Normalized (The Complete Quartet)

by David Bussell

  It wasn’t until the pain subsided that I took a proper look at my surroundings. I’d made it into Love’s home proper this time – not just her study but the inner sanctum. The place really was something. From the look of the place you’d think she’d given an interior decorator a design brief titled ‘spinster’s paradise.’ Every creature comfort you could think of was present and correct: slankets, foot massagers (plural) and so many cat pictures on the walls you’d think they were load-bearing.

  Doctor Love urged me to stay and rest but I told her I needed to head. In and out like a humming bird, that was the plan. Truth told I could have used a breather, but being around the woman who tore a gully in my heart and took a sh*t inside had me feeling a little sour.

  “Thank you for your assistance, citizen, but Mister Normal has work to—”

  “You can ditch the act, Captain.”

  Whoa there.

  “How did you know?”

  “Remember the first time we met how I slapped you?”

  “Punched actually.”

  “Well, you flinched,” she said. “A man who can hammer nails with his eyeballs doesn’t shy away when a ninety-five pound woman raises a hand to him.”

  Point taken.

  “I knew you weren’t yourself,” she went on, “but I also knew you were too proud to quit the hero game. When a mystery man showed up battling killer robots I knew it had to be you."

  I sat back down. “But if you knew I was Mister Normal then how come everyone doesn’t know?”

  “Because I happen to take Doctor-patient confidentiality seriously, that’s why.”

  Like hell she did! Enough of the pantomime, it was time for a truth crash on bullsh*t highway.

  “Don’t act innocent with me, lady, I wasn’t born yesterday” (although I am surprisingly young looking for my age).

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re going to make me come right out and say it? Fine. You’re a fink.”

  “I’m a what?”

  “You blabbed personal information about me to my brother so he could steal my job.”

  “You’re out of your mind!”

  “I was out of my mind when the two of you visited me in hospital to gloat about it, now I’m just pissed.”

  “I wasn’t there to gloat, you idiot, I was there because I care about you!”

  That sounded annoyingly like the truth, especially the “idiot” part. Was she for real though? Could the whole Birdy/Love conspiracy have been a figment of my imagination? Had I put two and two together and come up with a cheeseburger?

  “No,” I said firmly, “If it weren’t for you, how else would Birdy have known I’d lost my superpowers?”

  “Because he figured it out, dummy. Look at it from his perspective – first you run away from D’eath, then a janitor hands you your ass at a poker game – you even passed up an opportunity to humiliate him with that man hammock of yours.”

  She had a point. Several points really. It’s a wonder Birdy hadn’t put the pieces together sooner when I thought about it – I might as well have been wearing a sandwich board with a big fat zero on it.[102]

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I misjudged you. What do you expect though, you know everything about me and I don’t know a thing about you.”

  “That’s the way the doctor-patient relationship works.”

  “So I’m still your patient?”

  “Of course.”

  “Great,” I said, “now I’ll never know anything about you.”

  She laughed. “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me anything. Just let me in a little.”

  “You want in? Fine. Touch me.”

  I wasn’t expecting that, especially with her being my brother’s squeeze and all. I didn’t need telling twice though. I reached out a paw—

  —only to find myself blocked by some invisible force. I pressed my palm to its surface. Love was surrounded by a bubble – smooth and tough – a barrier of her own making.

  “You have superpowers?”

  Love explained her secret by sharing the lowlights of her childhood. How her parents had been horrified by her gifts and forbidden her from using them. How they’d insisted she pursue academics and stay as far as possible from the long underwear brigade.

  No wonder Love was the way she was. I’ve heard of this before – classic denial – superhumans pretending to be something they’re not and ending up saddled with all kinds of emotional problems. You only had to look around Love’s apartment to see the damage internalizing her powers had done. The place was a shrine to isolation – the home of someone who didn’t socialize unless they absolutely had to. Maybe Love wasn’t conjuring up force fields, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t living in a bubble. Doctor heal thyself![103]

  Love lowered her barrier and let me in to put an arm around her shoulder. We stayed like that for a while.

  May 12th

  I’d faced some challenges so far, but the time had come to really test my mettle. To saddle up and ride the lightning. To strap on my fighting gear and step inside the Thunderdome.

  Today was Mother’s Day, and I hadn’t even bought a present.

  To say Mom was surprised to see me would be an understatement. On first sight she took me for a burglar and almost nailed me in the skull with a steam iron, that’s how surprised she was. Fair play to her. In all the excitement I’d forgotten to officially let her know I was still alive after I fled The Bunker – little wonder she wasn’t feeling too convivial when I bust into her home disguised as a cut-rate accountant.

