The Indestructible Man (3 page)

“No.”

“It’s just a commercial.”

“I said
no
.”

“Are you sure you’re all right? You seem awfully upset.” He did not answer.

“Bad memories? Okay by me.” She rested her head on his shoulder and rubbed his chest. “It can’t be that bad.” Her breath smelled like tequila and limes, her body warm and soft. His hands had stopped shaking, but his eyes were still hot and moist. The last thing he wanted was to blubber in front of her.

“I think you should go,” he said.

She raised her head. “What? Are you kidding?”

“Please,” he said. “Just go.”

“Fine,” she said. “Have it your way.” She rolled off him and stumbled into her clothes. He lay motionless, staring at the ceiling until the door slammed. When he finally realized what he’d done he let out a howl that rattled the windows, and pounded the mattress until his arms were tired.

At work he was irritable and frustrated, the claw-grip refusing to cooperate as he set up a pyramid of discounted headlight casings. When the top few boxes fell to the floor for the third time, he swung the long wooden handle like a baseball bat and brought the whole thing down, the thin cardboard clattering all around him. As he sat in the middle of the pile, Mike, one of his supervisors, poked his head out from the storeroom. “Jesus, Bob,” he said, as Bobby began to re-stack. “Next time ask for help.”

There were other commercials
, too, almost every time Bobby turned on the TV. In one Romulus jumped out of a plane without a parachute, landing with a fleshy smack on a well-manicured lawn; in yet another he delivered his monologue in the living room of a burning house, repeating the slogan, “You’re never too young for All-American” just before the flaming roof caved in on him. For a week Bobby was loath to turn on the TV at all, or even to go to Roscoe’s, where he was sure to see one of those ads on the set above the bar. Or worse, he might run into Cindy.

The next weekend Brooks came over unannounced; though Bobby insisted he was not yet up to it, Brooks refused to leave until Bobby joined him for a beer. “I
ain’t
arguing any more,” Brooks said, grabbing Bobby’s wheelchair handles and pushing him out the door. “What’re you afraid of? You been cooped up too long.”

Just as he feared, Cindy was at Roscoe’s, talking with two girlfriends at the bar. Bobby turned fast and tried to wheel himself out before she saw him.

“Hey, wait a minute,” she said, running after him. “Wait a sec, will you?”

He closed his eyes, expecting Cindy to tell the whole bar he’d had a last-minute case of limp-dick, but instead she smiled and touched the back of his hand.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he said, head bowed.

“Last weekend was pretty strange, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Brooks glanced at Cindy, then at Bobby, raising a greasy black eyebrow. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “I’ll leave you two alone.” He looked Cindy up and down, flashed Bobby a thumbs-up, and headed for the bar.

“Feeling better now?”

“I guess so,” Bobby said, beads of sweat gathering on his brow. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” Cindy said. “I figured you had your reasons.”

“It’d take too long to explain.”

She hugged his thick neck. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“Thanks,” Bobby said, too surprised to say more. He smiled nervously and began to wheel himself toward the door. “
G’night
.”

“Not so fast,” she said. “You came for a beer, so stay and have one with me.”

They drank all night, and after Brooks and Cindy’s friends left she wheeled him back to his apartment, where they talked until well past two. He liked the sound of her voice, and kept her talking about herself. She worked as a receptionist in a podiatrist’s office; was obsessed with blueberry pancakes; her favorite color was purple; she had a cat but wanted a basset hound once she had a house; she’d once had sex in an old mausoleum. When she tired of talking, she leaned over and kissed him, then helped him into bed and took off his clothes. After a bit of fumbling she straddled him and took control, and it was better than Bobby had ever imagined.

When they finished he was sweaty and tired and his hips ached, but he barely noticed. For the moment, at least, Romulus Wayne’s hollow grin had stopped haunting him, and as the sleepy numbness washed over him he could not shake the suspicion that his life had just changed for the better.

In the morning
Cindy had to work, so she threw on her clothes without showering and ran out after a quick peck on the lips. After she left he was bored, and wheeled himself down to the corner newsstand for a paper, which he bought only for the TV listings. As he flipped through the pages an insert fell out onto the sidewalk. He left it to the breeze; those glossy ads were wastebasket filler at best.

“Hey,” a man’s voice called out. “Pick that up.”

He was about to tell the man to piss off when he noticed the police car alongside the curb, the driver glaring sternly at him.

“Better get that before I have to cite you,” the officer said.

“Fine,” Bobby said. The glossy paper was blowing away in the breeze, and he barely trapped it with his right wheel before it blew off the curb.

“That’s more like it,” the officer said, and drove away.

“Asshole,” Bobby said when the policeman was out of earshot. As he was about to rip it up he glanced at the ad: a glossy two-page still of Romulus in free-fall from a plane, smiling like a game show host, the All-American slogan in white block letters across the bottom. Romulus seemed to stare directly at him. “Leave me the hell alone, will you?” Bobby said, then crumpled the ad and tossed it in a waste bin.

