Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story (10 page)

“I told you, call me Sandra,” she says, and her had reaches under the covers of his bed.

13

“Look at the amulet, Jason,” Winton says after Sandra is gone and the weight of the day seeks to crush the 12-year old boy. “Look at the amulet and listen to my voice. You will listen to my voice and look at the amulet that rocks, rocks, rocks back and forth.”

14

Over the following week, only Winton comes to Jason’s room.

The amulet is always with him.

15

On December 6, Jason leaves his room for the first time since his fall. Francis is nowhere to be found and Sandra stays in her room, drinking heavily and tending to her broken arm.

No one will tell him how she broke her arm.

It is a lonely Holiday season in a very large house.

He ascribes his memories of all that happened on the day he fell off the cliff to a dream, and does not see the amulet again until April 19, 1996.

2001

1

Nancy Cathall listens to her station manager’s introduction of her and revels in the applause of her new colleagues. She has decided not to return to UNLV for the spring semester, parlaying her successful reporting of Kid Rapscallion and Fake Out into a job at one of the local network affiliates, and this is her first day on the job. It is January 18, 2001, and her life has never been more successful or conflicted.

There is no guilt evident on her smooth, polished face, but there is great turmoil beneath the surface. As she listens to her list of accomplishments, she is aware that none of these stories — not of the Kid Rapscallion/Fake Out incident last August, not of the chemical spill down in Spring Valley, not of the rise of a new super villain organization that calls themselves the 20-Sided Dice — would be possible without her relationship with Kid Rapscallion.

Before her relationship with Jason Kitmore (who was not a poker player of any kind, it turned out), she would have gladly agreed to become a hero’s go-to reporter in order to climb the ladder. She would also have gladly agreed to have plenty of sex with said hero, given that he looked as hot as Kid Rapscallion did.

What did surprise her was how she felt about it now and how little it has to do with Jason.

Lazlo
.

Did he hit her once?

Yes.

Had she forgiven him?

What was their to forgive?

She was drunk and being a bitch and he was drunk and being an asshole and she said the wrong thing at the wrong moment and —

“And I am proud to announce,” the general manager says, “that we will be nominating Nancy for a Bernitzer Prize for her deeply personal and moving reporting on domestic abuse, which included deeply personal accounts of her own experiences. Or will include, once the stories run. But trust me, when you see these reports, you will be blown away. While I hope none of you have to live through such a horrid event, I do hope that if you do, you are able to do as Nancy has done, and transform your experience into a moving story that makes Las Vegas a better place for all kinds of victims.”

2

Nancy uses a towel to clean him off her face.

“Oh my god,” Jason says, running a hand through her hair as he stands over her, “you were incredible tonight! I’ve never … I mean, really, you’ve never let me … just, wow. Wow. You’re incredible. God, your face is so fucking hot.”

“I love you,” Nancy says, but she says it in a low voice and with her eyes pointed down and the towel over her face and when Jason asks her what she said, she lies and says, “I loved it.”

Guilt needs more than a towel to be wiped away.

3

“I loved it, too, babe,” he says, smiling.

“Do you have to go out tonight?” she asks, pushing herself off her knees to sit back on her sofa. “I was thinking maybe we could just have a night in.”

“I do, yeah,” he says. “Sorry. It’s what they pay me for. Don’t you have to cover a story or something? First day and all.”

She shakes her head, wondering if she should tell him about her domestic abuse stories. “It’s just orientation this week,” she informs him as he absently looks around for his costume. “You’d think the new star reporter wouldn’t have to sit through endless hours of learning where the coffee was kept and how to file an expense report, but …”

Nancy lets her voice trail off, and Jason doesn’t pick up the conversation. Instead, he asks, “Any leads for me to follow up on?”

She doesn't tell him about the stories and he doesn’t notice when they run.

4

It wasn’t until October of last year that Jason had come clean on the full version of his relationship with Fake Out, and she thinks about that night now, as Jason takes a shower without her. Nancy was pissed at first, of course, realizing that he had been using her, but Jason has a way of smiling an apology at her that instantly wears her down.

