Wonder Guy

by Stone, Naomi

  She’d be leaving Aggie, who’d been much more than a good neighbor to her since Mom died. She wouldn’t see as much of Aggie or the ever-present Greg. It would be a lot harder to work on her and Aggie’s joint projects if it meant driving across town.

  Silly. She wouldn’t say goodbye. She’d still come around, still visit Dad, still work with Aggie. Maybe she wouldn’t do it as often as she liked. What if her life carried her in a new direction and she drifted away from her old life, her old friends? Well, that would be sad, but life got sad sometimes, right? Partings were unavoidable. She’d said goodbye to her mother, to her pets, and moved on. She could do this. Ignore the ache. It would pass.

  Gloria gave a quick rap at Aggie’s kitchen door before pushing it open and entering.

  * * * *

  “What a dork.” Gloria glanced up from cutting rounded rectangular shapes out of clear vinyl as Channel 11’s News at Eleven cut to an artist’s rendering of the witnesses’ descriptions. It showed a comic book hero in a red leotard. Ridiculous.

  A ten-year-old boy talked into the mic held by the on-scene reporter. “Yeah, that’s him. I didn’t get a good look, he moved so fast, but he’s the one stopped the robbers.” The boy stood in a suburban backyard, with a wading pool and a picnic table behind him.

  “There you have it, folks. It seems Minneapolis can thank a Real Life Superhero for stopping this latest attempt by the Backyard Barbecue Bandits.” The reporter, Bob Richards, spoke in capital letters so often they’d made a running joke of it around Aggie’s worktable.

  Greg muted the TV as he stood and cleared his plate from the single corner of the kitchen counter left free of craft projects and supplies. “Who’s a dork?” he asked. “The kid? He’s just–”

  “Not the kid. The guy who dresses up in a costume to make everybody think he’s some kind of superhero.” Gloria rolled her eyes in unassailable argument. Wasn’t it obvious? Sometimes Greg seemed awfully slow for a smart guy. “People shouldn’t pretend to be more than they are. You take what life hands you and you deal with it.”

  “But he is a hero,” Aggie broke in, mild as milk with honey. She sat across from Gloria at the worktable, cutting pieces from ultra-suede in various colors. “He saved the day. Those men had guns. Somebody could have been hurt if he hadn’t stepped in.”

  “It might have been the hero who got hurt, or he might have gotten somebody else hurt,” Gloria insisted. “He should leave that sort of thing to the police. They have the training for it.”

  Aggie muted the competing sound of the television, leaving Gloria’s voice echoing loudly in her ears.

  “The police weren’t there. They can’t be everywhere.” Greg spoke over his shoulder in his usual matter-of-fact tones as he scraped the last bits of lasagna from his plate and turned to wash up in the sink. “I bet those people who didn’t get robbed after all are glad somebody stepped in.”

  “Whatever.” Gloria sniffed in lieu of argument, turning back to her project. No point arguing with people who didn’t see something so obvious to her.

  “What would a hero have to do to impress you?” Greg dropped back onto his stool and leaned across the counter toward her and his mother at the kitchen table-turned-workshop.

  “I don’t know. Something big. Establish world peace? Save the environment?” She waved her bit of vinyl in the air as she spoke and did nothing to hide the exasperation in her tone. Why hadn’t he let the argument go the way he usually did? “Cure cancer, feed the world’s poor?”

  “C’mon. Even Superman couldn’t do all that.” His grin bared straight white teeth framed by deep dimples. Greg should grin more. Except for now, when it just annoyed her.

  “That’s my point. It doesn’t do any good to rely on make-believe heroes.” Gloria frowned to show him how seriously he should take her. “There are too many problems in the world. Every one of us needs to be out there every day, doing everything we can. It takes all of us to deal with it.”

  What was up with Greg? He didn’t usually bother to argue. Gloria looked him over. Same as usual. Same scruffy, too long hair. He’d spilled lasagna on his plaid button-down shirt and left a stain near the collar.

