I buy the essentials: clean underwear, rewritable DVDs, disposable razors, cue tips, a new hairbrush, toothbrush, shoe brush, boot polish and five cans of leather refresher that makes the emo chick behind the counter raise her heavily-pierced eyebrow, an effort by itself, and she laughs gently and makes some joke about me having a fetish and because I’m a little high I just nod and leer and say, “Yes, Veronica, and that is not all I can do,” and successfully creep her out. If I had my mask on she would so be mine. I dig the purple highlights in her hair, the chalky face, the pubescent cleavage straining at the secretarial white button-up blouse the shop makes her wear. I think of Cusp and my daughter Tessa simultaneously and it’s not the most comfortable sensation I’ve had all week.
In front of a display of the latest holo-projection TVs, my Zephyr phone starts blurping and I look over my shoulder, knowing already I am going to risk it despite the mild shopping turbulence around me. I pile my things onto the carpeted step beneath one of the TVs showing news footage of the Pope setting down in Newark, and whoever it is on the other end of the phone, I cannot hear a fucking word they are saying. I cut the line and realize I have five text messages, three of them from Seeker about “team business,” one from the guy who still manages my web forum, and one from Streethawk, of all people, asking if the rumors are true that we’re putting together a new squad. Sorry Bruce, no homos allowed, is what I think to myself, and then catch myself on the television suddenly, brows crinkled as I ponder how exactly I turned out to be such a homophobic beeotch given my upbringing – and it’s disorienting trying to work out why I can see myself on the holoscreen until I realize a salesman is demonstrating a handicam to a bunch of East China tourists who look like they’ve never seen an electric light, let alone a HD camera.
The phone rings again. I put my finger in my other ear. It’s the guy from the web forum again, I can’t remember his name for the moment as he’s telling me something about an irate fan who keeps demanding he pass on a message about the end of the world. I give a good laugh – it’s not easy being Zephyr on the phone when I’m not in costume and I’m surrounded by other people – and I tell my little helper not to worry about it and I have a pretty good idea who it is. This is a lie, of course, but I am not about to go sweating the psychiatric foibles of every loser who finds himself at contactzephyr.com.nu(.)
On the regular televisions I see shaky footage of a guy in a wrestling suit straining like someone with a blocked ass and then he swells and blisters and grows to about the size of a small elephant and goes all red and angry-looking and the words COALFACE appears as the surface of his body blackens and cracks open like the mantle of a volcano and I have to admit to myself, that’s one nasty-looking motherfucker, and that’s why I am glad it appears to be just a TV show. I pick up my purchases and decide to go buzz the perfume section and see about buying an early birthday present for Tessa, marveling at my uncurtailed freedom and wondering where exactly it is that I’m going to sleep once Beth settles on the date for her taking back the apartment.
*
THE PHONE IS ringing while I take a dump and it’s not just my sullen alpha waves that mean I don’t move a muscle, letting it drone on and on and on, my thoughts a thousand miles away and the sky outside filling up with black ink.
Eventually the phone is quiet. I shower, do my “ablutions,” which is a term I guess writers of Stoker’s era used to avoid describing the messy business I clean off my knuckles with tissue paper the consistency of gauze wrap as I sigh, filled with discontentedness, and then stand at the wide bank of apartment windows gazing across the cityscape as night descends like an inexpertly hung stage curtain, staggering down unevenly but eventually consuming the whole thing in darkness until the audience, uncomfortable in their seats, shift and wonder what purpose this development, how does the staging match the set design in bringing forward the central themes of the piece, assuming an author somewhere, intentionality, a coherent structure, the inevitability of climax and resolution, only to find the circus has moved on and run off with the price of their admission.
My life, for the moment, lacks all of these details. When I go to dress, half-a-quart of milk gurgling in my stomach and a vague craving for Swedish meatballs unconquered, I realize my costume smells like a homeless man’s trolley. The comparative luxury of my situation affords me a clean outfit and the almost Japanese ritual of the process of costuming myself in leather and turning the old suit inside out and hanging it to air in the wallspace obscures the central fact I now have few reasons to dress like an ordinary person, that without those silently knowing figures so recently extracted from my life I am one hundred per cent superhero on call without much else to show for my existence.
