Less Than Hero (28 page)

Frank stares at me, his chin covered with grease. “You can’t be serious?”

“I think it’s what Randy and Charlie would have wanted.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what Randy and Charlie would have wanted.” He grabs another slice. “I’ve had enough.”

Obviously he’s not talking about pizza.

“But think about all that we’ve done,” I say. “Think about all of the good we could do. Think about Randy and Charlie and Vic.”

“I do think about them,” Frank says. “That’s all I do. Every day. Every hour. And do you know how I feel?”

I shake my head but I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

“I feel responsible,” he says, his mouth full of meat and cheese and dough. “I should have talked all of you out of this superhero insanity in the first place. I should have been the voice of reason. Instead I enabled the fantasy. I participated in it. And now because of that Randy’s dead, Charlie’s in a coma, and Vic is missing.”

After Randy and Blaine went up in flames, Frank and I searched everywhere for Vic. Neither one of us saw him leave, and in the chaos of the moment we couldn’t find him. So we did the only thing we could do—we got the hell out of there.

We’ve called Vic’s home phone multiple times but he hasn’t answered. Since he doesn’t have an answering machine or voice mail, we can’t leave him any messages. And neither of us knows where he lives.

I can still see the blank, slack expression on Vic’s face after Blaine leveled his finger at him, and I wonder how much damage might have been done to his memory.

“What about all of those people who are at Union Square right now?” I say.

“What about them?”

“They believe in Randy and what he stood for. They believe in all of us.”

Frank takes another bite of pizza. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that Randy’s death shouldn’t be the end of it,” I say. “We should honor the sacrifice he made, both him and Charlie, and take vengeance on all of the would-be muggers and rapists.”

“Honor isn’t something I’m interested in pursuing,” Frank says, letting out a belch. “And vengeance isn’t good for the soul, Lloyd. It just eats it up.”

Frank finishes off another slice while I sit there contemplating his words and what it must be like to be his lower intestine.

“What about all of the people who still need our help?” I say. “Don’t you want to make a difference?”

“I’ve helped enough people,” Frank picks up the last slice of pizza. “I’m done being a superhero, Lloyd. Big Fatty is hanging up his cape.”

T
he New Year comes and the New Year goes and Frank is still retired, Sophie still isn’t talking to me, and Charlie is still in a coma. While the doctors don’t know how much longer he’ll stay that way, the occurrence of seizures is decreasing and they’re monitoring him with the hope that he’ll eventually regain consciousness.

I wish I could get excited about their prognosis, but at the moment I’m not exactly glowing with optimism.

There’s still no word from Vic. I’ve placed multiple calls to police stations, telling them Vic might be suffering from amnesia, but no one has been able to help me. So for the past month I’ve been checking the homeless shelters, starting with those closest to Union Square and working my way south, but so far no one has seen anyone who matches Vic’s description. I’d post flyers except I don’t have any photos of Vic and I’m not much of a sketch artist. I’m more Paleolithic cave painter than Renaissance artist.

It’s not easy trying to find an amnesiac superhero in New York City.

When I’m not looking for Vic or volunteering for clinical
trials and panhandling to pay Charlie’s rent, I keep working on Frank to get him to change his mind about hanging up his cape, but he isn’t interested in changing anything, including his T-shirt and sweatpants. So I go out on my own to fight crime a few nights a week, but it’s not the same without the others. When it comes to being a superhero, I work better in a team setting.

It would be easier if I had someone to talk to. Someone who knows me and cares about me and who could offer me emotional support and physical comfort, but Sophie hasn’t returned my calls let alone offered me a hug.

Eventually I start scouring the tabloids and local news websites, looking for any odd or unusual stories about people experiencing vertigo or insomnia or uncontrollable flatulence. I wander through Tompkins Square and Washington Square and other parks after nightfall, looking for kindred crime-fighting souls. I go back to Curry in a Hurry hoping to run into the guy who said he was Karma. But the only superhero to be found is the one staring back at me in the mirror. And he could use a vacation.

I look exhausted. Emotionally and spiritually. And a good ten years older than my age. More if I catch my reflection in the wrong lighting. The fact that my hair has nearly turned completely gray doesn’t help.

I think part of my haggard appearance has to do with the guilt and depression that are hanging around like sycophantic sidekicks. But I’m beginning to think that the cumulative experience of being a guinea-pig superhero is a significant contributing factor. Whatever it is that allows me to project sleep onto others seems to have taken a physical toll, which means I should probably stop.

The problem is, being a superhero is the only thing that makes me feel better about myself. If I stop, I’m afraid I’ll end up like Frank. Not morbidly obese, but depressed and lonely and feeding my guilt with something that isn’t good for me.

It doesn’t take me long before I realize that’s exactly what I’m doing.

So January comes and January goes and I hang up my cape and go back to living the same life I did before I became a superhero: just guinea-pigging and panhandling, living on the fringes of society in order to survive. Only this time I’m doing it without Sophie, which makes my existence that much less glamorous.

Winter is always bad for panhandling. While you can usually count on some benevolent souls taking pity on you, most of the time people are just too damn cold to care. And two of the clinical trials I’ve signed up for are lockdowns, one of which requires me to wear a catheter, but this is what I know how to do. It’s where I’m comfortable. And human beings are nothing if not creatures of comfort.