“I had to test you,” Kid Rapscallion said, explaining why he’d been lying to her for nearly two months. “I had to make sure our relationship worked for both of us, that we could come to an understanding.”

“You fucking used me to spin the public!” she yelled at him.

“Ugh, you sound like your fucking professor,” Kid Rapscallion snapped. “Look, this is how it works, Nancy. There’s ten reporters I can put you in contact with that will tell you the same thing — there’s things the public can’t know because it undermines their confidence in what we do.”

“You self-serving prick!”

“Fine, write a story saying that Fake Out spent two months as my assistant,” Kid said. “Write that I fucked her. Write that she’s got a chemical additive she can add to food and drink that can cause people to hallucinate. Yeah, go ahead, Nancy, write that story. Hell, I’ll give you the recordings she made of me doing coke and fucking her and fucking my hand instead of her pussy even though that’s what I thought was going on. Do it. Do all of it. And what then? Huh? How many capes do you think will talk to you after you do that? I’ll tell you. None. Fucking none. Do you want a career as a reporter? Then this is how you play the game, Nancy. Jump in or find another career. Maybe you can go back to your dad’s business. Oh, that’s right, that company declared bankruptcy. What are you going to do, ex-rich girl?”

Nancy’s memories are interrupted as Jason steps out of the bathroom, dressed as Kid Rapscallion. “Gotta go,” he says, then touches his face. “Damn, where did I put my mask?”

Nancy points to the top of her television. He takes it, fastens it to his face, and then gives her a nod and a wave before exiting her apartment as if it were a perfectly normal thing for him to do.

5

“Nancy? Nancy Cathall? Hi, how are you?” the older but still professionally put together woman asks as she holds out her hand. “Carol Porg. So nice to meet you.”

Nancy rises from the table in the coffee shop and shakes the hand, and Carol joins her at the table after removing her gray coat. “Have you been to New York before?”

“First time,” Nancy says, spinning her spoon in her cup of cold coffee.

“Did Kid pay for the plane ticket?” Carol asks.

Nancy nods.

Carol smiles. “Good. Let him pay for everything he wants to pay for. Let me get right to the point, Nancy. I don’t mean to be curt with you but I have a mall opening to cover at 11:30.”

“You’re covering a mall opening?” Nancy asks. “But you’re Carol Porg.”

“You’re sweet,” Carol says, pointing at Nancy’s cup of coffee when the waiter arrives.

“You won two Pulitzers!”

“Would have been three if it wasn’t for those Woodward and Bernstein assholes,” she smiles. “Anyway, let me give you the brief history of me: during the Vietnam Conflict, I was in college. UVA. After ‘Nam, I was working for a paper in Arlington. I was doing okay but not as good as this other new reporter, Bernard Bish.” Carol shakes her head and laughs. It is a beautiful but cold January morning outside the cafe. Nancy has taken Jason up on his offer to put her in touch with another reporter who has sidled up to a costume. “He was a political reporter, but he kept missing out on these stories that should have been on his radar. Big stories. Political stories. Stories that went to other papers first. He was on the line, about to be fired … but then he started getting stories on a new hero in town.”

“Senator’s Sun?”

The waiter brings the coffee and smiles at Carol, who gives a professional smile in response and tells him, “No, thank you, this will be all.” And then, to Nancy, “Yes, Senator’s Sun. I was so jealous,” she laughs, “and Bernie knew it. He spent a few weeks teasing me about it, and then one day he tells me about a big story that he needs help with. ‘I’m going to distract this Congressman and I need you to break into his apartment and steal a file that he keeps in a safe,’ he said.” Carol sips at her black coffee. “Well, he gives me the safe combination and I wait until he calls my desk, then I head over to this Congressman’s apartment. Except it’s not the Congressman’s apartment. It’s Bernie’s. He’s standing there wearing Sun’s golden pants and black boots and that yellow and gold mask he used to wear. The one that was patterned on the American flag? But yellow and black? God, the first costume was so ugly.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen it.”

Carol continues on, as if Nancy isn’t even sitting across from her. “He tells me that he realizes he can’t be his own reporter. Maybe if he’d decided to be a photographer, he could pull it off, but he was a reporter and if he kept getting the Sun’s exclusive stories, people would eventually put it all together. He needed someone else to be his reporter.” Carol shrugs, smiles, sips coffee. “It was a successful partnership.”

