight.”

  “He’s coming here?” Charlie looks around as if he just found out the boogeyman is waiting outside. “What happens if you’re right and he is Illusion Man? What do we do then?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess we’ll just have to find out.”

  “Find out what?”

  We all turn to see Blaine standing in Randy’s open doorway holding a six-pack of Corona. I don’t know how he snuck up on us without anyone noticing but we all just stare at him without saying anything. This goes on for about ten seconds. It’s so quiet you can hear Frank’s waistline expanding.

  “Did I interrupt something?” Blaine asks.

  Charlie lets out a nervous laugh.

  “We were just talking,” I say, wondering how much he heard.

  “About what?” he says.

  I’m thinking it’s probably best to suggest our suspicions with prudence and diplomacy, just in case I’m right about him being Illusion Man. Then Randy says, “About the fact that you’re a supervillain.”

  So much for prudence and diplomacy.

  Blaine looks around the room at everyone, then lets out a theatrical sigh. “I guess that means we’re not playing poker.”

  “So you’re not denying it?” Vic says.

  “Why deny what’s obvious?” Blaine says. “I’m a firm believer in embracing the truth, which is something you should really take to heart, Lloyd.”

  The last thing I need is relationship advice from a supervillain, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t strike a nerve. So just in case, I decide we should probably go with Vic’s approach and all gang up on Blaine. The problem is, I can’t seem to remember how to make my lips go numb.

  “What do you want?” Frank asks.

  “Well, I wanted to drink some cold Coronas and take all of your money,” Blaine says. “But since that’s not happening, I guess I want what any supervillain wants.”

  “And what’s that?” I say.

  Blaine smiles and spreads his arms wide. “Everything.”

  “Well, you can’t always get what you want,” Frank says.

  “Rolling Stones,” Randy says. “Nice.”

  “Will you shut up?” Vic says.

  Blaine lets out a laugh befitting a supervillain. More the Joker than Dr. Evil or Emperor Palpatine. “How anyone can mistake the five of you for superheroes amuses me. You’re more like Keystone Kops.”

  “You don’t know anything about us,” Charlie says.

  “Really?” Blaine says, briefly scanning the five of us. “Well, to prove you wrong, it just so happens I know that you’re all trying to call up your superpowers right now and wondering why you can’t.”

  We look around at one another. Apparently I’m not the only one having trouble accessing my trigger.

  “How do you know that?” Randy says.

  “You really have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you?” Blaine says.

  “Yes we do,” I say. “You’re Illusion Man.”

  Blaine laughs again, this time as if someone just told him a funny joke.

  “You’re not Illusion Man?” Vic says.

  Everyone looks at me.

  Uh oh.

  “Christ,” Blaine says. “You really are Keystone Kops.”

  “We’re not Keystone Kops,” Charlie says, his voice low and serious and filled with surprising resolve. “We’re superheroes.”

  “You say tomato . . .” Blaine says.

  Charlie’s face turns red, like he’s concentrating on something important. Or trying to call up his trigger. I join in and do the same but it’s just not there. From the looks on their faces I’m guessing Frank, Vic, and Randy are doing the same, but nothing’s happening and Blaine’s still standing there—not throwing up or gaining weight or going into a seizure.

  Charlie closes his eyes, his face turning a deeper red, the veins standing out on his forehead, his fists clenched against his sides. The next moment he shivers—a long, drawn-out convulsion that seems more intense than anything I’ve ever seen him experience before. When he opens his eyes and smiles, I think he’s found his trigger. Then his smile falls away and the color drains from his face.

  “Vanilla,” Charlie says an instant before his eyes roll back in his head and he drops to the floor.

  “Charlie!” Vic kneels down next to him and cradles his head while Randy checks Charlie’s eyes and pulse.

  “Well, it’s been fun,” Blaine says. “But I’ve got people to see and memories to steal.”

  “You can’t get away, you son of a bitch,” Vic says, looking up from Charlie. “We know who you are.”

  “Do you?” Blaine looks at Vic as if trying to win a staring contest. And I realize how Blaine might have blocked the memories to access our triggers.

  “Vic, look away,” I say.

  Blaine lets out another laugh, then holds his finger and his thumb up to his forehead in the shape of an L before he turns and walks out the door. “Catch you later, super zeroes.”

  His laughter follows him down the stairs.

  Vic stares at the open doorway a moment longer before he looks at me with a bewildered expression. “Who the hell was that?”

  INTERLUDE #4

  Memory Lane Is Closed for Repairs

  Blaine sits in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria, dressed in a tailored navy blue Hugo Boss suit, a black Hugo Boss shirt, no tie, and a pair of black leather Roberto Cavalli wingtips that are so shiny they reflect the lights of the ornate crystal chandelier hovering beneath the ceiling like an alien spaceship. Tourists and guests sit in lavish lounge chairs or walk through the lobby, taking pictures of the murals and mosaics and the chandelier, while assistant managers and other hotel employees canvass the area, unaware that Mr. Blank is in the house.

