“When you interviewed him last month the first thing you told me is that he was a jackass.”
“I was delusional. I’d been hit by the Gunk.”
“You mean the guy who makes Mensa members look like Sesame Street rejects?”
“Now you’re making things up.”
She picked up the notebook and flipped it open. “‘And the Gunk, previously believed to be a practically mindless beast, is actually a scholar who makes Mensa members look like Sesame Street rejects’,” she recited.
“I’m awful with a metaphor, you know that.”
“Why are you sitting on this, Josh? This could be the biggest story since Watergate! Why haven’t you blown the whistle? Unless...”
“Unless? Unless what?”
“Unless you’ve started to buy into the whole thing. That’s it, isn’t it? You enjoy playing dress-up and running around with these headcases.”
“It’s not like that--”
“And this Sindy chick -- you’ve got it for her, don’t you?”
“She’s not at all like Miss Sinistah, Sheila, that’s just a character.”
She gasped and I slapped my own face, realizing I’d said too much. “Sindy is Miss Sinistah? You’re in love with MISS SINISTAH?” She let her slick, curious look slip and replaced it with a wry grin. “Okay, Josh, confess, is everything about her super-strong?”
“Now cut that out!” I snatched the notebook from her hand. “Sheila, you can’t tell anyone about this!”
“And why not?”
“Because it’s not what you think. It’s not what I thought it was, it’s... it’s something more.”
“Now who sounds like the after-school special?” She jammed her finger at the notebook. “And what about all the stuff about using the merchandizing to payroll this? How do you think people will feel when they figure out how they’ve been footing the bill for all this?”
“It’s not that big a deal.”
“Your notebook has a picture of Spectrum on the cover!” She turned and tried to dart around me, towards the door, but I pivoted and kicked the knob with my foot, slamming it shut. I think we were both surprised that I managed to do it.
“You’re not leaving until I have your word that you won’t spread this around.”
“Why should I?”
“Because if you don’t I’m gonna... oh God.”
“What?”
I felt the blood draining from my head as my anger subsided. I had come dangerously close to pulling a Doctor Noble.
“Please, Sheila,” I said. “Sit down. Let me talk to you. Let me explain to you why this has to stay a secret.”
She stared at me for a while, without saying anything. “All right,” she said, finally. “But only because it’s you, Josh.”
“I know, I know, and thank you,” I said. So we sat down and we talked for a very long time. I told her everything. I told her about that first night and how I met Sindy. I told her about the Arena and my first adventure as Shift. I told her about Tom and Icebergg and the Soul Ray. And I told her what happened to Lionheart.
But I didn’t tell her about the Heart of the Lion. I didn’t know why.
When we finally finished talking, it was nearly one o’clock in the morning. My head hurt and I’d run out of coffee, but except for the odd question and her one outburst about me trying to fool the great telepath Mental Maid, Sheila remained annoyingly silent.
“I don’t know,” she finally said.
“Oh come on, Sheila! That had to be enough to convince you!”
“I’m sorry, Josh. I can’t make you any promises. I need to think about this.” She stood up to leave, but when her hand touched the doorknob, instead of turning it, she looked back at me.
“Josh?”
“Yes?” I said, anxious to say anything that might make a difference.
“You were going to use all that, weren’t you? I mean... you wouldn’t have written it all down otherwise.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was going to use it. So?”
“When did you decide not to?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Hell I don’t know. Part of me decided a long time ago, I think. Another part decided when Hotshot told me what happened to Lionheart. But I didn’t realize until I came in and saw you holding that damn notebook.”
She nodded, tight-lipped, and left. I sat up the rest of the night, eyes fluttering, unable to sleep.
A WALK IN THE PARK
I was still awake the next morning when the telephone rang. I picked up the receiver with a groggy, “Sheila?”
“Who’s Sheila?” asked Annie’s voice on the other end.
“She’s nobody!” I shouted, the exhaustion draining from my head. “I mean... just this woman I work with. I was expecting to hear from her.”
“Really?” Annie asked. “Young, voluptuous type?”
“Hairy old bat with a wart on her nose,” I lied. “What’s up?”
“Well I was wondering, if you’re not too busy waiting for a call from Sheila--”
“She knows how voice mail works.”
“What would you say to a picnic in Lee Park? You know, to celebrate your impending promotion?”
“I would say, ‘Hello, picnic in Lee Park. It appears God has finally relented and is allowing me a modicum of happiness’.”
She giggled. “That’s an awful lot to say to a picnic.”
“It’s a very literate picnic. What time?”
“Eleven-thirty, bring some sodas.”
“Deal.” I then did the following things in the following order: I hung up the phone, choreographed and performed a little happy dance all by myself, showered (while still dancing), shaved (I stopped dancing for that), got dressed, realized my new pants were now entirely too big for me, bought newer pants and a six-pack of sodas and finally got to the park.
“Josh!” I turned in the direction of the voice to see Annie, picnic basket and a blanket tucked under her arm, in a pair of cut-off blue jean shorts and a white top that had a very similar effect upon me as copying the Gunk’s powers.
