Superpowers (5 page)

Mary Beth shook her head. "I don't understand. Are you saying that just by having power, you become dangerous?"

"Some people would say so, and then some people think of power as the only way to make things better. It's like the difference between the Arthurian Sword in the Stone and Tolkien's One Ring. Have you ever read
Watchmen?"

"No. Is that a comic?"

"Yeah. We have the trade paperback. If you're not that familiar with comics it might take you some time to absorb it, but it'll help. That, and some
Spider-Man,
and maybe some
Daredevil—"

Mary Beth spent almost a hundred dollars at the store, then took the bus back to State Street and walked to Mifflin. From two blocks away she saw that there was a commotion near her house. There were three police cars on the street, their lights flashing, and a small crowd had gathered. She quickened her steps.

The police had pulled up in front of a house just a few doors down from hers and across the street. One uniformed officer stood near the cars, talking to a plainclothes detective. The crowd stood watching, some whispering, most silent. She saw Charlie Frost standing in the street alone, and she walked over to him.

"What's happening?" she asked.

"Nothing right now." Charlie was wearing a baseball cap, something Mary Beth had never seen him do before. Among the greasy strands of hair sticking out from under the cap was what seemed to be tinfoil.

"What
did
happen, then?"

"They arrested him." Charlie motioned at the cars, and Mary Beth realized that there was a young man with sandy hair in the backseat of the nearest patrol car. He looked as though he'd been crying.

"Who is it?"

"I don't know his name." There was a defensive note in Charlie's words. "He killed her, though. Marsha Tanner."

He shut his eyes and whispered something. It sounded to Mary Beth like he was saying, "I can't hear him now."

"That girl over on Johnson? Why did he kill her?"

"Because she broke up with him."

"The cops said that?"

"No." Charlie adjusted his cap. "I have to go. This isn't working." He all but ran into the house.

THURSDAY

Sixteen was trying to get her attention. He lifted his arm and waved his fingers instead of his hand, like an amateur beauty queen in a parade. Caroline smiled at him from across the room and nodded as politely as she could manage. She had six salads in her hands, and the food for Twenty was finally up. She delivered the salads to Eighteen, fetched the food and brought the sauces to Twenty, took a drink order that Seventeen shouted at her on her way past, and finally reached Sixteen, who didn't stop waving until she was standing next to him.

"Is everything all right?" she asked.

He sat back heavily, as if waving her down had taken his last ounce of strength. "My wife's steak isn't done." He was perhaps fifty, with a graying beard and a paunch that cradled his tie like a pillow. He was indignant, whether because of the food or her delay in getting to him she couldn't tell.

I'm sorry." Caroline turned to his wife, a narrow-faced woman with rectangular spectacles and her hair pulled back into a tight bun. "You ordered it medium, didn't you?"

"Yes." The woman sat far back in her chair, eyeing her steak as though it were a rabid weasel. It was rather pink—definitely not medium—but Caroline didn't think it was likely to attack.

"I'll replace it right away." Caroline reached for the plate, but the man shook his head.

"We're in a hurry," he said. "We have to be at the Civic Center by seven-thirty."

It was ten after six, and the Civic Center was two blocks away. "It's no problem," Caroline said. "I'll have them put a rush on it."

"I'll eat it," said the woman, looking as though she would have to plug her nose to do so.

"I can bring you another one, cooked the way you want it. Or I can bring you something else, if you like." Caroline considered snatching the plate away and running with it.

"No," said the man. "I just wanted to call it to your attention."

"What can I do to make you happy?" Caroline asked.

They looked at her as if the question was ludicrous, and it probably was. Caroline guessed that the only thing that might make them happy was seeing the manager flagellate her with the bleeding steak.

She offered again—between apologies—to take the steak back, but by now they were ignoring her, so Caroline retreated to the bar.

"Two Tanqueray tonics, a Jack and Coke, and a Sapphire rocks," she told the bartender, Ken. "And a shot of Cuervo for me."

Ken smiled, but he put up only four glasses. At times he could be convinced to slip her a drink, but rarely this early in the night. "Freaking out already?" he asked. "It's only Thursday."

"The lady at Sixteen doesn't like her steak, but she won't let me take it back."

"Did you tell Vincent?"