  After a few moments, Blaine stands up and walks across the lobby and into Sir Harry’s lounge with its plush red armchairs and checkerboard tables and a polished mahogany bar lined with red-cushioned, low-backed bar stools. “Say It Isn’t So” by Billie Holiday plays in the background. Blaine never used to know Billie Holiday from Etta James, but now he knows more about jazz than he ever imagined.

  He eyes a pair of empty stools halfway down the bar. An older couple wearing jeans and smiles sits on one side while a brunette in a sleeveless black dress and a bored expression sits on the other. He picks the bar stool next to the happy couple and makes himself comfortable.

  “Fresh nuts?” the bow-tied bartender asks with a Disney smile as he scoops some nuts from a silver bucket and places a small bowl down on the bar in front of Blaine.

  “Thanks,” Blaine says, flashing his own smile.

  “What can I get you to wash those down?” the bartender asks.

  “Can you make a mojito?”

  “Absolutely,” the bartender says. “Dirty or traditional?”

  Blaine looks into the bartender’s eyes and gets a flash of a thought that’s not his own, another voice speaking in his head, then the moment is gone. But the thought remains.

  “Dirty.” Blaine takes a small handful of nuts and pops them into his mouth. “And a glass of water, if you don’t mind.”

  The bartender gets Blaine his water, then starts preparing his drink.

  When he first discovered he had the ability to steal people’s memories, Blaine was clumsy in wielding his power and would ransack people’s minds like an undisciplined thief. But after several months of practice, he’s learned how to use finesse and a light touch so he can now access memories without anyone even knowing he was there.

  “I didn’t know they made dirty mojitos,” the bored brunette in the black dress says from two stools over, swirling the remains of her drink around the bottom of her rock glass. “What’s the difference?”

  “A dirty mojito is made with spiced rum instead of white rum and brown-s
ugar syrup rather than white sugar,” Blaine says, the synapses in his brain firing, incorporating the information into his memory.

  The best thing about being Mr. Blank isn’t just having the ability to make people forget him, but having the power to make all of their memories his own.

  “Sounds yummy.” The brunette drains the last of her drink and sets her empty glass on the bar.

  “Make that two,” Blaine says to the bartender, then turns back to the brunette. “I don’t think anyone should sit at a bar with an empty glass.”

  “Thank you,” she says.

  Blaine smiles and looks into her eyes, thoughts and images from her mind drifting through his head. “Hemingway drank mojitos during the winters he spent in Key West.”

  “I love Hemingway,” she says. “He’s my favorite author.”

  Blaine smiles. “Imagine that.”

  “Have you ever been to Key West?” she asks.

  “Never exactly made it on my list of Top Ten Travel Destinations,” Blaine says, as more of the brunette’s thoughts invade his mind, talking to him, telling him things. “But I’m planning a trip to Greece this fall.”

  The brunette leans one elbow on the bar, her chin in the palm of her hand. “I love Greece. It’s my idea of paradise.”

  Blaine just smiles.

  “Annabelle,” she says, offering her right hand across the empty bar stool. “But my friends call me Bella.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Bella,” Blaine says, taking her hand. “You can call me Rick.”

  “Like in Casablanca. That was Humphrey Bogart’s character.”

  “ ‘I remember every detail,’ ” Blaine says. “ ‘The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.’ ”

  Bella smiles and laughs, then runs a hand along her neck. “I don’t run across many men who appreciate old movies. I’m a sucker for them. Casablanca is my favorite film of all time.”

  “Small world,” Blaine says, his synapses firing again. “Or, as they say in French: Le monde est petit.”

  “Je n’en reviens pas,” she says, looking surprised. “Parlez-vous français?”

  “Oui.” Blaine holds his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Je parle un peu.”

  Bella slides over into the seat next to Blaine and proceeds to speak to him in French, occasionally touching him on the arm or the knee. He responds in French with the proper inflection, pausing occasionally as if searching for just the right way to say something, but it’s just a ruse to give him more of a vulnerable side. Even though he never studied French in school or had the opportunity to travel abroad, Blaine can speak the language as if he’d been born and raised in Paris.

  In addition to French, he can speak Spanish, German, and Italian. Sometimes he even thinks in other languages. Plus he’s absorbed more information about science, mathematics, history, sports, cooking, finance, marketing, stock trading, electrical engineering, medicine, animal behavior, filmmaking, feminine hygiene, mixology, and a lonely brunette’s favorite movies and travel destinations than he ever imagined possible.

  It’s amazing how much you can learn by stealing other people’s memories.

  When the mojitos arrive, Blaine raises his glass to Bella and she reciprocates.

  “We’ll always have Paris,” he says in his best Bogart impersonation.

  She gives him another smile and looks at him over the rim of her glass and he knows it’s only a matter of time before she asks him back to her room.

  Another benefit to having backstage passes and VIP access to people’s thoughts and minds is that Blaine has learned how to manipulate the inevitable.

  “Will you excuse me?” Bella sets her drink down and stands up, touching Blaine on the shoulder with her hand. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Mais bien sûr,” he says.

