Super Born: Seduction of Being (26 page)

“
Think I’ll pass.”

“
Your choice. It’s quiet an
experience.”

“
Oh…sorry I asked. Anyway, we were
fools to have drifted so far from our plan.” That was when a
thought hit me hard, just like the chili fries would probably hit
my stomach. The plan, the friggin’ plan! “You are so
right!”

Dr. Jones looked up at me, startled. “I
am?”

“
The plan was working. We just got
diverted. Your crazy…sorry…theory about the Super Bowl birth dates
was correct.”

“
And how are you knowing this?”
Jones asked, a bit affronted.

“
Okay, I haven’t told you
everything. The first woman I interviewed with the Super Bowl
birthday seemed like an ordinary chick when I meet her. I didn’t
lie to you…not then, at least.” Jones leaned toward me, surprised.
“But later, I learned that she melted my pen, and then I saw her at
the Searchlight Event. Why would she be there?”

“
Melting your pen? She melts your
pen and you don’t think it’s important enough to tell good ol’ Dr.
Jones? The same Dr. Jones that
told you
about the Super Born in the first place? Who paid you thousands of
dollars for accomplishing diddley squat? I had no idea they had
powers such as this. But why—why would she melt this pen of yours?
”

“
All I know is that I left her with
the pen and, when I came back a few days later, the busboy tells me
about her melting a pen, and I find it embedded in the table. How’s
that for your garden-variety weird?” I said, spinning my bottle of
beer.

Jones thought for a long moment. “So I was
right! The Super Bowl calculations are right! Let’s go meet this
woman!”

“
Hold on, Sherlock,” I said, pushing
him back down in his seat. “That’s not all of it. I think there’s
more than one. This woman melts pens and was the first-closest born
to Super Bowl half time, but she’s not the B.I.B.”

Now Jones was acting like a little kid who
hadn’t been told the secret everyone else knew. “And what is
telling you that there are more than one? Just how many are
there?”

I had to think a long time before answering
that one. “Let’s just say, there is more than one of them for sure,
because I’ve met some of them. I think your Super Bowl theory is
correct.”

He smiled and gave out a little laugh. “I am,
you know, right about this, about everything.”

“
You are a genius. Okay, I said it.
You are…I’ve got to find the rest of those Super Bowl babies, get
back to the plan, right? Is there anything else your calculations
say that can help us?”

“
Yes,” he said folding his arms.
“They say if you don’t share with me all your information again,
you will be finding a black loafer deep up your ass!”

“
Fair enough. I think I’ve told you
everything,” I lied. “Are there any other questions you’d like me
to answer?”

“
Yes. What is a chili
fry?”

On cue, the barkeep brought our chili fries in
paper baskets and dropped them abruptly on the table. “Bon
appétit,” he said.

“
That there, my friend, is what they
call a chili fry.”

“
How are you supposed to eat it? Why
is it looking at me like that?” asked Jones, suspiciously examining
the food.

I explained to him the art of eating chili
fries and soon he had developed his own techniques, based on either
licking off the chili or scraping it off by pulling one through a
trough he made with his tongue. We stayed for a while, downing a
few more beers, finishing our fries, and revisiting our
partnership, unmindful of the thuds, clangs, bangs, and gunfire of
the RFDs. We were home.

Before long, Dr. Jones seemed his old self
again. He smiled. “I think I shall be going now,” he said, rising.
“It is Two-For-Tuesday at The Banshee across that very street,” he
added, pointing out the door.

I slapped him on the back as he put on his
coat.. “That’s what I like to hear, the old Dr. Jones getting back
in the saddle. By the look of your new chili fry techniques, I can
tell some girl is in for the time of her life.”

“
Girls, my friend, we are talking
‘girls’ in the plural, as in many of them. I’ve some catching up to
do.”

“
Go get ‘em, Tiger.”

With that, he quickly shuffled out of the bar
and the barkeep closed in. “Another beer for you? No? How’d you
like them fries?”

