Super Born: Seduction of Being (10 page)

I’d seen the complicated scale drawings and had
to wonder why he was trying to hide them from me and what they were
all about, “Hey, Doc, you building something special there? Is that
for our little project?”

“
Yes, it happens to be a new idea
I’ve had,” he said as he locked the drawer and then backed against
the desk.

“
Does that mean I get some James
Bond electronic shit to work with?”

“
Something like that. It’s very
technical. Not something I expect you’d be interest in.
”

Jones’s answer left me more than a little
curious, perhaps even a bit insulted. But he was the one paying the
bills, and I figured he knew what he was doing so my concerns
drifted away like a happy little bird. “Dr. Jones, what’s wrong?
Something happened?”

He stared at the ground and took a few deep
breaths. “My friend,” he started, his voice breaking, “Demitri…I
received an email relayed through my colleagues in Oxford that
Demitri is dead…” He paused and shook his head. “He wrote me four
days ago saying that he had found Olga Settchuoff ,and that he
hoped to meet with her any day. He was very excited that all his
work had paid off, the proof was so close…The next thing I know, I
received a second email saying that he was found dead by Russian
authorities… an accident, they said. But I…I know
better.

“
His body was sent to his relatives
in Moscow, but now they have to delay the burial. It seems three
teams of morticians have been working for days trying to get rid of
the smile on his face. A dead man with a huge grin – can you
imagine it? Too ghoulish. So, then, they decided on a closed-casket
funeral. Now, they can’t close the lid…” Now Jones was really
pushing himself to speak. “It seems that his penis is frozen erect,
twisted into a corkscrew shape…the morticians have never seen
anything like it. They can’t get pants on him. They tried turning
him on his side, to no avail. What a tragic end for such a great
man of science. Not to mention the best bocce player I have ever
known .”

“
Wait! Does this mean…”

“
Exactly, my astute friend. Woe to
us all, Olga has perfected the mythical Spinderella move, and it
turns out to be deadly.”

“
How can that be? I thought it was
just a story…” As a tale told by many a pervert and by many
card-carrying penis-hating lesbians, Spinderella was both myth and
legend, a story that lived in men’s wet dreams and nightmares. It’s
on video if you want to rent it, but the short version is that a
virginal young beauty’s fairy godmother blesses her with an unusual
gift. She likes it on top and is able to spin around,
pinwheel-like, while she does it, giving her wildly exciting
orgasms and doing the same for her partners, if they don’t die in
the process. It seemed innocent enough as a porno legend, but now,
with Dimitri’s demise, it was a deadly reality.

Then I thought for a moment. “Wait. Doesn’t
that chick, Olga, have to be in her late sixties by
now?”

“
I see you understand the import of
this event. We have various birth dates for her, but they all put
her in either her late or early sixties.”

“
An old broad tears him up like
that?”

“
No, no, my friend, do not
underestimate her as Demitri did. That old broad is
lethal…obviously. If so, what is a younger version capable of?
There is no way to control the Super Born. No, it is too dangerous
to continue. We have opened Pandora’s box, or at least Olga’s. You
must stop searching for your B.I.B. To find her would be certain
death…maybe a happy one, but still a certain one.”

It all was crashing in my head like
waves going in opposite directions. I had arrived at Jones’s
apartment excited to tell him about the new sightings, and now he’d
hit me with this deadly news of Demitri. Jones was obviously
resigned to the end of his research, but I could not bring myself
to believe that a woman who saved cats and married people could
also be a cold-hearted killer, accidental or not. I had almost
convinced myself that she could not have killed Ed, but now this
news reopened that can of worms. Then the worst fear hit.
If he stops looking for her, he’ll stop giving me
bundles of cash, and I’ll have to find a job—what a friggin’
nightmare!

“
Sorry, Doc, but we can’t stop now.
We’re too close.”

“
That is what Demitri
said.”

