“I’m not sure that’s necessary.”
I look at Seeker and give her a pretty open, what-do-you-say kind of signal.
“The team, the New Sentinels, we could do with an experienced occult adventurer,” she says.
The brass robot turns his head unerringly back to me.
“Or a transforming robot, eh what, Zephyr?”
That’s pretty much the moment I realize he’s in.
Zephyr 4.8 “Male-Reinforcement Rituals”
THE WALLACHIAN FORTRESS deposits us in New Central Park and Seeker and I stroll across the crusty grass and over the three bridges over the main lake. Overhead, a remodeled biplane chugs across the sky dragging a banner that reads CSI NEW ZEALAND – STARTS MONDAY 8PM EASTERN. Some homeless guys are playing Frisbee and a small dog gnaws at the half-frozen remains of a mallard. Two park rangers on horseback eye the scene with beatific smiles, their radios providing additional background chatter.
“So we’re set?”
“A team of seven, huh?” I remark. “You’re sure about the robot?”
“He said to call him Tom.”
“Thomas O’Clock, what kind of fucking name is that?”
“Do you have better?”
I consider suggesting Contraption Man, but think better of it. Instead I shrug, surrendering to this one. Seeker looks jaunty, spritely and pleased. I tell her I’m surprised Magus himself didn’t sign up for the team and she says nothing until we’ve crossed the final arch and stop at the iron gates onto Elm Avenue, which leads on to downtown Jackson.
“I think Simon Magus has troubles enough of his own without signing up for the New Sentinels, Zephyr. Don’t feel jilted.”
“Jilted? Christ, whatever gives you that idea?”
Seeker gives one of her sweeter smiles and shrugs, a knowing laugh playing merriment behind her eyes as she turns.
“Four days to go,” she says. “You think we can keep it secret that long?”
I blink. “Oh, that reminds me of something.”
“Zephyr!” she gasps. “You’re not going to break the news early, are you?”
“Oh hey,” I lie. “No, I was thinking about my costume. That Italian dude burnt a hole in one of my new suits.”
“Who was that guy?”
“I dunno,” I reply. “Some crazy.”
“Some ‘crazy’ with scarily effective eye-beams,” Seeker says slowly. “I guess we’ll be hearing from him again.”
My reply is distant and disinterested. I’m thinking about our afternoon, our new 150-year-old teammate and his comments skirting my own secret history.
O’Clock outlined how he’d been created by Edison, but it was the immortal sorcerer Simon Magus who first found a soul for him. The robot had actually used the Holmes-Watson analogue to explain his period as the magician’s sidekick and then the time through the 1890s when the Western Empire very nearly fell to the Chinese as part of the aforementioned Shadow War. The resolution of that conflict remains a mystery to all those involved still alive today, since at the key cataclysmic moment it required history to be rewritten, and all the minds involved were wiped in the process. The Victorian Empire began to ail along with its monarch, but at least the Ghost Emperor in the East failed in his cross-continental coup.
The robot and his mentor parted ways for large tracts of the Twentieth Century. There was an earnestness, a strange honesty in the way the mechanical being comported himself. We could sense his ennui, his yearning to return to the “real world” from Simon Magus’s idyllic, but utterly yawnsome Nirvana. He is an arcane robot, a thing of equal parts magic and science and possessed of the soul of some formless astral being Magus referred to as a Ki-Rin. I’m sure that’s just an analogy. The guy seems keen on them, but then maybe he’s been staying with the Chi Worshippers too long.
I bid Seeker adieu and there’s a weird moment where we touch fingers and my sexy, strange, remote teammate bites her peach-ripe lip and drops her eyes, and into that moment I drop an awkward cough and say, “Okay, bye,” and do the crouch thing. Six trillion light globes or whatever and I’m damned if I can work out what’s going on.
