“Hey. Wait. Listen. You’ve got the wrong idea. I’m not really with these guys.” It’s a lie, of course, but it’s the best I can come up with. I pull on my coat, scrunched so tight around my armpits that I can barely move. “This isn’t even my suit.”
“I could tell,” the figure says. “It doesn’t go with your shoes at all.”
He takes his hand out of the bag, and I can see that it’s empty. No bombs. No guns. Maybe I’ll just be strangled to death. The figure in black cocks his head to the side, taking me in from a slightly different angle. Then he reaches down with a gloved hand and lifts me up without the slightest effort. He has long fingers, I notice. A magician’s fingers. We stand there for just a moment, and I want to ask “So what happens now?” But before I can, there is a flash of light and the growl of a motor as another SUV comes barreling through the field at top speed, making a shower of shattered cornhusks. It’s headed straight for us. The figure in black leaps out of the way just in time as the car skids to a halt, the back door thrown open. Zach reaches out and pulls me inside, then barks for Mr. Andretti to get us the heck out of there, wheels spinning while my feet still dangle out the door. There is a spray of mud and dirt as we jolt forward, ripping back through the field and toward the street.
I chance a look out the shattered rear window. At the stranger just standing there in the moonlight.
Watching me get away.
Dad’s waiting for me on the porch. One hand holds a rolling pin like a club. The other holds a black box. I have no idea what this particular box does, but I can only assume it’s more dangerous than the rolling pin.
The SUV jerks to a halt, just long enough for me to fall out of it, Mario still revving the engine like the green flag is about to drop. Zach says he will call me. Not to worry. That it wasn’t my fault and that Tony won’t hold it against me. He tells me to go ahead and keep the suit. Then the SUV speeds away, busted windshields and all.
I look up at my father bathed in the porch light, his eyes bloodshot. I take off my suit coat, torn and filthy and smelling of gun smoke, and toss it wearily over my shoulder, as if I’ve just come home from a long day at the office. I feel exhilarated and exhausted, the biochemical rush of nearly having my head knocked off—first by a superhero and then by his previously heretofore unknown sidekick—finally starting to ebb. I take three steps toward the door and falter. Feel his hands on my elbows, propping me up.
“I’ve got you,” he says.
I bury my face in his shoulder, smearing sweat and snot and soot on his pink-and-white shirt, leaving my mark, imprinting all over him. I let out a shuddering breath. It’s eighty degrees out here and I can’t stop shaking. My father whispers to me in soothing tones. “It’s all right. You’re safe now,” he says. “I’ve got you.
“I won’t let it happen again.”
I let him carry me to bed. Not cradled—he’s never had the chance to carry me that way—but draped across his shoulder, half dragged to the room. I let him pull off my new shoes and my socks, pull the covers to my chin, feel his chapped hands on my forehead, smoothing back my hair. I open my mouth to speak, but every time I do, he tells me not to say anything. We can talk in the morning. He asks me if I want him to leave the hall light on, even though I’ve slept in the dark from the moment he first brought me home, as if all of a sudden I’m four again.
I nod anyway. A little light can’t hurt.
Then he tells me he loves me. But he told me not to say anything.
Instead I lie there, picturing the Comet hovering over me, and the gunfire and the exploding car. The sickening crunch of his booted foot smashing into ribs, the ceiling coming down, Rudy’s bloody silver grin, Zach’s nettled grasp. The wire wrapped around my feet, pulling me down, all of it drawing me in. I scrunch my eyes and hold my breath and push back, past the explosions and the blood and the growling voice in my head, trying to think of something else, anything else. Until I’m back at her front door, remembering how she smiled when she found the penny in her back pocket, as if it was something she had been looking for forever.
And I feel like I’ve been split in half.
In the quiet I hear my father’s voice on the kitchen phone, two rooms away. It’s one o’clock in the morning. My father never calls anyone unless they’re going to show up thirty minutes later with food. The walls in the house are thin, with the exception of the soundproofed concrete of the basement, and the neighborhood is asleep. Even with his half whisper, I can hear him.
