Super (Book 2): Super Duper

by Jones, Princess

  Mike held my brand new, dripping wet hand in his. He turned it over to examine it and then turned it over again to examine the other side. “Audrey?”

  I licked my lips and met is almond brown eyes. “Yeah?” “You gotta call a plumber.”

  “I think you’re right. I’ll let you know when he gets here.” And with that, I grabbed my tools and made the fastest exit in the history of home improvement disasters.

  Chapter 5

  Tap. Tap. CRASH!!!

  For the second time in two sleeps, I was awakened to the loud sound of someone trying to get my attention. This time, it was at my bedroom window. I rolled over to see glass surrounding a large rock on my bedroom floor. It matched the big hole in my bedroom window perfectly.

  I struggled out the bed and rushed to the window. Down on the ground, Outside Bob waved up to me from the sidewalk. “Good morning, Audrey!” he called up.

  “What the fuck, Bob?! You broke my window?!” It was both a statement and a question.

  “Yeah,” he shrugged. “This building has thin windows. In my experience, most windows can take a few rocks without breaking all over the place. You should talk to the owner about that. It’s probably a building code violation. “

  “Bob, why would you be throwing rocks at my window? That’s insane.”

  Bob shrugged again. “Hey, I’m not the one who is late for her appointment.”

  I looked at the time on the alarm clock on my nightstand: 8:07. “FUCCCKKK!!!! I’m late!” I yelled. I didn’t even think to ask him how he knew about my appointment.

  “See? I told ya!” Bob yelled back.

  But I wasn’t listening to him. I ran across my bedroom and grabbed some clothes out of my closet. The day before I’d come back from apartment 3A, made another call to the plumber about the wonky disposal, and ordered Chinese food. Then I’d spent the rest of the evening watching reality TV and trying not to freak out about this appointment. I’d even set my alarm to wake me up a little early so I could get to Miss Fine’s office early. You know, start things out on the right foot and all of that.

  But as I stuffed myself into a pair of nice jeans and a dressy top and pulled my hair into a somewhat neat poof, I realized that wasn’t going to happen. “Wish me luck, Crash,” I yelled at the fish swimming in unperturbed circles. I grabbed my bag, my phone, and my keys, and opened my front door, where I promptly stopped in my tracks at the sight before me.

  Standing in my doorway, with her hand raised as if to knock on the door, was a little girl with two long black plaited pigtails in a pink shift dress. “My mom said for me to use your bathroom.”

  I exhaled as I realized who this was. “Little Cindy Pham, right?” She nodded. “I told your mom that you guys could use the extra toilet in the basement. It’s that door right next to the washers and dryers.”

  She shook her head. “My brother is in there.”

  “Then wait for him to get done.”

  She shook her head again. “My other brother is gonna use it after that. And then— “

  “Your other brother needs to use it,” I finished for her. I took note of the way she wiggled as she stood in the doorway in the unmistakable pee dance that every kid has ever done more than a few times in her life. I had to go, though. “Listen, you can use my bathroom but I have to go. I’m late for a very important appointment.” Cindy hopped up and down and nodded her head. “Just make sure you lock my door before you go. Just turn the lock on the knob and close it when you leave.”

  “Ok,” she said as she pushed past me and made a beeline for my bathroom. She slammed the door and the lock clicked. “Audrey?”

  “What?”

  “You’re almost out of toilet paper.”

  I just shook my head, shut my door, and ran out of the building.

  * * * * *

  If you believe the movies and TV shows, Supers are all loners. They spend their entire lives working alone—unless it’s time for a multi-brand movie where they all work together for a short time and a big box office payoff. But in real life, the Super Council manages all of us. We get our training, licenses, and our assignments from the Council. It’s a sprawling organization with numerous departments, committees, and boards working every day from a big building in midtown Manhattan.