“
But we now have this information.
We can be more careful.”

Jones shook his head and threw his arm down at
the ground in frustration. “I don’t know…Well, there is one thing
that could make this work. If by chance you have had any contact
with the B.I.B. if you have been with her and you are still alive.
That might give us hope of continuing…Have you been with her per
chance?” he asked closing in on me with keen interest.

I became trapped between the truth and my
dreams of being with her. It made me stammer while trying to choose
the right answer, the one that would make Jones want to keep up the
search. My hesitation convinced him I had been with her or at least
that I knew more than I was telling.

“Ah ha! You have been with her! You old dog!”
With that his attitude changed immediately 180 degrees. “I knew it!
All I had to do was cast a little doubt and out pops the
truth.”

“
No, I haven’t...I’ve only been with
her in my dreams.” I sensed the tiniest of openings and pushed
ahead. I showed him the newspaper articles, and got worked up
talking about them “How can a woman who does these things be a
killer? And look, she’s starting to do it in daylight, like she’s
not afraid to be seen and known anymore.”

“
Or maybe she just has to be home at
night to feed a sick mother or something.”

I ignored him. “If she’s not afraid
to be known, then she’ll have no reason to kill anyone who finds
her out. Maybe she even
wants
to be recognized now. And if I know what she can
do, I can stay away from those situations,” I lied.

“
You are both persuasive and brave,”
he said. Boy, did I have him fooled.

“
It’s my job. We can’t stop
now.”

“
You, you, can’t stop now. I can
stop anytime. Look, it’s Two-For-Tuesday at The Banshee and I’m not
going! Tomorrow is Ladies Night at Skelly’s, but they won’t see my
boney ass!” he said proudly, pounding his chest. “Besides, Mom
would kill me if I ended up dead in a coffin with a twisted flag
pole in my pants and with no straight “A” PhD grandchildren
mourning me by her side. You go on. Maybe you feel safe. But if you
must, I will be telling you over your grave that it’s your doing,
not mine.”

I considered it a victory and
decided Jones (and his money) would jump back on board at the first
sign of progress. On the way home, I thought about Ed, I thought
about Demitri, but most of all, I thought about the B.I.B…and the
Spinderella move. She wouldn’t kill me, would she? My brain
said
that light up ahead’s a bug
zapper
; my heart said
it’s the moon.

* * *

I don’t think my karate teacher
liked me very much. I don’t think he figured a working mom who only
had time for one lesson a week and no time to kiss his butt (which
was as big as his ego) made for a serious student. Sensei, as we
called him—I think his wife did too, and probably even he did, when
he looked in the mirror —didn’t spend a lot of time teaching me.
What he spent a lot of time doing was making fun of any little
thing I did wrong. They said
sensei
meant “teacher “ or “master” in Japanese, but I
thought it meant a-hole. Sensei was an ex-Marine, built like a
rock—a muscular, late-thirties guy with hair that had started to go
bald, yet which he wore long, in a ponytail behind him. He spent
his time with me in the class of white belt six- to eight-year-olds
teaching me
kata,
mock battles incorporating karate moves. It bugged him when I
wanted to move onto advanced techniques and skip the
basics.

He’d say, “It takes time to reach that level.
Perhaps in five years or so, if you work hard and come here more
than one day a week, you can reach that level, Grasshopper.” I
couldn’t believe he used lingo from an old TV show like that.
Anyway I didn’t have the time. I needed advanced techniques today,
so sit on this, Sensei Grasshopper.

I came to class early most days and left late,
learning from some of the other students who had black belts and
seemed to live at the school 24/7. One in particular named Amy
seemed to get a kick out of how fast I was picking up even the
hardest techniques. She was a short, brown-haired fifteen-year-old
girl who had been kicking and punching since she was four. You
could tell I made her feel torn between helping me and following
the sensei’s approach, but seeing an old lady like me learn so fast
was clearly rewarding to her, so she bent the rules for
me.

