Less Than Hero (8 page)

Sophie loves to explore New York and do all of the fun, cheap, touristy things that most people who live in Manhattan never get around to doing. Like hanging out in Times Square or touring the art galleries in Chelsea or riding the Staten Island Ferry.

“How is it sad?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says, her head still against my shoulder. “It’s like it wants to come with us, to tag along and see where we’re going and share in our adventure, but it has to stay behind and watch us go.”

Sophie is always attributing feelings and thoughts to inanimate objects. She believes there’s a consciousness in everything and that we’re all connected in one big, cosmic web, the way a flower is connected to the soil and to the sun and water that brought it into being.

It’s one part Buddhism and one part quantum mechanics.

“See how the sun is reflecting off the glass of that building?” She points to the curved façade of 17 State Street, the windows reflecting the sun and the blue sky. “When the sun heats the glass, it changes the configuration of the electrons of the glass and the electrons shift their energies. That changes the electrons in the air around the glass, which causes all of the electrons in the universe to shift, since none of the electrons in the universe can share the same energy level. It’s cause and effect, a ripple of cosmic activity, connecting everything.”

“Well . . . when we get back, we’ll be sure to tell Manhattan all about our trip.”

She looks up at me. “Really?”

I look down at her face just inches from mine, her eyes so big and blue they seem like windows into another universe. The corny romantic in me thinks about seeing heaven in her eyes and starts to compose a haiku around the cosmic nature of love, while the sarcastic cynic in me thinks about blue wavelengths being scattered more widely than other colors and starts to write a limerick about atmospheric perspective.

Eventually, the corny romantic and sarcastic cynic both get writer’s block.

“Absolutely,” I say and kiss her.

Sophie and I watch Battery Park and the rest of Lower Manhattan continue to fall away, neither one of us saying a word. These are some of my favorite moments with Sophie. Neither one of us talking, just enjoying the simplicity of each other’s company and knowing that words would just spoil the moment. Or at least my words would spoil the moment.

When it comes to Sophie, I think I’m at my best when my mouth is shut.

As we continue toward Staten Island, Sophie and I walk around the deck. The ferry is packed with tourists enjoying the ride, pointing at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, taking pictures and talking to one another in a dozen different languages, their conversations mixing together to form a background of unintelligible linguistic babble.

When I was a kid, I used to attend Sunday school. This was before my father decided he’d rather spend his Sundays playing golf and my mother decided she’d rather spend them drinking gin and tonics. One of the stories I always found confusing in my religious schooling was the story of Babel. There humanity was, working together after the Great Flood, united in language and purpose, filled with the promise of peace and harmony, and God decided that was a bad thing. So he scattered humanity across the face of the earth and confounded the language of man so no one would be able to understand one another, thus helping to foster all of the suspicion and animosity and bloodshed that followed throughout the history of man.

When you think about it, God was kind of a dick.

“I love listening to other languages,” Sophie says, pulling close to me and speaking just above a whisper. “It’s like hearing all the different parts of an orchestra.”

“An orchestra?”

“Romance languages are like strings, Slavic languages brass, Asian languages woodwinds, and Germanic languages percussion,” she says. “And all of them blend together to play a beautiful, unrehearsed symphony.”

Leave it to Sophie to make my worldview on humanity seem cold and cynical.

We walk along the deck, our faces warmed by the afternoon sun and the air filled with Sophie’s symphony of languages, though I’m not sure if what we’re listening to is more Bach, Beethoven, or Danny Elfman.

Ahead of us, a young teenage boy points and talks animatedly to his father in French. Next to them, a wispy girl of no more than ten or eleven leans against her mother, the girl’s face pinched from apparent motion sickness. The mother runs a hand across her daughter’s head and brushes the hair out of her face, then turns and says something to her husband in a flute solo. Or is it a cello? Or a French horn?

While I’m trying to remember which part of the orchestra the French language belongs to, Sophie squeezes my hand and leans into me, motioning toward the family of four with her head.

“I love that,” she says. “I hope we can be like them when we’re older.”

“French tourists?”

“No silly.” She squeezes my hand again. “A family.”

While Sophie has hinted before at the idea of getting married, usually by asking me about long-term plans and talking about the future, this is the first time she’s ever mentioned anything about wanting children.

When I think about having children, it’s always more as an abstract concept. Like love and beauty. Or the existence of Bigfoot.

“I’ll be right back.” Sophie kisses me on the cheek. “I have to use the ladies’ room.”

She walks away through the crowd, then glances back over her shoulder and gives me a smile that melts my heart before she disappears into the cabin. And I’m reminded once again of how I wish I could be more the man that Sophie deserves, the man she would like me to be. But marriage and children just seem like more responsibility than I can handle. At least right now.

Who am I kidding? My idea of being an adult is taking out the trash. And when it comes to responsibility, I tend to think it’s overrated.

I glance back at the French family of four and wonder if I can ever live up to Sophie’s expectations and be like them: married with children.

The mother, who apparently noticed Sophie’s affectionate departure, gives me a smile that says she remembers what it was like to have a little romance in her life before she had kids. Or at least that’s my current frame of mind. Her daughter, her face still pinched, glances up at me, obviously not enjoying the ferry ride. I start to offer my own smile to let her know that I understand how she feels, when my lips suddenly go numb and an immediate pressure builds up in the back of my throat. My eyelids grow heavy, along with my arms and legs, like someone turned the gravity up to eleven. It’s all I can do to keep from curling up on the deck to take a nap.

