How To Succeed in Evil (26 page)

“And be sure to wipe your feet!” Agnes says.

Excelsior takes two steps backwards and wipes his spotlessly clean boots.

“Now then. Welcome to Windsor and Associates. Mr. Windsor will see you now,” says Agnes.

“Thank you Agnes.” Edwin is eager to play the host in an attempt to avoid the property damage that inevitably follows a clash of costumed apes. “Can we offer you something to drink?”

Excelsior points at Lifto, “I’m here for him.”

“Excellent choice. Agnes, a pot of Oolong. We’re going to sit down and talk this through.” Agnes glares at everyone in the room and then leaves.

“Lifto does not talk,” Lifto says unaware of irony and its manufacture.

“You know, Mr. Windsor, people judge a man by the company he keeps,” Excelsior says, doing his best to drip with folksy wisdom.

“People have also been known to judge a man by his appearance,” Edwin retorts as he casts a dubious eye towards Excelsior’s spandex.

“NO ONE CAN CATCH LIFTO!”

Excelsior circles around to the long end of the room. Lifto crouches behind the desk. “Now Lifto, you and I both know that’s not true. Are you going to come quietly?”

Edwin rolls his eyes at the cliche. Edwin is sick of feeling powerless. He knows what is going to happen. He knows why. He knows everything that either side will say or do, but for all his intelligence, there is nothing he can do to stop it.

“Lifto, I advise you not to resist,” says Edwin

“You want me to go QUIETLY!?!”

“I’m not sure you are capable of doing anything quietly,” says Edwin.

“Mr. Windsor, you should really be getting to a safe distance, so I can take care of some business.” Excelsior says, not taking his eyes off Lifto.

Edwin steps directly in front of Excelsior. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to destroy my office.”

“Yes I do. I catch the bad guys Mr. Windsor. That’s what I do.”

“NO ONE CAN CATCH LIFTO!”

“Then, by all means, catch him. Skip the battle.”

“But, I have to bravely defeat him in single combat.”

“You do not. Look, I don’t care if you want to hurt him. But why not just grab him and fly away? Batter him senseless in a vacant lot. Perhaps, the top of a mountain? Where property will not be damaged and Lifto will not be able to capture the inevitable hostage.”

Excelsior thinks about this for a second.

“Who’s side are you on?” asks Lifto.

“It’s all the same to you, you can’t be caught,” snaps Edwin.

“But, I am paying you!” Something wasn’t right here. Lifto couldn’t put his finger on it. But something certainly wasn’t right.

“If you can’t be caught, why are you concerned about being caught?” says Edwin.

Now Lifto is totally boggled. While it’s not possible to know the mind of another we would not go too far astray if we imagined that Lifto was programmed in BASIC and the program read like this:

5 REM I am Lifto’s smarts-o-matic thought-thinking program.

10 goto 5

Edwin turns back to Excelsior. “So what do you think about my open area suggestion?”

“But, then he wouldn’t be able to elude me in a maze of narrow buildings,” Excelsior says slowly.

“So you see the benefits?”

“It doesn’t seem very sporting. And isn’t your whole thing to help the villains?”

“Oh no, I’m not prejudiced. My services are available to anyone who will pay me.”

“And villains pay better?”

“Something like that. Now, what about leaving my office in peace?” Edwin takes Excelsior’s elbow and attempts to direct him towards the door.

“But, I must defeat Lifto,” says Excelsior looking over his shoulder

At the mention of his name, Lifto is knocked free of his infinite stupidity loop. He realizes that no one is paying attention to him.

“Hey, Lifto is HERE!”

“Yes, but you don’t actually have to fight him to do that. And even if you do, you don’t have to do that here.” This a level of reasonability that Excelsior is not comfortable with.

“You’re right. I don’t have to. In fact, they’ve given me specific instructions not to harm you. But Mr. Windsor. I want to. Do you understand? I want to. I’ve been thinking about what you told me in the desert. And it made me angry. Angry, because you were right.” Excelsior turns and considers a priceless Chinese vase that is displayed on a plain pedestal. “This is a very nice office for a criminal mastermind.”

“I’m not a —” Excelsior knocks the vase off the pedestal. As it shatters on the floor, Edwin winces. “I’m a consultant,” he says through clenched teeth.