“This is Edson,” he says. “I accept your offer.”
THE MAN BEHIND THE MASKS
My life is slowly being populated by people in masks. People in masks are not to be trusted. I learned that from a movie. Of course, in the movie, the guy wearing the mask turned out to be the hero. Come to think of it, a lot of heroes wear masks. Kind of makes you wonder what they’re hiding.
I’m not a supervillain. But if I was a supervillain, I wouldn’t wear a mask. For starters, they are hot and sweaty. And they probably make your face itch. They also make it hard to breathe—unless they are gas masks, I guess. I suppose they could serve some other practical purpose. Infrared vision. Satellite communications linkage. UV protection. Whatever. That’s not why people wear them.
Think about it. A man walks into a convenience store. He’s got a gun. His intentions are clear. He wears a mask. Why? So nobody will recognize him. If he takes off the mask, everyone will know who he is. Then he can be hunted down, captured, thrown in jail. With the mask on, he is anonymous. He can hide. He empties the cash register and makes it to the front door, where he is suddenly stopped by some caped vigilante with a utility belt and an overfed sense of justice or whatever.
Of course the superhero wears a mask. Why? So everybody will recognize him. So that his picture in the paper will put the minds of Joe and Joanna Bystander to rest and strike fear in the hearts of would-be convenience-store robbers everywhere.
There is a brief scuffle. The superhero wins. The robber is hauled off to jail, his mask stripped, his identity revealed, his life changed forever.
The superhero, meanwhile, flies back to his secret headquarters. Kicks off his boots, cracks open a beer. He pulls off his mask and looks in the mirror. Nobody knows who he is now. Not really. That’s the point. He can walk down the street without getting mobbed by paparazzi. He can hang out at the mall. He can eat a ham sandwich on a park bench and feed the crusts to the pigeons.
Villains wear masks because it gives them the courage to do something extraordinary, something they might not have the guts to do otherwise. But heroes? Heroes wear masks because deep down inside, I’m guessing, they just want the chance to be normal. That’s my theory, anyway.
Personally, I don’t trust either of them.
I sleep in. I’m too exhausted to move even when the sun starts stabbing at my pillow through the slats. By the time I drag myself out of bed and get dressed, it’s almost noon. The Sunday paper sits on the kitchen table. My printout of the night sky is nowhere to be found. I stare dumbly at the picture of the trashed warehouse. The headline reads COMET CRASHES CRIMINAL PARTY.
So it was a party. That explains why I’m exhausted.
I skim through the article, trying to ignore the pounding flashes in my brain. Somewhere between eight and ten p.m., blah blah blah, witnesses report seeing fire and smoke, blah blah blah, police arrive at the scene of a war zone, blah blah blah, twelve men taken into custody, seven of them hospitalized. Known affiliations to the Romano and Maloney crime families. What appears to be a business deal gone bad.
That’s one way to put it.
There is a picture of the warehouse, windows of busted glass, a halo of smoke coming through its brand-new chimney, a burned-out car in the foreground. There is a quote from one of the suspects, one of Mickey’s guys, picked up by a reporter before the cops could shove him into the police van. “He dropped right out of the sky. There was nothing we could do. The man is inhuman.”
That’s o
ne way to put that, too.
There is more. Brief histories of the two crime syndicates. Paragraphs of speculation on why they might have been meeting. A vague statement by the chief of police, calling for a return to order and peace. And then pages and pages on the Comet.
Just the Comet. There is no mention of a sidekick, no talk of the shorter, equally growly wraith who appeared out of the shadows toting disk bombs and grappling cords. Unlike the Super who leaves a giant smear across the sky, the person who snagged me like a trout last night apparently left no impression. I start to wonder if I just imagined it, but the bruises on my elbows and knees are fresh. There was another hero there last night. Another freak in a mask. Another thing to wrap my head around.