  She gives him another smile and saunters away, her hips swaying like an invitation beneath the clinging black fabric of her dress. Blaine watches her go, then he looks around at the other people inhabiting Sir Harry’s on a Sunday afternoon and contemplates the information in their heads, just waiting to be his. All it takes is a moment of eye contact and he sees inside their minds, the windows to their souls, or at least to their thoughts and memories—which he makes his own, adding to his exponentially increasing amount of knowledge.

  He wonders if this is how it feels to be God.

  Except he doubts the creator of the universe would use his omniscience to take advantage of people. Or remove any memory of his existence.

  When Blaine first became aware of his new ability, he thought he’d simply learned to read others people’s minds, to see into their thoughts and memories, which he used to his advantage by guessing where people were from and what they did for a living. Or by beating his guinea-pig buddies at poker and chess.

  But Blaine soon discovered that in addition to winning bets and impressing women, he could also cause people to suffer from memory loss. Specifically, memories relating to him. All it took was a little extra focus and concentration on his part and any trace of Blaine would be wiped clean from their memories.

  So instead of using his talents just to make some easy pocket money or get laid, Blaine started to up the stakes. He got free meals and drinks at expensive restaurants. He stole from tourists and mugged people after they withdrew money from ATMs. He walked away with wallets and purses and credit card PINs without a single visit from a police officer.

  People have a tendency to not press charges or identify you to the authorities when they not only can’t remember what you look like but don’t even remember meeting you.

  This proved especially helpful when he started stealing prescription drugs at open houses, raiding medicine cabinets in the Upper West and East Sides for antianxiety drugs and insomnia medications, most of which list memory loss as a possible side effect. Blaine didn’t know if his power would go away if he stopped volunteering and he didn’t want to risk finding out, so he made sure to keep a steady supply of drugs on hand, just in case.

  Once you have the power, the last thing you want to do is give it up.

  But as Blaine soon discovered, the more drugs he took that could cause memory loss, the stronger his power continued to grow. Not only could he remove memories of himself from others, he could make them forget just about anything, even their own identities. Blaine found this both ironic and amusing, considering that he’d started volunteering for clinical trials because he’d had his own identity stolen.

  It didn’t take long before the local papers started calling him Mr. Blank.

  He likes the name. It has a sense of formality to it, a certain je ne sais quoi that commands authority and respect. As it should. He wouldn’t be caught dead with a ridiculous name like Captain Vomit or the Rash.

  While he enjoys stealing people’s identities for kicks, Blaine has taken to chatting up well-to-do women at bars and going back to their luxury hotel rooms or uptown apartments. There he indulges in their physical charms before he wipes their memories clean and leaves with whatever money and jewelry and personal possessions he can take. And getting the combinations to their safes is as easy as getting them to spread their legs.

  He knows eventually he’ll get bored with this and want something more, something bigger and better. Even now, at this moment, he can feel his power increasing, expanding, pushing past the boundaries of what he thought was possible. In the meantime, he figures he’ll continue to take advantage while the taking is good.

  Bella appears at the back of the bar and makes her way toward him, her eyes catching his and a playful smile tickling the corners of her mouth.

  Yeah, Blaine thinks. This is going to be fun.

  “I was thinking,” Bella says, brushing against Blaine as she sits down next to him. “Why don’t we take this conversation someplace else?”

  “What did you have in mind?” Blaine asks.

  “Well, I have a room in the towers,” she says, then sucks some of her mojito through her straw. “But that’s just one
idea.”

  Blaine gives her a smile and picks up his drink. “I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

  The clock on the ICU waiting room wall says it’s 12:37 a.m., which means we’ve been at the New York Presbyterian Hospital for nearly three hours, but it feels more like three days. No one else is in the waiting room at this hour. On the flat-screen television mounted above us, CNN plays a relentless tune of death and disease and tragedy. Not exactly uplifting ambiance.

  Maybe Sophie was right. Maybe the news needs to be less sensational and more inspirational. And right now, we could use some good news. But apparently CNN isn’t in the feel-good business.

  “Do you think Blaine caused Charlie’s s-s-seizure?” Isaac asks.

  According to the doctor, Charlie suffered what appears to be a grand mal seizure that put him into a coma. Isaac showed up at Randy’s just before the ambulance and we all came down here together.

  “I don’t know,” I say, as the death toll rises in some natural disaster somewhere. “I think it looked more like Charlie did it to himself.”

  “Kind of like how you thought Blaine was Illusion Man?” Frank says.

  At least no one’s assigning any blame.

  “We all thought Blaine was Illusion Man,” Randy says.

  “I didn’t,” Isaac says.

  Frank chugs down a Diet Coke and belches. “That’s because you don’t understand the concept of punctuality.”

  Frank found the vending machines not long after we got here and is eating his way from Almond Joy to Zebra Cakes.

  “What does it matter who Blaine is?” Vic says, which is appropriate, considering he actually doesn’t know who Blaine is. “Charlie’s in a coma.”

  And that shuts everyone up.

  The five of us sit in silence, watching the clock and trying to ignore CNN while listening to Frank eat a bag of Fritos.

  “Do you ever stop eating?” Vic asks.

  “I always eat when I’m stressed,” Frank says before he shoves a handful of peanut M&M’s into his mouth.