Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (69 page)

Within minutes, we were lowering ourselves out the window on several, twisted-together electrical cords, and dropping to the ground beside the Teen Titans kids.

Spiderman!”

“Oh, dear
GOD!”
his mother said, as you can imagine, a bit less enthusiastic about my ‘costume’ than her kid.

I had been painted with Wendy’s body-paint, head to toe in blue and red, with enough markings to pass as the worst Spiderman ever. Ms. Waboombas was War Woman, Sophie was a kind of Supergirl, and Morgan was Son of Satan. He really wanted to be Archangel, but we just didn’t have time to make it look right, or manufacture razor wings to his exacting specifications. We were, understandably, in a hurry. So we simply painted him up with red ‘pants’, yellow ‘boots’, and a sort of a pentagram thing on his chest that looked more like a crooked Star of David.

“I don’t wanna be Son of Satan,” he whined, for what must have been the thousandth time. “No cape. No pitchfork. I look like a tool.”

The rest of us ignored him and moved quickly off in the direction of the exits. I can only imagine from the looks we received that the men in white coats had already been notified.

Hair stuck out everywhere, including on the tops of our heads, though we had finally managed to rip free some of the sofa to fashion makeshift codpieces for the boys and thongs for the girls so at least
that
hair wasn’t visible. But on the whole, we were still barely passable as ‘clothed’.

“Sicko!” the Titan’s mother said, pulling her little one away as quickly as she could without dislocating any of his important bones. “SICKO! THERE ARE CHILDREN PRESENT!”

Her reaction was pretty much the same one we got from anyone with enough brains or experience to know what freaks we were. But being that it was ‘all part of the show’ no one stopped us, and no security guards mistook us for the ‘streakers’ Washburne had undoubtedly made good on his promise to warn them about. In fact, far from impeding us in any way, most people were happy to get out of the road and run for the hills at the sight of us. One man did come up to Waboombas and ask her to pose with him for a photograph. She obliged, thankfully without breaking stride, reminding him to come by her booth later for a copy of her comic. Promising he would, he then scurried over to Sophie and requested a picture with her as well. She, of course delighted, obliged bouncily.

“Can I touch your tit?” he asked her.

“Sure!” she said, bouncily.

He reached for it, holding his camera to record the event for posterity and his website, no doubt, when Morgan finally caught on that something was amiss.

“HEY!” Son of Satan shouted, and felled him like a redwood. The punch shocked everyone, especially me, and every eye in the building was immediately turned on us as the stricken souvenir hunter shrieked, and bled, and rolled around on the floor in agony. Sophie turned to Morgan and grinned darkly.

“Wow,” she said, and grabbed his ass again.

All the fuss, unfortunately, drew the attention of security, and as a couple of larger gentlemen in blue blazers set after us, we raced for the exits. They were hot on Morgan’s heels, calling into walkie-talkies, and I knew there would be many more on us soon.

The good thing about dressing like an idiot and running for your life through a crowded convention center is that no one wants to be in your way. The downside about dressing like an idiot and running for your life through a crowded convention center is that when enough people try to get out of your way simultaneously, they end up displaying their poor athletic ability by falling over one another and creating blood clots in the venous system of traffic flow. Wendy and I had come to one of these now, as herds of people fell, and screamed, and rolled over one another between packed tables and jammed booths on either side of the aisle.

Behind us we saw Morgan nabbed by one of two approaching security guys, and Sophie stopped to kick the man in the shins. The second by-passed her and headed straight for us, knowing we were trapped against the fleshy bubble of conventioneers.

I nodded to Waboombas, and she knew what I was thinking without my having to say it. We leaped up on a nearby table and raced across several portfolios of artwork laid before review editors at the Marvel table, hopped over the heads of stunned artists and down into the booth beyond, not stopping to look back as everyone called after us angrily.

Behind me, I thought I heard Marvel’s Editor In Chief say, “I hope we’re not paying that guy.”

