Action Figures - Issue Four: Cruel Summer

by Michael C Bailey

  “Oh no. No it’s not,” Natalie says with a wide grin. “Joe’s fired up the smoker. Guys, soon you will be gorging on some of the most fantastic barbecue on the East Coast.”

  I swear I just heard Stuart whoop with delight.

  We parade as a group up to the front door. Natalie rings the doorbell. Kilroy answers almost immediately. He sweeps his gaze over the female partygoers and offers us his finest welcoming smile.

  “Ladies,” he says, stepping aside and gesturing for us to enter. The boy would be downright charming if he weren’t such a lech.

  “Morning, Kilroy,” Natalie says. “Everyone up in the family room?”

  “Yep. Come on.”

  Kilroy leads us to the Quentin family room, a cavernous space boasting a TV as large as a movie theater screen. It looks like we’re the fashionable latecomers; Edison and Bart are already here, along with a statuesque African-American woman I kinda-sorta recognize, though I can’t say where I’ve seen her before. They stand in a tight circle with Dr. Quentin, who is wearing honest-to-God Mom Jeans and a T-shirt bearing a little stick figure holding test tubes in each hand. The slogan STAND BACK – I’M GOING TO TRY SCIENCE surrounds the figure.

  Dr. Quentin has a sense of humor. Who knew?

  Meg and Farley enter the room from the spacious rear deck, where the hulking form of their father, Joe “Rockjaw” Quentin, hovers over a black steel cylinder large enough to roast an entire side of beef (which, for all I know, is exactly what he’s doing). Farley sees me and streaks across the room to tackle-hug my legs.

  “Easy, buddy, I need those for walking,” I tease.

  “There are my ladies!” Meg, decked out in one of her trademark vintage cocktail dresses, a jazzy red number, dashes over to start doling out hugs. “And my gentlemen, I didn’t forget about you.”

  “Congrats on escaping high school,” Matt says. “Please note my deep-seated jealousy and resentment.”

  “And please note I am absolutely basking in your jealousy and resentment,” Meg beams. “Yours especially,” she adds to her brother.

  “What jealousy? I like high school,” Kilroy says. He turns to Missy. “I’m choosing to savor my high school years. They are the best years of a person’s life, after all.”

  “If that’s true, it means you’re peaking at the tender age of eighteen and it’s all downhill from there,” Dr. Quentin interjects. “It also means I’ve made some terrible missteps as a parent.”

  “I’ll always stand as testament to your strong parenting skills, Mother,” Meg says. Dr. Quentin raises her wine glass. The gesture says Thank God for that.

  “Me too!” says Farley, who has yet to release my legs.

  “I’m sure you’ll grow to become the best of us all, sweetheart. Drinks are out on the deck,” Dr. Quentin says, motioning in that general direction. “Soda and juice is in the red cooler, beer is in the blue cooler, wine is on the table.”

  And with that, the party starts in earnest. Edison introduces the semi-familiar face to the Squad as Tisha Greene, a.k.a. TranzSister, who happens to be a former MIT classmate of Dr. Quentin’s. She’s what’s known in super-hero circles as a techie, someone whose abilities derive from advanced technology — in her case, a suit of armor of her own design, packed with a wide variety of offensive and defensive weaponry and useful gadgets. Edison describes her as a walking Swiss army knife, if the knife in question had been designed by Steve Jobs.

  “You’re the girl who took down the King of Pain,” Tisha says to me with a mix of admiration and (understandable) skepticism.

  “Me and Sara, yeah. Well, more Sara than me. She did all the heavy lifting,” I say.

  Tisha raises her beer bottle in toast. “Good on her.”

  “Excuse me,” Natalie says, appearing behind me. “I need to borrow Carrie for a minute.”

  Natalie grabs me by the arm and half-drags me over to Astrid in the corner of the family room. They crowd around me, forming a two-woman wall between me and the rest of the guests.

  “Yes?” I say.

  “Is there perhaps something you’d like to tell us?” Astrid says.

  “Umm, no. What would I want to tell you?”

  “Ohhh, I don’t know. Maybe how you got that hickey?” Astrid says, pointing at the base of my neck.

  “You should have worn something with a collar today,” Natalie says.

