Action Figures - Issue Five: Team-Ups

by Michael C Bailey

  “And they blow up.”

  “Like a couple of nukes going off. They’ve had some truly epic fights. After they cool down, they swear up and down they’ll never let it happen again, and yet...” Natalie sighs. “I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to repeat the same stupid mistake over and over.”

  “Natalie, you had one fight with your boyfriend, and you worked through it. The only mistake you’ve made is you’ve wasted time talking to me when you should be home talking to him, so get out of here. Go. Don’t make me throw you out. You know I’ll do it.”

  “I know you’ll try.” She gives me a friendly punch in the shoulder. “You have a good night.”

  Done and done.

  Now, let’s see if I can go for two in a row.

  4.

  “Good morning,” Dad says. “You seem to be in a good mood today.”

  “I am,” I say. Such a good mood, in fact, I almost don’t mind talking to you. Once I get some coffee in me, I’ll be even better — and once I leave for school? Then head to work to play with the thunder gun some more? Better still. Nowhere to go but up.

  “Matt, what’s that mark on your neck?” Mom says.

  Oh, nuts. “Stuart and I were screwing around yesterday and he tagged me with a magic marker.”

  “Make sure you wash it all off before tonight,” Dad says.

  “What’s tonight?”

  Dad gives me an exasperated sigh. “Your Cousin Terry’s rehearsal dinner. I’ve been reminding you about it for days.”

  “Oh.” I honestly don’t remember him saying anything about it. Then again, I haven’t been listening to a thing he’s said since, what? Last spring? “I’ve got to pass, I have to work tonight.”

  “I thought you had Fridays off.”

  “I do, normally, but Edison assigned me to a special project, so I have to go in.”

  “How late will you have to work?”

  “I don’t know. Until I’m done,” I say — by which I mean, until I’ve completely missed my cousin’s rehearsal dinner.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to call Mr. Bose and tell him you have a previous commitment.”

  Considering how much we despise each other, “I don’t think Terry Jr. will mind if I’m not there.”

  “I’ll mind. This is a family event and Terry is your family, so you will be there.”

  I glance over at Mom, and I can tell right away she’s not going to back me up this time. Unless I barf up a lung or something, I’m stuck.

  “Fine. But if my promising career in the technology industry goes down the toilet because of this, I’m blaming you,” I say.

  “Sure, why not?” Dad snaps. “You blame me for everything else that goes wrong in your life...”

  “Credit where it’s due, Dad.”

  “Dammit, Matt —!”

  “Stop it!” Mom shouts. She doesn’t raise her voice often, but when she does, she can rattle windows. “Matt, the next time your father tells you to do something, you do it and don’t give him any lip. And Wil, find a better way to communicate with your son than barking orders at him. Got it?”

  Dad and I are too cowed to respond beyond nodding sheepishly.

  “I am so sick of you two,” Mom snarls, slamming her mug onto the counter. “You both need to grow up and learn to live with each other, or you can take your ridiculous feud out to the garage from now on. I don’t want to hear it anymore.”

  Mom waits for one of us to say something, but neither of us is feeling dumb enough to push our luck. Satisfied for now, Mom turns on her heel and marches out to finish getting ready for work.

  So much for my good mood.

  On the way to school, I text Edison to let him know I have to bag out on work. His reply is waiting for me when I leave for the day: he understands, he’ll see me Tuesday, have fun. Yeah, sure. Hanging out with my idiot cousin will be soooo much more fun than developing my thunder gun with Edison.

  Thunder gun. Jeez, I have got to come up with a better name than that.

  I head home and kill the afternoon mucking around with my design since I’ll eventually have to integrate a cooling system for the power source. Nuclear micro-cell casings are manufactured with an internal radiant barrier that reflects and traps most of the heat the nuclear materials put out, but they still require a secondary cooling system. A passive cooling element like a heat sink might be enough to do the job, but even that needs space to function properly, and that means added bulk to the casing.

  Stumped for a solution, I give up and head upstairs to get ready for the evening. I shower, throw on a pair of khakis and a black button-up shirt, slip into my least battered pair of sneakers, and head downstairs to wait for the parentals to return.

