Superpowers (8 page)

Caroline shifted in her seat. She hadn't really thought about Charlie's situation. Everyone else was energized by their new abilities, while he seemed drained, almost shrunken. "Maybe we can figure out some kind of headgear, like Mary Beth said. We should at least try that before you give yourself up to be poked and prodded."

Charlie nodded. "We can try it. But I really hope it works."

Mary Beth turned back to her easel. "Next item is
SCHEDULING,
as in, do any of us have the time to add crime fighting to their life?"

"I do," Jack said. "I could have stopped a dozen muggings in the time we've been in this meeting."

"Settle down, Flash," Harriet said. "You don't need to show off."

"I don't think I can call myself Flash," Jack said. "DC Comics might sue."

"We'll talk about code names later," Mary Beth said. "Right now we're talking about time considerations. We may have to plan on working in groups of two or three, for the most part. It would be best if we could manage nightly patrols." Mary Beth wrote
SMALL GROUPS
and
PATROLS 
under
SCHEDULING.

"We should invest in a police scanner," Jack said. "That way we can know when something's going on, and maybe help."

"Yeah," Caroline said. "That way we can always be sure to have cops around to arrest us afterward."

Mary Beth wrote down
POLICE SCANNER
. "OK. I think we've all got things to work on. Jack and Harriet will look into training, and I'll check out police scanners. Charlie, can you figure out a time for another meeting in about a week? And there was one other thing ..."

"Costuming," Jack said.

"Oh, yes," Mary Beth said. "I was hoping Caroline would take charge of that. Could you design costumes for us? Something non-spandex?"

Caroline glared at Mary Beth, knowing she'd been played. She'd been making her own clothes since she was ten, but she'd never dressed superheroes before.

"I'll work on it," she said finally. She wondered if she hadn't known that this was going to happen all along—the team, everything. Maybe she'd been so angry because she felt guilty for not pursuing it on her own.

"Are we done?" Jack said. "I'm starving."

"You ate a sack of hamburgers and most of a watermelon before the meeting," Harriet said.

"We can wrap up," Mary Beth said. "I hope you'll all take a look at the handouts. And do think about code names for next time." She took down her easel pad, and Harriet helped her carry the water pitcher and glasses. Jack was already gone.

Caroline was left with Charlie.

"You should probably go first," he said.

"Because if I don't, you'll get a headful of me when you walk past?"

"Right."

"Did that happen after we . . ."

"Rocked the casbah? Shook the pillars of heaven?"

"I don't know that we did either of those things."

"Are you kidding? Herds of buffalo thundered across the prairies. Eagles wept."

"I don't remember much, to be honest."

"I don't either," Charlie said. "But it's you and me, so it must have been something spectacular. Who's to say it wasn't?"

"I see." Caroline laughed. "So, the earth tilted on its axis."

"Now you've got the idea. It was the best sex ever known to man. We could never top it."

"We shouldn't even try."

"Nope." Charlie still looked like the living dead, but his tone was light. "We might knock the moon out of orbit."

Caroline's shoulders had relaxed far enough for her to realize how tense she had been. "So, what did you hear?" she asked.

"Nothing incriminating."

"Good. Well. I have to go design some superhero costumes." She stood. "You know, if you ever ... if we can get your power under control, maybe I could take you flying. It's pretty incredible."

"Sure. If I can get this under control."

Caroline looked out the window—it was gray outside, the streetlights just coming on. It was going to be a nice night for flying.

She started to say more, but the Stop-and-Starts began buzzing and pounding from the attic next door.

MONDAY

The baby didn't like jelly, Prudence Palmeiro decided. Prudence could eat an entire jar of salsa with chips for lunch, a black bean enchilada with extra chili peppers for dinner, drink three cans of Diet Coke, and sleep soundly all night. But a little grape jelly on her toast in the morning, and she spent the rest of the day gnawing on Turns.

She should start taking notes on foods that made her sick. She had four and a half months to figure out the kid's food preferences, without ever having to deal with turned-up noses or watching him push his food around the plate. She was already thinking of the baby as a he, although she didn't know for certain and didn't want to know. She wanted there to be a surprise at the end of all this.

