The She-Hulk Diaries (5 page)

As I was toweling off, Azzan squinted at me. He has a very unnerving squint. I’m convinced it’s a Mossad interrogation skill.

“Jennifer, why is such a nice girl wants to learn military fighting technique?”

“The streets can be dangerous for a woman.”

He gave a derisive snort. “I am thinking that maybe you are not a nice girl.”

I tried not to react. “My legal career is on public record. In fact, I’m between jobs right now, so I’ll have to scale back on private lessons.”

Azzan waggled his hand in a distinctly foreign way. “To bullshit me is an insult, Jennifer, so please do not do this again. If there is money problem, I know peoples who would very much like to employ such a girl as you for a honey trap—the nerdy shy librarian who will take off the glasses
and shake the gorgeous hair and beautiful perky ass, and then, after intelligence gathering with kinky sex, can recruit an asset or terminate a target by breaking his neck with her iron-firm thighs.”

Gorgeous hair! “Thank you, Azzan, but I plan to continue my legal career.”

He shrugged. “The offer is open and I don’t judge—except for your diagonal dives and rolls, which need to be tight and fast. Give me fifteen more minutes on the mat.”

Afterward I went to Whole Foods and stocked up on fruits, vegetables, chicken, fish, and grains. I could feel Shulky itching inside when I passed by a tequila display, but I resisted. She itched more when she saw a huge guy whose muscled neck was as wide as his head. He smiled my way and I hurried down another aisle. I honestly don’t get her taste sometimes.

I got back to my building just as the nice doorman, Claude, was ending his shift. Here is how I got maneuvered into doing free legal work by an old man.

First, Claude looked very happy and said, “Evening, Miss Jennifer. How are you doing?”

“Hi, Claude. I’m good. How’s everything today?” [My first mistake; never ask a question without knowing the answer.]

“Everything here is fine, but I just got this letter…” He pulled a letter from his jacket pocket, which meant that he’d been prepared to ambush me. “I can’t make heads nor tails of it. Am I in trouble? I can’t afford to pay more. My niece always took care of the taxes for me, but she’s gone and moved away.” [He sensed my vulnerability for the poor-poor-pitiful-me tactic.]

The letter was a boilerplate notice from the IRS about a miscalculation, but the numbers were all wonky. [Lured me with unusual problem.]

He smiled again and somehow made his eyes look twinkly. [Helpless and friendly making it hard for me to say no.]

“I’m not a tax specialist, Claude, but it may be a simple fix. Do you have a copy of your filing and any supporting documents?”

He bent over so slowly I could practically hear the
creak-creak-creak
of his bones, and then he hauled a large cardboard file box from under his desk. “Here they are.”

Good gawd! I did an
er
here and a
gosh
there, but Claude said, “You’re the only one I know who’s good at this stuff. I didn’t want to ask anyone else here because them other tenants are so important. But you’re not like that.”

This was basically the rubber chicken all over again. At least he didn’t call me ma’am.

I hauled the box to the loft, intending to set it aside since it wasn’t a priority. Curiosity got to me though, and within ten minutes I was browsing through the contents. I found unorganized receipts, invoices, bank statements, county assessor notices, and several dozen two-for-one Joocey Jooce coupons.

I started sorting everything into piles on the dining room table. It became apparent that Claude didn’t have a simple income tax issue. He had a
hydra monster
of a tax issue. Shulky had had a brutal encounter with Madame Hydra, but even that diabolical mastermind didn’t have the terrifying ability to charge compound interest.

Tomorrow I’d tell Claude that he needed to get a specialist. I made file folders for his papers so he wouldn’t be charged additional fees for clerical work.

I keep thinking about Dahlia’s prediction that dangerous cloned organ technology would be used for beauty treatments. Spent the day reading about advances in the field, as well as learning about ReplaceMax complications that go far beyond the usual risks associated with human-to-human transplants. Most of the news is only conjecture, but there are too many reports of organ recipients now on life support.

