The Real Thing

by Marina Simcoe

  “You’re a fucking bitch!” In a rage, the first drunk decided to ignore the car and the fact that his white runner was now completely soaked with blood from the wound inflicted by the girl’s heel. He lurched towards the blonde girl again.

  The door of the car swung open and another young girl jumped out of the driver’s seat. She had a grey sweatshirt on and a pair of loose pajama pants. Her strawberry blonde ponytail was swinging in the air menacingly as she ran towards the fight with the daring determination of a Chihuahua ready to attack an elephant.

  “Leave her alone I said! Get in the car, Ava!” she yelled, coming closer.

  With her eyes open wide, the blonde girl — apparently named Ava — swung her tiny purse at the drunk attacking her in a last-minute attempt to protect herself. The purse connected with the side of his head; incredibly, the blow proved to be strong enough to throw him into the bushes all the way on the edge of the parking lot.

  “Holy cow, woman!” the girl with the ponytail screamed as she finally reached Ava and grabbed her by the arm. “You’ll teach me that one later. Now get in the car, and let’s get out of here!” She pulled her friend towards the car. “Why didn’t you call me earlier? Before you left that shithole? Why would you ever go there in the first place?” she reprimanded, as she stuffed the bewildered Ava into the passenger’s seat and buckled her seatbelt. “Never again, you hear me? Never again!” was the last I heard before she got into the driver’s seat herself and drove away.

  One of the drunks finally managed to get up to his feet and stood in the parking lot alone, watching the white car drive away. The other one was still groaning loud in the bushes somewhere.

  “They’ll be okay,” I heard Marcus’s voice just above my ear.

  “You did that!” I turned to face him.

  He hesitated for a second and then replied with a shrug, “She obviously needed help. There was no time to wait for the police.”

  “Look at you.” With a small smile I lifted my hands and linked them behind his neck. “A sexy Vegas star by day and a crime-fighting Superman by night.”

  “Hardly a Superman!” he scoffed and tipped his chin towards the window. “She did most of the work herself.”

  “You just gave her strength.”

  “And a better aim,” he chuckled. “Anyway, with a friend like that, she has a lot going for her.”

  My fingers at his nape touched the small silver chain that I’d seen him wear around his neck often. I’d never seen the pendant on it, though. It was always hidden under his shirt. With the tip of my finger, I traced the chain from the back of his neck to the neckline of his t-shirt and then over the material to the middle of his chest where I could feel the elongated shape of the pendant through his shirt.

  “Does it mean something to you?” I asked finally. Some secrets he guarded more closely than others, and I was never absolutely sure what questions he would answer. The only way to avoid prying was not to ask any questions at all, but then how would I get to know him better?

  “Maybe,” he replied and covered my hand over the pendant with his then swiftly changed the subject. “You can still have an hour of sleep if I take you to bed right now.”

  20. My Very Own Superman.

  I was lying in bed, listening to Marcus’s even breathing at my back, thinking about the fight.

  Of what I knew about Marcus so far, his power was limitless. I called him Superman, but come to think of it, Marcus’s magic could do even more than any superhero powers I knew. His only kryptonite seemed to be his own fear of his abilities.

  What would I do if I could do absolutely anything? What if I could right all wrongs in the world? Where would I start? World peace, get rid of all wars for good? Eradicate hunger and violence? No more diseases?

  Weren’t all of those things, though, caused by or related to human nature, the one thing that Marcus could not control?

  How about helping with the consequences of the disasters that had already happened? So much suffering was happening in the world every single day. Couldn’t some of Marcus’s powers be used to stop the pain or at least to help with the damages?

  In comics and movies, the best that superheroes did for humankind was preventing global disasters. Otherwise, they mostly used their abilities to fight supervillains, causing a lot of destruction along the way.

  I had yet to see Superman help repair the damage he caused to buildings, Thor repave the roads he cracked with his hammer, or Spiderman wash the windows of skyscrapers he messed up with his web and fingerprints.

  That morning at breakfast, I asked Marcus if he ever thought about helping humankind on global level.

  “I did,” he sighed heavily as his thumb drummed against the coffee cup in his hands, letting me know that topic was not an easy one for him. “I tried to solve different problems for many people over the years.”

  “And?” I asked eagerly.

  “Here is the thing, Angela. The bigger the problem, the more variables are involved, the larger the consequences are of solving it. It’s hard to predict the magnitude of your actions beforehand. And then, afterwards, some are just impossible to fix. Sometimes, the more you try to fix something, the more damage you cause.”

  His answer was clear enough, but still too general for me. I needed a more specific example. I grabbed my laptop and opened the news page in my browser.

  “Look, there are always so many sad, disastrous things that happen in the world every single day. What if we just try and help one thing at a time? To have a better control of things. See, there was a flood in this region in Africa —”

  He inhaled to protest, and I continued hurriedly before he could say anything. “I know you try to avoid controlling the weather. The flood had already happened, but now because of it, there is a disease outbreak. See, here is the name of this hospital run by Red Cross. They are short on medication. Can you make it so that they have enough?” This was a concrete, specific task in my mind that could be easily accomplished by somebody like him: one thought — and the hospital had enough medicine to treat everyone.

