Third Class Superhero (2 page)

***

On the way home, I don't want them to see where I live, so I tell them to just drop me off at a bar. I go in for a drink. As I sit down, in walks Johnnie Blade. He's a gray guy—talented enough to have passed all the tests, but never bothered signing up for either side. He calls me about once a year, trying to get me to sell my good-guy card for cash. Or something better. He slides up next to me and orders whatever I'm having.

"Is it worth it?" he asks, grabbing a handful of peanuts and tossing them into his mouth. I don't answer.

Johnnie Blade grabs my wrist and locks in on me. "There are alternatives, Nathan. Quit trying to climb that ladder." He hands me his business card and teleports out. I am about to throw it away when I see the local news on the TV. The Polaris Team defeats Tricky Trio. There's Golden Boy and Red Fury and Zero C, making it look easy. Almost fun. And then they somehow got a shot of me sitting in the car, struggling with my seat belt. I put Johnnie's card in my pocket.

When I get home, I go upstairs to check on Henry. He's asleep. I startle him a bit trying to cover him with a blanket.

"How did you do?"

"We won," I say. "I kicked a little ass." Henry looks at how clean my costume is and smiles, embarrassed for me.

"Yeah, I saw you on the news. Next time, buddy. Next time."

***

Another year of not making the cut means another year of trying to do enough freelance to keep my good-guy card, which means getting a provisional license. I sign up for the exam. The test is on a Saturday at a local high school.

Inside the exam room, sixty of us are crammed together at twenty desks. It is hot and people keep shifting around. The proctor explains the rules: three hours of multiple choice, an hour of true/false, and then ninety minutes of moral quandaries. We fill in bubbles. Name. Alias. E-mail. We describe ourselves:

What abilities do you have? Please check all that apply. _ Can run faster than a cheetah.

_ Can jump more than twenty feet into the air from a standing start.
_ Can swim faster than an adult dolphin.
_ Can tell if a person is lying.
_ Can intensify feelings of others.
_ Can make others doubt themselves.
_ Can manipulate atomic structure.
_ Can be invisible.
_ Can see through objects.
_ Can see the future.
_ Other (please explain):

There's no box to check for my power, so I write it in. Try to pretty it up a little.

Condensation power: Can take water from the air and use it as a distraction, or to cause momentary confusion in the enemy. Also to extinguish small fires and provide refreshment for team members.

I look around at the people in there with me. To my left is Itch-Inducer Boy. To my right is a pebble shooter.
Over by the door are Malaise Man, The Fatiguer, and The Nauseator aka Slight Discomforto. Burnouts, all of them. And they are no doubt thinking the same about me. All of us crammed into this sweatbox, each with the same thought bubble over his spandex-costumed head—
I'm the diamond in the rough, just wait, world,you've underestimated me
—each thinking he's the late bloomer, the one who is going on forty but has enormous untapped potential thus far stymied by a combination of bad luck and small-minded admissions committees.

I come to the last question and get a queasy feeling in my stomach.

Which are you applying for? Please check one.

_ Good Guy
_ Bad Guy

I check Good Guy and get out of there as fast as I can.

Two weeks later I get the provisional in the mail. I try to convince myself I don't care, but my hands are shaking as I rip open the envelope. It's a piece of gold card stock, laminated. The type is blurry and off center. What does it prove? That I know the right words to say to convince people I'm a decent guy? It's nothing, less than nothing. It's a piece of paper, a shred of the dream, but it's what I have and I want to show Henry. I run upstairs and knock. There's no answer so I invite myself in to find Henry lying on the ground.

"What are you doing, big guy?" I'm laughing at how funny he looks when I realize I am watching him have a stroke.

***

Twelve hours, three bags of chips, and two choco-dings later, the hospital waiting room is starting to feel like home. I'm trying to find a doctor to tell me if Henry is going to make it, but they keep jogging past, avoiding eye contact, which I take to be a bad sign.

A woman comes in holding her baby son. He's been nicked in the foot by a stray bullet, and the bleeding is heavier than it should be. It won't stop. The baby is barely crying, but he is bleeding all over his mother and the floor while she fills out paperwork. Where were the heroes? Something in me clicks. What the hell am I doing? What is it I want to be? A ladder climber, like Zero C? I wasn't born gifted. I'm not going to lead a squad before I'm thirty. Thirty was almost eight years ago. Even if everything I could realistically hope for goes right for me, even if the rest of my life is one long lucky streak until the day I die, where does that get me? Middle management? A teaching post? Adjunct lecturer for eight-year-olds who have nothing to learn from me, who can shoot fire and do calculus and crush my skull like a peanut?

