Zephyr II

by Warren Hately

  And the summer dies and the papers speculate about the mystery disappearance of the young hero, the myth of Zephyr just starting to gather pace.

  *

  I CRUISE JERSEY for a week before I even admit to what I am doing. The whole time Hawkwind’s tailing me, though I only learn that later.

  The ornery old bastard calls in Streetsweeper, dead from HIV these long years now, and then sits on the roof of an old cannery and watches the super-strong brawler hand me my ass four or five times before there’s a whistle and Streetsweeper drops his guard to give me that rich mahogany grin of his and I deck the prick and stand panting and triumphant while Hawkwind appears to scold me like the surrogate parent he eventually becomes.

  “Go easy on Sweep, Zephyr. That little performance was for my benefit,” Hawkwind says as he strides across the empty lot, the whole area just a rusting amusement park for rats and looters, the people moved to new homes in Grant and Harding in the last of the Kirlian relocations.

  Hawkwind wears his trademark brown get-up, the avian cloak, scaled armor over his chest and shoulders and a mask that includes goggles and a hard curve of beak over his many-times-broken nose. Streetsweeper gets up from where I dropped him, grinning still and rubbing his broken jaw as it slowly knits back into place. His skin is the color of carpet underlay and he stands about six-ten, carrying maybe four hundred pounds.

  These guys are strictly what I’d call low grade. At least that’s what I’d say today. When I was nineteen and only about two-thirds the power I commanded at my peak, their age and experience and sheer streetwise grit impressed me, though that did little to cut down my attitude.

  “Shouldn’t’ve dropped his guard,” I snap.

  “Like you and the Diamond Dog,” Hawkwind asks. “How’s the legs?”

  I hang my head, response aborted, tongue like a rolled up pair of gym socks in my mouth. Hawkwind laughs and Sweeper’s deep baritone fills the rusting lot and we walk a little and I slowly explain my problem. Hawkwind doesn’t mock me, only nods and presumably gives Streetsweeper the cue to fuckoffski, and so we walk a little longer and Hawkwind, who’s been on the street for ten years already at this point, leads me to the place where I will train on-and-off for the next five years, no costume, no obvious hint of my powers when I can help it, just me and a bunch of other local toughs in aikido gis or sweat pants under the hulking frame of the dispossessed auto-parts warehouse Hawkwind owns under one of his many aliases.

  In those years I get married and Tessa is born and Beth returns to law school and I continue on with my Zephyr-ing, and Hawkwind and I don’t discuss again my awful confession: that getting beat so bad made me afraid to take to the sky again. It’s something I work through. Hell, I’m back on the beat within a few weeks of Hawkwind’s self-help course. Of course, back then it wasn’t that I’d had my powers taken from me. All the same, the old man is in my thoughts now more than I’d like to admit, and I don’t even know where he’s gone. It’s been a long time since we even sparred on the phone, let alone in the street.

  Zephyr 7.9 “Secret Identities”

  THE WEEK TURNS cold and my ongoing failure to make any decisions is like a shrink-wrapped meat tray rotting at the back of the refrigerator of my mind. We are shopping for vegetables at the Asian market we discovered on Turner and Vine and laughing like an actual happy couple as Loren thrusts a wet broccoli in my face, walking advertisements for a winter woolens campaign or something, when the Blackberry in my pocket starts up and Loren wrinkles her nose and asks me why I haven’t done something about the ringtone even though we reset it together the night previous.

  It’s Tessa’s school. For a moment I am alarmed that they have this number, and then my paternal instinct kicks in and I am barely able to hear the tutorial voice of the starched English woman over my hitching breath and the thundering pulse in my ear.

  “She what, sorry? Please say that again?”

  “I said this is her third absent day in a row and today we haven’t even received a call,” says the woman, a Mrs Woodcock, if that even sounds credible.

  “Oh . . . really?”

  “I’m aware your daughter doesn’t live with you. However, we were advised Tessa’s mother is on a work trip to England and she would be lodging with you?”

  “In England? No. That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “The school requires attendance from all students, Mr –”

  “Yeah, okay. I’m onto it. Thanks for calling. And watch out for splinters.”

  I give Loren a grin I’m not really feeling, which means I’m fooling no one as I click the Enercom phone shut and the fresh fruit and the fish display and the bright bunting of the hot corn cart all become a blur under the market’s powerful internal lights and I simply start walking away and Loren has to ditch our last few unpurchased selections to catch up with me as I hit the street and the cold day means steam is oozing from the grates and the rear ends of the taxis that seem to be endlessly cruising by, drivers looking through their opposite windows to ogle Loren who looks fetching in a wool cap by Dior, a scarf by Tracey Almond, a white Versace wool jacket and fashion jodhpurs by Bruce of Nepal. I have on a thick Dr Who trench coat we bought at the flea market and a rat-eaten scarf and my customary work boots and the only concession to style are my aviator sunglasses and a dog-eared copy of Glamorama in my coat pocket. I stand at the curb and let the world whiz by for a few seconds before I manage to contain it all and it resolves.