  Greg laughed. Laughed at her.

  “You’re taking this too seriously,” he said, brushing aside a lock of stray hair from across his eyes. “Some guy in a costume stops a robbery and you think it’s a bad thing? You think he’s somebody to make fun of?”

  “It looks silly.” She turned back to cutting the final corner on her carefully shaped bit of vinyl as if turning aside should settle the matter.

  “You say the same when it comes to anything out of the ordinary.” Greg leaned closer across the counter. “But you know what, Gloria?” He waited until she met his unusually intense gaze, “Being silly or being out of the ordinary doesn’t make it a bad thing.”

  * * * *

  Greg grinned to himself as he crossed through the backyard to the garage. The surrounding trees shaded the yard to deepest night but his feet knew the way. He should probably be more upset. Gloria had called him a dork after all, but he’d been used to the same kind of talk from her since they were kids.

  Funny how she wanted to deny anything special in a guy who moved so fast no one saw him. Funny the way she so badly wanted everything to be practical and predictable that she didn’t appreciate something out-of-the-world extraordinary when it appeared in her own hometown. She’d seen the laws of the physical universe transcended like hundreds of years of science meant nothing, and what did she focus on? A silly costume.

  At least she’d stopped in after her date. He found it strangely reassuring to know she’d be going home and sleeping alone in her own bed tonight.

  Entering his apartment, Greg threw his keys down on the counter dividing the kitchenette from the main room of the small space. He’d been in the habit of forgetting to lock up when he went to the main house to see Aggie, but today’s adventures served notice of the criminal element operating in town. Before tonight, he’d never witnessed a crime in progress. Crimes might be reported on the news every day, but they’d never seemed real before this.

  Reviewing student papers at super speed had taken a fraction of the usual time, although some of the pages ended up singed from friction fires he quickly smothered. Greg needed an explanation for Professor Morrissey. He’d say he’d set them down too near the stove. At any rate, he’d finished in plenty of time to join Aggie for a late supper of leftover lasagna.

  He eyed the stack of newly graded papers piled at one end of the coffee table. The charred patches hardly showed, but, yeah, friction fires went in the “minuses” column in assessing the usefulness of super speed. Add the wake of debris he stirred up behind himself whenever he went all out. He’d heard of tornadoes driving a straw through solid wood. Or was that an urban legend? What if the wind of his passing put someone’s eye out with a straw, or some other bit of detritus?

  He slumped onto the love seat, all he’d been able to fit into the tiny apartment to serve as a couch. Growing up in Aggie’s pacifist household hadn’t prepared him for dealing with violent men or situations. He didn’t regret stopping the criminals, but his own ferocity in the process alarmed him. A sick taste rose to his throat as he remembered the sound when he’d yanked the guns from the robbers’ hands–those finger bones snapping like so many dried twigs. It came back to mind like an accusation of brutality. If the robbers got lawyers and learned his identity, they’d probably sue him. Another good reason for secret identities.

  He’d enjoyed super speed, but it included too much unintended havoc, and everything he did ended before he got half a chance to enjoy the good parts. As much as he’d liked running across the surface of Lake Calhoun–even his dunking had been kind of fun–he’d better try something different in the way of superpowers.

  How was he supposed to contact Serafina? He wasn’t wearing the costume hood with the built-in radio. He needed to talk to her about this.

  He hitched his
butt off the couch, digging in the front pocket of his slacks for the business card she’d given him. He drew it out, slightly foxed and bent, still legible, but it included no contact information whatsoever. He tapped it a couple times, flummoxed.

  “So how do I reach you?” he muttered.

  “You only need ask.” She sat on the chair opposite him, still clad in her lace-trimmed purple suit and the hat with its jaunty feather.

  Greg levitated a few inches. “Jesus!”

  She tsked. “I won’t tolerate profanity, young man.” The corners of her smile drew into a disapproving moue.

  “Fairy godmothers are Christians?” He settled back in his seat.

