by Various
“You disappeared back at the hospital for a minute. Where’d you go?” Jim demanded.
“Had to find a lavvie, didn’t I?”
“If that’s all it was.”
“What else would it be?”
“If I can’t depend on you, I can’t use you.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t want to be used anymore, Jim. You ever think of that?”
“I wanted to bring Zita in,” Jim went on.
“You got the baby back, didn’t you? And I saw on the telly you nicked her boss, too.”
“One of her bosses. Frank wasn’t the only guy she brought kids to.”
“Yeah, but you got another one back from the house before you pushed it down the hill. And you took out them two bum killers, so you still came out the hero, didn’t you?”
“You know that’s not why I do this. If it was, I’d be on there talking to the news.”
He threw one green leather thumb at the TV, which could be heard now, and Nico naturally glanced at it.
“Up next on Vulpes 11…Capes!” the narrator was saying, as flashes of the number one hit drama show flashed across the screen. Damn it. Where was the remote?
“Listen,” Jim said, slapping of all things, an old Rolodex down on the counter. “I need you to go through here and look for familiar names.””
He went to the fridge, opened it, went clinking in the crisper for a beer.
Nico took the moment to rush into the living room and plunge his hand into the cushions, feeling for the television remote. The sofa was always swallowing the damned thing, savoring it like a bit of candy tucked into the jaw.
The fridge slammed, and Jim cranked the top off a beer with a hiss, tossed the cap into the bin.
“I need to know if any of them ever worked for Perennial, if you knew them from…Jesus Christ, Tink. Are you even listening?”
Nico straightened. He was too late anyway.
There was Jim’s old flame Cassidy Hollis on the screen. Person Magazine’s ‘Sexiest Woman Alive.’ Twenty-five years old and the hottest star on any network, heading the hottest show, the PwP drama Capes, about the daily lives of a team of superheroes. She played Diana Hale, also known as The Amazon, a tough-talking investigate reporter by day and a warrior princess smashing supervillains by night.
And there was Jim, standing stricken in Nico’s kitchen, watching the TV, a morose, love-struck, junior high kid, though he was twenty-five himself.
Nico abandoned his search for the remote and moved to switch the telly off.
“Don’t,” said Jim.
He watched the intro. Watched her move through it, smashing through walls, jumping out of planes, passionately but reluctantly giving into her attraction to the show’s billionaire bad boy dark vigilante hero, Nathan Renner, The Nightjar, to the delight of millions of breathless viewers, as all around four-color good guy and extraterrestrial Clint Kane, AKA The Immortal, looked on longingly. Personally, Nico preferred the porno parody.
Why did Jim put himself through it? It must be hell, Nico thought. To be stuck in a kid’s body, watching your leading lady all grown up.
When the triumphant, soaring, but heartbreaking theme song ended (also by Elton Ormond, perhaps a nod to Peter `N Wendy, because after all, Capes followed the same format and was basically catering to the nostalgia of the adults who had grown up with that show), and the show broke for advertising. Nico turned it off.
Jim stood there with his beer, looking kind of ridiculous, like an underage kid at a Halloween party catered by his cool older brother. Why the hell did he wear that get up? Why the green spandex? He looked like a fool.
“You know,” Nico said, chewing his lips. “I could…get you a hooker, Jim. I know a few that won’t think twice. Won’t…you know…ask questions.””
Then he was gone. Up and out into the rainy night, the skylight slamming shut behind him. He had taken the beer with; drinking and flying. And his small body, for all its toughness, couldn’t handle even a smidgeon of alcohol.
“Ah, shite,” said Nico.
FOUR
The rain was driving, beating him down, but whatever it was in Pan that gave him lift, was stronger. He soared through the boiling clouds, heedless of the tempest. Pan was stronger than he looked, and tougher. But he couldn’t lift his heart—Jim Cutlass’ heart—out of Nico Tinkham’s living room. He left it there on the kitchen floor, like the real Peter Pan had left his shadow behind in the Darling nursery.