Nancy plays with her cup. “But … do you ever feel like he was using you?”

“Of course he was using me,” she laughs, “just like I was using him.” For the first time since she sat down, Carol gives Nancy a good look, and realizes the young woman is conflicted. “Listen, this whole game — the reporting game, not the superhero game — is all about leverage, same as it is for reporters covering politicians. You’ve got to figure out what parts of what you know make it out to the world, balancing the public’s right to know with the public being better off not knowing. And if you blow all your information every time you file a story, you’ll never get ahead.”

“Jas— Kid says—”

“Oh, God, you’re fucking him,” Carol laughs, pushing back on the table to press against her seat. When Nancy’s face turns read, Carol does her part to erase the shame. She leans forward and asks, “Is he big? It looks like he's got a big cock.”

Nancy is momentarily horrified because she is barely old enough to legally drink alcohol and Carol is almost ready to retire, but the friendly smile on the older woman’s face soon has Nancy smiling, too.

“It’s not as big as I thought it was going to be,” she confesses.

“They never are.”

“He does know what to do with it, though.”

“That’s what counts.”

“I think … I dunno … he’s something of a sex addict.”

“There are worse things to be addicted to.”

“Did you and Senator’s Sun …?”

“God, no. No, no, no,” Carol laughs. “That’s where I drew the line.” She sips more coffee and accepts the check from the waiter. “Always remember that you’re a reporter first,” she says, “and not a PR firm. Make sure you get as much as you give. Make him give you leads about stories he has nothing to do with. A bribery case. Corporate malfeasance. A chemical spill. You have to be careful about the public thinking you’re only good for getting Kid Rapscallion stories, because you’re a player in their game, too, and it can consume you. If it does, you’ll be out of the business before you know it and selling insurance. So … any other questions?”

“How?” Nancy asks, feeling like she’s drowning. “How do I stay me through this? The stories I’ve been writing about what happened between Kid and Fake Out? Most of that was a lie. He was,” she pauses to lower her voice, “he knew her before she went all super villain. She was his partner.”

“Ah,” Carol nods, finishing her coffee. “Those are tough ones. If you out that, bye bye his career and bye bye your career.” She drums her fingers on the table, thinking through her options. “Do you know,” she asks, “that Shining Light dated a reporter?”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Carol says, rolling her eyes. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? The first superhero in the world, the only one that predates World War II, the one people loved, dated a reporter.”

“Professor Sil didn’t mention that.”

“Sil?” Carol asks, her momentary surprise giving way to a shake of her head. “Michael Sil, as the Lord is my witness. Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.” Carol laughs. “Him? Him I slept with.”

“Ew.”

“He might not be much now, but he was quite the hot shot reporter back in the ‘70s. I met him when Sun crossed paths with Gentleman Beaneater. God, Bernie hated that case, but not Michael. Heroes always get nervous when they have to start working the dirty side of the street. Oh, stop, listen to me. Reminiscing. There’s a mall opening I need to get to.”

“Just one more question,” Nancy says as Carol stands up and drops a five dollar bill on the table.

“Don't ask it,” Carol says.

“But —”

“You’re going to ask if it’s worth it,” Carol says, “and there’s no way to give you a definitive answer. For me, it was worth it. For Elaine Eastman, it wasn’t.”

“Who’s Elaine Eastman?”

“Exactly,” she nods, pulling on her coat. “Tell Michael I said hello, and file a story that’s critical of Kid. Not one that makes him look terrible, but one that lets him know you can bite.” Carol winks. “But maybe he already knows that? Take care, Nancy. See the sights when you’re in town. It’s the greatest city in the world.”

6

Nancy files a story that questions whether Kid Rapscallion is doing enough community outreach and waits in her apartment for Jason’s reaction.

It never comes.

He doesn’t watch her report because he is busy being Duplication Girl’s date at a wedding in something called the Shadow Nebula. He bought a tiger from someone who just stopped by his place at the Grand with one to sell, names him “Fred,” and gives him as a wedding gift.