“
My compliments to the chef. Those
were potatoes, right? No…extras?”

“
Nothing but the finest for our best
customers.”

I lifted my finger with a quizzical look on my
face and hesitated, about to ask the barkeep a question. But he was
two chapters ahead of me. “The blond bird? No, she ain’t been here
since we last spoke. Heaven knows my wallet could sure use her
visit. Like you said, 200$ to call you if she shows…or was it
300$... Good tipper too, that one…and them hazel eyes…” he said,
drifting away a bit.

“
Yeah,” was all I said, dejected,
thinking how far down the list of her assets and values good
tipping was.

“
And I ain’t forgot, you owe me
another hundred if she shows up here and I give you a
call.”

The barkeep could sense how much it mattered to
me. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, friend, she’ll
show up one day.” He seemed truly sincere, and he even squeezed my
shoulder. “But you’ll have to get to her after me!” he said, and
walked away.

I tried to chuckle. “Ha ha, very funny, you old
fart,” I called after him. But then I slipped into self-pity. Where
was she? With all my efforts to find her, all I had of her were
dazzling but brief memories. Had I imagined that connection between
us that seemed so real? Was I fated to find her again? Now that I
knew what I was missing, why did it friggin’ hurt so
bad?

Chapter 21

The B.I.B. Is Dead

With all my workers gone for the day, I was
pulling another all-nighter at Camino Waste headquarters in my
small, temporary office. Just as the workers were in the process of
putting my office back together, I was in the process of putting
together a plan to finish that devil in black who had dared to
attack me—me!—in my very home. She was dead. She was still walking,
but she was dead. I wasn’t content anymore to publicly disgrace
her. I would dance on her grave.

I picked up a bottle of Miner’s and slipped
over to the doors to my real office. I snapped on the lights, and
looked inside to see the progress that had been made. The gaping
wound in the floor was still there, but the roof and much of the
support structures had been rebuilt. It made me feel good—as my
office was being rebuilt, so was my confidence.

I snapped off the lights in my soon- to- be
office, and when I turned, heard a whirling fan running in the
silence of the office. I turned to my left and tracked the sound to
my secretary’s office. There I saw the tiny light that indicated my
secretary’s computer was still on. When I brought its screen back
to life, there was the B.I.B. Rescue on the screen with the game
paused.

“
Son of a fucking bitch!” I yelled.
“My own fucking people!”

I looked in disgust at the image of
the B.I.B. avatar swooping down to save a beer truck from hitting
my secretary’s avatar. I hit
play
and the B.I.B. flew off with the beer truck. My
secretary was awarded fifty points and her avatar
smiled.

Then inspiration hit me. (You never
know when that little bastard will strike.)
That’s it! That’s fucking it!
“Ha!” I
laughed. “We’ll let her kill herself! That’s fucking it!” From that
moment on, I knew what I had to do.

I had been in contact with every one of
Gambrelli’s men, now in prison, who had taken part in the ill-fated
attempt to liberate The Tool and finish off the B.I.B. When asked
about going another round with her, they all shook their heads;
some immediately began to pace nervously at just the thought of it.
They all talked about her speed and her power, the way she’d put
their lights out with one fist. Not one wanted a rematch. Not one
except Dennis Mastrangelo.

Mastrangelo was a cocky young thug. I had seen
the type before and almost dismissed him. “Yeah, I’d love a rematch
with the bitch,” he said. “I cut her, ya know. I cut her good right
here.” He lifted his right arm, pointing to his ribs. “We’d have
had her too, if I’d had some help. While she was putting out Benny,
I sneaks in, catlike, and give her a slash. If someone had been
there to help, I’d have cut her like a pig. Instead, her arm comes
down and puts me out, like that. Hit me like a fuckin’ hammer, she
did.”

“
You cut her?” I asked. “You saw
blood?”

“
Hell, yeah. On her clothes and on
my knife before she whacked me.”