My limbs rapidly solidified, however, when I saw the other little package she’d brought with her. It was a surprise, to be sure, but at least it was a welcome one.
“Hey, Tom!” I said.
“Josh!” He rushed me from Annie’s side, red backpack banging against his side, and darted in for a high-five.
“I couldn’t keep him from coming,” Annie said, laughing. “He’s always asking about you these days -- you and Shift are all he talks about.”
“How are you, buddy?” I asked. “Discovered any latent superpowers lately?”
“Not yet,” he said, “but I’m working on it.” He pulled out a brown portfolio he had in his backpack. “Hey, I brought something to show you.”
“Did you know Tom was an artist?” Annie asked. “He’s going to be the next George Perrin when he grows up.”
“That’s Perez,” Tom said in that tone of voice that 10-year-olds use to indicate that everybody in the world except the person they just corrected already knew that. As Annie unrolled the blanket she brought, Tom opened up his portfolio and started pointing out some of his favorite sketches. He was pretty good, too -- a lot better than I’d ever be. There were drawings of the skyline and of Simon Tower. Some sketches of birds and a particularly impressive drawing of a lion he’d done at the zoo.
“I always bring my sketchbook when I’m going outside for a while,” he said. “You never know what you’re going to see.”
“I’ll bet.”
Then, of course, came the super-heroes. Lots of them. Drawings of Hotshot and the Spectacle Six and an airborne Aquila, backlit by the sun. I smiled at a drawing of Justice Giant capturing Solemna, and I felt a knot at a sketch of Lionheart fighting back-to-back with the Gunk.
The most recent sketch ground me to a halt. It was Shift, in midair, racing alongside a speeding truck with a small boy in front of it.
“You like that one?”
Tom asked. “I wish I knew how to get in touch with Shift, I’d like him to sign this, too.”
“What are you looking at there, boys?” Annie asked. I looked up from the sketchbook and, despite the size of the lump in my throat, managed to explain to her the concept of “Ghangaghangahgangahgang.”
“What?” said Tom.
“Nothing. It’s just... it’s really good, man.”
I never learned who wore the Shift costume before me, but I can promise no one ever drew a picture of him like this. Tom’s rendition of Shift was strong, proud and majestic and, even though the costume still had the menacing presence it intended to convey, someone who didn’t know better would have sworn it was a picture of a Cape rather than a Mask.
“Wow... Tom, that’s great,” Annie said.
“Thanks. So what do we have to eat?”
Annie broke out the basket of cold chicken, potato salad and cole slaw, and Tom had triple helpings of everything before spying a bluebird in a tree and darting off to sketch it. Annie and I stayed back, finally able to talk. Tom was a great kid, don’t get me wrong, but he had a tendency to stifle the conversation.
“Did you see that drawing of Shift?” I asked her, still flabbergasted.
“He’s a really good artist, isn’t he?”
“Well yeah, but... I mean the way he drew it. It was like... Whoa, here comes Shift, saving the day!” I thrust my arms in front of me like I was flying and “banked” in the “air” a few times. Annie practically doubled over with her wonderful laughter. Within a few seconds I had joined her and it was a good, long while before either of us was able to catch our breath.
“So...” I finally asked, “How does Todd feel about you having a picnic with this ‘lowly maggot’?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t tell him. Frankly, I don’t care.”
“Woo-hoo! Two points for Annie!” She laughed a little at that, but then her face fell. Slowly, and probably with more fear than anything I’d done in my entire life, I placed my hand over hers.
She let out an agonized breath. “It’s not like it’s all bad.”
“It’s not? Come on then. Give me one reason you stay with him and I’ll drop the whole subject.”
“Because--”
“And any reason that includes the phrase ‘he used to’ doesn’t count.”
She was quiet for an eternity. Finally she said, “I can’t. I should be able to, but I can’t.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“I suppose.”
“Why him? I mean... what did you see in that guy in the first place?”
“Oh come on, Josh, think about it. I’ve just been drafted into this world of super-heroes and tights and fame and -- all of a sudden the hero, the one everybody in the world looks up to... all of a sudden he’s paying attention to me.”
“Couldn’t you tell what kind of guy he was?”
“He wasn’t like this then. He didn’t start... acting the way he does--”
“Like a jackass, you mean.”
“-- until... well... until...”
“Until he knew he had you,” I finished. She nodded.
“You’re better than him, Annie,” I said. “You deserve better. I...”
“You what?”
I looked her straight in the eye and felt my voice break. “I...”
“Josh! Annie!” Tom broke in, waving his sketch in the air. “What do you think?”
“It’s great, buddy,” I said, barely looking at it.
“I saw a turtle by the fountain! I’m going to go draw it.”
“Okay, squirt,” Annie called back as he jogged away. She smiled at me. “What were you saying?”
“Just that... you amaze me,” I finally wheezed out.
“Aw Josh... Thank you.” She threw her arms around my neck and gave me a solid kiss on the cheek, and that was the best I’d felt since I saw Sheila sitting on my bed reading my notebook.