  “Mom, stop, it’s me!”

  I expected her to unleash hell, but instead she grabbed me around the waist and lifted me off the ground like she was locked in a fight with a grizzly bear.

  “What is new suit, boy? Does it come with company car? Your cousin Gary got Porsche when they made him boss of real estate company.”[104]

  Mom didn’t wait for answers, instead she started jabbing numbers on her phone.

  “I must tell your brother you are here...”

  I stubbed a finger on the switch, cutting off the call.

  “I can’t have you blowing my cover, Mom, even to Birdy. Promise me you won’t tell him I was here.”

  “Okay, okay, I promise,” she said, in a way that seemed to say, ‘I am a massive liar and this promise counts for nothing.’

  Mom turned the conversation on a dime. “How is love life?”

  It was so out of the blue that I answered without thinking. “I might have met a girl.”

  I hadn’t meant to say anything but Mom’s like Columbo when it comes to this stuff. She was so excited she just about spritzed her undies.

  “You met a girl? First your brother and now you!” she gasped.

  You got that right, lady, in more ways than you know.

  She pinched my cheek and looked me up and down. “Your father would be so proud,” she said.

  Well that was that. Nothing I could do, I just started bawling. My eyes were the twin barrels of a double shotgun full of tears.

  Mom dabbed a napkin on my face. “There, there, do not cry, son.”

  “I’m not crying,” I sniffed, “it’s just my eyes detoxing.”

  She laughed and called me an idiot twice.

  May 13th

  Since that last run-in with Acro-Bat my suit was coming apart at the seams. I’d need to find something more rugged if I was going to stay in the crime-fighting game, because the togs I had on were starting to reveal parts of me that ought not to be on show. Having a hard-on for evil is one thing, but make that hard-on literal and people will soon question your motives.

  I went to the one person I knew I could count on to upgrade my threads, Baptiste, my old tailor. Baptiste was a man of impeccable discretion, plus he wasn’t the type to go to pieces over some media darling, so I wouldn’t have my time wasted by another Mister Normal groupie fawning all over me. In all my years as Captain Might he never once failed to conduct
himself with anything but perfect poise.

  “Mon Dieu!” he screamed the moment I set foot in his store. “Monsieur Normal! What an honneur! Oh ‘ow I have waited for this day!”

  Somehow he ended up bowing, curtsying, shaking my hand and doffing an imaginary cap all at once. It was an explosion of manners, and made him look like he was having some sort of conniption fit.

  “Easy, buddy, it’s just me, Captain Might.”

  Once Baptiste gotten over the shock of discovering who I was he reached under the counter and hurriedly unzipped a portfolio.

  “See what I have prepared for you, Monsieur.”

  He slapped a great pile of sketches on his drafting desk. He’d drawn them up in anticipation of my arrival, and I could see right way that the man had really gone to town. The designs were some of the most striking I’d ever seen – astonishingly elaborate concepts resplendent with great billowing cloaks, insane colors and codpieces that would make your eyes water. It’s funny, I used to enjoy even the boldest of Baptiste’s costumes, but the trials of late have recalibrated my tastes. This new batch of designs seemed so tacky I felt like you could have rubbed them on the Queen of England and she’d turn into a commoner.

  “I need to look nondescript, Baptiste, not like Liberace’s gayer brother.”

  That just about broke his heart. I backpedalled and explained that Mister Normal didn’t dress like a superhero because he wasn’t one, but I could hear from his voice that he wasn’t happy. And from the crying.

  “I’m just not that guy anymore,” I told him. “I put my pants on one leg at a time now. Literally, since I can’t float anymore.”

  “But Monsieur Norm—”

  “—no, Baptiste. No cloaks, no underwear on the outside. I need something simple, sturdy and, most of all, practical. Let’s keep the codpiece though, no harm in that.”

  Baptiste jutted out his bottom lip like a Gallic peasant girl struggling with a kite in a subtitled movie.

  “Perhaps a suit of flying armor then for mon ami? Or a pair of, ‘ow you say, retractable claws?”

  “No and no,” I replied. I mean, Jesus, where does it end with all the accessorizing? A tricked out sunroof and some spinning rims?

  “I’m sorry, Baptiste, but it’s back to the drawing board.”

  Baptiste nodded solemnly. He closed up the store, cancelled his appointments and slaved the rest of the day to bring my new outfit to life. We worked together to come up with a design that fit my new bare bones ethos. It turned out to be a tall order – simplicity, it transpires, is a pretty complicated business. We got there in the end though, even if I did cave in and give Baptiste the green light to make the outfit a little swag. I felt obliged seeing as he was making the threads pro bono. Bless that man and his tiny French hands.