  He sighed again and rubbed the back of his neck, hesitating, but I could see he was not indifferent to my idea. Something bothered him, but he wanted to help.

  “I don’t want to conjure medicine. What if I get the formula wrong and cause more harm than good? If people end up dying, I wouldn’t be able to fix it.”

  “Okay, don’t conjure it then,” I conceded and did a few more searches on the laptop. “See, this medicine is actually produced in the United States. Can you teleport a pallet from their warehouse to the hospital in Africa?”

  “Only if I leave a payment for it,” he said firmly.

  Well, his paying for the medicine ruined my idea of getting something for nothing. Money undermined the whole point of using magic. However, he was right; taking the medicine without paying would be stealing.

  “It’s a lot of money, Marcus.” I had no idea how much, but medicine was usually expensive. Buying it by the pallet could cost him a pretty penny.

  “It’s worth it,” he shrugged his shoulder, “as an experiment. What’s the name of the hospital? And where is the pharmaceutical factory located exactly?”

  My enthusiasm must be catching — Marcus looked more excited by the idea. He turned the laptop his way on the table and clicked between the browser windows I had open there then pushed it back to me.

  “So,” I asked, tentatively, “are you going to do it?”

  “It’s done,” he replied calmly.

  “Already?”

  “Mmhmm,” he nodded.

  “Really?” I clapped my hands together, smiling from ear to ear. “See! I haven’t even finished my coffee, and you already made a huge difference in the world today!”

  He smiled at my excitement, but something seemed to cloud his smile at me.

  ***

  “So, let’s see!” I opened my laptop as soon as I woke up the next morning, eager to see the news of the results of Ma
rcus’s involvement.

  He sat next to me in bed, with his back to the headboard, and kept quiet.

  “Here it is!” I exclaimed, as soon as I found the page with the name of the Red Cross hospital.

  My excitement evaporated quickly as I read the article. “Marcus, they burned it.” I looked at him in disbelief. “They destroyed the whole pallet of medicine that they needed so badly!”

  The expression on his face remained unchanged — as if he had expected it to happen all along. Only the lines around his mouth hardened.

  “With the violent military conflict in the region,” I read the article out loud, “terrorist activity is suspected. Several paramilitary terrorist organizations already claimed responsibility for the tainted medicine that arrived at the hospital yesterday.”

  I turned to face him again. “They couldn’t trace the shipment to a reliable source, and suspected that it was planted by terrorists. It was destroyed as a precaution.”

  My mood fell, and I understood firsthand how Marcus must have felt every time people reacted negatively to his magic.

  “You had proper paperwork?” I asked him quietly.

  He nodded and finally met my eyes.

  “I did, but it didn’t matter. They still couldn’t explain it, and they decided not to risk it,” his voice was calm.

  “Have you done these things before?” I asked.

  He nodded again.

  “With the same results?”

  “The same, or very similar. I’ve done it many times, more than I could count. As soon as we started making enough money to cover our expenses and then some, Simon looked into several charity organizations. For tax write-offs, as he put it. One of them funded projects in several countries in central Africa at that time. They built schools and dug wells for clean water in villages. I went there myself, saw all the work they’d done — all the work that still needed to be done — and wanted to help so badly. I finished the school building for them overnight. They had worked on it for months, and had several more weeks if not months of work ahead of them. I thought I was helping by speeding things up.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  He shook his head with a sad smile.

  “The villagers burned the building down the very next morning. They claimed it was erected by black magic as a place of demon worship. What’s more, the whole settlement was deserted, as people declared the place a cursed land and moved to live elsewhere.”

  “This is awful,” I whispered, flabbergasted by how much good deeds could be misunderstood and even feared.

  “There is a balance in the world, Angela,” Marcus continued, “in nature and in the society. The balance that took thousands and millions of years to get established. No matter how strong my magic is, I am still but a man: and no man can ever know exactly how everything works in the universe. Over the years of trying to solve world’s problems, this is the most important thing that I have learned. Controlling the use of my magic is the most responsible thing that I can do for the world.

  “I had tried to feed people of one region hit by famine, only to cause drought in another one. I accelerated crops growth in one village in India once, only to have the ground depleted so that nothing grew there for several seasons afterwards. Every action causes a reaction, or more precisely, a series of mostly unpredictable ripples of reactions that are often impossible to fix without causing even more damage.”

  He took the laptop out of my hands and opened another article.

  “Here you go.” He turned the laptop so that I could see the screen again.

  This article was about the pharmaceutical company where Marcus got the pallet of medicine from yesterday morning. The “missing” shipment was meant for the local market. Now there were statewide shortages of this medication. The company’s production schedule was put under strain, and the medicine had to be urgently flown in from other countries. The customers had to pay double the price until the production would catch up with the demand again.

  “What have I done…” I whispered, and my hand went to my neck in horror.

  “It wasn’t you. I did it.”