Scientists in some lab somewhere had a Latin name for the gene that had granted him the power of flight. He didn’t know what it was. Most people just called it the Chimeric Gene. Father Eladio called it The Power.
“The Power’s a gift,” he said. “Make no mistake about it. If it comes, it comes to you when you need it the most, and in that instant, I believe your mental and emotional state defines the manifestation.”
Father Eladio’s power had come to him as a young priest just out of the seminary. He had been assisting in the Midnight Mass at a little church down in Bella Vista, about five miles north of Mexico, when a gang of chulos had burst in and attempted to drag a young woman fresh over the border out of the pew.
They had got her as far as the parking lot where their pickup trucks were waiting when Father Eladio’s power had come upon him in the form of a pair of brilliant tropical bird wings and what he referred to as his Glare of Righteousness, basically a burst of golden energy that emitted from his eyes. He had thrown open the doors of the church and saved the girl that night, leaving two men smoldering in their burned out trucks, the others groveling on their knees beside their gold-plated, diamond-encrusted guns, thrown down in superstitious terror.
“I had been in the midst of the Transubstantiation, the most sacred part of the Holy Mass,” Father Eladio explained, “and when I saw that woman in the arms of those men with their guns, I thought of the wrathful servants of God, like the ones who turned Lot’s wife to salt and slew the first born of Egypt. I was, in the moment, filled with outrage, and the Power made me Angelus.”
Father Eladio’s Power had been triggered by a selfless need to protect another. Jim’s Power had saved only himself.
It had been the Tuesday after he’d last visited Tink in the hospital. The morning of Tink’s release, he had come to his friend’s room and found him sleeping. Not wanting to wake him, he had settled in the chair beside his bed, and picked up the old copy of Peter Pan he’d given him to read; the same copy his late father had always read to him.
His mother had hated Peter Pan. She’d never really been a reader at all. Dad had read to him all the time: The Jungle Book; The Hobbit; Winnie the Pooh; but his favorite had been Peter Pan. He would fall asleep to his father’s voice and dream of flying.
His father had been a Marine pilot. He really did fly. One day though, when Jim was nine, a somber man in an officer’s uniform had arrived at their home and his mother had slammed the door in the man’s face and slid down to the floor and wailed as the doorbell rang again and the man called her name through the door.
“Mrs. Cutlass? Mrs. Cutlass!”
He had never seen his father again.
Flipping through the book that morning, Jim had smiled at the old stains and creases. Jim’s mother used to scold his dad for folding the pages to mark his place. She’d come home with bookmarks with clever sayings and popular characters on them, but his dad never used them, and they sat in Jim’s desk drawer.
At the back of the book though, had been an inscription on the previously blank pages that hadn’t been there before.
Reading it had brought Jim’s world crashing down, almost as hard as when his mother had told him his dad wasn’t coming home and they were going to California.
He had loved playing Peter Pan. When he had got the part, he had felt like it was fate, or his father watching over them somehow.
His mother had always warned him to be careful, that everybody on set was out to
use him, especially Barry ‘Goddamned’ Mezner, but he’d stopped taking his mother’s advice shortly after that blow up about the toy line in front of all the cast and crew. He’d made up his mind that Barry was a nice guy, that Tink and the other kids on the show were all right.
Mostly he concerned himself with Cassidy Hollis. They studied together, rented movies together at her parents’ house (because they couldn’t really go out in public anymore without getting mobbed), and now lately, even kissed a few times when nobody was looking.
Barry had caught them holding hands once, and he’d thought they were busted for sure, seeing as how it was in their contracts not to fraternize. But Barry had just smiled and told them it was all right, not to worry about it.
The writing in the back of his book, Tink’s writing, made it plain why.
Barry Mezner was a monster. He was one of many monsters who’d been abusing Tink and the other kids in the worst ways. He had done things to them Jim couldn’t even fathom.