  Mom and Dad come home, and after a quick change into more casual clothes, we pile in the car and head down to Plymouth. Our destination is a historic seaside inn that’ll serve as the location for both the wedding and the reception. We arrive on time, but Terry Jr. and his bride-to-be are running late, and since we kind of need them, we kill time hanging out in the parking lot and introducing ourselves to the groomsmen and bridesmaids. My Aunt Jess — Terry’s mom — arrives a few minutes after we do and subjects me to the traditional “Oh, my, look how much you’ve grown!” routine — which is a little ridiculous considering she saw me all of four months ago at Dad’s Memorial Day barbecue.

  It’s almost seven when Terry Jr. finally pulls in. His groomsmen swarm around him while the bridesmaids gang up to welcome Terry’s fiancée Celeste. She’s pretty — too pretty for the likes of Terry Jr. — and she looks young for her age, more like a high school senior than a recent college graduate. She’s as bubbly as a teenage girl, too; she squeals in delight as each new face steps up to welcome her.

  “Hi, Uncle Wil,” Terry says as he reaches the Steiger contingent. He gives Dad a big hug, then Mom. He manages to keep something resembling a smile on his face when he turns to me and extends a stiff hand. “Matt.”

  “Terry Jr.,” I say, taking his hand. He squeezes, trying to crush my fingers. I squeeze back. He winces and lets go.

  Terry Jr. introduces Celeste to my parents and adds as a grudging afterthought, “Oh, and this is my Cousin Matt.”

  “You’re Matt?” Celeste says, a hint of a Southern drawl in her voice. “Well, hello, Matt. Terry’s told me so much about you.”

  I bet he has.

  “It’s all true, every word,” I say. “I’m a terrible person.”

  Celeste giggles. “Oh, I think you look like a perfectly charming, intelligent young gentleman,” she says, more or less confirming my suspicion that Terry Jr. has not spoken well of me. “And so handsome, too. Are all the men in this family so good-looking?”

  “I like to think so,” Mom says, “but you obviously got the best-looking one of the bunch.”

  “I won’t argue that. Well, what say we get this show on the road?”

  The rehearsal wraps up quickly enough. I barely had time to get bored.

  Afterwards, the mob heads over to a Japanese steak house for dinner. It’s one of those teppanyaki restaurants where the chefs cook the meal at your table and do all kinds of cool tricks with their knives. Missy would go bonkers in a place like this.

  No one says a word to me throughout dinner. Almost no one knows me, and my family members are too involved talking to each other to throw the conversation my way. My name comes up a few times but never in an effort to bring me in. It’s like I’m not even in the room.

  That’s cool. I don’t care. I’m getting a free meal out of it.

  Dinner winds down, and for a brief moment, I’m sure someone will play the “We should get some rest. Tomorrow’s a big day!” card, but then Celeste realizes the restaurant has a karaoke bar in the back and plays the “I’m the bride, and you all have to do what I say” trump card.

  The karaoke bar is much nicer than the one the gang and I haunt at Junk Food. It feels more like a fancy cocktail lounge. Waitresses in black slacks, white
shirts, and black vests weave through a sea of tables, serving drinks and plates of appetizers. There’s an actual DJ sitting to the side of a full stage, complete with a movie screen-style backdrop that is currently swirling with psychedelic colors as a very drunk woman screeches out “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane. Groovy, man, groovy.

  “Come on, Terry, you’re singing with me,” Celeste says, pulling at Terry’s arm. She half-drags him onto the stage so he can unenthusiastically sing his half of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” one of the most popular karaoke songs out there — and, coincidentally, one of the songs people absolutely mangle on a regular basis. I think only “Piano Man” and “I Will Always Love You” are murdered more consistently.

  Despite the painful mediocrity of Terry Jr.’s performance, the wedding party responds with thunderous applause and a lot of hooting and howling. Terry Jr. and Celeste rejoin the group, clearing the stage so one of his groomsmen can get up there and massacre — you guessed it — “Piano Man.”

  “Not bad, Terry,” Dad says. “Not bad at all.”