I put down the paper and try to listen through the floorboards. I wonder if Dad even bothered to sleep last night. I had thought maybe we could take the day off. Spend some time together. Talk about what was going on. But judging by how quiet it is up here, he is obviously down in the lair. I look over at the counter. The coffeepot holds only yesterday’s dregs. Whatever he’s doing, it’s important enough for him to skip his morning fix. I don’t remember everything from last night—there’s way too much—but I do remember him saying that things would be different between us. That he was going to try harder. I remember that, and I remember the phone call.
I shuffle over to the basement door and turn the handle.
I turn again, giving it a little jiggle.
It’s locked.
It can’t be, but it is. I mean, it can be. It was for a very long time, but it hasn’t been in two years. Ever since I learned about my adopted ancestors. I knock once. Then again. Then six more times, harder and harder until my knuckles sting. Nothing. No response. “Dad! Hey, Dad!” I shout. “Open up!”
“I’m right here,” he says.
I spin around to see my father standing in the kitchen doorway with a half doughnut in hand, as if he’s just teleported there. As far as I know, he’s never built a teleporter. You’d think that would be something he’d share with his only son. “You startled me,” I say.
“You couldn’t hear me come in because you were shouting,” he says matter-of-factly.
I point to the door. “It’s locked,” I say. It’s more of a question than a statement. He nods, affirming my assessment. I take a deep, patient breath and try again. “Why is the door locked?”
“I’m working on something,” Dad says, still holding his half-eaten doughnut. There is a bag of them under his armpit. “I got breakfast,” he adds, as if that somehow clears things up.
“Oh, well, if you are working on something . . .” I have to wait sometimes for the sarcasm to sink in with him. Sometimes it never quite hits bottom, just floats there between us like dust motes in a sunbeam. But this time he gets it. I can tell by the look on his face. He struggles to find a response.
“They’re cream filled,” he says, holding out the bag, letting it hang there in the void.
I notice he’s not looking me in the eyes. I don’t reach for the bag, so he sets it down on the table and rakes his flaming bush of orange hair back. For the first time I realize how old he looks. It’s not the streaks of silver speckled in his beard or the sag of skin around his eyes. I’ve noticed those before. It’s the way he stands, with one hand holding on to something, the back of a chair, the doorframe, the corner of the table, as if his own two legs aren’t quite solid enough anymore. When he speaks again, the words are all spread out, as if every one of them has an anchor attached and he has to pull them forcibly from deep down inside.
“Listen, Michael. I think you should stay up here for a while.”
“Up here?” I repeat. “You mean, don’t go down in the basement?”
I call it a basement on purpose. A lair is one thing, but a basement? You wouldn’t keep your son from going down in the basement.
“I made a mistake. You’re not ready,” he says. “Not for this.”
“Not ready!” I shout, stepping sideways to get him to look at me. “I’ve been helping you for two years! You’ve made me rob banks. You once had me ask a cop if I could borrow his gun!”
“But I didn’t ask you to shoot anybody with it,” he counters.
“I was twelve!”
“I wanted you to feel included.”
“Fine. Then include me!” I shout. “I’m not stupid. You said yourself that everything in life is a choice and that nobody should do something just because they’re told to.”
“Fathers are different,” he says. “This is different. You have to do what I tell you.” He tries to reach out for me. I step back. “It’s not permanent, Michael. A couple of days. It’s just, what I’m working on right now . . . I don’t want you involved.”
I shake my head, piecing together the words, pulling them back apart. Don’t. Want. You. He can’t be saying what I think he’s saying.
“Little late for that. I’d say last night I was pretty darned involved.” Thirteen years old, a criminal history, weekends with the mafia running from superheroes, and I still have to use the word darned in front of my father.
“Exactly,” he says, snapping his fingers as if I’ve solved the equation. “It’s my fault. I thought I could protect you, that we could protect each other, but this . . . Everything’s out of balance. It was unexpected. I can get it under control. But I need you to stay out. Just until I’m finished with this one thing. Then everything will be back to normal.” He nearly stumbles over the word. “No. Better than normal. I promise.”