And now Barry wanted him and Cassidy.
He’d stormed out of the room, sick to his stomach, brain burning from the descriptions of the things Tink had written. He took the book with him. He’d wanted to tear out the filth that was written in it and flush it down a toilet. It didn’t belong in the book his dad had read to him.
But he knew it was all true.
He felt horrible for Tink and the others. How had he never noticed?
And then he felt angry. How many other people knew about this? Who on the crew knew?
He decided to find out.
He knew it was going to change his life, but he didn’t care.
He had the driver take him first to Cassidy’s house, but she and her parents were out. He didn’t even think of bringing it up to his mother. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. He loved her. Knew she wanted what was best for him. But she was irrational. He knew she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She’d have a nervous breakdown, forbid him from going back to Perennial.
And that wouldn’t do.
He wanted to confront Barry in front of the crew and the whole cast. Then he’d know exactly who was in on it. He’d be able to tell, just looking at them. This book was his Mousetrap.
He planned to do it the Tuesday when they got back for filming.
He knew what it meant. It meant the end of the show. The end of his career maybe, and the careers of his friends.
But fuck it.
If this was what Hillywood was about, he didn’t want any part of it. He’d made enough money off it to never work again, if he was smart. And the other kids? Well, he’d take care of them, too. His mother could have a conniption over it. He didn’t care. He’d get one of those parental divorces if she didn’t like it. Fuck Hillywood. Fuck Perennial Pictures, and fuck Barry Mezner in his fat neck.
His only worry was that he’d never see Cassidy again.
He decided not to call any of the other kids and talk about what he was going to do. They’d be scared. Maybe they’d tell Barry. Maybe they wouldn’t back him. Tink would. Tink had wrote him this letter, hadn’t he? Tink had known he would read it.
Should he tell Tink his plan?
No. No, not even him. Tink was a drug addict, and as much as Jim loved him, he knew he couldn’t fully depend on him.
Let the whole cast and crew, those that didn’t know already, find out what kind of crawling thing Barry Mezner was firsthand.
He spent the three days before the shoot practicing what he would do, what he would say. He couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. Wouldn’t take anybody’s phone calls. His mother worried over him, but he wouldn’t say what was the matter.
It was such a heavy burden, though. Like a stone shirt weighing him down.
Finally, at three AM Tuesday morning, he had collapsed beneath it. He was so nervous. This would be the first real thing he ever did in his life. Acting a hero for all those little kids, for the girls, none of that meant anything. This was real.
He called Cassidy.
It went right to voice mail. Her phone was off.
He told her everything. Or as much of it as he could in the time it took for the voicemail to cut him off. It all came spewing out of him, like it was his own confession. In the end, he told her what he meant to do. Told her he loved her.
If the last part went through, he never knew.
Tuesday morning finally came.
The driver showed to take him to Perennial and his mother came with.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” she cooed, brushing his forehead.
“I’m fine, Mom,” he snapped, recoiling from her hand.
If he had known what was going to happen, he would never have done that. She’d never been the best mother, but she hadn’t been the worst, either. She had done all she could for him in the only way she knew how, and all in the shadow of his hero father’s tombstone. God, he had been a terrible son to her.
He walked onto the set like a bull.
In his mind he had rehearsed this. He would call for the entire cast and crew to gather around.
To his surprise, he found them all together already, the crew looking bored, orbiting about the actors in the center, who were crowding the empty craft services table and chatting lightly.
The Fokes brothers, Henry, Mikey, Alicia, Donald Renoir, Amy Matheson, who played Tinkerbell, already in costume, the director, Jeremy Keene, Caleb Burnett, who played Smee, laughing with the guy who played Gentleman Starkey, whose name Jim could never remember.
And Tink.
“Oi, Jim,” Tink had said, the first to notice him and his mother.
“Where’s Cassidy?”