“You don’t like that? You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen you show an emotion, Mr. Windsor. Why so upset? I chose to do that. That’s what you wanted isn’t it, for me to make my own choices?”

“I’m not sure destroying a part of the artistic heritage of mankind is what I meant,” says Edwin.

Excelsior turns and considers the slab of beautifully carved marble on the wall. “Hmm, looks heavy.”

“Heavy? The work of these unknown craftsmen represent the pinnacle of human achievement during the golden age of Greece. A time when wisdom and excellence were rewarded and the potential of mankind was properly channeled.”

“Still, it looks heavy to me.” Excelsior lifts the sculpture from the wall. “Ah, it’s not so bad.”

“Please be careful.”

Excelsior locks eyes with Lifto. “Let’s do this thing.”

Lifto! LIFTO! LIEEEEEEEEFTO!” roars the hairy man as he lifts Edwin’s desk from the floor once again. 

Edwin dives for cover.

Lifto steps forward, holding the desk above his head. His plan is to throw the 600 lb. desk across the room as one would snap a soccer ball back on to the field. But he doesn’t quite make it. Excelsior bounds forward and shatters the desk with one mighty swipe of the Elgin Marble. The desk is thrown through the three story wall of glass.

Lifto plunges his hands into the floor and grabs one of the beams that forms the skeleton of the building. As he rips up a hunk of steel, Excelsior loses his footing and releases the sculpture. Edwin watches, powerless, as the slab of stone hits the floor and shatters.

Feeling a pain deep within him, Edwin closes his eyes. The floor heaves and twists underneath him. The sound of shearing metal comes to him from miles away. He opens his eyes and sees the world as if he is in a dream. Excelsior has pounded Lifto into the floor. Lifto raises his powerful arms to free them from the concrete and the floor splits wide open. Edwin watches the crack run the length of his office and then into the center of the building.

“No! NO!” Edwin cries. But the sounds of impact and twisted metal are so loud that no one hears him. Edwin is filled with rage. Rage at his powerlessness. At the raw stupidity of it all. He wants to hurt them. To harm them. To put them down by force and restore order to his world. He even takes a step towards them. But of course, there is nothing he can do.

Except flee.

He races the crack along the hallway. In the floor he can feel the building vibrate as tremendous blows are struck. When he reaches the lobby Edwin sees the crack run all the way to the elevator shaft. No good. He dives into the stairwell. As he descends his feet barely touch the stairs.

The abuse of the building echoes throughout the shaft. The stairs buck under Edwin’s feet and he collapses on a landing. A pain in his knee makes him nauseous. He lies there and fights for breath, worried that his heart may explode. He pounds the wall in frustration. Why? Why must he be a mere man? Why must he be so unbalanced? So strong of mind and weak of body? For the first time in many years, undisciplined thoughts tear through his mind.

He hears a terrible noise. The worst noise that he has ever heard in his life. Later, he will realize that this is the sound of a portion of the tower cleaving from the rest of the building. It is the sound of building scraping against building. It is as if Edwin is trapped inside a violin on which God is playing a eulogy for the end of the world. He wonders if he will die. Then realizes he does not have a care for himself. But what of Agnes? What has happened to Agnes?

Edwin leaps to his feet and begins to climb. He ignores the pain in his chest and legs. Fear coats his hands with a cold sweat. From his chaotic thoughts he resolves a purpose. As the noise in his mind drops away and the pain in his knee grants him clarity, he  feels something fierce kick within him. He sucks the stale air of the stairwell into his lungs and climbs.

“Agnes!” Edwin cries as he throws open the door to the lobby. The spectacle stops him cold. Half of his entrance is gone, along with what looks to be a third of the building. Inexplicably, some of the fire sprinklers have activated. Along the edge, exposed wires crackle and snap ominously. The wind claws at Edwin. In mere moments, his office has been transformed into a savage place. What little hope that remains in Edwin’s heart now drowns in bile.

“Agnes!” he cries again. As he approaches the edge, a large section of it gives way and tumbles into the empty air. The wind pulls at him seductively, beckoning the tall man into the abyss. For a moment, he considers yielding to the abyss and letting himself fall away from the cares of the world. Then he hears a soft cry.

He finds Agnes lying on the floor in the kitchen. She has collapsed in the ruins of the tea service.