  Even though I rushed, it was still 9am before I made it to midtown. I was sweating like a hog even in the cool October morning air. The whole ride there I was nervously going over all the scenarios possible for the meeting. None of them seemed like something I would want to participate in.

  By the time I got off the train I realized that I should have called the number on the card Miss Fine had left me to tell her I was still coming. But what if she told me not to bother coming because she’d already decided on my case? No, I thought. I’d rather just go up there and explain. I’m always better at explaining in person.

  I’d only been to the Super Council building once before. Super licenses were given out in mass oath swearing ceremonies—sort of like citizenship hearings. Other than that, I hadn’t had a reason to visit the building again. . . until now, that is.

  It looked like any other of the big office buildings that lined 6th Ave from the outside. Inside, the lobby was bare except for one desk with a security guard sitting behind it. As I approached the desk, he eyed me with interest. “Can I help you?” he said, his voice indicating that he had no desire to the help me at all.

  “I have an appointment with an auditor. Her name is Miss Fine.”

  “Name?” His tone hadn’t gotten any warmer. “Audrey Hart.”

  He checked his computer. “You’re late.”

  “I know. I overslept because— “

  “4th floor.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The auditors are on the fourth floor.”

  “Oh OK.” I walked over to the elevator and pressed

  the up button. On the fourth floor, directly across from the elevator doors was a receptionist at her desk. I walked over and gave her the same information I gave the guard downstairs. She instructed me to wait in the reception area and picked up her desk phone when I did. She was talking low and her voice didn’t carry across the room. When she hung up the phone, the receptionist raised her voice significantly and said “Auditor Fine will be right out.”

  I nodded and gave her what I hoped was a confident smile. Inside, I thought Those are the least comforting words in the world.

  I considered leafing through one of the magazines on the coffee table in the area but I was too nervous to scan through seven ways to plump my butt right now. My butt and its degree of plumpness were the last things on my mind at the moment.

  Miss Fine came around the corner, raised two fingers, and used them to indicate I follow her. She didn’t wait to see whether I did—just turned and made her way back down the hallway, leaving me to hustle behind her to keep up. She stopped in front of one of the doors that lined the hallway, opened the door, and indicated for me to go in

  Once inside, she sat behind her desk and began shuffling paperwork on her desk. I felt stupid standing there while she sat so I sat down on one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk. She still didn’t speak to me. She was much more interested in ordering and reordering her papers.

  I waited a few more moments for her to start. And then I just figured that maybe she was waiting for me to start. “Listen, I’m sorry— “I started to explain.

  “You’re late.”

  “I— “

  She raised her hand. “Don’t interrupt,” she said.

  “You’re late. But I knew you’d be late. According to your file, being on time is not something you think is important.” She pointed to the paperwork she had been shifting on her desk.

  We sat there for a moment in silence in an apparent staring contest. Finally, I realized she was waiting for me to say something. “Um, well, I don’t think I don’t think that it’s important exactly.” I sounded stupid. Her raised eyebrow told me she disagreed with me.


  Miss Fine shuffled more paperwork on her desk until she found what she was looking for. “You’re always late. Your district numbers are abysmal. Your work is unprofessional. You are not an active part of your community. You’ve been late by varying lengths on your dues since the day you received your license.” She put the paper down and slid her glasses down her nose. “You’re a failure, Audrey.”

  I felt my mouth drop open involuntarily. It’s one thing to know you’re not exactly the world’s best Super. It’s another thing to hear someone call you a failure. It’s like when your jeans don’t fit and you think Hey, Taco Tuesdays are becoming a problem, only to have someone else say “No, you’re fat.” It might be true. But hearing your worst fears coming from someone else’s mouth is no a small thing.

  Miss Fine didn’t stop there, either. “I’m going to be honest with you, Audrey. I don’t think you should be a Super. I don’t understand how you even got your license in the first place. I don’t know whose fault it is that you’ve been allowed to continue on the way you have. Maybe you have friends in high places. Maybe your incredible incompetence has just been overlooked.”