Every now and then I find myself haunting Seward Park, eating a doughnut from the Doughnut Plant and looking across the street, waiting to catch a glimpse of Sophie coming home or leaving for work. I’ve seen her a couple of times, but I’m afraid to let her see me, so I make sure to keep my distance, sometimes not catching more than a glimpse of her figure bundled up in her coat and scarf and knit beanie.

Sometimes I ride the Staten Island Ferry back and forth, listening to the symphony of foreign languages and thinking about violins and clarinets and saxophones, remembering the joy on
Sophie’s face as she listened to the orchestra of voices and hearing her buoyant laughter as we would run to try to catch the return ferry.

It seems lately that everywhere I look all I see and hear are the memories and ghosts of Sophie. And none of them is anything but a weak, unsatisfying substitute for the real thing.

Sometimes I walk along the Mall from the Bethesda Terrace to the Olmsted Flower Bed, hoping to find Sophie in her seafoam-green sleeveless dress with matching green wings and yellow chiffon skirt, holding a single rose in one hand, standing perfectly still like the day I met her. But the only statues I ever find are those of Christopher Columbus and William Shakespeare, neither of whom is either alive or my type.

Sometimes I approach Sophie’s pitch from the Wollman Rink or from Fifth Avenue, thinking that maybe by mixing things up she’ll be there and I’ll be able to re-create the magic of that moment when we first met. It’s silly, I know, but you tend to do such things when you’re lonely and depressed and desperate.

I know I could just wait for Sophie outside her apartment or show up at Westerly when she gets off work, but I don’t have the courage. I’d rather find her as a living statue. That way I could do all of the talking and say everything I need to say and she couldn’t walk away or ignore me or tell me how much I disappointed her. She wouldn’t have any choice but to stand there and listen and not say a word.

I never claimed to be adept at relationships.

In early February, the canopy of elms lining the Mall is gone, the limbs a tangle of skeletal arms that reach toward one another
beneath the dismal gray sky. The wind blows in off the Hudson, scattering a few dead leaves across the ground and hibernating lawns. Other than a few hardy green shrubs, the Olmsted Flower Bed is devoid of any color.

While the weather has been unseasonably warm and pleasant, today seems to be a more fitting reflection of my current state of existence.

I’ve brought a flower, a single red rose, as a peace offering. I probably should have brought a lily, since that’s Sophie’s favorite, but it was sort of a last-minute purchase, an impulse buy, and the only flowers the guy on the street corner was selling were roses. But as has been the case every other time I’ve come here, my gesture is made to a nonexistent audience and an empty theater.

I think about the day I met Sophie, how she stood there wearing her faint smile like she had a secret. Like she knew something I didn’t. I remember how I walked up to her and told her I believed she’d appeared to me for some divine reason and that I could use a little pixie dust to change my luck.

As I stare at the Olmsted Flower Bed, it occurs to me with no small amount of chagrin that I’m back right where I started more than five years ago, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do and how I’m supposed to do it. Except this time there’s no fairy to sprinkle pixie dust over me.

I never believed in the power of Sophie’s magic, that she or anyone could change someone else’s life simply by sprinkling metallic glitter over them. But standing here in my own personal time warp with the benefit of hindsight to slap me in the face, I’m hit with an epiphany that makes me realize how wrong I’ve been.

When Sophie sprinkled her pixie dust over me and offered me a place to live, she changed my life. Everything good that has happened to me over the past five years came from that one single moment. If it hadn’t been for Sophie, I don’t know what I would have done or where I would have ended up or who I would have become.

Without any sense of hyperbole, Sophie saved me. She’s my own personal superhero. The Fairy. Defender of lost causes and champion of cats. Able to tolerate slacker boyfriends for longer than expected.

If only I’d been smart enough to figure this out before I decided to screw it all up.

W
hile I’ve never been to Paris, I’m guessing it’s the only city in the world that’s a more romantic place to spend Valentine’s Day than Manhattan. In addition to all of the restaurants, nightclubs, and museums that offer the opportunity to ignite or rekindle your love, you can canoodle at the top of the Empire State Building, hold hands while ice skating at Rockefeller Center, go window-shopping at Tiffany’s, take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry, and, of course, go for a stroll through Central Park.

If you have someone to romance, that is. If you didn’t screw up your relationship and aren’t single and pathetic and lonely.

It’s been more than two months since I’ve seen Sophie, and my hopes that we can reconcile dim with each passing day. Still, that doesn’t keep me from imagining various scenarios where I sweep her off her feet with roses or poetry or a steady job with benefits.

For the past five years I’ve spent Valentine’s Day with Sophie. But this year, rather than canoodling, skating, or strolling, I’m panhandling at the Bethesda Terrace in Central Park, sitting near the arcade with a sign that says:

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE . . . AND CHOCOLATE

I know I’m recycling one of my other panhandling signs and substituting
chocolate
for
Ben & Jerry’s
, but my creativity has waned of late. Besides, what better way is there to celebrate Valentine’s Day than with love and chocolate?

So far my take for the day is pretty good. The near-record winter temperatures help, but it’s a lot easier to make money when your targets are men and women drunk with love, who tend to lose their inhibitions when it comes to emptying their pockets. Especially if they’re trying to impress their dates.