My mouth opens in a wide, jaw-popping yawn. I have to close my eyes just to get it out of me, my hand covering my mouth halfway through. When I’m done, I notice that the young French girl has stolen my idea and laid herself out across her mother’s lap to take a nap. I also feel refreshed and realize that my lips are no longer numb.

“Danielle?” The mother caresses her daughter’s face. “
Êtes-vous d’accord, miel
?”

I don’t know what she said, but her husband looks over and says something else in French, to which the mother responds while shaking her head. Then the father gets off the bench and squats down in front of his wife and daughter.

“Danielle?” he says, shaking his daughter gently before saying her name again.

Danielle remains unresponsive, although she doesn’t appear to be unconscious. She just looks like she’s taking a nap. A moment later she curls up in a fetal position and puts both of her hands under her head.

And I can’t help thinking about the kid on the skateboard.

“Hey.” Sophie appears at my side as the French parents try to awaken their daughter. “There’s a Spanish couple talking next to a group of Italian students and it sounds like a violin concerto. Come on.”

As Sophie takes my hand and leads me away, I glance back at the sleeping French girl and wonder what the hell just happened.

I
n the movies, when people discover that they’ve developed, or think they’ve developed, some strange new ability that defies logic and reason, they spend about five minutes getting used to the idea and then incorporate this information and understanding into a brand-new paradigm.

Telekinesis. Invisibility. Superhuman strength.

X-ray vision. Animal mimicry. Mind control.

In real life, for instance, if you thought you’d developed the ability to make people fall asleep, you’d more likely spend several days yawning at people—on the street, on the subway, in Central Park—but the most you’d get is a reciprocal yawn and a mild case of TMJ. You’d even spend several accumulated hours pinching and biting your lips and sucking on ice cubes to try to make your lips go numb, and when nothing happened, you’d start to wonder if you’d suffered a psychotic break.

Characters in films who develop supernatural abilities don’t tend to spend a lot of time questioning their mental health. Or at least if they do, that footage gets edited out because it doesn’t test well with audiences.

I wish I had an editor. Someone to cut out all of the bad parts of my life and just leave the bits that make me look good. While we’re at it, I could use a good musical score, too. Something fun and playful, like the soundtrack from
Pulp Fiction
. Or
The Blues Brothers
. But since I don’t have a twenty-four-hour DJ and I’m stuck with the uncut version of my life, I just have to try to figure out what the hell is going on and hope I haven’t been dosed with LSD or become delusional.

The rational part of me realizes I couldn’t possibly have anything to do with what happened to the French girl on the Staten Island Ferry or the skateboarder in Central Park. Except the more I think about it, the more I wonder about the timing and my lips going numb and the uncompromising yawn that built up inside of me. Both the skate rat and the French girl seemed to fall asleep the moment I yawned, and immediately afterward I felt refreshed and reinvigorated.

Sophie’s voice plays back in my head. She keeps waxing on about Buddhist philosophy and quantum mechanics, telling me how everything is connected to everything else in the universe and how a change in molecules here has repercussions and consequences there. A cosmic ripple effect of energy.

Cause and effect.

But it’s not just the effect of two people falling asleep that’s on my mind, along with the still-debatable idea that I may have caused their unexpected catnaps. It’s the effect of my lips going numb and what caused me to feel tired and yawn in the first place that has me wondering about my life choices.

All sorts of prescription drugs can cause drowsiness. It’s a
common side effect and one I’ve experienced countless times. So while the idea is still something I’m not quite ready to embrace, I’m considering the possibility that all of these drugs I’ve tested over the past five years may have caused an unexpected and unusual effect.

True, it’s only happened twice. And I remember reading that once is chance, twice is coincidence, and three times is a pattern. So I’m trying to see if there’s a pattern here or if I’m just borderline schizophrenic.

“What are you doing?” Sophie asks.

She asks me this from the bathroom doorway while I’m leaning forward, staring at myself in the mirror and pinching my lower lip to try to make it go numb. Not as bad as getting caught masturbating, but it’s still kind of awkward.

To make things worse, I noticed a few strands of gray in my hair.

I haven’t said anything to Sophie. Not about the gray hair. But she already wants me to stop volunteering for clinical trials. If I tell her I think the drugs I’ve been testing for the past five years have affected me to the point where I believe I’m making people fall asleep, she’ll make me stop for sure.

The fact that Sophie’s reaction would be perfectly rational doesn’t factor into my decision making.

“Just checking my gums,” I say, still holding on to my lower lip like I’m trying to keep it from flying away.

“What’s wrong with your gums?”

“Nothing. I was just making sure they looked healthy.”

Sophie stands there in her Westerly Natural Market polo shirt
and stares at me. For a moment, I think she knows I’m lying. Somehow her fairy powers allow her to see that my aura has changed from blue to red or orange or whatever color your aura turns when you’re manipulating the truth.

“When was the last time you saw a dentist?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, both relieved and ashamed. “At least two or three years.”

“You should make an appointment, Lollipop,” she says. “You need to take care of your teeth.”

I know she’s right, but I hate going to the dentist and having people stick things in my mouth. Some people are afraid of clowns. Others are afraid of snakes. I’m terrified of dentists.

The light over the chair that stares down at you like a giant, malevolent eyeball. The chalky substance they use to clean your teeth. The sound of the suction funnel. The high-pitched whine of the drill. The pinch of the needle as the dentist injects lidocaine into your gums and your lips turn to rubber. It’s like a sadistic nightmare. Or torture porn.