Skirting attendees and booth workers, Wendy and I dove across a second table on the other side of the Marvel area, scattering some giveaway items—buttons, posters, stickers—and sending them flying into an unsuspecting line of autograph seekers waiting patiently for one of Marvel’s more popular writers to sign their boxes full of comics. As the most recent, highly revered chronicler of Marvel’s most popular characters, the author was being fawned over, and spoke to the crowd from behind his table, absently signing his name one letter at a time. Many of the fans were clearly awed and inspired by his genius, listening intently to whatever he was pontificating about. Or at least they pretended to be.

“I have seen a vision,” the writer explained serenely, and in a British accent, “that showed me America’s world dominance will come to an end in the coming months, when the president and his minions declare martial law, eliminate congress, and take complete control of this country. This act will reduce your nation to chaos.”

Who cares
, I thought.
I’ll be in an alternate dimension.

Hopefully.

Not far ahead, moving more slowly than we super-powered superheroes through the massive crowd, I saw the Boones, River, and Wisper just reaching the exit. They were flanked by their rent-a-thugs who were paying more attention to the convention and its attendees than they were to their clients. I decided I would have to take advantage of their lack of focus. I jabbed a finger in their general direction, and Wendy snarled an acknowledgement that she too had seen them.

We picked up the pace, but it wasn’t fast enough for me as there was still a good distance between the escapees and us, and because the aisles were still horribly crowded. We decided the fastest way to get where we needed to be was to ruin some very valuable artwork at Mitzi Abromowitz Graphic Collectibles booth by leaping onto her tables and running over them with our bare, painted feet.

“Hey,
hey,
HEY
!”
Mitzi called out, understandably annoyed.

“Sorry, Mitz!”
I yelled, skipping over a Ron Garney two-page spread.
“I’m in a hurry. Send me the bill!”

“Corky?”
she asked, clearly startled.

So much for my secret identity.

“Yep. Loved the Whitcomb you sold me last month. You always have the best stuff!”

“I got a nice Joe Jusko piece over there if you wanna walk on that,” she said, her tone getting cheerier.
“Sixty-five hundred.”

“Sold!” I called back, leaping across to the Slave Labor, independent comics booth and out again into the aisle on the other side.

The crowd was thinner here as we neared the exit, and I was able to reach Wisper and the others without further difficulty. I nodded to Wendy, indicating Thug #1, and Wendy—understanding me completely—shoved him over a trashcan and into a group of fans sitting on the floor just beyond, excitedly going through their day’s haul. They were not the least bit happy about his thoughtlessly deminting their purchases and began wailing on him as if they were children beating on an inflatable party game that gave candy if you popped it.

I took the other thug and clocked him on the back of the head. But given that I haven’t exercised since the president required me to in grade school, my fist simply rebounded off the man’s head and into my own mouth. Instead of ‘defending my woman’ all I’d really accomplished was to make a very large, and very hostile professional pain-giver very, very angry.

He leaped on me in a way I’d only seen spiders do in Animal Planet specials about creatures that eat things that don’t want to be eaten, and my lack of physical prowess put itself embarrassingly on display. I flailed and screamed as we tumbled backward over fascinated onlookers, annoyed sellers, and tables full of carefully graded comic books about happy animals that don’t wear pants.

As the owner of the particular booth we were desecrating shrieked and howled, punching and kicking us both and trying to shove us into the next guy’s booth, I tried to remove my throat from the death grip Thug #2 had on it. But no amount of my thrashing, begging, or pleading would make the guy stop.

Imagine.

In desperation, the lack of vital air slowly fogging my vital brain matter, I reached into several plastic containers that had spilled around me and found some Jetsons Happy Meal toys in plastic-bags for sale at ten dollars apiece. I snagged one of the pointier, shurikenshaped ones and raised it over my head.

“Meet George Jetson!” I yelled.

And jammed the ‘determined safe-for-children’ item into the temple of my attacker. Blood spurted from somewhere inside him, and I couldn’t help but say, “Eeewww!”