  I shrink into a deep shrug, like a turtle trying to pull its head into its shell.

  “I’m guessing she got more than a hickey,” Astrid says. She may be the only person in the world who can smirk in approval.

  My mouth falls open and flustered noises, intended to be words of emphatic denial, spill out. Natalie grabs my arm and gives it a squeeze that she probably means as a comforting gesture.

  “Easy, kiddo, breathe,” she says. “Was it your first time?”

  I nod.

  “How was it?” Astrid says.

  “Astrid,” Natalie chides.

  “Inquiring minds want to know.”

  I don’t answer, hoping my silence will end this deeply uncomfortable interrogation, but Astrid stands fast. She’s not about to let her curiosity go unsatisfied.

  “It was nice,” I say.

  “Awww,” she groans.

  “What? It was.”

  “Carrie, we were both virgins once. We know what ‘It was nice’ means.”

  “It means it was nice.”

  “It means it was thrilling and a little scary, but in a good way, and you enjoyed the intimacy,” Astrid says, “but when it came time for the main event, it was over in two minutes and you never got anywhere close to an orgasm.”

  “That is not true,” I insist. It lasted more than two minutes.

  I think it lasted more than two minutes.

  Look, I didn’t time it. I mean, come on.

  “Carrie, we’re not trying to give you a hard time, honestly,” Natalie says. “It’s okay your first time wasn’t all fireworks and carnal bliss. That’s normal. First sexual experiences are supposed to be clumsy and weird and at best semi-satisfying.”

  “That’s why you keep doing it,” Astrid says. “Practice makes perfect.”

  “You used protection, right?” Natalie says, as though saying no was not an option.

  “Of course I did.”

  “Are you on the pill? Or Depo-Provera, or Ortho Evra?” I hesitate, which is answer enough. “Oh, Carrie, no. If you’re going to be sleeping with your boyfriend, you need to be on some kind of birth control.”

  “You should be on it anyway. Makes that time of the month more bearable,” Astrid says.

  “It does?” I say.

  “Didn’t your mother ever talk to you about going on birth control?”

  “No. Mom’s always been twitchy about sex talks. When I was little she told me where babies came from and that’s about it,” I say, and thinking back on that conversation, it took Mom fifteen minutes and several colorful euphemisms to stumble through the basic mechanics.

  “Not to criticize your mother’s parenting skills, but she hasn’t done you any favors by keeping you in the dark,” Natalie says. She lays a hand on my shoulder in a big-sisterly way. “If you have any questions —”

  “Or want any tips,” Astrid says.

  “— please come to us. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I say. I suppose it is nice of them to offer their, um, expertise on the matter, but Natalie and Astrid are the polar opposite of my mother; they don’t hold back anything. Educational? Sure. Useful? Most likely. Intimidating? Off-putting? Embarrassing? I choose D: all of the above.

  They part, granting me safe passage. I make a beeline for the deck, where the Squad, Meg, and Kilroy have congregated for the very practical purpose of being that much closer to the barbecue (which smells amazing). As I join the group, I can’t help but notice how Meg and Sara are standing somewhat apart from the others, deeply engaged in whatever conversation they’re having. Meg is her usual animated self (she uses her hands a lot w
hen she talks) but Sara is quiet, focused, almost entranced, and there’s something about her smile...

  Oh, duh. She has a crush on Meg.

  Meanwhile, it appears Kilroy has — well, not a crush on Missy, but he clearly has designs on her. I’ve lost my appeal since gaining a boyfriend, so now he’s moved on to his next target. I trust that Missy’s not so naïve she’d fall for his Mr. Smoothie routine, but I might want to have a little talk with her just in case.

  All chatter stops as Joe lifts the smoker lid, releasing a cloud of mouthwatering meaty aroma.

  “Is it food yet, Dad?” Meg says.

  Joe pokes at one of several racks of ribs with a long-handled fork. A single rib, burdened with glorious meat, drops away from the rack.

  “It is most definitely food,” Joe says. “Come and get it!”

  We swarm the smoker like jackals attacking a fresh antelope carcass. Joe doles out generous portions and directs us to a side table covered in side dishes (mac and cheese, potato salad, cole slaw, assorted chips) and plastic squeeze bottles of Joe’s homemade barbecue sauces.

