“So you found me, Zephyr,” the disgusting little clown sneers. “Big deal. The boss said I was to approach you once you showed signs of unease.”
I look the guy up and down, his hat in one of my big hands. Tattered lids lower over bulbous rat eyes and his face is little more than a skull with a theatre of skin attached, the neck a ruined mess, the skin beneath a wool vest and the trenchie awash with disease. There’s something about the way he fails to fill the workman’s pants and heavy boots that tells me there’s little more than a skeleton beneath his show of bravado.
“They call me Korpse,” the tough guy says. “With a K, in case you ain’t hearin’ it in my voice.”
“Yeah well, I don’t see any speech bubbles coming out that excuse of yours for a mouth,” I mutter by way of reply and finish off eyeing him up and down just late enough for him to glean I’m no big fan.
“Mentor in there?” I ask.
The skull-faced turd gives an unhappy sniff, then suddenly his face moves, jaw working and neck twisting like a man on the verge of a killer sneeze. Just as quickly he’s still. Dead eyes lift to glower at me. There’s no pretense otherwise that the main man just took over the reins.
“Good morning, Zephyr.”
“You’re a long way from Madison Avenue, toots,” I say.
“You have forced upon me the indignity of a house call, old friend.”
“Old friend?” I give him a stare for all of three seconds. “Let’s refresh.”
“No need, Zephyr,” he replies in that English headmaster way he has. “I remain well acquainted with your peculiar determination to maintain the enmity that has characterized so much of our interactions in the past.”
“This coming from the man who’s stalking me to my hideout.”
“I had the seed of your mental signal,” he replies slowly, blindly stepping his way through the half-perceived but mangled etiquette. “Forgive me if I was too forthcoming.”
“Seems like it’s your pal Korpse who deserves the apology,” I say. “What do they do in there while you’re riding ‘em round like ponies?”
“They sleep, Zephyr. My servants sleep like I no longer can thanks to the mutual enemy I am keeping at bay for all our sakes.”
“Oh yeah,” I say and shrug. “Think-Tank.”
“Indeed.”
City crowds continue unabated past the end of the alley. I fold my arms and consider flash-frying Mentor and his sidekick then and there. Unwisely, for once, I make the merciful decision.
“So all this is the reason why you’ve had this guy outside my window for the past week, stirring shit up in my dreams, hoping, what, that the penny would drop and suddenly I’d come running over to your Fantasy Island?”
I glare at the desiccated figured for a second and add, “Did it ever occur to you maybe I was ignoring you? Not interested?”
“You should be –”
“Keep out of my head, motherfucker.”
“At this distance, your dreams are all I can influence, Zephyr,” the mutant manages with a fey smile, something disturbingly gentleman-like about all this with the human corpse bobbing his hairless head and drool leaking from between gapped teeth. I push the fedora back into his hands.
“I can’t even remember half of it,” I say as much to myself as him. “It’s a curiously fucking backward way of communicatin’ for someone with such supposedly vast powers as yourself, Mentor. Next time, send me a fucking email, OK?”
“I . . . didn’t know you were on the Net.”
“Yeah. Shit, I’ve got a publicist now.”
“Really.”
“Yeah it’s really taking off,” I say without as much enthusiasm as I should.
And then it’s just me and the living dead guy eyeing each other in an alley that already smelled like cat pee before Korpse-boy showed up and started funking the place out with his cryptic stench.
Korpse looks at me, eyes widening in the way only a guy with tattered lampshades for eyelids can manage, and he gives a little start and snatches the hat in his hands up onto his head.
“What?” he demands.
“Mentor,” I say. “Where is he?”
“He’s gone,” the ugly mutant sniffs. “Gone. Completely.”
“You’re, uh, sure about that?”
“I can tell when I have a dick up my ass, pal.”
Korpse looks around the alley like it’s just dawned on him that he’s in the new Big Apple and there’s a thousand better places he could go. He nods to me and moves off.
“What are you gonna do?” I call after him.
“Anything,” he yells over his shoulder.
“Well, you better behave yourself, pal,” I say lamely. “You’re in my city now. I’ll be watching.”
The mutie doesn’t even have the decency to glance back.
Zephyr 11.2 (Flashback) “Payday”
MY PUBLICIST CALLS at 10am sharp. This is one of delectable Miss O’Hagan’s mid-level handlers called Janice. Janice is kind of bossy. And flat-chested. It’s fair to say we haven’t got off to a good start and now she’s telling me I’m in danger of running late.
It is kinda hard to hear her over the sirens of the crime scene and I pull an aggrieved face at the guys loitering at the open doors of the cruisers and they catch themselves on and it’s only a few seconds before I can make do just with a finger in my ear. The crowds lining the hasty cordon keep calling out as I wander back and forth trying to find a sweet spot in the phone reception and I’m distracted as hell by what I take to be a lady-boy or something in high heels and seriously unshaven legs who keeps trying to flash me his/her/its titties, as concealed by a late 90s commemorative Zephyr & the Jersey Ferry t-shirt.
“Why aren’t you at the studio?” Janice growls down the line.