*
I WANTED DINNER to be at a restaurant because people always say it’s hard for someone to make a scene if you hold a difficult discussion in public. I lost the vote and now with Tessa in my company, I book a cab and there’s an awkward moment downstairs when Elisabeth and my daughter arrive in the back of one of the law firm’s town cars and Beth and I just stare at each other as Tessa scurries free with an overnight bag. I’m about to say something when Beth veers back to the black chauffeur and instructs him to go on to the airport, she’s got a conference in Dallas, she doesn’t even blink as the tinted glass slides back into place and the car rolls on without a word spoken between us. There’s something a few shades short of hatred in that exchange-that-is-not-an-exchange, a new low for us, or maybe I’m just a slow learner because this is the woman who wants to divorce me, after all.
It’s not with me that Tessa’s staying. The grandmothers have wrangled some time with their girl and I guess it was a) convenient for Beth, given the business trip, and b) a better option than leaving our daughter with me. We don’t have any legal agreement yet, which is one of the reasons why my ex hasn’t turfed me out of the apartment. I figure an end to that is only days away, though now I’ve cleared a path to some temporary digs, at least, even if they will just confirm my lack of a real life.
“I’m gonna get changed,” Tessa says as she bounds with youthful enthusiasm up the stairs to our eighth-floor apartment.
“Hold on,” I say, still in the foyer and pressing the button for the lift like it’s a cigarette butt that won’t go out. “You look fine as is. A cab’s coming. I thought we could just go from here.”
Tessa eyes me with stupefied disbelief. Her mouth hangs open and she somehow manages to capture the right mix of disbelief and ridicule with her eyes despite her expression making her resemble a young retarded foreign child.
“Dad. Come on. You can’t be serious.”
The girl is in a new wardrobe: designer jeans, knee-high calfskin boots, a Gucci jacket and forest green blouse by Zara. Her mother is throwing more money at her than ever. It’s like her company heard she was up for a divorce and are rewarding her for dumping me.
“Tessa, what is it, honey? You can show off your other clothes when you stay.”
“These?” The girl plucks at the shirt with disdain. “Mum’s trophies? Or maybe I’m the trophy. I wasn’t talking about changing these.”
“OK, what were you talking about then?” I ask. “I’m confused.”
Tessa glances around for spies and drops down the steps to come back close to me, expression morphing like a panther, at once coquettish and coy.
“Dad,” she half-whispers. “Come on. I was thinking we could fly to Queens. What do you say?”
“You want to get changed into costume?”
“Yes!”
“Honey, it’s a school night.”
“Oh come on dad,” Tessa says, the breath exploding from her gasp.
I glance at a watch I don’t actually own.
“The cab will be here any minute.”
“Screw the cab.”
“Hey watch your language,” I scowl and the lift opens and our neighbors, people who shunned us like we were AIDS victims or from tribal Rwanda since the first day we moved in, they flatten themselves to the far side and exit with their faces down.
Through the glass door I watch the cab pull in to the curb outside. Tessa looks at me, the whole teenager pleading thing going into overdrive and I sigh and hang my head, and thinking about the guy with the eye-beams again not for the first time that day, mutter something about regretting this decision later as I step into the lift and try and remember if I’ve worn my third costume yet and in fact if I even have one.
*
IN THE SKIES over Atlantic City, Windsong and I are World War II fighter planes, swerving and dipping and putting on the
speed as we dodge over the open water, the big friendly moon throwing our mirrored selves across the dappled surface as we streak toward Queens. Each time the girl catches up to me I add another burst of speed, curious to know how far she can go, and when finally we hit Mach I draw alongside to catch her squealing delight as she tests herself and her limits to see what sort of speed she can reach.
I drop back, a snaking discharge of electrical energy crackling at her heels as incentive to pour on yet more speed as she hurtles close enough to the water now that it creates a trench. Next thing we are crossing land again, Astoria close, and by silent agreement we abandon our game and come down amid the trees that aren’t so leafy any more. Tessa is breathing heavily and she wraps her arms around my leather-clad frame as we duck into the shadows of the driveway and she rests her head against my shoulder, quite unable to speak with a wonderfully adolescent mix of adrenalin, exhaustion and wonder. I can’t help savoring the moment and smooth back her wind-tousled hair, the smell of lemon and cinnamon inexplicably clinging to it, my hand on her leather jacket’s hip as she grins up at me in a smile caught in full radiance by the gibbous moon.