  “That has nothing to do with it. It’s a matter of respect for your elders.” She pulled herself even more upright, lace-gloved hands folded before her.

  “Sorry, ma’am. You startled me.” Best to humor her.

  “That’s better.” She twinkled at him again. “You wanted to speak with me?”

  Oh yeah. “Right. The super speed was great, but it’s not quite the right thing for me. It’s too easy to cause accidents at high speed.”

  “Say no more, dear boy.” She held up a dainty hand. “It’s gone. Did you have something else in mind?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Maybe he should have thought this through before calling her. Only he hadn’t realized he was calling her. Why pursue this whole mad idea anyway? He’d been crazy to think a superpower would impress Gloria. He did have a life of his own. Why not leave this stuff to the police? But, those people the robbers held at gunpoint looked so relieved when he’d stopped the robbery, and those kids seemed so impressed. It had been kind of fun to foil the gunmen without them seeing him. It felt good to be able to help. Just remembering made him feel a bit taller, a bit stronger, a bit closer to being an actual hero.

  When he’d been a kid, he’d daydreamed about what he’d do with superpowers. He’d taken the comics as his guide. Heroes stopped criminals. They stopped monsters and super villains. There wasn’t much call for defense against monsters and super villains here in the Twin Cities, and today was the first time he’d ever encountered actual criminals in the area. What kind of superpower would be most useful here and now?

  He mused aloud, “Maybe I should figure out what people need from a superhero if I were able to go around invisibly and observe things, see what kinds of problems come up, and then maybe foil crimes without doing any damage in the process.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, dear.” She smiled like a teacher approving a clever child.

  “Thanks.” Though, who knew what he might learn as an unseen observer that he wouldn’t learn by paying attention to the people around him? At least he’d do less damage invisibly than he’d done moving at Mach whatever it’d been.

  “You’re very welcome. Now say ‘Zone Out’ to activate your power and ‘See Ya’ to return to normal.”

  “Okay, then. No costume this time, I guess?” Greg chuckled, trying to visualize it.

  “Oh, there is.” Her smile brightened her tone. “But no one will see it.” Her words echoed over the empty chair.

  Chapter 4

  Gloria unlocked the back door as quietly as possible. Dad had probably passed out by now and it would be easiest if she didn’t wake him…but the key scraped in the lock, and jangled against the others on her keychain as she pushed into the house, and the hinges creaked as usual. It didn’t matter, with the television blaring from the living room. The news by the sound of it.

  “That you, Glory?” Dad’s voice, shaky, with a whining edge.

  “Yeah, Dad. You still awake?” Not that she suspected him of talking in his sleep. She made her way through the kitchen and dining room to the front of the house where her father kept his usual post on the sofa in front of the television.

  Ike Torkenson looked older than his actual age, with his deeply lined face, thinned hair gone gray, a big man who’d shrunken in on himself after injury stopped him from working in construction. He seldom bothered to shave and tonight made no exception, leaving his chin heavily stubbled in gray. Gloria breathed shallowly. He wore the same worn jeans and flannel shirt he’d worn yesterday and it seemed he hadn’t bothered to bathe today.

  “Why’re you getting in so late?” Not looking at Gloria, he leaned forward over the coffee table, chose a beer can and waggled it, then another, until he found one in which some liquid sloshed.

  “It’s not late.” She kept her tone light, but loud enough to cut across the weather report. “I went for an early dinner with Pete and his parents, then stopped by Aggie’s and worked on a project for a while.” She kept moving, hanging her jacket in the front closet, placing the portfolio of her sketches on the end table beside the wing chair also facing the television. She stood over the chair and looked at the TV screen without seeing it. She held herself braced like a dam against her own reactions.

  “Pete’s parents, huh?” Ike hitched around to face her squarely.

  “Yes. They’re nice people.” Here it came.