While I might long for a different kind of normal, the feeling of familiarity and safety brought by my leather encasement is a comfort I might find hard to describe if I had to, if there was anyone else with which to share my thoughts except you, my phantasmal darling. Briefly I think of Cusp, Seeker, Vulcana, Devil Betty, handicam footage of my daughter and Shade turning pirouettes at Mach over the Silver Tower. While I admit I’m feeling sorry for myself, and it might be the comedown from self-medication making it such a drag, the tomb of the apartment and the desecration of my private life revealed by the bare refrigerator, strewn magazines and empty pizza boxes underlines the reality beneath my funk. I am no has-been when I am Zephyr, yet even slumping on the sofa and staring at the disconnected television, I am already moving imperceptibly back toward being that person who, in a parallel life, declined to climb the maddening tower and went on to live a plain, inglorious and altogether unremarkable life. Perhaps I would’ve been happier. Perhaps I could’ve kept Beth, though it’s questionable I could’ve wooed her in the first place without my lightning trick and incredible strength to seduce the girl she so quickly ceased to be upon our graduation. More likely I would’ve met some girl behind the desk of a pharmacy, a library, a video store, raised a brood of weird-looking children and continued on through ignominy to the anonymity of death.
Oh God.
In the bathroom, I contemplate my face in the mirror, my mask gone. Whatever fate awaited me – presuming the intersection of my life with that lightning bolt was anything other than kismet – the very fact of my existence is underwritten by my paternity. Electrical storm or no, whatever else, they tell me I am John Lennon’s son. The Preacher Man. Yet we look nothing alike. Or, almost nothing alike, unless there’s something I’m missing.
There is an iconic image of Lennon from the Summer Rebellion. I move through the apartment to my computer in the wallspace, many of my things in boxes in preparation for the move. Excel spreadsheets from Sal Doro’s disc about the Azzurro Corporation is open from my half-hearted review of the web of complex company structures and asset holdings that one of Sal’s journo colleagues inexplicably had to hand. It is quickly minimized as I pull up Firefox and perform an image search to get the picture I’m after. It’s just a few seconds between this and that, and then my alleged father’s face stares out at me, the Preacher Man bearded and cross-legged in a white linen robe with heavy beads around his neck, floating in the air over the writhing hordes of protesters and London bobbies with Perspex shields and grimaces marring their mustachioed faces. He has one hand raised above him and the word “stop” nascent on his lips. Distracted that moment by a cameraman, perhaps an inherited trait after all, he turns his face sixty degrees towards the viewer and unintentional immortality. Put that in your cosmic peace pipe and smoke it, grandpa.
I’m eating at my parents’ place tomorrow night. All will be revealed, I suppose.
I sigh and wish I had a cigarette and my eyes drift down the initial table of thumbnails from the internet search and I find myself looking at quite a different, but nonetheless familiar face.
My half-brother, Julian.
Zephyr 4.6 “A Tarantino Moment”
MY REVERIE EVAPORATES at the chirrup of the Zephyr phone. I snatch it quickly from my be
lt, but otherwise remain defeated in my rickety office chair.
“What is it?”
“Is that Zephyr? It’s Hallory O’Hagan from MMI.”
“Oh, Hallory, Christ, hello. Sorry. I was expecting someone else,” I lie.
“That’s cool. Where are you now?” she asks in her ever-effervescent voice.
“I’m, uh, actually outside some bad guys’ lair right as we speak.”
I grin, pained, the expression unpleasant.
“Talk about a Tarantino moment.”
Hallory titters.
“I guess it seems like a silly time to want to discuss figurines with you.”
“Hey, I get fanboys wanting to talk about my figurine all the time.”
“Well, it’s definitely time we revamped your line. It’s been, what, ten years?”
“Sure.” I shrug. “Those plastic fuckers last forever.”
“Okay,” Hallory replies with enough trepidation that even I can discern it. “Did you manage to talk about the line of dolls with the other Sentinels?”
“New Sentinels,” I correct her.