“That’s the fastest I’ve ever gone,” she whispers.
“And how did it feel?”
“Amazing,” she says and gulps, taking a few more breaths. “But you’re faster, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been doing this longer,” I say and smile, proud in my own way as she recovers her breath sufficient to stagger off a few paces and I follow, we’re rounding into the back yard and pulling our street clothes free.
“I’m just going to, uh, change,” Tessa says and motions to the garden shed.
I nod all patriarchal-like and walk casually, drunk with the moment, up to the vine-encrusted greenhouse and my old familiar change station.
Minutes later we’re admitted through the back door into the rosy glow of George and Max’s kitchen. A roast drizzled with vindaloo spices sizzles in the oven and we exchange air kisses and chatter chirpily and try not to think about the recent troubles as Tessa and I file into the house and remark heartily on how nice and warm it is inside and my two mothers smile and observe our chastened, wind-chilled faces and say nothing except to put the kettle on.
“How are you feeling after that madman attacked you, Joe?” Max asks.
“Grandma,” Tessa laughs, “I actually think it was dad who attacked him!”
“Hey, thank you very much,” I respond with mock tenderness. “Thanks for your concern, honey. No I’m fine, mom. Fine. I guess he just got the jump on me.”
“Let me see your chest,” Georgia brogues and fusses forward and starts helping herself to the third and second buttons of the cheap long-sleeve I’m wearing until I bat her off, hands on her wrists as I try and imagine the steel in her eyes once, the cat mask and the flames trickling through her fingers ready to punish the wrongdoers of the night – but I can’t picture it.
At that moment my heavyset old ma being one of Old New York’s defenders seems about as remote as my own childhood. I couldn’t tell you if they read to me, if I had blocks or plastic cowboys or played armies in the sand dunes on seaside holidays because the whole thing’s a blur, man. Is that just me? I hope not. Let me not be alone in my eidetic anesthesia.
Georgia fusses with her fisherman’s knit pullover like she can read my mind, though she also tuts dismissively and moves across to the oven and slips on mitts to check the roast despite her own immunity, half-a-lifetime’s masquerade now just reflex.
“Och, ‘tis such a shame. You had the most gorgeous nipples as a boy, didn’t he, Maxie?”
“He did,” Maxine, who I’d otherwise call “the sensible one,” says with all the pomp and ceremony of the queen herself.
“Get off it,” I mutter as Tessa laughs and discovers a chocolate cake concealed beneath a towel and gives a titter.
They start preparing the table for dinner and there’s a lull, if not a black hole in the conversation into which we all pitch, the inevitable now looming like a kind of death itself ahead of us in the night.
“The meat smells, uh, good,” I manage.
“Yeah,” Tessa says. “Is that curry?”
“It’s an Indian recipe,” Max says stiffly. “That shop on Breaker and Vine, do you know it?”
No, we don’t know the Indian deli on Breaker and Vine, but we nod our heads like automata and focus so hard on the table it’s like we’re afraid it’s going to sprout wings and fly in to attack us. George places the roast on a platter in the middle and turns, ceremonial-like, and passes me the knife.
“Your mom said we never did include enough male-reinforcement rituals for you growing up, Joseph,” she says slowly. “How about you be a good lad and carve?”
I take the heavy knife and consider pitching it into my neck. Instead, I furnish the anticipated grin, an olive branch, as the diners slowly take their seats and we take yet more steps toward the moment I have been heading towards my whole life.
Zephyr 4.9 “Cover The Mirrors”
“YOUR FATHER WAS the one who thought differently to the others. The idea man, he was,” Georgia says eventually.
The dissertation starts without preamble or request. Perhaps it was me asking for the mint sauce. I don’t know, but she has a faraway look in her eyes I don’t want to disturb, like it requires some sort of channeling for this story to be told and well, perhaps in a way that’s true.