  “Bet they are. Too nice for the likes of us. You’ll see.” He frowned and drained the last bit of liquid from the can he’d found. “People pretend to like you, to be nice, but they don’t think you’re any better than you are. Like Aggie next door. When’s the last time she invited me over? No. Last time she says, ‘You clean up your act, Ike, or don’t come over.’ Thinks she’s better than me. Probably mad cuz your mom, Evie, her good friend was killed while I got drunk at your birthday party.”

  Any attempt at talking seriously to Dad hit her like dashing through a hard, cold rain. Time to shake off the results yet again.

  “Dad, you say the same thing whenever you have too many beers, which is every dang day. Aggie doesn’t blame you. She doesn’t like your drinking. Neither do I, and Pete’s folks are not too nice for me.” Fretting for something to do, Gloria sat in the wing chair and pulled her portfolio of sketches onto her lap. “They seemed perfectly happy to welcome me to their family. They’re Episcopalian. Pete’s mother is real active in the church.”

  “Episcopalian, huh? Churchgoers? Think you’re going to fit in with them?” He glanced at the coffee table, as if wondering whether he’d find another can still holding a few drops.

  She plucked at the zipper of the leather case on her lap. Do not engage. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Why should you? What do you know about their sort? What do they care about our sort?” His voice mimicked the scorn such people must feel for her. “A girl quits college after one semester, marrying their boy with his business degree?”

  She turned to him, sick of his same old crap. She could shake off only so much before it soaked her to the bone and she had to deal. “Stop it. I quit college to take care of you. You couldn’t do for yourself after the accident.”

  “Yeah.” His remaining gnarled hand clutched the worn-shiny arm of the sofa. He scowled at her. “Rub that in.”

  “I’m not.” Why did he always get so defensive? “It’s just the way things went. But now, when I want to get married, you make like I’m not good enough, like you want to stop my chance at happiness.”

  “I still need help,” he muttered, so quietly she had to strain to catch the words.

  Hopelessness, almost despair, crossed his stubbled face, tugging at her heart. Wasn’t that exactly what had kept her at home, stalled her career for these past few years while Greg finished college and went on to grad school?

  “Poor daughter you are,” he went on. “You’ll move away and leave me on my own. You don’t care what happens to your old worthless papa.”

  “You’re not being fair, Dad. You know perfectly well how much I care. Didn’t I leave college to help you? I wanted my art degree, and now you throw it back in my face. Like I’m not good enough for Pete because I have less education?” She glared at him, surprising herself with the bitterness souring her tone. Sometimes she resented him, but resented herself more for the heart that trapped her here. If it we
re a paw, she’d chew it off.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but she charged ahead. “Well, you’re not as helpless as you make out. You got your prosthetic four and a half years ago. I helped when you needed it, when you first lost your arm, but you’ve had plenty of time to adjust and you’d be able to get along fine if you hadn’t given up on yourself. Look at Aggie. Look at how much she does.” She gestured in the general direction of the house next door.

  “Don’t you hold her up to me.” He slammed his empty can down with a clatter on the coffee table. “She’s had MS her whole life and never knew different. What am I worth if I can’t do the only work I ever knew?” With some fire in his eyes, at least he didn’t look so helpless. Ah.

  “Dad, do you want me to believe you’re an idiot who can’t learn a new skill to save his life? Or to give his only daughter a life of her own?”

  With a jerk of his shoulder, he turned back to the glowing screen.

  Gloria looked to see what he found so interesting.

  They’d gotten actual footage of the guy in the red costume. Jeez. He ran across the surface of a lake like an ordinary person would run over solid ground. The first clip showed only a red streak. The slo-mo version followed immediately. The camera zoomed in on the man, moving like a great cat, well-muscled limbs sliding through the air like water sluicing over a dam. The rippling play of muscle under skintight red fabric fascinated her. Whatever had been next on her mental agenda never made it to the surface of thought. Not too dorky after all, until he stopped, slid bouncing across the water and slumped beneath the surface like a skipped stone, all in slow motion.