  “I made you,” I replied firmly, refusing to put the blame on him. “You’d warned me.”

  There was more: the police launched an investigation, as even though payment for the missing medicine was discovered, no one could explain where the money suddenly came from and where the medicine disappeared. Until the investigation uncovered anything, the case was treated as fraud.

  “This is so, so disheartening.” Tears began to prickle the inside of my nose, and I swallowed hard. “There is really nothing we could do, without making it worse?”

  Seeing my distress, Marcus took my hand in his.

  “Well,” he reached for his pants on the floor with his other hand and pulled out a piece of paper from one of the pockets. “In my experience, there is plenty anyone can do, and it works best if you do it with a proper respect to the established order of things.”

  I took the paper from his hand; it was a receipt from a charity organization made to Marcus Hargrave, with yesterday’s date on it.

  “You never believed my plan would work.” It was supposed to be a question, but it came out as a statement because I already knew the answer.

  “I wanted to believe it, more than any other time, because you wanted it to work.” He brushed a finger over my cheek. “But I knew from experience that it’s never that simple. So, I made a donation to the charity organization to purchase medicine from a factory in Europe and paid for air transportation to get it to the hospital within days. I also donated money to an organization in the United States. They will supplement the increased cost of medicine to those who don’t have enough insurance until the new shipments come in and the cost will have normalized again.”

  I sagged against the headboard of my bed, still staring at the receipt in my hand.

  “It ended up costing you a fortune. God! I should have thought it through better. I’m so sorry, Marcus.”

  “Don’t be.” He took the receipt from me and stuffed in back in the pants pocket. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll change the donation to my stage name. Simon may still have some room for tax write-off this year.”

  “So, if even you, with all your magic, don’t have a solution to all of this,” I gestured at the laptop screen with the news articles of today’s disasters, large and small displayed on it, “then who can?”

  “Everyone,” he replied meeting my confused stare. “Angela, you may feel guilt and disappointment right now because there isn’t a magic-wand solution to all of the world’s problems, but I’ve come to see the silver lining here. The fact that this,” he gestured at his pants on the floor with the charity receipt in their pocket, “proved to be the most effective way to help only shows that there is no magic required. Everyone can do something to make this world a better place. After years of trying and failing, I’ve found that small, specific problems are easier to solve. Their solutions often also have faster, positive results. Things that everyone can do every day: if you see a hungry kid — feed her; if you see a woman in need — help her. Often, you don’t even need any money to make the biggest difference.”

  His words made a perfect sense, but I still couldn’t shake the disappointment I felt at my magical plans failing so miserably.

  “Come here,” Marcus beckoned seeing me still upset. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and kissed my temple, pulling me closer to him. “You feel so much for others.”

  “No, I don’t,” I scoffed, “I have a thick skin I was told. I’m not even a good listener as far as people’s problems are concerned.”

  “It’s because you feel the need to jump into action right away and solve all their problems as soon as you hear about them,” he argued with a conviction that surprised me as much as his words did. “You have your own way of caring, my ice queen. It may not always be with kind words and warm hugs. Yours is the way of action. You take problems of others to heart and
try to solve them as if they were your own.”

  All this time we spent together, it wasn’t just me getting to know Marcus. It seemed he had learned many things about me too, things that I didn’t even recognize myself.

  21. Parents.

  “Oh my God, baby! I just don’t know how much bad luck our family can take! It just doesn’t stop!” My mom had always been emotional, but this time she was being exceptionally overly dramatic.

  “Calm down, Mom. It’s not the end of the world. We’ll get through it. We always have,” I said, standing in the stairwell of my office building.

  As soon as I heard her tearful announcement that Evan lost his job once again, I knew that I shouldn’t continue this conversation in my cubicle and came out here.

  “But, Angela, when does it end? How can one family have so much bad luck?”

  “It’s not so bad, Mom,” I said, keeping my voice low. “He will find something again. He’s getting better. His last job lasted for over a year.”

  “They said they don’t need him anymore. He was working on a contract, as self-employed. So he is not even going to get any unemployment benefits now…” She sobbed. “And Lily… Lily told him to start looking for a job right away, but he says he doesn’t want to have another job as a stagehand again… She will break up with him!”

  “Mom. She won’t,” I made my voice calm and even, as if I were talking to a scared, skittish animal.

  “You know how smart and ambitious that girl is!” Mom wouldn’t stop. “I honestly don’t know what she sees in your brother. She will dump him now for sure… And then what will he do?”

  “Mom, he will be fine,” I said firmly. “Evan has been doing great. I’m sure he will do just fine with or without Lily. But I don’t think she would dump him over a job. She loves him, Mom, and he loves her too. They will figure it out.”

  “I don’t know, Angela, I don’t know. It’s just too much. I can’t take it anymore, it doesn’t end. One thing after another. Problems are everywhere! First Evan, then your dad’s health, and now the house…” Her voice cracked, and I realized that this was the first time she mentioned their financial problems to me over the phone, even if indirectly. Usually, she shared her fears of losing the house only in her monthly emails to me.