“You ain’t heard? Appendicitis, mate. She’s all right. She’ll be out for the first couple shooting days though…”
He pushed past him, went to the middle of them.
One other person was missing.
No, there he was.
Barry came into the room, leading a kid in a Pardo’s Bakery uniform carrying a cake. The cake was a big green crocodile.
He was singing Happy Birthday. ‘Happy Fourth Season Peter `N Wendy `N Friends” it said in pink icing on the leering crocodile’s belly.
Jim squeezed his fists, dug into his palms to keep them from trembling. How could the sonofabitch smile and joke like this? He looked around at his cast mates, noticed for the first time their flat eyes, even as they feigned smiles. How had he never noticed there was something wrong? Jesus! For Barry to be urging them to celebrate, how could they stand to be around him?
As Barry set the cake down, Jim reached into his bag for the book with Tink’s confession.
His mother brushed past him, cackling loudly.
“Oh, isn’t that sweet, Jim?”
Sweet?
He wanted to wrap his fingers around Barry’s fat neck and throttle him to the floor.
A hand touched his arm.
It was Tink.
“Jim…”
Barry sunk a knife into the cake, a coup de grace, right across the grinning crocodile’s throat.
A coup de grace for all of them, it turned out.
The fire, the heat, the sound. It was like the whole world abruptly ended.
Everyone around the table had probably died instantly, except for Tink, who’d been standing directly behind Jim.
So it wasn’t quite true that the manifestation of his Power hadn’t saved anybody. Maybe it had saved Tink. Burned him terribly, but saved his life.
“Your Power began like a father woken up from sleep to a burning house. It protected you. Got you out of danger,” Father Eladio said.
What it had done was fling him a hundred or more feet into the air, through the roof of the soundstage, and sent him hurtling eighteen miles away.
The impact of smashing through the ceiling and the concussion of the bomb’s explosion had knocked him out. He awoke hours later, shivering in the cold, whipping night wind coursing around a church steepl
e, which he was circling slowly like a child’s lost balloon.
St. Juan Diego’s.
Father Eladio’s parish.
Finding himself a hundred feet in the air with no memory beyond the flash of light and fire from the explosion, Jim shrieked in abject terror. He remembered thinking he was dead, that his soul had departed his body and was just floating around on the breeze.
The hunchbacked Mexican priest heard him screaming and thrashing, scaled the bell tower and called to him, talked him into a kind of calm.
“I don’t know what’s happening!” Jim blubbered uncontrollably. He was covered in soot, dirt, and blood, and his ears still rang.
“You’re flying, kid!” said the priest. “I’m gonna throw you a line. Catch it, hold onto it. I’ll pull you in.”
It was only after the fourth try that he had realized the priest wasn’t poor with a lasso, but totally blind.
Down in the rectory, swaddled in a vestment and drinking hot cocoa, he watched Father Eladio settle into a chair, take off his dark glasses, and set them on a table. He was in his late fifties, his crow black hair shot with silver. Jim saw with a shiver that both his eyes were glass, the irises angled in weird directions.
“Are they straight?” Father Eladio asked.
“No,” Jim said quietly.
He shrugged and put his dark lenses back on.
“How’d you lose them?” Jim asked.
“A guy named La Luz pulled `em out. Oh, two years ago now.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. Meanest chimeric I ever trained. So far.”
Chimerics. The word took a long time getting through his addled brain.
“What? Why would you train chimerics?”
“’Cause I am one,” he said. To show it, he unbuttoned his shirt, much to Jim’s discomfort, until the beautiful parrot red and yellow wings unfolded from his back. Not a hump at all.
“Holy shit, you’re Angelus,” Jim said, forgetting for a minute his own situation. “I know you from TV.”
“Sure, kid. I know you from TV, too. Kind of a closet fan, you understand. A priest watching a show liked Peter `N Wendy, some wiseass is bound to start rumors. Thought the FX were pretty good. Didn’t realize you were a chimeric.”