“
You’re sure?” I insisted, leaning
over the table in the visiting room and staring at him, deadly
serious.

Mastrangelo leaned back over the table at me
and stared me in the eye “On my dead grandmother’s
grave.”

Immediately, I made a mental note to cut a deal
and spring Mastrangelo. Here was a man who had gone toe-to-toe with
the B.I.B. and was willing to do it again. Also, he had seen her,
and that could be very valuable with the B.I.B. now in
hiding.

If it bleeds, I can kill
it
, I thought.
If it bleeds, I can kill it.
If it bleeds it can die.

***

Flying over the city at night in the rain had
to be the worst. But crime didn’t stop just because the weather was
crappy, and the world didn’t operate for my convenience.

I first heard about the beer truck on the
police frequency but they seemed to be taking a really long time to
respond. The first call was about a Miner’s truck out of the
impound lot parked in a mostly commercial area, nothing dramatic.
But then the second and third calls mentioned that there were
sounds of people, mostly children, coming from inside the
truck.

Miner’s trucks being a special hobby of mine, I
was immediately curious. How could kids have gotten trapped inside
a beer truck? Concern for their safety overrode any questions I
should have asked.

When I flew over the truck, I could see a few
curious bystanders observing on the streets around the truck or
sheltered under nearby doorways. It was an old part of town with
short brick buildings that renovation had passed over. I also saw
police lights flashing a block away.

I debated whether this was a job for me or not.
There were police officers on the scene, but they were doing
nothing. Then again, it was a beer truck, after all, and I wanted
to make sure no more beer trucks were injured during the beer
embargo. Heaven knows we would need as many as possible once it
ended, and the fleet had taken a number of losses already. (What? I
know it sounds silly, but I’ve grown attached to those lil’
suckers.) Oh, and I was worried about the kids too.

That was when I heard the loud scream of a
little girl come from the truck. The sound instantly triggered
memories of Paige. I didn’t think, I just dove through a pelting
rain and landed behind the truck. I heard the few people around
cheer and call my name.

I stood in the rain, looking more like a wet
rat than a superhero, and listened for a moment. That was when I
heard what sounded like a flock of birds flying past me and into
the truck, one after the other. It took me a tragic second to
change from concern for the people in the truck to concern for
myself. But when I had done that, I realized that the birds flying
past me were ultra-high-caliber sniper rounds penetrating deep into
the aluminum walls of the truck. My movements had been slow, but
luckily quick enough that all the rounds zipping passed me had
missed by fractions of an inch—except for the last one, which
sliced over my arm despite my diving away from the truck. I could
feel the impact and the pain, but my arm still worked and I was
breathing.

My breathing didn’t stop until the explosion
reached me. The thunderous roar of the explosion of the truck sent
a shock wave that caught me and threw me fifty feet down an alley.
It collapsed parts of the three building closest to the blast and
shattered windows for blocks around.

Now the police responder had another call to
place. Several of the people who witnessed the blast were down and
not moving. Others cried in anguish for help.

But I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t help
myself. I couldn’t feel anything. It was like I was alive only in
my mind. I felt myself calmly drifting away. I hovered up above the
alley and saw the flames of the burning remains of the truck and
watched those who had survived scurrying away in the rain. I looked
down and saw my black form still lying facedown in the alley, but
somehow I didn’t feel surprise or concern. Memories flashed as I
watched my still body—it was just like any pile of inanimate
material; like a rock or a cloud, my body was there, but it was no
longer me.

Then I thought of Paige, as a baby, as a child,
and imagined her as the woman she would be. I remembered how the
last few months had made me feel alive with a burning passion that
was the opposite of the calm indifference of death. I stared at the
black hulk that had once been me and, that was when my passivity
changed to panic. “Come on, Allie!” I screamed, but just kept
drifting away. “Please!” I cried. “Please, Allie, come on!” But
then as I continued to float away, I calmed a bit. “Paige, I am so
sorry…so sorry.”