Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (68 page)

“What’s the big deal?” she said, not realizing that it might be the ‘little’ deal that was Morgan’s problem.

He resisted only a little, but squealed and moaned the entire time, staring longingly at each piece of clothing as it fell to the floor, like a small dog just the other side of the fence from its food bowl.

Sophie finally got him down to his underwear, and Morgan struggled more seriously with her as she tried to slip them off. Before long the minor struggle had turned into a full-scale battle as they each strained and complained, one against the other. But it was only fabric—Wopplesdown Struts fabric, at that—so it was inevitable the undies finally split, ripped, and tore away in Sophie’s hands. Morgan shrieked as if he’d been hit rather hard with an ugly stick.

“Oh,” Sophie said, a little sadly, staring at Morgan’s exposed ‘flea’. Then, ever the effervescent optimist, she rocked back on her heels and bounced—once, twice, three times. “Well,” she said, smiling pleasantly at Morgan. “You’ve got a pretty long tongue, right?”

It took a moment for what she was saying to slowly awaken Morgan’s hamster, but once he was fully alert, the little fellow fairly leaped into the wheel and sprinted madly, as if the finish line was finally in sight, and this time,
this time,
he would get there. “Yeah,” he said—Morgan, not the hamster—smiling back at her. “I do.”

“Good enough,” she told him, and tossed aside the shredded briefs. Then she put an arm around Morgan, clapping one hand on his bare ass. He perked up like I hadn’t seen since that day he learned Marvel had finally fired that one writer he thought was ruining the XMen.

What was his name?

“Down on the floor,” Washburne said, refocusing my attention.

Slowly, we complied. Wendy and I got down last, and most reluctantly, staring through Washburne’s soul the entire way.

“What’s in the suitcase?” he asked Henchman Number One?

“Nothing,” the thug replied. “Some paint, a couple a g-strings, and a buncha funnybooks.”

“Comic books!” Morgan, Wendy, and I said simultaneously.

“Shut up!” Washburne said. Then turned back to the thug. “Take the g-strings and the comics. You can leave the rest.”

Then slowly and confidently, he turned back to us, a bit more relaxed in his moment of superiority.

“I’m telling security to be on the lookout for…um…whaddayacall…streakers,” he told us. “Streakers. What a weird fuckin’ place this is. Anyway, so don’t get any ideas you can run through the convention and get out of here if you’re fast enough.” Then the little toad laughed, though for the life of me I don’t know why, and he and the thugs backed out the doorway.

Before closing it completely, Washburne stuck his sweat-slicked head back into the room and smiled the only smile I’d seen him offer since I’d laid eyes on him. It looked completely out of place. Like a bowtie on a baboon.

“And don’t bother coming back to Nikkid Bottoms,” Washburne said, a giddy, chuckling, sadistic glee in his voice. “
That
door will be closed by the time you get there.”

Sophie’s head shot up almost as rapidly as mine.

“What?” we both said.

“Sorry, Sophie,” Washburne told her, though clearly he didn’t mean it.

“Washburne, you
bastard!
”
Sophie spat, revealing a darker side that jolted me and excited Morgan. “If I can’t get back home, I will
rip
your
fucking
nuts
off and feed them to
rats!
”

And somehow, I believed she would.

“Not if you can’t catch me, and you can’t catch me, you can’t catch me…”
he said in a weird, playground singsong. “Because the door will be
clooooosed
. Just like this one. HA HA
HA
!”

And as promised, he closed the door.

We were on our feet in an instant, but I already knew from the rumbling, and thumping, and clicking sounds in the hall outside that we were pretty much sealed in. As Morgan, Sophie, and Waboombas struggled with the doorknob, I paced the room like a weasel on a leash, looking for any way free, and more importantly, something to wear once I
had
exited.

There wasn’t much in the way of either doors or clothing options. There were some plastic chairs, food containers, a table, bottled drinks, hors d’oeuvres, posters, and a sofa. I checked the posters, but they were small, rigid, and translucent, so they could be lighted from behind, and wouldn’t obscure anything that needed obscuring, except maybe Morgan’s little gentleman. The plastic containers were a similar translucence, milky-clear, and equally useless, and the hors d’oeuvres were miniscule, and fairly flavorless to be honest.

But there were plastic knives.

And the sofa was made of fabric.

I began digging at the sofa like Freddie on a sexually promiscuous teenager, and immediately snapped the knife. I grabbed another, and shattered that. Then a third. A fourth. After nearly putting my eye out with the fifth, I finally gave up and screamed in anguish, throwing things, upturning tables, and knocking over folding chairs.

I was about to shatter a metal and plastic seat through one of the windows overlooking the convention floor when I realized the broken shards of glass would rain down on a cluster of innocent children below. The energy drained out of me as I watched them—laughing, giddy, little toddlers wearing Teen Titans costumes and striking poses for their parents, who smiled with pride and joy at their…eh…prides and joys while taking picture after picture after picture.

Stupid superheroes. They’d failed me in every way.

