Broke and Famous

by Elizabeth Gannon

  Her mistakes had gotten her a permanent and inescapable membership in The Window Seat Tribe.

  Her mother had been right: there was no getting free once you joined that particular organization. It was better to just end yourself.

  She gave the young officer behind the desk a tired but polite smile, and took the bag of her personal belongings from him without a word.

  He frowned at her for a moment. “You look familiar…” He began.

  “She used to be on staff with the Horizons Academy.” The second officer answered, knowing that Sasha had been a faculty member at the main training center for superheroes. “And let’s just say the fact that she was ‘Director of Student Affairs’ there, was rather ironic.” He snorted in cruel amusement at his own joke.

  Sasha wasn’t surprised that he recognized her. She’d grown up in Reichelt Park, so she was used to everything she did being everyone else’s business. It was the central fact of life in that neighborhood. The community was a quaint little corner of the otherwise busy New York City, southwest of Van Cleef Square, nestled near the river. It was mostly overlooked by modernity and the outside world… but it had more than its share of secrets. Its residents stayed to themselves and generally distrusted outsiders, but at the same time, they had the all-consuming drive to gossip about their neighbors. As such, the fact that this man knew of Sasha’s life and was openly mocking it, just reminded Sasha of the small community which had once been her home.

  It was not a welcomed association. She’d moved to Central City to avoid remembering that place.

  “Oh, wow!” The other officer blinked at her in surprise, recognizing her now. “Sure, I know you! You’re one of the Westgates, right? I mean, the Westgates?” He nodded in confirmation of his own question. “Sure, sure, I remember seeing you guys on TV all the time back when you were announcing your inventions and sharing cool pics of the crazy dimensions you’d visited. Jesus, you guys were huge when I was young.” His brows drew together in confusion. “Whatever happened to you?”

  Sasha blinked at him for a moment, made a show of looking around the interior of the jail and then back to him, the answer to his question really being self-evident.

  The officer made an understanding “Ah” sound, and then went back to his paperwork.

  “Maybe if you could stop killing innocent people with your creepy fucking inventions…” The second officer whispered under his breath. “World don’t need to be any more complicated than it is, if you ask me. Every time one of you fucking eggheads dreams something up, it just ends up making things worse for the rest of us.”

  He tried to push her towards the door, but Sasha instead turned to watch him, her face an expressionless mask. She calmly reached into her purse and the officer tensed, expecting her to retrieve some kind of space-age weapon or horrible scientific creation which would melt his skin into a puddle.

  Instead, she pulled out a screwdriver, and then leaned over the first officer’s desk to fix the drawer for him.

  She’d always been good at fixing things. Well… everything except her own life, obviously. She’d failed completely at that.

  She demonstrated that the drawer now functioned correctly, smiled politely at the first officer again, and then calmly walked from the station and out into the blazing sun.

  “Thank you!” The first officer called after her. “That was…”

  The door shut behind her, cutting off whatever the man had been about to say.

  Sasha let out a long shaky breath, alone for the first time in months.

  It was good to finally be by herself. It was like her brain was once again back up and running, after being preoccupied for years with terrible husbands and guards and fellow inmates. Not that she had really been doing much with her brain these last few years, but it felt good anyway.

  Sasha wasn’t a genius who was ahead of her time; Sasha was a genius who always seemed to be 5 or 10 years too late. She invented things which would have revolutionized the world had she created them earlier. As it was, they were already outdated or unneeded by the time she thought them up. Still arguably impressive, just obsolete. Like… imagine if tomorrow you created a machine which could produce VHS tapes at 1/10th the cost, in half the time, and with twice the quality? It was kind of like that.

  Sasha was obsolete. She could feel it. Her life was meaningless.

  The world had gotten out in front of her and she just couldn’t catch up.

  Which was a pretty solid checkmark in the “Sasha would be better off killing herself because she could never accomplish anything as worthwhile as her ancestors did” column.

  The Westgates were legends. Sasha was a cautionary tale.

  She’d failed her brother, she’d failed her parents, she’d failed her friends, she’d failed…

  She let out a frustrated breath, not even wanting to think about that particular black mark on her soul.

  But she’d failed him too. Horribly. And she knew it.

  Of all of her many mistakes… she regretted that one the most. It tormented her daily.

  It had ruined her life.

  The heat wasn’t helping either. She wiped a hand across her forehead— which was already wet with perspiration despite the fact she’d only been outside for a moment— wishing that she’d been arrested while wearing a hat. She could already feel her face beginning to burn.

  Not that she would really consider suicide over something as trivial as the weather, but it certainly wasn’t helping her overall mood.

  The air was still and heavy, and the afternoon sun was beating down on Central City, burning this town like it was a sinner in Hell.

  Sasha had never liked the heat. It made her mind feel foggy and her body feel anxious. The heat seemed to get inside you, making you think about nothing else but how hot and sweaty you were, and how much you just wanted to strip off all your clothes and escape.

  It was impossible to think about anything but the heat and your own body when it was this hot.

  It made the days long and the people savage.