  She laced her fingers together in a pyramid, placed her elbows on the desk, and lean forward. For the first time since in I’d walked into the door, she smiled at me. It was utterly terrifying.

  “It stops here. This audit is going to be quick. It’s going to be by the book. When it’s over, we’ll have all the evidence we need to revoke your license.”

  “S-s-so you’re saying that it doesn’t matter what I do,” I sputtered. “You’re going to fail me.”

  “I’m saying that it doesn’t matter what you do, you’re

  going to fail yourself. But the rules are the rules. I have to follow procedure or I’m no better than you are. I’m going to test you on the core skills it takes to be a Super. We’ll start with the guidelines. Brush up on them in your handbook and

  we’ll meet here tomorrow to give you a test.”

  I didn’t want to say it but I had to. I didn’t have a

  chance unless I admitted it right now. “I don’t have my Super

  handbook.”

  “Of course you don’t.” She pulled out a handbook

  and a form from one of her desk drawers and tossed it across

  her desk. Then she turned to her computer and began typing

  something. “Read over the handbook and the test instructions.

  You’ll take your test tomorrow from today. 8AM. Don’t be

  late.”

  I shoved my new materials into my bag and stood to

  go. “Got it”

  “If you’re one minute late, Audrey—just one minute—

  I’ll fail you. And we can end this whole thing and figure out

  how much jail time you’ll do.

  * * * * *

  “Could you put a little extra meat on that, please?” I left Miss Fine’s office and immediately headed to the Chipotle four blocks down. I was feeling all sorts of things and for me the best way to quell that has always been something to eat.

  The guy making my burrito looked up at me with amusement. “You want extra meat?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Extra meat means an extra charge. You know the line right before I have to pay an extra charge? I want all the meat right before that line.”

  He put one more piece of chicken on my burrito. “How’s that?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”

  After paying for my meal, I headed to a little bit of greenery near Rockefeller Center where most of the nearby office workers ate their lunches or took their breaks. It was a little early for lunch breaks so I had my pick of benches. Just as I took my first bite of burrito, my phone rang. The caller ID read “MOM.”

  My first instinct was to panic. Shit, does she know about my audit already? My parents do know a lot of people at the Council. I considered letting it go to voicemail. But my mom was the type of person who would just keep calling until I answered or threw my phone in the river. “What?” I answered, with a mouth full of burrito.

  My mother’s familiar voice drifted through the phone. “When are you going to be too old to answer the phone like that?”

  “Never.” Holding the phone to my ear with one hand and my burrito with the other, I took another huge bite of cheesy goodness. “Did you call me to criticize my phone etiquette?”

  “If I had to critique your etiquette in anything, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else today,” Mom answered back. “I called to remind you that we’re taking the family photo soon. And I need your vote,” she added.

  “Vote for what?”

  “The theme, of course.”

  Oh thank God. It’s just about the damn pictures. They were a tradition in our family. Well, it was really Mom’s tradition and the rest of us just went along with it with varying degrees of enthusiasm. As usual, I was the least enthusiastic. But messing up the family picture would be getting on my mom’s bad side—which is not a side anyone in the world wants to be on.

  “Why are we voting on a theme? Don’t you just pick the theme every year?”

  Mom sighed. “Usually. But you father wants to do something different this year.”

  I took another bite of my burrito. “And you guys can’t just figure this out between the two of you?”

  “No.” The steel beneath her voice made me pause. With her matching linens, four course Sunday dinners, and scrapbooking, sometimes people underestimated my mother. But she was a force to be reckoned with, all the way back to her days on the job. Mom may seem like the velvet glove but the truth was that she was the iron fist and the velvet glove.

  Dad was the easy going part of that relationship. He mostly just went along with whatever she wanted. But every now and then, he would put up a fuss about something. And then Mom would have to at least pretend like she was giving him a chance to be in charge. It’s the dynamic their relationship had followed forever. Why were they bringing me into it after all of these years?