My mind is racing. I look back at the basement door. What could be so terrible, so dangerous, that he’s suddenly kicking me out? I’ve helped my father build antimatter rays. Memory erasers. I’ve been burned, scratched, paralyzed, temporarily blinded, and nearly electrocuted, and still the door has never been locked, not since the day I first went down. “Please tell me you’re not building a nuclear weapon.”
“I’m not building a nuclear weapon.”
“It’s smallpox, then, isn’t it? You’ve got the Ebola virus down there? The black plague?”
“It’s nothing like that,” he insists.
“Then why won’t you let me in?” I yell, a seething, teeth-clenched question that actually comes with a little spit and causes my father to flinch.
He finally dares to look into my eyes. His pouty bottom lip quivers. He looks pathetic, gaunt face and Popsicle-stick frame trembling under his cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirt. We stand there, staring at each other. I could do it. Could make him unlock the door, could make him tell me what’s down there. And he knows it, but he still doesn’t look away.
“You have to trust me,” he says.
I could do it. But I look down, breaking the stalemate. After a moment he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a wad of cash, peeling off two hundred-dollar bills and setting them on the table next to the doughnuts. I wonder if they came from Dickens. Or maybe he robbed the doughnut store, though that doesn’t sound like something he would do without me. Of course I didn’t think there was much of anything he would do without me.
“Take it,” he says. “Go somewhere. See a movie. Be normal for a change. For me. For both of us.”
I don’t reach for the cash, shaking my head in disbelief. Yesterday he was mad at me for leaving the house. Now he’s bribing me to go.
“I’m going to make things right,” he says. “I just need a little time.” He makes a move, like maybe he will come and wrap his arms around me again, like he did last night, but I stand there, glaring, rigid, refusing to make any move that will give him permission. I’m reminded of all those chess matches I’ve already lost. He’s never apologized for winning. There is another calculated pause, like when you’re poised with the piece hovering above one square or another.
Then he heads to the door, pulling the key from his pocket.
“Sorry, Son,” he says over his shoulder. Then he disappears, closing the door behind him.
I shuffle over slowly and try the han
dle once, just to be sure. My instinct says break it down. Grab the heaviest thing I can find, and pound away at the handle until it breaks off. But then a second impulse grabs me. To get out. To go away. I can feel the whole house collapsing, getting smaller around me. A box with no trick floor and the river all around, seeping in through the cracks.
I put on my new shoes, still caked in mud from my mad dash through the field last night, and head to the door, shutting it hard behind me, even though I know full well he can’t hear it. Still, there is small satisfaction in feeling the house shudder beneath the force of a fully slammed door.
Two minutes later I come back inside, stuff the two hundred bucks in my pocket, and grab an éclair from the bag.
At the very least, it gives me the chance to slam the door again.
I walk. I do a lot of walking. When I’m fifteen, Dad has promised, he’ll teach me to drive the Civic. The Edsonmobile. Of course I’ll never have a license. Forms again.
With two hundred bucks, I could take the bus. I could get a cab. I could probably persuade some random guy standing on a street corner to take me anywhere in the city I wanted, even to places I know I don’t belong. But I need to walk. To clear my head.
“You have to trust me,” he says. And then he locks the door. I think about the phone call last night. “This is Edson. I accept your offer.” What offer? What is he building down there? He can cram most anything into one of those cubes, and there are plenty of people out there who know it. Word spreads. He’s not an easy man to find, but secrets can be hard to keep. Possible it was Tony. After all, he is Dad’s number one customer. Except it didn’t quite fit with the urgency in my father’s voice. What if it was somebody else? Somebody new? Somebody I’ve never seen before? I’m guessing that’s where the wad of hundred-dollar bills came from. Down payment. Earnest money. I wonder how much he stands to make off this thing he’s building, whatever it is. Wonder if it is the thing he’s building that’s dangerous, or the person he’s building it for
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