  “Not great either,” I mutter.

  “Oh, yeah?” Terry Jr. says. Oops. “You think you could do better?”

  Seeing as I’ve already stepped in it...

  “Pft. I could do a lot better,” I say. “I could gargle a bottle of Drano and still sing circles around you.”

  “Go on, then,” Terry Jr. says, gesturing toward the stage. “Put your money where your mouth is.”

  “How about literally? Tell you what, you pick the most embarrassing song you can think of, I’ll sing it — spectacularly — and then I’ll pick a song for you. Whichever one of us wusses out first wins,” I say as I dig my wallet out of my pocket. I wave a fifty-dollar bill at him. “You game, Terry Jr.?”

  Have I mentioned that Terry Jr. absolutely hates it when I call him Terry Jr.? It’s such an easy button to push.

  “Where did you get that much money?” he says.

  “From my awesome job at Bose Industries,” I say, “which I am not at tonight so I could be here. You’re welcome.”

  “Matt,” Dad says, his tone reprimanding.

  “I want in on this,” one of the groomsmen says. He places his bet, and soon all the groomsmen have thrown in — all of them against me, of course. Mom holds the money while Terry Jr. flips through the song catalog in search of something truly mortifying.

  “Here we go,” he says.

  I take the stage and grab the mic. Terry Jr. files his request with the DJ, throws me a smug grin, and returns to his seat to watch what he must believe will be my complete and utter humiliation. The first few notes of the song fill the room. Really, Terry Jr.? That’s your opening salvo? This is going to be cake.

  Wedding cake, if you will.

  5.

  Long story short, I destroyed Terry Jr. and walked away with a three hundred dollar profit.

  He tried, and failed, to trip me up with “Like a Virgin.” I took him down with my first selection, Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.” He couldn’t even sing the opening line.

  The money’s great, but I would gladly humiliate Terry Jr. for free, any time.

  We didn’t stay long after that, mainly because the wedding party started drinking like the college students they were until very recently. That was Mom and Dad’s cue to drag me away from such a bad influence under the pretense of wanting a good night’s sleep.

  The wedding isn’t until the afternoon, so I spend most of the day in my room working on the thunder gun and avoiding human contact. I bang my head against a wall all morning trying to figure out a small but effective cooling system. It isn’t until I’m wolfing down lunch, a stack of Fluffernutter sandwiches, that I have my breakthrough: silica-based aerogel. The stuff’s amazing. Despite what the name suggests, it’s more gas than a solid — 98.2 percent air, in fact — and that makes it almost weightless. It’s also a great insulator; aerogel almost completely negates heat transfer by means of convection or conduction, and since the micro-cell casing handles most of the radiant heat...my God, this could work.

  I’m about to text Edison when Dad knocks on the door and says, “Matt, you about ready to go? We have to leave soon.”

  I look at the clock. The wedding’s in an hour, and I haven’t showered or dressed. Not that I want to go...

  “I’ll be ready in a minute,” I say, which Dad takes as a cue to come into my room. He stands in the doorway, takes a look at me still in my pajama bottoms and a T-shirt then gives me the patented Wilbur Steiger Display of Displeasure: he crosses his arms, sighs, and then frowns at the floor.

  “You’ve had all morning to get ready,” he says.

  “I’ve been working.”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “So? Dad, Edison’s relying on me and I don’t want to let him down.” I wait for Dad to hit me with a comeback, but he doesn’t. “I’ll be ready to go in fifteen minutes.”

  And with that, I set the clock ticking. Shower, wash hair, comb hair, slap on deodorant, ran back to my room, jump into my black suit, throw on my only pair of black dress shoes, grab my wallet, grab my phone, grab my car keys, check the time...

  Boom. From zero to formal event-ready in thirteen minutes. A new record.

  “I’ll see you there,” I say, hustling past Dad before he can protest and heading straight for my car. I’ll go to the wedding, I’ll stay at the reception long enough to meet my family obligations, but as soon as the dancing starts? Boom. I’m out of there.