When I got home that afternoon I locked the book in a big trunk at the foot of my bed. Although it was taken out once more, I never wrote in it again. I spent that night, as the night before, wondering. This time I was wondering what would have happened if I had managed to say “I’m falling in love with you” to Annie. I was outraged at Tom for interrupting, and at the same time I was wholly and incredibly relieved that he did, because if she’d heard that statement and didn’t agree with me, I don’t think I would have been able to take it.
ISSUE TEN
COPYCAT
Cats with a mouse being dangled before them. Kids on Christmas morning, waiting for their parents to wake up. Me waiting for my costume. The three most anxious creatures I can imagine. When I made it to Morrie’s office that Tuesday, he greeted me with a smokey expression that was half frustration and half amusement. There was a white plastic garment bag hanging from the coat rack with a picture of a black domino mask printed on it. My eyes landed on that bag like it was Annie in a bikini.
“Hey there, Morrie,” I said as though I just happened to be passing through his office directly in front of his desk. “”How’s it going there, man? Heh?”
“Yer terrible at playin’ things aloof, Corwood, you know that?”
“My mother says it’s my best quality.”
“Must be a killer with the ladies. Come on in. Lemme show ya what we’ve got.”
I closed the door and sat, completely oblivious to Mental Maid for once, and waited as Morrie got the bag and laid it on his desk.
“Yer name,” he said, “is Copycat.”
“Copycat, sounds great, I love it.”
“You’re what our boys down in the writer’s shop call a revenant.”
“A what?”
“A revenant. A ghost that rose from the grave to exact revenge.”
“Oooh, spooky. I like it so far.”
“Ten years ago, during Lionheart’s last battle--”
“Whoa! I’m tied in to Lionheart?”
“You want this suit or not?”
“I want! I want!” I raised my arms in surrender. “Go ahead.”
“Lionheart’s last fight happened in January. In the middle of it, you got thrown through the ice on the pond in Lee Park. You were countin’ on Lionheart to save ya, but he never got around to doin’ it, what with him vanishin’ and all. So ya died.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“But ya couldn’t rest, see, because that Carnival guy, the last one anyone saw Lionheart fightin’? He’s the one that killed ya, the way you figger, y’know, with him knocking ya through the ice and all. So you were brought back from the dead to hunt him down an’ kill him, and you don’t care who you gotta get past or what you gotta destroy to find that guy. Understood?”
“Yeah, I got it, Morrie, great origin. But why ‘Copycat’? And how does the revenant thing explain my duplicating other people’s powers?”
“When you was alive, you didn’t have no powers. Now that yer a ghost, all you can do is copy other people’s shtick. That’s the ‘copy’ half of yer name. Oh, except that you can turn into smoke.”
“Smoke?”
“Yer a ghost, accept it.”
“Farfetched,” I said, “but I’ve heard worse.”
“As fer the ‘cat’ half... heh... I think you’ll understand when you see yer costume. It’s lined with kevlar, standard precaution for folks that aren’t invulnerable, and there are compartments in the belt for yer smoke bombs. Go ahead. Try it on. “
I snatched the garment bag from him and raced to the locker rooms fast enough to justify anyone asking me if I was copying LifeSpeed’s powers again. When I got there I unzipped the bag and pulled out a mass of black and gray fabric with a pair of black boots at the bottom. I knew immediately where he got the ‘cat’ from, and I was simultaneously honored and saddened.
It was Lionheart’s costume.
Not an exact duplication, of course, the colors were all off. The pants and boots were the same jet black as his, but the brilliant red tunic
he always wore, with its crisp, military cut, was the same black as the pants. His sky-blue cape, which buttoned to the tunic with gold buttons and connected to the brilliant Lion’s Head emblem on the chest -- was thundercloud grey. The Lion’s Head itself, a wonderful yellow on Lionheart’s costume, was a deep, blood-red on mine.
I almost couldn’t put it on.
But I did.
“Ya look sharp, kid,” Morrie said when I returned to his office in full regalia.
“I’m kind of uncomfortable dressing like this,” I said.
“What, are you worried about disrespectin’ Lionheart? Don’t be. Y’see, yer one of those Masks who’s got a sense of honor. Oh, you’ll steamroller anyone who gets in yer way, but you don’t wanna see nobody else get hurt if you can help it.” He laughed and expelled a cloud of cigar smoke. “I told ‘em to add that part. This way if you do somethin’ stupid like save a life or somethin’, nobody’ll think there’s anything strange about that.”
“Beautiful.”
“You go in the Arena tomorrow. Hotshot is gonna be the one to take you in. We figgered it would add.... what did they call it? Pathos! That’s it. Y’know, since he knew Lionheart an’ all.”
I stepped into the lounge and was greeted by a round of applause, led by Hotshot. It was the first time I’d ever noticed how much his costume resembled Lionheart’s (and, by extension, mine). It was almost a reverse, with red pants. His cape was connected to the front of his black tunic by a patch of color (yellow instead of blue) and the masks were identical -- they covered most of the head, but opened for the eyes, nose and mouth. The tops were open, too, letting the hair breathe free.
Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) Page 16