I glance around at the armored van jutting from the front of a Starbucks, the scorched rear doors peeled open comically like a green platemail banana. Two of the perps are still sitting together in the back of a cruiser, while the one with the homemade powered armor is in the ambulance, his face the color of puke, a far too good-looking paramedic shooting him expressions of concern.
“I was just returning some videos,” I say.
“Honestly, I don’t know what’s the matter with you people,” Janice says in her waspish, never-been-laid voice.
“Um, we pay your wages?”
“You couldn’t find your way to the bathroom without an assistant, let alone pull down enough to pay my wages, mister hotshot hero,” Janice bleats.
Her tone is so acid I actually laugh, marveling at the balls of some people. My levity only sets her off again.
“Miss O’Hagan warned me I’d have to watch you –”
“Trust me, Janice, you’ve got nothing I want.”
“This is the biggest gig of your life and if you’re not across town and in that chair getting your face done in ten minutes, you can kiss your big payday goodbye.”
There is an element in truth in what she says, so I decide not to offer a few choice alternatives that I might consider my biggest gig yet. I snap closed the latest edition Enercom phone with disdain and give some of the watching cops a ho-hum smile that at least makes them laugh, then I wave my goodbyes and launch into the air. It isn’t hard to be across town in ten – I make it in five – but it’s another ten minutes before I clear security, get checked in and navigate through a bunch of thick-as-bricks PR people clustered around the cappuccino machine in the Questor Studios lobby.
A skinny bald guy with a clipboard strides up to me with an air of authority and grins.
“Hey there, Zephyr. Thrilled you could make it. I’m Steve Soderbergh. I’m directing this extravaganza.”
I adopt a bemused face, the irony not lost on me that we’re here to shoot a hamburger commercial and there’s a sodomy joke somewhere in this guy’s name. However, for a change I am the soul of discretion and I shake his hand without giving him the joy buzzer and he practically drags me through the lobby and down a
concrete ramp into a large sound stage. The ceiling has got to be a hundred yards high and there’s half a ruined city in the background fashioned out of plaster and foam. Crew members loaf about, some picking from a luncheon cart, and my stomach gurgles as the director leads me past a few half-familiar faces, rattling off names in their order of importance.
“And of course, last but not least, this is Ralph Esquigiet.”
“Escar-what?” I frown.
The little man practically has artiste stamped on his forehead. Curly black locks surround a pouting, designer stubbled face. Although he’s dressed like a chump, I know the ensemble probably adds up to more than my pre-tax income last year. And yet he’s not wearing much more than a jacket, faded red t-shirt, corduroy pants and stained trainers.
“Ralph Esquigiet,” he says in a brisk rush of heavily accented syllables.
“Oh OK, my apologies.”
I look to Mr Soderbergh for a clue and he ahems politely and says, “Ralph is from the Wimpy people. He’s their, uh, hamburger artist.”
“OK.”
I smile, waiting for the joke, but clearly they are serious because there is only so much discomfort one man can channel. I glance again at the dishabille Frenchman and frown.
“And that’s a . . . what, exactly?”
“I make the hamburger come to life,” he replies in excellent though muddy English.
“Is that in the . . . script?”
“Please tell me someone couriered you the script?” Soderbergh asks and I nod, though this isn’t the same as telling him I read it.
“Forget the script,” the snail guy says, reading my thoughts precisely. “In this story, like in all stories, there is only one character. Everything else is scenery.”
I smile, but he adds, “Le hamburger!.”
“Shit,” I remark. “This guy’s for real, isn’t he?”
The director coughs into his fist. “Yeah, I’m afraid he is.” He coughs some more and smiles politely to the Frenchman and again takes me by the arm and says, “There’s just a few more things we have to run through.”
*
WE PASS JANICE, standing looking at her blackberry and scowling like I already disappointed her more than I’ll ever know. Then we are through into the middle of the set and the cameras are behind us and I can sense the technicians warming up, lights switching on and test runs getting underway on the big crane-heavy cameras that rotate above us like a hydra.
“This is Natalie,” the director says, introducing me to a lovely Latina honey in cut-off denims and a distracting top. “Miss Martinez is the one who will deliver you the hamburger in your moment of victory.”
“I bet you never expected to say those words in the same sentence.”
“And of course you’ve met Negator before.”
The guy in the Negator costume is a fair match, though the real villain never had a goatee. Otherwise the outfit is the same, some of the harlequin in the alternating black and white color scheme, the narrow, forked cloak, the black face mask flaring into twin points like horns above the crown of his skullcap. He looks at me sheepishly and I give my best cover boy grin and promise not to hurt him too much, doing my best to recall what the hell is actually meant to happen in this thirty-second promo. Janice is right in one thing, which is that the Wimpy endorsement promises to be the single biggest payday in my life behind the mask and the very reason I approached the O’Hagan agency in the first place.
I almost don’t quite catch what Soderbergh is saying, except his frightened tone makes me blink my way back to the present, peering at him, at his mouth, like I have suddenly been struck by some weird, Babel-like affliction.