I’m pretty sure I blew the rights to the old team name in a poker game, though it is equally possible it was Mastodon who walked out the winner, taking with him the keys to Omeganaut’s Omegamobile (which he later crashed and sank in the bottom of the bay) and the rights to Aquanaut’s first-born child. Boy was that a night.
“Look,” I tell the hot redhead on the other end of the phone. “It’s still a little premature to discuss this. We haven’t actually finalized the team.”
“Really? I thought we were booking media for the launch next Friday?”
“Well, yeah. . . .”
“I might have some interesting feedback for you, then,” Miss O’Hagan continues unperturbed. “Focus groups have thrown up a few names you might want to consider.”
“For my . . . team?”
“Well, for the action figures, but yeah I guess they need to be on the team too so we can license them, right?”
“Okay,” I shrug, uncomfortable yet intrigued. “Who?”
“Shade, for starters.”
“Shade’s, like, British. From London.”
“We’re getting some very good numbers for her at the moment, and besides, you’ll need some diversity, right?”
“So they tell me.”
“What about Paragon and Jocelyn?”
“Jesus,” I hiss. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” Hallory asks. “Have you even heard the figures they’re talking for wedding pictures?”
“Let’s keep going down the list.”
“Cusp? I don’t even know who that is.”
“I’m working on it. Next?”
“Okay. Red Monolith.”
“He’s, uh . . . he’s dead.”
“Okay, well that’s not happening then. Do you think we could acquire a license from his estate? Sort of a, ‘friend of the New Sentinels’ angle?”
“Jesus, lady, I don’t know,” I stagger a sigh. “I’m beginning to think you could get a license to kill if one really existed.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says and I can practically hear her purr down the phone. She is so mine, even though it wasn’t meant as a compliment.
“Do you actually have any suggestions I can use?” I ask.
“Okay. Well how about Nocturne? If you can’t go with Shade, Nocturne’s another good colored option.”
“I don’t think we call them ‘colored’ any more,” I remark.
“I’ve got another idea, not sure what you’ll think about it.”
I scratch at my mask and realize I am still not wearing one.
“Go on.”
“The groups were indicating boys from eight all the way through to thirty-five were pretty keen on a modular, kind of transforming robot sort of guy,” Hallory says and barely drops pace as she continues with the spiel. “I’ve had production mock up a few costumes and the copy guys have suggested names: Contraption Man? Mr Roboto? Rocketman?”
“But I don’t know any . . . transforming robots . . . I don’t think.”
“I guess that’s the point,” Hallory says. “You could think of it like meeting your obligations to equally represent minorities on the team. Have you asked yourself, do you have the machine world covered?”
“Honey, I don’t think the machines have a lobby group we need to worry about, unless they’re armed. . . .”
I think briefly at this juncture about Think Tank.
“Next thing you’ll be making suggestions for a fucking superhero with Down’s Syndrome or something. It’s not happening, OK?”
“Zephyr, the numbers are really good.”
“I’m sure they are,” I say.
She waits a beat. “Even for a disabled person, we’re getting feedback that there’s a lot of angles as far as accessories go, there’s even a synergy between the robot guy.”
“There is no robot guy!”
“Only because you’re being so negative about it.”
“Christ, Hallory,” I say, sounding spent. “You know I love you and everything, but you have to listen to what you’re saying here. The two members of my team you’re most interested in don’t exist, and maybe they’re having an affair together? The robot guy and the girl with mechanical legs?”
“It’s not a bad idea.”
“I’m hanging up now. I’ll fax you the final roster when I get the licenses signed off.”
A gravid silence hangs between us. I don’t know if I’m sympathetic just because I want to get into her pants, but I feel guilty about chewing Hallory out and there’s nothing but embarrassed, possibly sullen vibes emanating back down the phone line.
“I’d green light the Red Monolith toy, though,” I say reluctantly. “He would’ve liked that.”
“Cool,” Miss O’Hagan comes back. “I’ll courier you over some new concept art. Where should I, uh, do that?”
“No concept art,” I snap. “He wore red and black, with yellow panels under his arms. And a motorbike helmet, damn it.”