  “That’s the spicy Carolina mop sauce,” Kilroy says, pointing out one bottle, filled with a rusty red sauce. “Vinegar base with a pinch of Red Savina chili pepper, the second-hottest chili pepper known to mankind. For extreme eaters only.”

  “Your dad is the most awesome man on the whole frickin’ planet,” Stuart says.

  “I know, right?” Meg says, dousing her ribs in the mop sauce — and I mean dousing. She might as well be eating barbecued pork soup.

  “Hardcore,” Stuart says in admiration.

  “Try it,” Meg says, offering her plate to Sara for a sample. “Hurts so good.”

  Sara, understandably wary, picks a strip of meat off one of the ribs, dips it in sauce, and pops it in her mouth. Hilarity ensues. Sara’s eyes bug out, her lips press together to hold back a squeal, and her pale face turns a vivid shade of pink. She snatches the root beer out of Missy’s hand and downs half of it in a single chug. It’s prime physical comedy. We can’t help but laugh — which, I realize too late, might be a huge mistake. Sara glowers at us, her eyes blazing, and I worry we might have unwittingly pushed her toward another tantrum.

  “You okay there?” Meg says. She smiles and rubs Sara’s arm tenderly. The tension in Sara’s face vanishes.

  “I think I’ll try something a little milder,” Sara says with a breathless giggle.

  “Carrie,” Edison calls out. He’s at the back of the food line with Dr. Quentin, and both of them look very serious — grim, even. Edison jerks his head, a silent summons.

  “Something wrong?” I say. Edison and Dr. Quentin step away from the group. I follow. Oh, man, he’s not going to give me a sex talk too, is he? I am so not up for that.

  “I want to keep this between the three of us for now,” Edison says, keeping his voice down. “I hate to bring up business during what’s supposed to be a celebration, but I just got a call from Warden Pearce.” He pauses. “The King of Pain attempted to kill himself in his cell this morning.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Dr. Quentin greets the news with a slow raise of her eyebrows. “If you’ll forgive my morbid curiosity,” she says, saving me the trouble of asking.

  “He fashioned a ligature out of his bed sheet,” Edison says, “tried to strangle himself.”

  “How did he manage that?” I say. Having spent a little time in a Byrne cell, I can say with complete confidence that there is no way someone can hang himself in one. The cells are smooth cubes, no exposed rafters or the like, and they’re all monitored constantly. Guards would respond to a suicide attempt within seconds.

  “He fashioned a noose, slipped it over his neck, tied the other end in a knot, then flushed it down the toilet,” Edison says. Dr. Quentin and I do simultaneous double-takes. “I promise you, I am not making that up.”

  “Well.” Dr. Quentin takes a long sip of her drink. “That’s certainly imaginative.”

  “Yeah, points for creativity, but he must have been truly desperate to even try it.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “The King of Pain’s supposed to be a hardcore psychopath. Why would be try to kill himself?”

  “It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Individuals like the King of Pain are driven by the need to control others, exert their power over their victims,” Dr. Quentin says. “His power has been taken away. Suicide is simply his pathetic way of attempting to reclaim control.”

  “Too bad he didn’t succeed,” Edison says. “Would have saved us a lot of trouble.”

  Dr. Quentin tsks. “Really, Edison. Such vindictiveness is beneath you.”

  “Sorry to intrude,” Bart says, intruding and not at all sorry for it, “but this has all the appearances of an official confab and I thought we agreed we wouldn’t discuss business today.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re done here,” Edison says, unceremoniously ending the impromptu meeting.

  Business remains on the back burner for the rest of the day, and I allow myself to become distracted by the eating, drinking, and merry-making. Stuart and Joe wind up embroiled in an unofficial rib-eating contest, polishing off plate after plate without ever slowing down. Dr. Quentin puts away, by my count, four glasses of wine in as many hours. Each glass makes her louder and more susceptible to uncontrollable giggling at the least provocation. Matt reduces her to a quivering mass of hysterical laughter after making a joke about someone named Heisenberg getting pulled over for speeding.