“That’s, uh, not an actor,” he says again. “That’s your old, well, you know, your old pal and, uh, nemesis . . . Negator.”
I whirl about.
“Negator?”
“Uh yeah, hi Zephyr.”
“That’s really you?”
“Y-yeah.”
He looks down. The swagger is gone, but he retains the same weirdly black eyes, however strangely the chin fuzz rests on his face.
“What the . . . Aren’t you in the slammer?”
“Three years are up,” Negator says dimly. “I’ve been out four months.”
“Didn’t you . . . wait, I . . . how come. . . ?”
I’m struggling.
“Please, Zephyr, this is awkward as it is,” the villain says. “I really need this.”
“You need this . . . hamburger ad?”
“Hey, maybe it’s nothing to you, big-shot, but I gotta grasp for everything I can,” Negator says and swings around, still impressively tall and with his height inflated by the fins on his black mask. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?”
“I seem to remember picking a bus full of kids from the Miskatonic,” I reply. “Lucky no one died.”
“That’s right,” he snaps. “No one died. And I did my time. Or so they tell me. Like I’d know, right? It’s . . . it’s fucking lights out once you’re in White Nine, pal. They had to . . . they had to start stimulating my frigging legs with electrodes three months before they released me because the goddamn muscles atrophied.”
“Jesus,” I say softly. “I can’t believe you’re whining about this – just like the last time I whipped your ass.”
“Gentlemen, please,” the director says and quite bravely comes between us.
Intentionally or not, Negator’s white-gloved fist is hissing with sickly-looking corrosive black energy.
“Today, try and bury your differences, OK? Today we’re all just acting. It’s just a hamburger commercial, like Zephyr said.”
“Tell that to the Frenchman,” I remark.
“I will be trying to.”
Soderbergh takes a stern look at both of us until we’ve settled and then he walks off across the set.
I ignore the delicious Latina and turn slowly back to Negator, but find him already glaring at me.
Zephyr 11.3 (Flashback) “The Formulaic Breeze”
“ARE YOU GOING to be able to pull this off, fuck-face, or are you after a trip back onto the ice?” I ask.
Negator scowls and adjusts his cape and the energy leaking from his gloves dissipates.
“I spent a decade trying to steal a better life and now I’ve got nothing to show for it but this ridiculous fucking costume, Zephyr,” the villain says in a low voice. “The difference between me and you is I am standing here dressed like a prize fucking turkey because I have a goal in sight. You’re still here because it’s the only way you can get your rocks off.”
I laugh at that and ignore him.
“They’re paying you for this gig?”
“Straight up. Ten grand,” he says. “My agent thinks he can get me a touring show. I just need to remind the public what a badass I was.”
“Without landing back in prison.”
“Relax, Zephyr,” he sneers. “You’re the one who taught me crime doesn’t pay, correct? Now we’re both in showbiz.”
“Showbiz? I’m not in showbiz.”
“Sure,” he says quite earnestly, deathly presence taking to the background in his efforts to justify his own decision. “I heard Ultimatum and Carnage are doing a house show in Vegas now. Hell, Captain Jackass and his crew are getting their own show on MTV.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“And you don’t even have a comic,” Negator says disdainfully. “And that action figure – I mean, what the fuck was that?”
“Screw you, Negator,” I reply. “We’ve got a whole range of new PVC figurines coming. I’m relaunching the Sentinels, and we’re really gonna do things. Heroic things. And it ain’t just show business.”
The key grip sticks his head into the lull and asks way too brightly, “You ladies about ready?”
I give a grunt and catch Negator’s gaze. The subtlety is lost on him, unfortunately, as I scowl and say, “It’s showtime,” in my worst Austrian accent.
And indeed it is.<
br />
As the mobile pieces of the set swing into place I grab a copy of the tech script from a passing flunky and the girl with the impressive norks disappears off the stage as more techies attach the wires to the harness I didn’t know Negator was already wearing. They then guide him up one of the mobile mounds of wreckage just wheeled in. Back-lighting creates an apocalyptic atmosphere, and someone tests the fake thunder and even I feel a tiny thrill at the ersatz realism. I glance down and refresh my memory with the inanity of it all, the fight in the devastated city, bringing my foe down, then the girl running forward with the nonsensically attached hamburger. The punchline has me all but pushing the hottie aside and snatching the hamburger, growling, “That’s what I really want” into the camera. It’s the new Wimpy motto, though I can’t say I agree much with the focus groups.
“Zephyr?”
I snap my head around and find Janice with a phone to her ear, motioning for me to junk the script. I toss it aside and some stage hand disappears it. If only life were so accommodating.
“OK Zephyr, Negator,” an amplified voice comes from halfway across the set.
I turn around slowly, but I can’t find the director anyway. It doesn’t stop him talking.
“We really appreciate you guys being here and respect your professionalism and if we can do this in the minimum time possible then we’ll all be happy and you can go on your way to do the undoubtedly more important things you have to do . . . uh, well that’s you, anyway, Zephyr. Negator, again, I appreciate you making yourself available. . . .”
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