The waiting room TV is turned to the local news. In my world, every TV is always turned to the local news. It's like nothing else ever happens in the entire galaxy except whatever is going on in a five-mile radius to make me feel bad about myself. There's the same old story: Golden Boy and his team win again. Score one for the good guys. They interview him and I feel the chasm between us. Meanwhile, back at the hospital, I can't do anything for the one person in the world more pathetic than I am. Henry is in there maybe dying and the bleeding baby is still bleeding on the floor and I'm looking at the television thinking about why I'm not on there? About my career? A thought bubble appears above my head and there are italicized words inside it.
Don't give up. The race isn't over.
I take out my good-guy card. I realize how small it is. I feel stupid. Embarrassed for myself. For longer than I can remember, I've been pretending I don't have ambition. Hiding it from people, from myself. Pretending I'm happy where I am. I think about Henry. I think about me, about what I used to want. I don't even want anything anymore. It's a bad place to be. The race may not be over, but it's over for Moisture Man. People are starting to lap me.

I open my wallet and fish out Johnnie's card. I flip it over and over, thinking, What if? What can he get me? I go to Henry's room and look in through the glass. He's asleep. I make the call from the pay phone. While it's ringing, I keep telling myself
this is a bad idea this is a bad idea
but then he picks up.

"Talk to me," he says.

"This is a bad idea."

"Hey, Nathan, I knew you'd come around."

"Cut the shit."

"Okay, then. What can I do you for, Moisture Man?"

"I want flight?"

"Of course you do. Do you know what it's going to cost you?"

"Can you get it or not?"

"What do you think?"

It's silent for a long minute. A lifetime of guilt versus a lifetime of feeling like this. I do the moral math.

"How does this work?" I say, finally. And that's that. I feel free. I feel hollow. I want to throw up.

After I hang up, I go outside for a smoke. The nurse comes out and tells me Henry will be fine.

"He's doing well. He woke up and slurred a few syllables, but he'll be asleep for hours. Go home and get some rest."

I can't sleep in my own bed. I go upstairs to Henry's apartment to watch TV and finish the bottle of Wild Turkey he was holding when he fell over. The programming at this time of night is for people like me. People who can't believe they're watching TV at this time of night. A commercial for a technical college. A commercial for a new religion. A commercial for a multilevel marketing system guaranteed to make me up to $5,000 per week working from the comfort of my home. When the Wild Turkey's all gone, I stumble down to my apartment. I fall asleep on my couch and dream about the checks just rolling in.

***

When the phone rings too early the next morning, I don't open my eyes. I already know who it is. I already regret what I am about to do. Golden Boy is on the line. He's out of breath. Megaton dislocated his thumb and is out four to six weeks. They need a fourth. This is the real thing, he says. I want to know how many guys he called before getting to my number, but I don't ask. Can I be ready in fifteen minutes? I say I can. He says they'll pick me up in the jet.

The inside of the jet is better than I could have imagined. Every seat has two cup holders. There are free vitamins and sports drinks. My head is light from the speed and from my amorality. So this is what it feels like to be evil. Not at all what I thought. It's absolute freedom. Like stepping outside of your own body and watching it. I throw up. Zero C looks back from the copilot seat and shakes his head.

Red Fury unbuckles herself and brings me a bottle of water and some strength pills. "Here you go, Nathan."
She knows my real name
is what I'm thinking while launching into another heave. I feel her warm, photonic hand on my back, gently patting me between the shoulder blades. "It happens to everyone their first time in the jet."

I know I can't do it. I'm sure of it. With her palm pressed against my thin costume, I start to lose my resolve. Just touching her makes me a better person for a second. I want to tell her to turn the plane around. But we're already landing. Golden Boy tells us we're fighting in ten minutes. Before I can tell Red Fury what I've done, she's up and out of the jet. All three of them are out there, stretching on the mountaintop. Their muscles are all so perfect. They stretch their hamstrings. They flex and loosen their granite-like quadriceps, massage their balloon-shaped deltoids. That is what a costume is supposed to look like, I think, when it fits. That is what a superhero looks like. The reason they have better lives than I do is because they are better people. They're more this, more that, more strong, fast, smart, kind, forgiving. They're more everything. What do I have more of? What do I do better than anyone else in the world?