Superheroes really
were
for kids, not adults, like the ninety percent of the people out there on the convention floor right now. Not men, like me or Morgan, or—well, maybe Morgan. Superheroes were really designed with children in mind. Batman. Superman. The Hulk. The colorful costumes and simple morality tales spoke to young minds in ways they could understand, told tales that uplifted them, encouraged them, and, hopefully, in some ways, helped set them on a course toward being good, honest, and ethical adults.

Not that it helped. Lots of people who loved them as kids still grew up to be non-heroic—or worse, to take your comics, your girl, and call you one of life’s ‘extras’.

Of course, superhero comics
now
didn’t have the kind of clarity they once had. Maybe that’s where they had failed me. These days, the bright colors of our supermen were muddied with endless shades of gray. Good guys who weren’t really good guys, bad guys who weren’t really bad guys, problems without easy solutions.

Many of you may not know this, but within the last fifteen to twenty years, superheroes in printed form (and through osmosis some of the films based on them) have become a weird, hybrid form of adult/child entertainment aimed almost exclusively at grownups who—for complex reasons no one really cares about—have become virtually the only remaining audience for them.

These modern superhero readers don’t want to let go of their cherished supermen, their beloved paragons of virtue, their men-ofwill who are always right; but as adults, these fans have now experienced the grays of the world, and therefore can no longer reconcile the multiple tonalities between dark and light, sort of right and maybe wrong, with simple tales of cartoon heroism. Yet, at the same time, they still
want
the happy ending, the good fight, the easy answers of childhood. They want their brightly colored, spandex-clad ubermen who violate civil liberties at will, with impunity, and government sanction, even though those tales are primarily only suited for the minds of the young—or Bush administration officials. In other words, comics fans today want their entertainment to reflect the grays and the realities, and the darknesses of the real world, but they still want someone to punch the bad guy and make it all better.

Hell, don’t we all?

I certainly did. Wisper apparently did.

Maybe that’s how superheroes had failed us all. Given us simple answers we still longed for. Still believed in, simple answers that blinded us to the complex solutions often needed for real-world problems like ‘love’, ‘fame’, ‘peace’, ‘wealth’, or ‘happiness’. Realworld answers don’t come in pure, undiluted forms of clear, pleasanttasting liquid inside convenient, plastic bottles with no FDA warnings on the label.

Without some confirmation from me, Wisper couldn’t see through the thin mist of grays that hid the mostly good—mostly wanting to be heroic—man I felt was inside me. And could I blame her? Earlier, on the floor of the convention center, confronted with something stupid from my past, I couldn’t see through the even thinner haze of grays to the clarity of what she offered. What should have been the most important thing in my life. Freedom. Control. Love.

Instead, I had insulted her. Fallen back on old ways and hurt the last person I ever should have.

Spent, sore, and deeply frustrated from everything that had happened to me this past few days, I lowered the chair I still held over my head, set it on the floor, and slumped down into it, feeling its cold plastic adhere to my bare ass as an unpleasant reminder that I was stuck here.

When I finally looked up, everyone was staring at me. Wendy. Morgan. Sophie. Perhaps a bit afraid of my rant, but more as if they believed
I
might have the answer to our dilemma.

Didn’t they know me? Hadn’t they heard everything Mayor Boone had said about me? Everything Morgan had confirmed?

I had no answers. No one did. Sometimes, there were none. Sometimes the bad guys won.

All good came with bad. Black came with white. Happy with sad. Asian cultures had long ago invented a term for this concept, and even created a picture to help explain the idea for the listening impaired.

Innun Dang it’s called, or something like that. The best you could do—the thing
I
needed, clearly, to do more of was to see the good, to focus on the good, to embrace the good, and accept that there would, occasionally, be some bad in life.

But never,
ever,
forget the good. Especially when she was right in front of you.

Wisper.

The videos, the comics, the money, the loss of my mansion and my lifestyle were
nothing
compared to losing Wisper. The joy that washed over me when I was with her—hearing her voice, her breath, her laugh, being naked with her, touching her, holding her, experiencing everything she offered—was complete. Perfect. Without grays. None of life’s annoying, tonal gradations mattered to me as much as the clarity of Wisper and the love I felt for her, right now, right this second.

That was clear. That was vibrant. That was alive.

And now it—she—was going to be denied me forever, lost in another dimension when Washburne somehow destroyed the storm hole off US 108.

That bastard. He couldn’t have her, so he’d deny her me, and me her. Sometimes there were no grays. Sometimes there
is
the pure
,
stark, clarity of right and wrong. And the fact that the Boones were intending to deny me Wisper
was
wrong. Something a superhero could, and should, fight against.

So where were they? Where were the real superheroes to be found when you desperately needed them to stop villains, open doors, and bring you pants? Where was Spiderman, or Captain America, or even War Woman with her velour-splitting sword when you truly, and honestly…?

That’s when I noticed Wendy’s suitcase.

“What are we going to do, Corky?” Waboombas asked.

And the extension cords connecting the glowing, poster-signs to the wall outlets.

“Say something!” Morgan demanded.

And the fact that the windows opened without needing chairs thrown through them.

Sophie pleaded with me, silently.

I looked around at my fellow heroes and smiled a radiant smile. A courageous smile. A superhero smile.

“We’re going after them,” I said.