Amy taught me the hammer fist blow and several
types of kicks that I had seen her use to win a tournament and I
thought would be useful when the B.I.B. was fighting hand-to-hand.
Amy took the time to show me things Sensei would not, and she was
always very patient with me. She was about Paige’s age, so I guess
I turned a little motherly on her.

We had just finished a session in a back corner
of the dojo when she laughed and wiped the sweat off of her pimply
adolescent face. “Wow, you sure picked that up quick. I’m gonna
have to watch out for you.”

“
Yep, I’ll bet I’m really gonna be
somethin’ when I grow up.”

She snorted a little laugh. “You already are
somethin’…for a mom anyway. My mom thinks I’m crazy to want to go
to a karate tournament instead of Homecoming. I can’t imagine her
doing what you do.”

“
Your mom doesn’t know how good you
are. She’ll see one day.”

“
I’m not good. That woman in black,
she’s good. You hear about her? The lady in the mask? She knocked
out that nasty old reverend and turned him in. I wish I could meet
her, but she’d probably kick my ass .”

So I did: I gave her a front kick right in the
butt.

“
What was that for? “ Amy asked,
with a little laugh.

“
I’m the Women in Black and I’m
kicking your ass!”

Amy snorted again. “You’re funny. You wanna be
my mom?”

When I looked at Amy’s face, I saw every
mistake I had ever made with Paige. The fact that her mom didn’t
understand her daughter’s interests hit a little too close to home
for me—I’d heard Paige tell me something along those lines too many
times . “Listen, Amy,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulders,
“can I come to your next tournament? When is it, and where?” Then
Sensei called her and she had to run, quickly.

“
I’ll text you,” she said, running
to meet his command.

Fifteen minutes later we lined up for our
class. As I was only available this one day a week, due to my
part-time job, my choice of classmates was limited. There was
Robby, five years old and more interested in the lights than his
teacher; James, sixty-seven months old (as his mother put it), with
his runny nose; Megan, almost eight, with thick glasses and a weak
defensive posture; Michael, not “Mike”—eight years old, the cocky
leader of the group; and finally, at the end, Allie, thirty-three
years old (or 397 months or so), who towered over the others in her
class but tried to slouch to make the others feel more
comfortable.

Sensei—ex-Marine, current
asshole—walked before us, inspecting our stances as we stood in
white, loose-fitting karate jackets, pants, and white belts. He
grunted something in Japanese, which I had learned meant
take a ready position,
so
I did.

“
Last week I promised you that we
would be sparing in our next class, and that time is here. I want
you to take everything I have taught you so far and use it. But
remember; don’t hit one another. Show me that you could connect
your punch or kick and then I will give you a point. Actually hit
someone, and you lose a point. First to three points wins. Got
it?”

Robby spun around for no particular reason,
James picked his nose, Megan nodded, and Mike…Michael pumped his
fist with excitement.

“
You two, get in position,” he said,
gesturing to Michael and I. I pointed at myself in disbelief—me,
fighting an eight-year-old? “Yes, you. Do your best. Michael is
very aggressive.”

I looked at the ground and then at little
Megan’s unspoiled face and knew I couldn’t defy the sensei in front
of his students. Even though I thought it was a bad idea, I assumed
the sparring position. Sensei put a red flag on my belt and a white
one on Michael, in order to identify us for scoring. Then he told
us to fight.

Michael screamed, “Hiiiyaaa!” and came running
at me in a ball of flailing arms and legs. I couldn’t bring myself
to hit the poor child, but he no qualms about hitting me and landed
a kick in my groin. Sensei threw up his arm and pointed at Michael.
I was expecting him to lose a point for hitting me, but instead
Sensei shouted, “Kick point white.”

“
What?” I asked. “I thought you said
no contact!”

“
There was no contact, just a clean
kick that could have hit you. Get back to position,” the Sensei
instructed me.