  She’d grown up in New York City, where the climate was slightly less oppressive, but hot or not, she’d never be going back there again. Sasha had washed her hands of all of that when she’d run away from her old life and married Jacob Michaels.

  In retrospect, that had been a mistake. She’d been young and stupid and emotional. She could see that now. It had taken years of pain and a pending criminal charge against her to fully understand it, but she accepted that.

  In either case though, it didn’t make her situation in New York any better.

  There was almost a thousand miles of distance between her former home and here, and it still wasn’t far enough in her opinion.

  Thus, Sasha had no one and nothing. Her bank accounts were all empty, thanks to Jacob, who had used her paltry inheritance to buy himself meth and lap-dances, not always in that order. She’d been evicted from her apartment, and there wasn’t a single science institution in the world which would dare give her something to do.

  She had no prospects, no friends, and nowhere to spend the night. Her inventing muse had long ago abandoned her, she was facing some very serious charges which could potentially send her to prison for the remainder of her life, and “the remainder of her life” wasn’t nearly as long as it had once been.

  She’d lost everything. Even herself.

  And she had no plans.

  That should have worried her, but instead it just provided yet another tally in her half-hearted list of reasons for suicide.

  Sasha Westgate had long ago disappeared from the world anyway, so it wasn’t like anyone would even notice her absence. She’d basically been invisible for years. That’s what happened when you joined The Window Seat Tribe.

  But, on the other hand, at least she had something to wear while wandering the streets, penniless, hated, and alone.

  The police had been kind enough to take almost all of her meager belongings into custody too, undoubtedly to l
ook for evidence, but since everything else she owned had most likely been tossed out by her former landlord, it was a welcomed courtesy.

  She took a moment to reorganize her things, moving them out of the cardboard boxes and evidence bags which were piled next to the door of the jail. Everything she owned now fit into one suitcase, which was a yellowish tan color, and was from 1961. Most everything Sasha owned was from that era, from her clothes to her luggage. She even did her hair in vintage style. Not because the ‘60s had any special meaning to her, just because she liked the look. She thought it fit her personality quite well. Her entire family had always been that way. They all typically dressed like they were from another era. But Sasha saw nothing odd about that at all. It simply was what it was. Anything else would have been crazy, and she didn’t even think about it.

  The sticker on the side of her suitcase was the old mid-century mod Westgate Foundation logo; the familiar blue slanted W in intersecting purple ovals, atop a background of round crackly grey circles.

  Seeing the symbol struck her like a physical blow.

  She deliberately avoided thinking about her family’s old company, because it brought up a lot of memories she would just as soon forget. But, on the other hand, it was either use the suitcase or pack everything up in trash bags, so it wasn’t like she had much of a choice.

  She didn’t have any trash bags at the moment.

  Hefting up the heavy vintage suitcase in her lace gloved hand, Sasha started walking down the street in her scuffed white heels, without bothering to recognize the fact that she had no destination. In her mind, having no destination was no excuse for arriving there late.

  She rounded a corner, eyes searching for some kind of cheap hotel which would hopefully accept vintage plastic jewelry or major science awards in lieu of money. Perhaps she’d be able to barter with the proprietor and…

  “Afternoon, Miss Sasha.”

  Sasha stopped dead in her tracks, hearing a ghost from her past. Like all ghosts, its appearance was unwelcome and terrifying, but at the same time… sad. It instantly made her want to cry, but she wasn’t sure why.

  She didn’t even need to turn around to know who the voice belonged to though. It was unmistakable.

  The familiar odd accent, with its deep almost mechanical rumbling quality. Sasha’s brother Kurtz sometimes used to refer to the man’s accent as “Robo-Cajun,” and it seemed to fit as well as anything else.

  Thraex.

  Her alleged step-brother. But she would NEVER think of him that way.

  In fact, in recent years, she endeavored not to think about him at all.

  He was an inescapable maze of a man.

  After they’d found him, Sasha had spent dozens of hours with Thraex and Mrs. Eugenia Crandall-Davenport, the esteemed communications professor Sasha’s father had brought in to teach Thraex English, morals, human etiquette, elocution, and cordiality. The boy had basically been feral when her family had brought him to this dimension, so such lessons were an absolute necessity. The old woman had tried to make Thraex a gentleman, but he’d ignored everything she taught him, with the exception of picking up the woman’s southern accent and adopting a mocking parody of her concept of what it meant to be a “good Southern gentleman.”

  Unable to deal with his behavior and recognizing that fancy teachers weren’t the answer, the Westgates had then foisted him off on their Cajun housekeeper, Edmee “Maman” Thibodeaux, who had also failed in her attempts at putting a leash on the boy. It seemed to Sasha that the woman spent most of her life trying to keep Thraex and his mother in line, but it was a hopeless prospect. The only real impact the outspoken old woman had on him was the occasional Cajun word finding its way into his vocabulary, and a very strong work ethic... provided it was work he wanted to do. Otherwise, Thraex just seemed to run wild, unable to be tamed by anyone or anything.

  The whole situation was ridiculous, of course. But still, it meant that the Westgates had had the world’s only extra-dimensional ward who talked like an android Doc Holiday.