Bobby might have been satisfied
crumpling Romulus in effigy if he hadn’t become so inescapable. One night, “The Indestructible Man” Romulus Wayne was a featured guest on the
Late, Late, Late Show
. Bobby cringed at the super-heroic name; any competent mugger or bank robber would simply toss Romulus aside and get on with his business.

He needed to turn off the TV, call Cindy, go for a beer with Brooks. Instead he turned up the volume and leaned toward the TV in his wheelchair, his face no more than a foot from the screen.

When the host announced him, Romulus emerged from behind the curtain, clad in a black turtleneck and olive corduroys. He stood still, staring nervously at the audience, who began to laugh. A few seconds later a huge wooden crate dropped from the rafters onto his head, knocking him to the ground with a thud so sickening that some audience members screamed and several stagehands ran to his aid.

After the stage crew helped him to his feet and he showed the audience he was unhurt, he walked across a bed of small explosives, fire and sparks erupting around him. As he brushed the dust from his singed clothes, an old baby grand dropped on his head, disintegrating into a splintery mess. Romulus slowly dug himself out of the wreckage, smiled politely and waved as the audience applauded, and sat down beside the host’s desk.

He answered the host’s questions politely: he headlined a touring stage act; he used no stuntmen; it was not a good idea for anyone to attempt to copy him; no, he would not reveal the secret of his invincibility; yes, he was married; they had just bought a place in New York; yes, she traveled with him. Bobby waited for Romulus to say her name. He never did.

Romulus rattled off his tour dates for the next couple of weeks; none were within driving distance. When the show went to commercial, Bobby switched off the TV. It might not be her, he thought; there were millions of women in New York; Romulus and Abigail must have parted years ago. But the more he tried to convince himself otherwise, the more he suspected it was her.

He finally shook the thought; that business had been over for ten years. He had a job and a life. He had Cindy. Still, he decided not to watch Romulus on TV again; the power button was his best weapon, and as long as he was willing to use it, Romulus Wayne could never touch him.

For nearly a month he watched only PBS; there were no commercials and the documentaries put him to sleep faster than any pill. He drank beer with Brooks and let Cindy wheel him through the park by the river, and thought very little of Romulus Wayne.

One day, after his physical therapist finished the painful job of stretching and bending his legs, he wheeled himself to the newsstand and bought a paper. As he flipped through his thumb caught the edge of the “Arts and Entertainment” section. The cover story caught his eye—a feature on the Indestructible Man’s traveling show. He studied the gathered troupe: a hairy, grotesquely-muscled bald man with a cheesy handlebar mustache; an Indian with black hair down to his waist, a long bow over his shoulder; a thin man in a long caftan dotted with embroidered eyes; and in the center, Romulus Wayne. But no Abigail—he wondered if she had been there, just out of camera range. The caption read, “The Indestructible Man and his Human Marvels.” Bobby stared for a long time, his sweaty fingertips absorbing the ink from the paper. In ten days Romulus and the Human Marvels were to perform at the Simms Theater in Rockford, an hour away. Bobby balled the insert in his hand and wheeled down the sidewalk, searching for a phone booth to look up the Simms’ box office. He did not know what he would see at the show; he only knew he was going.

Since the Self-Help van
did not go as far as Rockford, Bobby had to ask Brooks to drive him. He knew it would take some convincing, since Brooks rarely left town for fear of being recognized.

“Is it really that important?” Brooks asked.

“Yeah.”

“All right, then. But if anybody even gives me a sideways look, I’m
outta
there.”
 

He did not tell Cindy where he was going or why. Had he mentioned the show she would’ve wanted to come; had she known the whole truth, she would have thrown something at him. He could already think of a hundred good reasons not to go, and did not need another.

By the time the minibus pulled into the Simms’ parking garage Bobby’s hands were raw from clinging to the rail. With Brooks in tow, Bobby—in a black baseball hat and zip-up sweatshirt with the hood up—wheeled himself toward the stage. They were early; the auditorium was empty except for a stagehand examining a shiny black grand piano hanging unsteadily over the set, and a white-haired grizzly of a man who walked in behind Bobby and Brooks. Bobby almost gagged on his own saliva when he realized it was Romulus’ father. Colonel Jackson Wayne took a long look at him, one eyebrow raised to a sharp, silvery point. Bobby had always feared him; he was an ex-Marine, the tallest and thickest man he’d ever seen. When he was twelve Jackson Wayne’s mere presence had been enough to keep him far from Romulus. He grabbed his wheels, ready to flee if the Colonel recognized him. But Jackson Wayne only nodded hello as he passed, climbed the wooden steps to the stage, and disappeared behind the curtain.

“A little jumpy, aren’t you?” Brooks said. He slouched low in his seat so that only the top of his head was visible from the entrance. He did not expect trouble, but saw no point in taking chances. “You sure all this is worth it just to see a girl?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Bobby said. “I’m fine.” He pulled down the brim of his cap to hide his face, and waited for the crowd to filter in.