  “I have a daughter,” I tell Loren at the edge of the street without actually looking at her. “I have a daughter and she’s about to turn sixteen and she’s been playing hooky from school.”

  “You have a daughter?”

  Different flavors of surprise swirl across her face and Loren suddenly looks flustered.

  “A sixteen-year-old?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and now I meet her eyes and she looks at me as a flush rises to her face. So I tell her, “She’s Windsong. My daughter is Windsong.”

  The slap sounds like a rifle shot in the chill air and I stand beside the string bag of dumped groceries as Loren strides away and I am left like an alien scientist marveling at the new phenomenon of such an utterly normal reaction to my deceit.

  Then I dig the phone again from my jeans and try Tessa’s number one more time.

  *

  ON THE SKY Rail from Van Buren, the new trains have satellite TV and the rest of the carriage watches entranced as Brasseye leads a revamped Sentinels line-up that includes the new Seeker, looking thin and gawky, Stormhawk, Mastodon, and the organic brick Susurrus, into battle against gigantic spider robots invading New Hampshire at the bequest of the Clockwork King. I admit I am more than a little put out as I sit on the uncomfortable bench and watch my fellow commuters gawp and meep at the screens and swap inanities and tweet about it and update their Myspace statuses and generally jizz in their collective pants.

  None of which puts me in a great mood for disembarking in the old neighborhood, where I do my Taxi Driver routine up the shit-cluttered footpaths, still a little addled from the night before and my ever increasing experiments with the sudden ability to get well and royally roasted. Loren has a job, though she is being secretive about what exactly she’s doing, and her father’s vintage Triumph motorcycle now lives at the bottom of the fire escape, shielded from the elements by a tarpaulin and the dumpster from the Vietnamese take-out. And introducing the existence of my child into the equation isn’t going to soften things if my still-stinging cheek is anything to go by.

  Rain starts to fall as I round the corner to my old apartment building and I do the classic Hitchcock shot of looking up with the monolith towering over me and a taxi goes past and splashes my leg and I retreat to the 24-hour deli for a Coke slushie and a microwaved burrito before finally having the requisite mix of courage and preservatives to be able to jog across oncoming traffic and in through the dirt-spattered glass door of the building and up the stairs rather than the elevator.

&
nbsp; The door opens after my second round of hammering and Tessa stares blankly at me with a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and a new lip piercing and the sound of what might pass for music in some subcultures gushing from the living room speakers. It looks like there are other people in Beth’s apartment and Tessa and I exchange gormless expressions for a moment before she takes the smoke from her mouth and sags a little against the open door, one arm above her head resting along the frame as if either to keep me out or suggest she’s holding up the building on her lonesome.

  “What do you want?”

  “The expensive private school you begged to be transferred to called and said you haven’t been showing up,” I say.

  “And what’s that to you?”

  “Whoa,” I say and push my way into the place that used to be as familiar to me as the back of my own hand. “What’s with the hostility here?”

  A girl stands rolling a joint in the kitchen to the right of the entry wearing lingerie briefs and a half-length black singlet and her dyed black hair is twisted like broken straw and piled on top of her head and pinned there with a pair of jade chopsticks. A tattoo of a Chinese dragon adorns her bony side. Down the hall I see a blonde girl with ringlets and a Eurasian chick with a nose piercing, spiky hair and black fingernails peer around the final doorframe before the living room where the TV is on and I can see images of a recent Pepsi commercial where Nautilus is crushing cans and doing something unnatural with a dolphin.

  “What the fuck’s going on here?”

  “You’re crashing my party,” Tessa says despite the fact it is before eleven in the morning. “Don’t you have your own lingerie model to go play with?”

  “The school said your mom was in London.”

  “Manchester,” Tessa says icily. “She’s in Manchester.”

  “They said you told them you were staying with me.”

  “I told mom that too,” she says and shrugs. “Doesn’t mean I’m doing it.”

  The girl in the kitchen fumbles something and a few dirty plates slide from the bench and shatter across the floor like bones breaking. Laughter comes from ahead. The furrow in my brow feels like it got there from an axe and I hear myself growl, the blackest of moods descending.

  “OK. I need to talk to you in private, baby. Party’s over.”

  I move into the kitchen and aim my thumb at the front door and tell the Suicide Girls to pack up and get the fuck out. No sooner have the words left my mouth than Tessa angrily stomps up behind me and spins me around by the shoulder and I go slamming backwards into the wall and lose my footing and the air explodes from my startled lungs.

  Tessa stares at me horrified as the girl in the kitchen tip-toes through the broken crockery and into the bedroom to retrieve her clothes.

  “Dad,” Tessa gasps. “What the hell was that?”

  I don’t say anything. I don’t know if it’s the embarrassment or the concern for our secret identities, but I stand again with a scowl and pat imaginary dust from my jeans and Tessa steps closer and gives me an experimental prod in the chest and I am unable to stop from staggering back against the wall and I growl and look at her pretty much helplessly.