She peeled more paper off the roll and popped another antacid into her mouth. "So that covers the stories for the rest of this week, right?"

"Just about," said Bill Boxer, her producer. "They want a reedit on the campus sexual assault story."

Prudence bit into the Turns. "Again?"

"The dean's office is revising their statement."

"God." Prudence shook her head. "Tell me something good."

Bill looked at Tommy Tang, Prudence's cameraman. "Do you want to tell her?" he asked.

"Kindersley Construction is under investigation," Tommy said. "Someone in the governor's office saw the report and decided they couldn't ignore it."

"That
is
good," she said.

"The station is very pleased," Bill said.

"Pleased enough to let me out of some of these mommy stories? Car seat safety, kids' summer reading clubs, the feature on the school superintendent—"

"We've been over this."

"Have we? Remind me."

Bill looked at Tommy for help, but Tommy just shrugged. "The station wants to exploit your image."

"That would be the image of a successful woman of color, right?"

"That would be the image of a successful young woman of color pregnant with her first child. The station wants to soften your image a little. You come across a little cold to some people."

"Because I do tough investigations? Because I practice journalism?" Prudence leaned back and shut her eyes. "God, I hate this business."

"No, you don't," Tommy said.

"No, I don't. Bill, I'll do that crap, but I won't go soft. And I want something serious."

"Car seat safety is serious."

"You know what I'm talking about. The sexual assault story?"

"I'll fight for it at the rundown," Bill said. "I promise. But it would help if you would agree to do the pregnancy updates."

The station wanted her to do periodic reports on her pregnancy, to highlight health issues for expectant mothers and their newborns. They thought it would be a great ratings coup. Prudence thought it sounded like a desperate plot twist on a stale sitcom.

"Tell them we'll do a feature on my OB/GYN visit next week if they run the sexual assault story tonight."

Bill's eyebrows went straight up. "You sure you want to do that?"

"It seems to be the only way I can get any leverage. Tell them I'll give them two reports a month if they let me do two stories
I
want."

"I'll tell them."

He would, Prudence knew; he would make it clear that it was an ultimatum while still being diplomatic. That was why she worked with him, and not with Tamara, who was a perfectly competent producer. Bill was far better than competent, and Prudence hoped she would be able to take him with her when the network came calling.

"What else have you got for me?"

"There is one thing, but there's not enough there to go with yet."

"What is it?"

"A lot of strange police reports over the weekend. Tommy talked to the watch commander."

"Yeah," Tommy said. "People claim that some invisible guy was running around town. Stopped a purse snatcher and saved a kid on a tricycle from being hit by a car. A few other things, but they were sort of confused."

"An invisible man? Come on, guys."

"There are thirty-four different reports," Tommy said, "ranging from runaway dogs being returned to bicycles being righted as they were about to fall. And for every incident reported, the watch commander said there are probably four that go unreported."

"Every report mentioned someone invisible?"

"Every report said the benefactor was never seen. He must have been getting around pretty fast, too. There were reports from everywhere between Sun Prairie and Middleton, sometimes only ten minutes or so apart."

"That would have to be an entire team of invisible people." Prudence fished another Tums out of the roll. She wondered if the baby was going to come out of the womb with a craving for antacids. "Stay on that one. And get me a copy of the police reports."

_______

It was an old UW football helmet, a remarkably ugly design from the early 1970s: white, with a red oval into which an anemic white
W
had been squashed. The upper arms of the W had been truncated by the oval, making it look droopy and tired. Charlie imagined Badger football circa 1972, players drowsing in the huddle, linemen falling forward on the grass before the ball was snapped.

"Found it at an antiques store," Caroline said. "If it works, I'll paint it up and make it pretty." She sat across the living room, far enough away that all Charlie got from her was a dim sense of discomfort. The tinfoil-and-pipe-cleaner contraption under his cap wasn't blocking everything anymore. He hadn't told anybody. He was tired of them feeling sorry for him.

Caroline had drilled several holes in the helmet and threaded bits of stereo wire through. The interior was lined with aluminum foil, and she had grounded the stereo wire to the foil. Then she had connected the other ends to numerous silicate gel packs of the
DO-NOT-EAT
variety and taped them to the outside of the helmet.