  Thraex was not from here. He was nothing like the Westgates or any of their upstanding, scientifically-minded friends.

  He was from somewhere a whole lot meaner and a hell of a lot scarier.

  His sudden reappearance in her life made her throat dry and her heart start to pound in her chest. He’d always made her feel that way. Like she’d just run a marathon, while at the same time somehow transforming into a 15 year old who said extraordinarily stupid things.

  “…Thraex.” She got out hoarsely in acknowledgement of the man, willing herself to remain calm and ignore her pulse which was suddenly pounding in her ears.

  The man was casually leaning against a black luxury sedan to her left, hands in his pockets. The cruel lines of his face contorted into something which would resemble a smile, were it not so harsh. He looked up at the sky and the unyielding sun, shielding his eyes with his large hand. The blinding sunlight glinted slightly on his vaguely metallic skin, producing a bluish glow. “My, sure is fixin’ to be a hot one today, inn-it, chère?” He let out a long, low whistle, eyes moving from the sky to her, where they lingered, running down her body. “Mighty hot, sure enough.” He added a beat later, deliberately talking about her now.

  Like all of the people from his dimension, Thraex had the coloring and expressiveness of one of the Easter Island heads. When she was younger, it had fascinated her, but now it just kinda pissed her off for some reason. The man’s skin was the color of burnished steel, with the changing angles and plains seeming to glow a bluish color, like a film negative or old neon. Some kind of bioluminescence or interplay with the sun in this dimension, which she’d never been able to figure out. Whatever its source, it drew your attention to the impressive shape of him. …Whether you wanted to look or not.

  It was actually kind of pretty. She’d always found it fascinating. But he was absolutely the LAST person in the world—or in any alternate dimension she’d ever visited—who she wanted to see right now.

  His face was characteristically implacable and mysterious, but his eyes had always been a different story. His eyes were deep set and sparkled like black opals at the best of times. And since this was not the best of times, his eyes were currently embroiled in a furious shifting rainbow of glowing emotion. The people of his dimension were like mood rings: you could almost always tell what they were thinking based on the color their eyes displayed. In their own dimension, it probably wasn’t much of a problem, since everything in their world was greyscale and red. There literally was no color in his homeland. But once you got him here, and colors entered the picture, you could read his eyes like a book.

  She was very out of practice at it, sadly, and she had no idea what the shifting colors currently swirling through his eyes meant.

  She could guess though. And her estimation of his thoughts made her want to slap him. But Thraex was the kind of man that any well-bred woman would feel like slapping after a few minutes. There was nothing close to “gentleman” about him.

  She looked him up and down, surprised that he’d cleaned his act up in the years since she’d last seen him. She was used to Thraex wearing stained workman’s overalls and going barefoot, forever doing odd jobs around the Westgate Foundation building for her father.

  The bastard child of a penniless concubine from another dimension, most people had written Thraex off as a charity case who the Westgates had taken in out of the goodness of their hearts. But within a few years of living in this dimension, Thraex and his mother had ended up with everything the Westgates had. And he wanted more.

  Now he was wearing a suit which appeared to cost more than Sasha’s considerable education.

  The sight was akin to seeing a tiger in a business suit and then trying to have a casual conversation with it. It was unusual and not something which seemed natural. And you spent the entire time waiting for the tiger to maul someone, then nonchalantly lope away to take a nap in the shade someplace.

  A tiny piec
e of her was now acutely aware of the fact that her own clothes were fraying and that she hadn’t brushed her teeth this morning.

  And the fact that she was now feeling self-conscious about her appearance around Thraex of all people, just confirmed how far she’d fallen. She had spent years of her life believing that the man didn’t even own a shirt.

  On some level, she recognized that she should be happy that he was doing well and had been able to add to the fortune he’d inherited from her father, but she had heard rumors about how the man had earned his money. The hideous things he had done for the Freedom Squad, before they’d finally been stopped. But the bloodstains didn’t show on his solid black and impeccably tailored suit. And he seemed to have no qualms about spending their blood money.

  Thraex simply was what he was, and much to the frustration of the Westgates, he had never given a good goddamn what the world told him to be.

  “One thing I’ve never gotten used to about this dimension, chère?” The younger man intoned, like their years of separation hadn’t happened and they were calmly conversing at the beauty parlor over a glass of iced tea. “The seasons. Makes no sense to me why the temperature changes all the damn time. Ya ask me, this’a real messed up dimension you folks have got here. You need to talk to someone ‘bout that and see if you can’t get it sorted out right. Why, I was just tellin’ my mama the other day, I said…”

  “What do you want, Thraex?” She cut him off, trying to keep her voice steady.

  He took on a hurt expression. “Can’t a fella just pay a call on an old friend?”

  “Is that what we were?” She arched an eyebrow. “Friends?”

  To her surprise, he quickly prowled closer, looming over her until she was entirely in the shadow created by his large body. The temperature dropped noticeably now that she was in the shade and not the blazing sun, but then again, when that man walked by, it always felt like the room got colder. He wasn’t a warm soul. He was dangerous, alien, and forbidden.