  “So what are the choices?” I finally asked.

  Her voice lit up. “Well we can do a modern glam theme—you know, think The Great Gatsby if Gatsby if it was happening today and Gatsby lived uptown. I’m thinking of a black, white, and sparkle color scheme. Party dresses for the girls and your father in a tux.”

  “So obviously that’s yours,” I concluded. “What’s dad’s idea?”

  Mom paused. “Pajamas, Audrey. He wants us to all get dressed up in the matching pajamas and take pictures. And I’m supposed to send that out in the Christmas cards. I’m supposed to put that in the scrapbooks. Pajamas.”

  She kept saying “pajamas” with the same tone she would have said “dog shit.” I let out a snort before I decided to mess with her a bit. “I like pajamas, Mom.”

  “No, you don’t” she screeched.

  “Um, have you forgotten which daughter you’re talking to? Yeah, I do like pajamas.”

  “No,” she emphasized. “You don’t. And you better vote the right way if you expect to keep bringing home leftovers from my dinners.”

  That made me burst into outright laughter. “You aren’t even going to offer to pay me?”

  Now it was her turn to snort. “No. I’ve paid you enough in bribes over the years. You’re doing this one for food or nothing at all.”

  “Why are you even having this vote? Just tell Dad that you’re going to do it your way and he’ll go along with it. You don’t need a vote.”

  Impatience oozed through the phone. “I’m the one who suggested it.”

  “Because you want to be fair?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now you’re calling me to bribe me into voting your way?”

  “Yes.”

  I balled the burrito foil up and tossed it into a trashcan nearby. “I gotta go, Mom.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow for dinner. And the vote,” she added.

  Chapter 6

  On the train back to Brooklyn, I
pulled out my new handbook and took a look at it. It was bigger than I remembered. But then again, the last time I’d opened it was when I was taking my test for my super license over a decade before. And truthfully, I hadn’t looked at it much even back then.

  This time was going to be different, though. Back then, I had nothing to lose. Now, if I didn’t pass, I’d lose everything. I had to take it seriously.

  I stopped by the bodega on the corner for supplies— Doritos, cream cheese, some KitKats, a pint of triple chocolate ice cream, a two-liter ginger ale, and toilet paper. Rafi rang up my order with a smirk. Usually he was OK but today that smirk irked me. “What?” I asked

  He pointed to my stuff. “Big night planned?” “Yeah, but not the way you think.” I slid the money across the counter.

  He counted the money. “This isn’t enough.”

  “I paid for a breakfast roll I didn’t get yesterday,” I reminded him.

  “Fine.” He bagged my stuff sullenly. “Have a good night. I hope you get the runs from all of this.”

  I ignored him and gathered my things to leave. You can do this, I repeated to myself over and over again. You passed the first time. You can do it again.

  In front of the building, I saw Outside Bob holding a pink and orange kite with a kitten emblazoned on it. What’s a homeless guy doing with a kite? Shouldn’t he be panhandling or something. But I’d never seen Bob asking for money. In fact, I’d never seen him ask for anything.

  He gave me a terse nod as I approached. I was tempted to ask him where he got the kite and what he planned to do it with. But I had plans tonight and he was on the public sidewalk so I just let him be and went inside.

  My apartment door was indeed locked, thanks to little Cindy Pham. It was little cold, though. My broken window had been letting the fall air into the apartment all day. I put down my supplies on the coffee table. Using a bit of cardboard from the box I’d dragged home yesterday, I patched the hole and made a mental note to get it fixed.

  Satisfied with my patch job, I grabbed a spoon from the kitchen, collapsed onto the couch, and dug into the ice cream. Crash eyed me curiously as he swam around his bowl in long leisurely circles. “I’m glad you’re up, Crash. I may need you to quiz me later.”