  What we ended up with was perfect – I really couldn’t be happier with the way it came together. I stand here now in a snugly-fitted gray one-piece that comes relatively free of pizzazz. No mask, no insignia, just prescription goggles and a tasteful ‘MN’ monogrammed on the chest so villains know who’s tanning their hide. No one in their right mind would call it a costume. A uniform maybe, like something a soldier might wear, but definitely not a costume.

  May 14th

  “Nice costume,” said Doctor Love the second she laid eyes on me.

  I’d invited her to dinner as a thank you for patching me up the other night. It took some persuading on my part, what with her being the indoors sort, but I told her I knew an intimate spot that was far from the hubbub and prying eyes.

  I’d chosen my favorite restaurant for the occasion, an exclusive Japanese/Mexican fusion place in the East Village. Sadly, we arrived to find that the establishment had changed hands since I last paid a visit. Much as it pains me to say it, Jap’s Ay Carumba – once a byword for fine cuisine and the best sushi tacos you ever tasted – had been transformed into a ‘Normal Burger,’ a slop-shop diner dedicated to yours truly.

  The place was so lacking in class I expected to see toilet rolls on the tables instead of napkins, and the food looked so bad I was surprised folks weren’t sending it back to the kitchen with ‘f*ck you, Chef’ written on it in ketchup.[105] Still, the staff made such a fuss when they saw me loitering outside that I felt bad about bailing. Before I knew it they’d hurried Love and me to the best table in the house; a window booth next to a mural of Mister Normal tagging some burger-thieving mascot in the solar plexus. All around us heads turned. There were so many gasps I thought my ears would pop from all the air getting sucked out of the room.

  I explained the mix-up to Love and she laughed it off as our waitress took a knee by our table and excitedly read out the specials (or “Not-Specials” as she called them). Looking over our options we asked about the ‘Normal Burger’ and our server explained that it was a two-pound beef patty with double cheese and all the trimmings. I get that Mister Normal is where it’s at right now, but “normal” was a funny of labeling a cow disc the size of a tractor tire. The waitress registered our hesitation and said if we’d prefer less food we had the option to “Super” our meals. Apparently that meant taking away half our French fries and pouring the best part of our shakes down the drain. For a fast-food menu there were some exhausting concepts at play. In the end, we cried uncle and plumbed for two coffees and a couple of Hero Sandwiches.

  “Are you sure about that?” the waitress asked.

  “Can we just get our meals, please?”

  Two minutes later we were brought a pair of plain hoagies measuring six inches combined, both of which were empty.

  “Enjoy your Hero Sandwiches,” the waitress said, and left us to it.

  Love let out a long exhale. I could tell something was up. That or she was cooling her coffee.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Don’t you ever wonder if you might be backsliding? Playing the hero again, I mean?”

  “I’m not playing the hero. Not the superhero anyway.”

  “You’re sure dressed like one.”

  “It’s more like a soldier’s uniform really, definitely not a—”

  “—whatever. I just think you should ask yourself who it is you’re doing this for. Is it for the people or for the glory?”

  Being in a theme restaurant with my name on the menu was doing very little to sell the idea that I’d changed, but the army of paparazzi gathering outside to snap us through the window was really laying waste to it.[106]

  Maybe Love was onto something – maybe I was getting taken in by all the attention. I have been a bit of a show pony lately, I mean, I did fix my hair just to write this entry. Still, her holier than thou attitude was rubbing me wrong. I didn’t ask her to dinner to get psychoanalyzed.

  “Your problem is that you just don’t like heroes,” I told her.

  “Don’t like heroes?”

  She pulled something from her pocket. It was a pin – a membership badge for The Might Mites, my defunct fan club.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “It’s mine,” she said. “Take a look.”

  Love flipped it over and I saw her name on the back. Next to it was a membership number.

  Number Two.

  Making her the second kid in the whole of the country to have signed up to the club.

  “Holy guacamole!” I said.

  “Coming right up,” said our waitress, mistaking my exclamation for a food order.

  Doctor Love pocketed her badge. “I’ve been a fan of yours forever,” she said. “You won’t remember, but when we were kids you came to my school to give a talk; this big ‘Say No to Drugs’ speech.”

  “I remember that! They made me do it as community service after I got high and used my eye beams to carve a dick pic on St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”

  “Well, what you won’t remember is that I was so excited about you being in my vicinity that I brought an empty bottle to class.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to capture some of your breath in
it, that’s why.”

  “Oh wow...”

  “What do you want, I was thirteen years old!”

  “Okay, I think it’s fair to say you don’t have a problem with heroes.”

  She smiled. “Says right here on the badge – number two fan.”