  Once our stomachs settle, Meg breaks out a portable stereo and fires up the tunes because, in her words, “It’s my party and I demand we dance until we barf.”

  Dancing happens. Barfing, thankfully, not so much.

  The guard guides Coleco into the medical center. Like the rest of Byrne, it’s eerily quiet in here. Library quiet. Funeral home quiet. It’s a near-perfect silence, broken only by the faint tap tap tap of the on-duty doctor poking a tablet as she hovers over her sole patient — and the reason why Coleco was rousted from his bed before noon on a Sunday.

  He couldn’t have tried to kill himself on a weekday, Coleco grumbles to himself.

  Coleco and the doctor exchange cordial nods. The doctor withdraws to grant him some privacy, resuming her post at a desk near the entrance, near the trio of armed guards — Coleco’s escort, plus the two stationed in the medical center. Normally, only one guard is assigned here.

  “How are you feeling?” Coleco asks as a matter of courtesy.

  The King of Pain gives him a wobbly smile. “I’ll live,” he croaks.

  “Care to explain what brought this on?”

  “Oh, you know. Those four walls, closing in on me, driving me to despair.”

  “I’d be more inclined to believe that if you weren’t smiling. You’re determined to make this case as difficult as possible, aren’t you?”

  “I take that to mean you’ve failed to uncover my real name?”

  “Your name, your date of birth, a driver’s license, school transcripts, tax filings — any kind of normal civilian record. As far as I can tell, you don’t exist,” Coleco says. “How can anyone in this day and age have no paper trail whatsoever?”

  The King of Pain shrugs. “Clean living?”

  “I’m attempting to save you from the death chamber, you know — and unless the DA royally botches the case, you’re looking at a capital sentence. The best you can hope for is life without parole, but I won’t be able to get you that much if you don’t help me out a little.”

  “And how might I do that?”

  Lacking a chair in which to sit, Coleco repositions himself near the King of Pain’s head — a less intimidating, friendlier position. Always work to strengthen the client-attorney bond and forge a sense of trust, even when the client is being difficult.

  And is an unrepentant serial killer.

  “Help me understand you. I know what you’ve done; I need to know why. The facts of the case are not on your side. That means the only way I can keep you
out of the death chamber is to get the jury to empathize with you. Juries are told to consider the evidence and leave their feelings out it, but make no mistake; they don’t turn off their emotions. They can’t. If you can give me something, anything that might earn you a shred of sympathy —”

  “You say you know what I’ve done? Oh, no,” the King of Pain says, shaking his head. “You might know the broad strokes, but as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. I do not simply kill super-heroes, Mr. Coleco; I tear them apart from the inside. I reach into their souls and free every dark thought and black impulse they keep caged up, then stand back and let them disintegrate. You want to know why I do it?”

  The King of Pain beckons with a finger, enticing Mr. Coleco to draw closer. Against his better judgment, he does, bending close enough to hear the King of Pain’s whispered confession:

  “No jury will sympathize with me, Mr. Coleco. I’m not driven by some horrible tragedy in my past. I’m not some wounded animal who just needs to be loved and understood. I kill because I like it, and I take my time because I love to watch them suffer.”

  Coleco shudders, as if from a sudden chill.

  “Having said that, I’ll of course understand if you no longer wish to represent me.”

  “I have a job to do,” Coleco says, though he no longer feels any sincere desire to help the man grinning up at him.

  “Off you go, then. Call if you’d like any more information. I’ll be here.”

  “Yeah,” Coleco says, turning to leave. “You’ll be here for a long time.”

  No, the King of Pain muses. Not that long.

  We don’t leave the compound until dark — much, much later than we anticipated staying, but we were all having too much fun. We needed it. We deserved it. Sara definitely deserved it, and I can tell by the way she practically floats back to Natalie’s car, her face bright and happy, that it did her a world of good.

  Here’s hoping it lasts.

  The ride home is quieter, at least for us girls in the back seat. Natalie and Matt maintain a steady stream of chatter throughout the trip, debating with increasing passion who would win a battle royale between Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, and Tony Jaa. For the record, Bruce Lee wins thanks to his blinding speed, adaptability, and mastery of something called a one-inch punch, which Natalie vows she will learn one day if it kills her.