“Edwin. You are unharmed?” Agnes asks with difficulty. Her face is drained and pale. Clearly she is in shock.

“Agnes, I’m sorry.”

“Shh, Shh, dear boy,” Agnes says, coughing up a little blood, “Promise me…”

“Anything,” says Edwin.

“Be good.”

Edwin is unable to speak. The moments drag into minutes. Agnes closes her eyes and dies, not having lived long enough to hear Edwin’s reply. Edwin cradles her head in his lap and says nothing. 

From far below he can hear sirens. In the distance are helicopters. As the last rays of sunlight fade, spotlights descend from the flying machines. They circle and circle, their lights indicating all of the tragedies that they are powerless to stop.

Perhaps Lifto still struggles against Excelsior. Perhaps the struggle was over and the rescue crews were simply dealing with the collateral damage. It matters not. Edwin knows the broad strokes of it. Lives have been lost. Property has been damaged. Resources have been squandered. Few, if any, will notice. They will be too busy watching the explosions to ask what it might cost. It will be entertainment for the masses already swollen with entertainments. Why have bread and circuses when you can have the Superpowered?

But Edwin will count the cost. He will count everything. As he holds Agnes and weeps, he even counts his tears.

Chapter Forty-Three 

Edwin Dresses for the Funeral

Steam rolls over the white tiles as Edwin Windsor stands, absolutely motionless, in the vortex of a six-headed shower. Although his long frame does not move within the womb-like embrace of the warm water, his mind ranges farther, ever farther. As if this white cell was not a bathroom, but rather a chamber in some sophisticated steam engine designed to harness the heat generated by his thoughts as they spin around the circumference of his brain.

Somewhere deep within himself, Edwin comes to a conclusion. His eyes open and his body becomes animated again. With the shower still running, Edwin steps onto the impossibly clean white tile. As he stands in front of the mirror, he can see himself only as a vague abstraction in the steamed surface. And there, before he even has a chance to grab a towel, a thought traverses the depths of his mind. Like a glimpse of a large fish in murky waters, he barely sees enough to describe it.

He searches his reflection. What if this undefined form — this sloppy, imprecise, ungraspable view of the world is reality? What if sharp outlines are merely illusions created by strong minds? What if there is no precision? No terms? No categories? What if all of it is merely the play of light across a steamed mirror? Is that why everything seems to fall apart? Is that why it was all apart to begin with?

He wipes the mirror with a towel and opens the door to let the moist air out. He whips shaving cream to a lather with a badger hair brush and applies it to his face. The warmth of the lather and the reassurance of the ritual is soothing. Only after his face is prepared does he open the drawer. Alone in the center of the long drawer is the razor and nothing else.

He touches the cold steel to his neck, and for a moment, all thought focuses on the question of suicide. Of course he asks it. No man has ever felt an edge across his jugular and not, with varying degrees of sophistication, considered his own mortality. Crude men think of death as a bodily function, as unpleasant as kicking over a full bedpan. Ordinary men try to cover it over with bad analogies — a snake sloughing off the skin or the timeworn relation between caterpillar and butterfly. Religious men think of heaven. Impious men of unfinished revenge. But Edwin Windsor is not like any of these.

In Edwin’s mind, death is exact. He can imagine it for what it is, a quick slip sideways, the sudden warmth on his neck and chest, lightheadedness, ringing in the ears, but no pain. Then the cold of the tile as he lies down and the warm stuff of his life sullies the floor. Peaceful. Inevitable. Definitive.

At the edge of this grim reverie, he imagines a function stretching out over time. The accretion of money and utility that all the moments of his life have brought and will bring. The part that came before is lost forever. Childhood and yesterday were, after all, only sunk costs. And the future, unknowable, but not inestimable. And where he stands in a perfectly white bathroom with a razor at his neck is the impossibly sharp edge of the now. Valued by the expectation of all future worth discounted back to this moment — a series, a summation, the equation of the value of his life. And with this in his mind he slides the razor along his skin, instead of through it.

The hair is parted from his face with a crackling whisper. He wonders if there isn’t something else. Something unmeasurable. If he took the summation and subtracted the crude utility of his life from it, would there be something left over? A something which makes all other measures truly and perfectly ridiculous? The immeasurable. The incommensurate. The soul. The a priori behind and yet still somehow beyond all biological demands.