The mountain of a man squealed in apparent, actual pain, and rolled off me to thrash about in a pile of autographed, Lord of the Rings action figures.

“HEY! Who’s gonna pay for this?”
The booth owner demanded in high-pitched squeals. Apparently, a bleeding, fellow human being came somewhat farther down his list of ‘important things to be concerned with’, than the perceived value of the items said loser was bleeding
on
.

“Talk to
him
,” I said, pointing to the thug. And the booth owner did.

“Who’s gonna PAY for this?”
he demanded of the thug, who seemed not to hear him through his shrieks of agony, coupled with the sounds of crinkling cardboard and popping plastic. He just continued rolling around, crushing things and begging for an ambulance.

Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

I raced from the booth back in the direction of the Boones and Wisper. But they were gone.

Instead I found Waboombas trapped against a wall where she struggled with her thug—like Lazarus against his antimatter self in that episode of Star Trek—both evenly matched, refusing to give an inch, throwing off flares of radiation and energy so intense they threatened to destroy our universe.

I started to leap in and help, but was still relatively physically unfit, so instead I held back and scanned urgently about for more Jetsons toys. Suddenly, a flesh-colored blur shot past me, its jet stream so intense it knocked me into a five-foot Darth Vader, who apologized to me through a James Earl Jones voice modifier.

The flesh blur was River, flying to Waboombas’ aide—I kid you not,
flying
—and he’d somehow lost his loincloth during takeoff. Several women ‘ooooohhhed’ appreciatively.

Fortunately for Waboombas, unlike me River had exercised endlessly, pretty much since
in utero
, and when he slammed into the guy, the guy really felt it. River punched him once in the side of the head, and he went over into Waboombas, who punched him once in the other side of the head. The cumulative effect was to make the man’s head visibly thinner, and far less conscious. He dropped to the carpet with a thud that couldn’t be heard over the noise in the convention center, much of it created by the crowd of folks who had gathered to watch.

Then something startling happened. Startling to me, at least.

River and Waboombas looked deeply into one another’s eyes, as if seeing something neither had dared believe could happen in their lifetimes. Overcome, they passionately fell into each other’s arms and kissed so deeply I thought they might end up in crawling into one another’s internal organs.

“Um… ” I said, not really sure I wanted to interrupt but feeling it was necessary before they began having sex on the floor. “I think we should…I need to go find…what about…?”

With strained effort, I finally pulled River away from Waboombas. It was a lot like pulling hot, soft gum out of gooey, melted caramel.

“WISPER!” I reminded them.

River stiffened up—and not in a good way—not for Waboombas at least—and awoke to concern for his sister.

“That way!” he said, pointing, and the three of us hurried off the convention center floor and into the front lobby. Through the glass windows, moving much faster in the thinner crowd outside the building, and more motivated since realizing we had escaped, the Boones were forcing Wisper into a waiting limousine. She looked scared but strong as she glanced back my way, and I was stuck with how beautiful she was, how much I loved her, how amazingly sexy she was in my old shirt, and I kicked myself for ever giving someone so fabulous any reason to doubt me.

It would never happen again.

Washburne forced her into the back of the vehicle before she could call out, and by the time we reached the convention center’s glass entry door, the limo was already moving off and away from us.

Waboombas, River, and myself burst through the openings at the front of the building and raced toward the escaping vehicle, but we were too late. Security had held a way open through the crowd of people and cars in order to get the limo moving quickly and help ease traffic in the congested drop-off area. They were on the street and heading toward the freeway before we could even get off the sidewalk.

We stopped running and caught our breath for a moment.

Panting heavily we looked at one another, desperately trying to figure out what to do next. A commotion erupted behind us, and we turned to see Sophie and Morgan sprinting our way at full-throttle with a good ten, or more, security guards right on their tails. Sophie was holding a pair of dark slacks, and Morgan carried a walkie-talkie and a gun. Both were missing large portions of their body paint, and as Morgan gave commands to the walkie-talkie, Sophie randomly threw keys, wallet, and other items from inside the pockets of the slacks into the crowd.