Caroline shook her head. Vincent was the owner and very possibly insane. A week ago he had dropped to his knees and wept to a family of four after the eight-year-old boy found a dead ant in his dinner salad. He had paid for their dinner, given them each a cake and enough gift certificates for two weeks' worth of dinners. Then he had stormed into the back room and put the busboys to work scouring the salad bar with bleach in the middle of the dinner rush.

"What about table Nineteen?" Ken asked.

Caroline had been trying to ignore Nineteen. They had been her first dinner customers, a couple in their mid-thirties, very into each other. She wore leather pants and high-heeled boots and a white T-shirt that strained against breasts that Caroline and the other waitresses all agreed weren't real. He wore a Harley-Davidson T-shirt, several gold chains, and jeans so tight Caroline could read the serial numbers on his keys. Before dinner they had spent more time sucking on each other's earlobes than on their drinks. There was no inappropriate touching, exactly, but it wouldn't have surprised Caroline if they had found a way to have sex through their clothes and from separate chairs.

Things had cooled by the time she took their dinner order. They had eaten in an icy silence, and now they were arguing in low tones. When she cleared their plates she had heard her calling him a dickless wonder and him calling her a fucking whore.

"I don't think anyone else can hear them," Caroline said. "I'm afraid if I say anything they'll get loud."

"You shouldn't have to say anything," Ken said. "That's Vincent's job."

He was right, and after she delivered the drinks to Seventeen and made sure there were no unhappy diners at Twenty, she went to find Vincent.

He was in his office doing paperwork. He didn't look up when she entered, but she knew he was aware of her presence. Announcing herself would only make him grumpy.

Vincent was the only child of Feodor Christos, the man who had opened the restaurant more than fifty years before. There was a picture of Feodor on the wall, taken when he was in his forties, and at forty-two Vincent resembled the man in that picture very much. He had the same thick, wavy brown hair, the same deep-set eyes, the same sharp chin and cheekbones. The primary difference in their appearances was that Feodor was smiling, which was something Vincent rarely did.

He looked at Caroline over his glasses, still leaning over his desk, his pen poised.

"Two things," she said. "I have a woman at Sixteen whose steak is underdone, but she won't let me replace it. And I have a couple at Nineteen that I'm afraid is going to make a scene. They've been arguing for about fifteen minutes. Quietly," she added quickly. "But I'm afraid they might get loud."

"Did Sixteen ask to have the steak taken off the check?"

"No, but I wanted to warn you in case they do."

He stood, and she followed him out of the office and down the hall lined with his father's memorabilia: pictures of Feodor with mayors and legislators and governors, autographed photos of Anthony Quinn and Tony Curtis and Raquel Welch, clippings from the local newspapers about Feodor and reviews of the restaurant. At the Christmas party Vincent had, after several martinis, told Ken that his father was haunting the restaurant.

"I suppose that's true," Ken had said. "After all that time the place absorbed a lot of his character."

"I'm not talking about his character," Vincent had yelled. "I'm talking about the bastard's ghost." He had gone on to describe several late-night visitations before his wife dragged him away and took him home.

When Caroline told stories about her job to Harriet and Mary Beth, they always told her that she should quit, that it was unhealthy to work for a lunatic. If the money hadn't been so good, she probably would have. She had made a deal with herself that if Vincent ever flipped out on her, she would walk out and never come back. But so far she had dodged his tirades, though she had witnessed several.

She might be in for one tonight. Once he had dealt with the diners, he might scream at her until he went hoarse. Caroline had rehearsed quitting countless times in her mind; she would pull off her apron, throw it in his face, and tell him he had turned into his father. It was a bit of a cheat, since the elder Christos had died a few years before Caroline had started working there. But it was well established, through the stories of the longtime employees, that: (1) Vincent had hated his father while he was alive, and (2) Feodor, like Vincent, was prone to emotional outbursts and verbal abuse. In fact, the only major difference between the two seemed to be that while Feodor had been renowned for his ability to make his customers feel welcome, Vincent could be awkward to the point of being rude.