Legal bloggers are saying that Quintal, Ulrich, Iverson, Ride, and Cooper (QUIRC) are rumored to be moving against ReplaceMax. QUIRC is described as “an elite boutique firm led by eccentric senior
partner E. Charles (Quinty) Quintal III, who defected from the prestigious firm his grandfather founded to establish a more ‘bohemian’ practice. QUIRC specializes in resolving high-profile cases with extremely secretive settlements.”

I wrote a letter to E. Charles Quintal III, attached my CV, and sent it off.

I know that shopping is fun for most women because they can fit in normal clothes and the clothes won’t be ripped to shreds by the end of the month. I went to Bloomie’s, gritted my teeth, and paid crazy prices for five nearly identical black suits that were too big, so that the sleeves and skirts were long enough.

I took the suits to the Garment District and found the shop that specialized in “breakaway garments.”

The designer, who wore a tape measure around her neck, looked me up and down. “Most strippers your age look more chewed up at the edges, if you know what I mean. If you’re gonna get implants, tell me so I can leave some give for the plastic.”

Grit teeth smile. “It’s for a private client who likes me to be stylish.”

When I gave her the new suits, she tut-tutted, and said, “These are too good to ruin, hon. You don’t want me to cut them up.”

“Trust me,” I told her. “If they don’t have breakaway releases, they’ll get ripped off my body and ruined anyway.”

She seemed suspicious, so I bought two of the lovely dresses in her showroom. One was a deep scarlet because I plan to have a Real Date on
Valentine’s Day. I was going to leave, but she made me try on the suits and then said, “A couple of tucks here and there and you’ll look classy even while you’re being trashy.”

Grit teeth smile.

As Ruth would say, OMG, AMAZING! I got a call from Quintal, Ulrich, Iverson, Ride, and Cooper. QUIRC wants to meet with me ASAP. So glad I picked up my suit from the cleaners. The repairs to the seams are hardly noticeable.

Must call Amy to schedule intense interview prep session.

If things keep going so excellently, I’ll have achieved so much, I can add “Visit Paris” to my list of goals!

Excitement is now churning in my guts with nausea. My skin crawls and I feel like I’m going to barf. I want to be judged by what I’ve done, not how well I can impress people on casual acquaintance, which is not at all. Amy said not to worry, that my CV speaks for itself.

If this fails, I can always take Azzan up on his offer of the international assassin job.

I’m doing sit-ups to burn off my anxiety when my aPhone buzzes. I grab it. “Yes?”

It was the emergency nightline at the Mansion. “Jennifer, we’ve got a situation and everyone else is at the hovercraft derby. Mr. Stark thought She-Hulk could handle it.”

Because I’m the rubber chicken. “Sure, so long as she doesn’t have to leave the planet, because I’ve got a job interview.”

“She doesn’t even have to leave the state. Someone’s built a platform
in the Hudson, and it’s supporting a giant peashooter, pulling water from the river and firing water spheres at the theater district. The tourists are running scared and wet. Detective Palmieri will meet Shulky at Pier 83.”

I was going to ask how water could be formed into spheres that would travel that distance, but now was not the time to get technical. “Shulky will be there stat!”

I pulled off my flannel pajamas and took a breath.

Everyone who shifts experiences something different. With me, there is the initial tingle of expectation that runs through my body. I feel it in my fingertips, on my scalp, and down my spine.

The sensation builds as my body stretches and grows dense with muscle. My skin takes on an intense green hue, and my slight curves swerve into dangerous turns of boobs and ass. And then,
kaboom!
, it’s like being in a volcanic eruption and She-Hulk is the volcano, roaring out, as big and bold and badass as she wants to be.

I’m somewhere inside. I can see what she sees and feel what she feels, but I have
limited little
no control of her behavior.

She grinned at herself in the mirror and shook out her long waves of hair that were the deep shade of green ink. She grabbed a purple pleather bodysuit and silver boots from the closet, then wiggled into them and sighed with pleasure.

In less than a minute, she’d hit the express button in the private elevator, which dropped so fast it was almost like being in free fall.