I snap the phone shut and jam it back into its purse hard. I’m fuming with anger and yet mostly I’m just annoyed at myself. I consider annihilating the TV and instead exercise just a modicum of control, giving it enough spark to power it on. The widescreen resolves into a picture of British actors picketing the skyscraper where the Union Jacks have their base. Seeker’s vanishing fortress is certainly a better deal than a headquarters where even a bunch of freakin’ thespianoids can manage to find you. As the small crowds wave their placards, Protector himself appears – the third British mask to bear that name – and tries to settle the crowd with an inaudible speech that soon turns to violence. It’s not a good look as he jets through the crowd bowling women and policemen over, bottles smashing the glass façade of the building lobby. I reflect on an image of his teammate Lionheart, last time he was in Atlantic City, with a beard of puke dribbling from his chin into some stripper’s lap.
I glare at the screen throughout a twelve-minute commercial break, promos for American Hero, Celebrity Heroes, Heroes: Where Are They Now, You Can Be A Hero, Heroes Unlimited, Arena Heroes, Down And Out In Atlantic City and London, and a cooking show with some raven-haired British bint who eyes the camera insouciantly and looks like she’s licking up cum as she devours a mess of chocolate cake and cream on a child’s-sized spoon.
A newsbreak live from the NBN chopper shows some ridiculously buff dude with black hair and a gold cape fucking around the top of the Silver Tower, seemingly inspecting the array of antennae and digital receivers. NBN splices in some of the free-to-air feed Chancel himself provides, giving a fish-eye lensed view of the stranger up close, a furrow to his otherwise fine, completely unfamiliar features.
It’s enough for me. I’m angry and already dressed. I press my mask into place and stomp through to the wallspace and the open window and basically throw myself out and plunge into the glimmering dusk.
&nbs
p; *
IT’S ONLY A couple of seconds across the city at the speed I’m travelling. Golden Boy hears me coming and turns as I use the concrete ledge as a brake and snarl, “Who the fuck are you?” as the news copter whirrs around for a new angle.
The other guy has about half-a-foot on me, which isn’t anything unusual as I’ve explained before. I’m just ordinary height. He has shoulders like a bull, black hair in a sort of Imperial Roman cast, a gold circlet around his brows matched by the cape and little sandals. His arms and legs are bare, the rest of him in a clinging reddish blouse, thick belt and trunks.
“A spiritu fornicationis, Domine, libera nos,” he chuckles. “This-a question, it is rhetorical, no?”
“What?”
The foreigner smiles and next thing I know there is immense pain in my chest as eye-beams lance through me. I lose all strength and drop from the air – not a good thing when we’re about forty floors from the ground – and it is only rebounding off the hard concrete ledge that jolts me back into awareness long enough to grab for a hand-hold. Meanwhile, the dude in the cape gives a final once-over to the audio-visual apparatus on the outside of the tower, glances at me, and then rockets heavenward.
I’m a ruin. I only just manage to roll onto the ledge and lay there for long seconds with the smell of my own cooked bacon filling the air despite the competing cross-winds. The news helicopter turns around and a megaphoned voice booms my name a few times before I manage to sit up, gasping, actually trying not to break into tears of embarrassed, pained frustration as I probe the wound to my chest in disbelief.
“Who the hell was that?”
The leather is scorched and peeling and basically destroyed. Likewise for the top-most layers of my skin and pectoral muscle. It hurts like a motherfucker and if it wasn’t for my own persistent physiognomy I’d be winging my way to the ER right now. All I know is I need to get somewhere private and strip down. Victim of my own adventures as I have been so many times these past years, I’m a veteran at this routine and manage to get to my feet without much more than wincing. I remember once seeing a Canadian hero called Manowar do the same thing after a few of Cogito’s goons triple-teamed us with some of these industrial lasers he’d whipped into weapons. Poor bastard didn’t realize he’d been nearly cut in half by the beams and stood only to watch his intestines and liver pour onto the ground. I think somehow he lived, though he’s been institutionalized ever since. I guess you don’t adjust easy to seeing your insides in the dirt.
Zephyr II Page 4