Red Fury is motioning for me to come join them. I can't move.

***

The battle is a rout. The good guys don't know what hit them. Apparently my card allows even a peon like me access to a lot of sensitive material. They hacked the server, got access to the battle plan. Access to the hero weakness files. Everything. I guess the good guys operate on trust. They trusted me. Halfway through, it gets so ugly I start to throw up again. I even consider fighting, but what can I do?

***

When it's all over, Golden Boy has a broken femur and a dislocated shoulder. Zero C is dead. Red Fury is basically okay except for a long, shallow cut across her shoulder. Her costume is torn. The color of her skin is impossible to describe. There's no name for it. Her gash is glowing so bright it hurts to look.

I pull together some water and cup it in my hands to wash her wound. She starts to thank me, but I stop her. I tell her what I did. She doesn't believe me at first.

"No. You wouldn't. Not you."

"Anna. Listen." My tone quiets her. I sound like a different person, admitting what I've done. I'm already a bad guy and she can hear it. "These guys are bush league. Any two of you could have taken all of them down on a given day. What happened here? Why were they so fast today? Because they
knew.
Because you were ambushed. By me. I ambushed you."

She is silent for a long time. "Why?" she finally asks, but she is twice as smart as I am and knows the answer better than I ever will. The rescue copter is getting close. I have to leave or go to jail. I climb up the stairs and into the jet. As I am flying away, I expect to see her shooting me down, but she just waves a sad, small wave.

***

A couple of weeks later, I'm waiting in front of the 7-Eleven for Johnnie Blade. I'm on my fourth cigarette when I start to realize he might not be coming. What was I thinking, making a deal with a guy like that? Even the bad guys don't trust him.

Then he drops out of the sky and almost lands on top of me.

"You did it."

"I guess so."

"I didn't think you would. I didn't think you had the stones to do it."

I can't even look him in the eye. I wonder if I'll ever be able to look anyone in the eye again.

"Hey. Nathan. Look at me." I slowly turn my head and stare at him with the side of my face. "You're not the devil. Get over yourself. How do you think I make a living? You think you're the first bad guy with a conscience in the history of the world? Please. Look around. Look at all these men your age wandering around in the middle of the night. No one to save, no one to save them. Think you're different? Think you're not one of 'em?"

"I don't need an after-school special from you, of all people," I say. "Do you have what I want?"

"Listen, I'm just trying to do you a favor. You weren't born a superhero. The sooner you realize it, the better."

I look straight at him. "I'll say it again. Do. You. Have.

What. I. Want?"

"Tough guy, huh? Hurt a few loved ones and now you think you're Dr. Doom?" He smirks. "Okay, then. As promised." He hands me a sandwich.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"You eat it, big man. And then you fly."

Before I can argue, he's two hundred feet in the air.

I look at the thing. Two slices of bologna on white, a little mayo on the bread. I eat it in three bites. What choice do I have? The crosstown bus pulls up and I get on.

About two stops later I start to feel something. A tingling in my foot. My right foot. It's light at first. I'm not even sure I feel it. Then it's running up the back of my leg. Could be my sciatica. Then it's gone. Then it's there again, this time in my left foot, in the toes and heel. It's like pain. It is pain. It feels like I've been shot. I wonder if I should try to fly a little inside the bus, but people are watching. I get off twenty blocks from my stop and stand on the corner, waiting for the bus to pull away. It's late. No one's on the street. Bugs chirp. It's now or never, I guess. How do you fly? How do you try to fly? I still don't know. It's not like jumping or walking. There is a moment when you are bound by gravity, bound by rules, bound by every assumption you've ever made about yourself since the age of ten, and then the next moment you are not. In between those moments, the impossible happens. How do you fly? Not by trying. Not by doing it. Not by willpower. There's no push-off. Flying isn't an action, it's a state of being. All of a sudden, I know I can fly. One minute I have no idea how I could ever do it and the next minute I wonder how anyone could not know. I fly low the whole way home, a few inches off the ground.