The elevator opened to the subbasement, which had access to one of the secret tunnels that crisscross Manhattan. Shulky ran because she’s faster than a car in city traffic. She was happy to be out, happy to stretch her long legs, happy to be wearing clothes she thought made her look hot. Or as she spells it, hawt.

She slipped out of the tunnel at 42nd Street by the Hudson River Greenway. She kept to the shadows as well as a six-foot-seven jade Amazon could keep to the shadows, and then she burst out under the street lamps.
A crowd had gathered to watch the action, and they shouted, “She-Hulk! She-Hulk’s here! Shulky!” and she gave a wave while noticing the silver arc of a water sphere shooting like a meteorite across the sky before plummeting down in the direction of Broadway.

A dozen black-and-whites had red lights flashing at the base of the pier. She scoped out the raft bobbing a hundred yards off in the dark water. Centered on the raft was a contraption with a wheeled turret and mantel that supported a long metal cylinder. The white foam churning around the raft indicated an engine below the surface.

Sergeant Patricia Palmieri, our favorite NYPD superhuman liaison, waved She-Hulk over. “Shulky, glad you made it.”

“What’s the scoop, Patty?”

“We can’t tell if the giant peashooter is remote-controlled or not, since anyone who gets close gets blasted. The main target is the goddamn theater district.”

“That’s taking the bad reviews of
Spider-Man
a little too far,” Shulky snarked. Patty laughed because people think anything Shulky says is hilarious. “Is the ammunition just water?”

“Yes, but you’d have to ask a goddamn physicist how it’s been formed into giant cannonballs. The loading interval seems to take at least twenty-five seconds.”

“That’s long enough for me to get there. Not to worry, Pattycakes.”

Another waterball flew through the sky, and She-Hulk sprinted down the pier, her long legs eating up the distance. Then she extended her arms and dived into the river, setting off waves on either side.

Her legs propelled her quickly to the edge of the raft. Her muscles were so dense that when she hauled her 680 pounds up on the raft, it began to tip over. She rolled to the center of the raft, and as it righted itself, the pea-shooting metal cylinder swung right at her head.

She thought she heard a manic giggle as she reached up, grabbed the cylinder, and crushed it as easily as a normal human would crush an aluminum can.

An engine suddenly roared, and the raft rocked violently in the wake of a silver capsule jetting away on the surface of the water.

He’d left too easily.

When a miscreant departed without a struggle, it was usually because his plan was about to go into Phase II, known among the superheroes as the Let’s-blow-this-mother-up Phase.

Shulky remained poised on the raft for an instant before she hurled herself off and backflipped into the water. She stretched out, using her massive arms to propel her quickly away from the raft. She took a deep breath then ducked under the surface, going as deep and fast as she could.

She was already under the pier when she felt the shock waves as the raft exploded.

She waited until the shrapnel stopped raining on the river before she rose to the surface. She pulled herself out of the river, shook like a dog, and banged on her ear to get the water out. Sergeant Palmieri was soon by her side saying, “You all right?”

“I will be as soon as my hair dries.”

“Did you see the perp?”

“I only heard him. He giggled like a kid, a crazy kid. The peashooter, that’s like something a kid would build. Maybe your team will find out more from the wreckage, but it was almost like a prank—except for the explosion. That’s attempted murder.”

“So you don’t think there’s superhuman involvement?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say no. Superhuman evildoers are more goal-oriented. This was merely mayhem.”

“For all of our sakes, I hope you’re right.”

She-Hulk looked at the bright lights of the city. “Patty, do you mind sending a copy of your report to the Mansion? Cuz I hear a party calling my name.”

Returned home without Shulky sexing up anyone. Which was not easy. She is cutting into my sleeping hours, but at least there won’t be any embarrassing videos.

Underestimated Shulky’s capacity to be photographed doing something scandalous. Why didn’t I notice that she was grinding on that DJ? And why did she think it was so funny to leave a foil three-pack of condoms like a bookmarker in this journal?

She wears me out.