He was on his best behavior tonight, however. He spoke to Nineteen, and soon they were smiling at him, if not at each other. They talked to him for a couple of minutes and then left, surprising Caroline with a 20 percent tip. Then Vincent apologized to Sixteen, told them he would take the steak off their bill, and gave them a gift certificate besides. He sat with them for nearly half an hour before they left for their show, and managed to charm them so thoroughly that the woman even thanked Caroline as they left. The tip sucked, but she had expected that.

Vincent waved her over after they had left. She tensed, wondering if he would scream at her. Had they told him she had said something rude? Had there been something about her body language that offended them?

It was neither of those things. "Who cooked that steak?" he asked.

"Don." She was sorry to have to tell him. Don was a nice guy, but he wasn't a very good cook. Now Vincent would probably fire him.

He didn't, though. He pulled Don aside and talked to him in low tones for several minutes, Don paying close attention, nodding almost continuously. Then Vincent stood for a while by the bar, exchanging occasional sentences with Ken. Caroline kept one eye on him while she handled her tables. The rush was over, and they would probably close early, unless Vincent decided to keep them all out of spite.

She didn't see him go over to the waitress's station and start inspecting it. The first hint she had that there was something wrong was when she heard something clattering across the floor. Vincent was dropping coffeepots.

The three businessmen who had just sat down at Seventeen looked stunned. She took their drink order and went to the waitress station to find out what was going on.

Kendra and Sharon were standing there, listening to him rant. "Decaf coffee lids go on the decaf coffeepots," he said, not loudly. "Look at this! Where is the lid for this one? Where are you putting the lids?"

Caroline moved slowly toward the bar. The worst thing to do when he was on a roll was to respond. She started ordering her drinks from Ken.

"You don't care? You're going to fucking care!" Now he was loud. The restaurant had gotten quiet, but Vincent didn't seem to notice. "Decaf lids on the fucking decaf pots! Regular lids on the regular goddamned pots! When are you going to learn that I'm in charge here? I'm the man!" He seized a bus tub, piled all the coffeepots and lids into it, and stalked with it back into his office.

They didn't see Vincent again that night. The hostess went into the office to get permission to close at ten o'clock. There were only two tables left. Vincent told her to wait until ten-thirty.

"I hate being here this late," Sharon said to Caroline as they punched out at twenty to eleven. "He likes to keep us here. It makes him feel important."

Caroline followed her out the back door and into the parking lot. "If he wants our respect, why does he act like that?"

"He learned from his dad," Sharon said. "I could tell you stories."

"I think I've heard them," Caroline said.

"Not all of them. Not by a long shot. See you later, honey." Sharon got into her old Plymouth and drove off in a cloud of exhaust.

Caroline looked around. No cars. No one on the street. All the businesses around Christos were long closed.

She took a deep breath and flew up into the air.

It was a warm night, and only a few wispy clouds veiled the moon and stars. The city spread out below her as she rose, the capitol and the lakes and the campus. She looked down over it and breathed in the clear air.

She had bought a compass earlier in the day. She pulled it from her pocket now and took a reading as she rose straight up into the sky. Then she turned and flew south, slipping the compass back into her pocket.

It took little thought, and less effort. All she had to do was think a direction and she was moving, warm air rushing around her, the ground speeding away below. Except it was her that was shooting through the air like a rocket over the farm country south of Madison, with only the stars to keep her company.

She hadn't said anything to anyone. She never would. She didn't know why this was happening, and she didn't care. All she knew was that on Sunday night, after spending the day hungover and angry at herself for sleeping with Charlie, on top of which work was insanely busy and Vincent fired one of the waitresses for being ten minutes late and she spent most of her shift waiting for a scream that never escaped, she had started to walk home and found herself soaring over the rooftops instead.

She'd been out flying every night since, except for Monday night, when there were thunderstorms and she'd been terrified of being struck by lightning. How did planes handle that? She had to remember to look that up, when she had some time.

No lightning tonight. She was afraid of colliding with a bat, but she had convinced herself that a bat would notice her before she noticed it and steer clear. Most of the birds flew far above her, and planes were higher still, although they sounded terrifyingly close. She had panicked last night when a jet passed overhead; she'd been sure it was about to ram her, and she'd set down in a pasture, where the smell of cow pies got into her clothes.

She tried a few stunts, spinning like a corkscrew, somersaulting through the air, flying on her back. She laughed. It was impossible not to laugh, impossible not to feel good while she was flying.