  “I’m sure this handsome young gentleman wouldn’t refuse the bride a dance on her special day,” Celeste says.

  Or maybe not.

  The ceremony itself was shorter than I’d expected. Dull, but short. The wedding party vanished for a while to take photos then returned to kick the reception off. Terry Jr. and the newly crowned Celeste Steiger had their first dance to some pop song I didn’t recognize. The singer was so heavily auto-tuned she sounded like a Cylon. From the original Battlestar Galactica, I mean, not one of the sexy clone types from the reboot.

  After that, I zoned out. I barely tasted my dinner of prime rib and slightly undercooked red potatoes, all the toasts and speeches were white noise, and I couldn’t muster a polite laugh when Terry Jr. smooshed wedding cake in Celeste’s face. Nice way to treat your new wife.

  His behavior didn’t improve while he and Celeste made the rounds to say hello to their guests. Celeste approached our table, practically glowing in a sleek, modern bridal gown of snow-white silk, and gushed about how thrilled she was that we could all make it.

  Terry Jr., meanwhile, looked distracted, almost bored, until Dad said, “Your father would have been so proud of you,” and that caused him to tear up a little.

  “Aw, no sad faces today, honey,” Celeste said. “Come on, let’s go dance those blues away.”

  “No, you go ahead,” Terry Jr. said, “I’m not in a dancing mood.”

  “What? Not in the mood to dance at your own wedding? Why, you big party pooper,” Celeste teased before turning, for some reason, to me. “I’m sure this handsome young gentleman wouldn’t refuse the bride a dance on her special day.”

  And that brings us to now.

  “Of course I wouldn’t,” I say. “I’d have to be a right cad and a bounder to refuse the woman of the hour.”

  “And you, sir, look like neither,” Celeste says, cocking her arm so I can escort her to the dance floor.

  “Aren’t you the charmer?” Terry Jr. sneers at me as I pass.

  “One of us has to be,” I say.

  Something very few people know about me, including within my small circle of friends: I’m a good dancer. Maybe not great, but I’ve been told by reliable sources — Sara, specifically — that I don’t look like a complete spaz, so I’m not worried about putting on a good show — and that’s what this is if I’m going to be honest. Celeste seems like a legit nice person, and I’m happy to dance with her, but I’m really all about giving Terry Jr. a swift kick in the ass.


  It works. Celeste and I tear it up to Katy Perry, and halfway through a Rihanna tune, Terry Jr. cuts in and takes over. “I’ve got this,” he says.

  “About time,” I say, and I head to the bar to grab a soda.

  As I wait for my drink, a girl my age steps up and orders a Diet Coke. Her bottle-blond hair falls in tight ringlets to her shoulders, and she’s wearing a short, tight dress that leaves nothing to my dirty adolescent imagination. She dresses this way at school, too. At least she’s consistent.

  “That was impressive,” Miranda says. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize she’s talking to me.

  “What?”

  “On the dance floor? You’ve got some moves.”

  “Thanks?” Okay, something’s up here.

  “Who are you here with?”

  “Myself. The groom’s my cousin.”

  “Really? Oh, wow, that’s funny. The bride’s my cousin. Well, she’s a real distant cousin. I think I met her, like, once when I was ten...”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She sticks her hand out. “I’m Miranda.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Miranda gives me a confused look. I see that face a lot in our US History class. “We go to school together.”

  “We do?” she says. My God, she seriously doesn’t recognize me.

  “Yeah. Last week my pen ran out of ink. I asked you if you had a spare. You said, quote, ‘Tchah. Not for you,’” I say, mimicking her haughty drawl.

  She frowns at me, then her eyes go wide. “Matt Steiger?”

  “Ta-da.”

  “Oh. My. God, I totally did not recognize you,” she says. Yeah, duh, I figured. “Wow. You look...um...”

  “Like someone you don’t really want to talk to, so tell you what: I’ll let you off the hook. Walk away and I won’t hold it against you — and I won’t tell Amber Sullivan and Jeri Burke and the rest of your snooty little clique that you spoke to that weird Matt Steiger kid. Your reputation, such as it is, will remain intact. You’re welcome.”