“He came to New York for a break from London. Things were too intense there. The Wolfman had died. Protector killed him, you’d know all about that. It’s high school history – well, not high school history, but for feck’s sake perhaps it should be.
“You’d think a man of John’s caliber would come to New York and be engaged in non-stop, you know, superhuman battles.”
She sighs and rolls her eyes and gives a fey laugh.
“Sorry love, it’s just at my age the whole thing comes to sound a little childish.”
“No offence. Go on,” I say, mesmerized.
“Well anyway, he didn’t. He locked himself in a hotel room with this strange Japanese woman he’d met at a party in Soho and he was already way into the yoga and tantric magic and meditation and, you know, weird stuff with your breathing and all that. He believed it helped him reach a higher plane and be even more powerful. That part must be true, when you consider all the surviving Beatles came back from India stronger than they’d been before. Just look at George these days, just appearing at random all over England whenever he wants to. He was just a garden variety telekinetic, you know, back in the day. It took him a week’s energy to transport them, the whole team, anywhere.
“John locked himself in that room with that mad bitch and her crazy ideas, stuff that would’ve made Hitler turn in his grave only she was Japanese, so it didn’t seem like racism to talk about eugenics and human evolution like ordinary human beings were cattle. That combined with the way his studies were letting his powers grow – he had men bring in a grand piano and he taught himself how to play in a month, never wearing anything more than a bed-sheet –”
“I remember the footage,” I say.
“Well it all seemed so innocent then. ‘Hair peace’ for cryin’ out loud.”
“What happened?” I ask, the others at the table silent, like statues. “How did you meet?”
“There was a party,” she says and smiles, eyes lowered, and Max puts a hand over hers to show her it’s alright, I guess, that she knobbed a bloke. “He was gorgeous and famous and something about his aura then, so powerful. I wasn’t the only one interested, but I was the only one he spoke to. The Japanese witch had gone. Her name was Ono, which sounds about right. She had powers too, just disappeared into the shadows he said, though of course that was a lie. She was probably with us the whole time, encouraging him, urging him on.”
“That seems pretty heavy. She died, didn’t she?”
“So they say,” Georgia replies and sniffs like it’s obviously no big loss to her. “Poison
ed him, she did. Oh well. He was half-gone in his mind already only we never knew it. Certainly not me, young and randy, I’m sorry love, my name in the papers and every night a new club opening or a crime lord to raid or something else to do. It was a heady time. I’m sure you’ve had your fair share.”
“Go on.”
“Well he gave me you,” she says hesitantly. “Sorry Joe, it’s corny I know –”
“And stop speaking in rhymes.”
“I didn’t know at the time I wasn’t the only one who spent time with John during that period,” my mother goes on like my wisecracks are nothing, which is to say it’s situation normal around here. “I don’t know if it was part of the Plan or not, considering it wasn’t, you know, until before the Kirlians that he even tried the whole Doomsday Man thing.”
“Plan?”
“It’s what he called it,” Georgia says.
“Called what?”
“Well, having you,” she says in a way that totally creeps me out, chills flushing down my body hard enough to make me stand, covering my distraction by a brisk walk to the kettle for a refill.
“You and all the other children. All your brothers and sisters.”
I drop the kettle and stare hard at the floor, the expanding pool of distilled water as good as blood for all I care. When I look up there are tears pouring silently down both their faces and Tessa, like the young saint she is, scurries across to right the kettle and refill it and put it back on to boil.
*
I SIT HEAVILY at the table and try not to fry anything.
“Tell me more about what you said: about my brothers and sisters.”
“Half-brothers and sisters,” Maxine says from somewhere to the side, perhaps half-a-million or so miles away.
“You were born in, what was it, ‘77 Joe?”
“That’s right, ma.”
“So you must’ve been six by then. We had that little place in Walden Park, I don’t know if you remember it?”
“I remember the oak tree.”
Zephyr II Page 6