"Thanks," Charlie said, because it would be rude to say what he was thinking.

"Go ahead and try it out," Caroline said.

"OK," Charlie said. "It might be better . . ." He shrugged, but she didn't get the hint.

"What?"

"Nothing." He wasn't going to ask her to leave if she was willing to stay. "Here goes." He reached for the helmet with one hand and pulled off his cap with the other.

He never managed to put it on. His skull felt as though it were imploding under the barrage of thoughts. Caroline's came first: her confused feelings for him, her directionless anger and deep sense of betrayal. But other thoughts piled on top of hers, rage and sorrow and ecstasy tackling him and then flowing to some inaccessible place inside, like water down a drain. He tried to fight, to swim up and away from it all. The minds would drown him if he didn't escape.

"Go," he called to Caroline over the rush of voices inside. He didn't know if she heard him or if she obeyed. He had the sense that he was lying on the floor, but in truth he was underwater, fighting the undertow and losing. His lungs were stripped away by the jagged edges of foreign minds. They cut him to ribbons, shredded the ribbons into bits, and sheared the bits to cells, molecules, atoms.

He woke on a bare concrete floor facing a bare concrete wall. He rolled onto his back and saw a bare concrete ceiling far above. Two men were looking down at him.

"About time you got here," said the first man. He had clean-cut brown hair and wore a cream-colored turtleneck with gray Dockers and burgundy loafers. His socks were argyle.

Charlie sat up, facing another bare concrete wall.

"About time you got here," said the second man. He had a brown ponytail and beard and wore a wrinkled flannel shirt over a torn T-shirt and cutoff jeans. His feet were bare.

Charlie didn't remember standing, but he was on his feet. "Where am I?"

"Exactly," said the first man, and raised a martini glass to him.

"Dude," said the second man, and toasted him with a joint.

"Who are you?" Charlie asked.

"Mental matrix Madroxes," answered the second man.

He looked familiar. They both did. "You're—"

"Charles," said the first man.

"Chuck," said the second man.

"You mean, this is—"

"Home," said the first man.

"It's so quiet here," Charlie said.

"Can't you hear it?" asked Chuck.

Charles waved a hand, and a choir of Charlies emerged from the darkness. They sang his lusts, his longings, his loneliness; his preferences, his peeves, his prejudices. They washed over him so swiftly that he hardly recognized them as his own.

Charles waved his hand again, and the choir went silent. "That's merely the overture," he said, lighting a cigar.

Chuck nodded, and took a hit off his joint. "You gotta learn the score."

I'm reading my own thoughts,
Charlie thought.

I would have thought that was patently obvious,
thought Charles.

Their thoughts played projection-style over the walls, like in a bad Oliver Stone movie. Fish swam through the air, their scales glittering with thoughts.

" 'First, know thyself,' said Aurelius," Charles said.

"No, man," said Chuck. "It was Seneca."

"How do I do this?" Charlie asked.

"Learn to swim," said Charles.

Chuck motioned at a worn but comfortable-looking chair that hadn't been there a moment before. "This could take a while," he said. Charlie sat.

Chuck reclined on a mushroom cap, wearing a multicolored terry cloth robe and sucking on a hookah. His beard was stained with resin and spit.

"You got to let go of the world a bit," he said. "You don't know what you think you know, you know?"

"No," Charlie said.

"He's speaking of introspection," said Charles from a throne upon a raised dais. He wore a smoking jacket and an ascot and dark pants with a sharp crease. "Not introspection as most people experience it, however. You have to be comfortable in your own head before you can swim in the mindstream."

"You have to find yourself, is what he's saying." Chuck blew pot smoke at a passing school of fish.

"I'm not looking for me," Charlie said. The smoke tasted like something he used to know.

"You live an unexamined life," said Charles. "One life, many facets."

"One dude, many faces." Chuck leaned back on the mushroom cap. "Stalker, slacker, masturbator."

Charles spoke from the upside-down throne. "Lover, worker, intellectual."

"Pervert," said Chuck.

"Gentleman," said Charles.

The fine print on the inside of Charlie's head was a case study of himself, a
mappamundi.
The evidence was all there. The fish giggled and changed colors and swam through him.

"Get it?" asked Chuck.

He was starting to.