  “Jesus Christ, dad. What the hell’s happened to yours powers?”

  *

  AFTER THE MODELS have gone, Tessa makes hot chocolates and we sit on the sofa looking through the wide bay windows at the grey pall throwing the city into shade. She has been crying in the kitchen and I dare not ask why, the mascara she has clearly taken to wearing now as good as evidence from a crime scene betraying her emotional state. Weirdly, stripped of my considerable powers, I feel more calm than I can actually remember, sipping from the sweet hot drink and crossing my legs and looking out across the panorama with the television now mercifully muted. If only my life wasn’t a shambles, I could be happy. Images from a show about Eskimos battering seals to death play as Tessa picks at the corners of her eyes and draws sustenance from the big pullover into which she’s changed.

  “I don’t think I can do school any more,” she says eventually and takes a drink.

  “Your grandmothers paid for that school,” I reply. “Paid up to your graduation in advance.”

  “Well, one grandmother is dead and the other was some kind of make believe, so I’m not sure I put much stock in their opinions,” Tessa says.

  “You’ve lied to everyone,” I say and don’t look at her in case she decides to bolt. “That really surprises me.”

  “What, that I can lie? You shouldn’t be. Surprised.”

  “No, I’m just surprised that you’d lie to me.”

  “Yeah, well, it looks like we don’t even have our powers in common any more,” she says. “Thanks for Christmas, by the way. That was just awesome.”

  The lack of empathy stings and I put the cup down as an advertisement plays showing Johnny Depp with a Hawaiian guitar while Olga Kurylenko and Stiletto do wiggly dances. The news break cuts to shots of the Indonesian president meeting a bunch of white diplomats with lots of kissing and hugging.

  “You’re angry about Seeker.”

  “I’m angry I had to hear about it on E! Online, dad.”

  “Honey, the time’s going to come when even your mother is probably going to wind up with someone else too.”

  “Jesus, dad. Get with it. She’s only been shacked up with her boss since about five minutes after she divorced your sorry ass.”

  The words desert me as I drink that one in and then Tessa betrays her intentions by peeking across to see if she scored a direct hit. I am astonished, not just by the news of my recently ex-wife, but the sudden rich vein of sadism in my world.

  “Fuck, Tessa. What’s got into you?”

  “Not you. That’s what little miss Seeker was worried about, wasn’t she?”

  “She knows all about me and Windsong now,” I reply.

  “Great, dad. You can’t just make a fuck-storm of your own secret identity, you have to go and trash mine,” Tessa says and stares away fuming.

  “When your school called, I had to explain.”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t understand what’s gotten into you,” I say again and I am listening to myself, and frustration aside, this isn’t how I am used to these things panning out. I can only dig myself in further.

  “Tessa,” I say and at least manage to get her looking my way. “Baby, you’re really scaring me. My life’s going down the shit-hole and the least I could hope is I don’t trash things with you too. I need to know what’s made you so angry. Is it really about her?”

  “You could’ve, you know, waited,” she says, and begins to break up. “Both of you. Have you ever even met that guy, Harald? I mean he’s fucking Norwegian, dad. How am I meant to even talk to a Norwegian guy?”

  “I don’t know, honey,” I manage to mumble. “It could be an opportunity to learn another language. . . .”

  “Oh what, while I’m in England?”

  Tessa is standing before I know it and the windows in the bedroom must be open because suddenly wind is pouring through the room and books are falling from their shelves and magazines and CD cases come scurrying around the room and Tessa squeezes her fists as she stares down at me and her hair explodes backwards as the zephyr gathers like a fist and smashes me into the chair and wall against which I’m sitting. The pane above me cracks and the fluttering of a thousand different loose things abates and my daughter turns her back and storms off into the kitchen and I find her there five minutes later smoking the joint the Goth model was rolling.

  “You shouldn’t be smoking that shit,” I say and step in and take it from her and blow on the tip to clear some of the clumsily-rolled paper from the end and then I take a deeper toke and close my eyes, my ribs aching from my daughter’s unique way of expressing her frustrations.

  “I’m sorry I hit you, dad.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t take it.”

  “Your powers . . . they’ll come back, right?”

  “I dunno
, baby.”

  We are silent for a minute and I think what the hell and hand her the joint and she smokes it with a thankful lack of skill and then offers it back and the weed is hitting me like I can only remember from a few weeks of junior high before my own powers began and I rock back on my heels with the release of breath.

  “I sometimes wish my powers would disappear too,” Tessa says.

  “I never felt that way. Don’t know why.”

  “It was easy for you,” Tessa says. “I don’t think you ever aspired to anything else.”

  “Sheesh. Listen to you, Dr Phil.”

  “Well it’s true, isn’t it?”

  I turn back to her and toss the roach into the grungy sink.

  “You better clean this place up before your ma gets home.”

  “I will.”

  “It was easy for me because I had my powers and I had your mom and then I had you, all by the time I was twenty,” I tell Tessa. “What more could a guy want?”

  “I think you always wanted more. You just didn’t know what it was.”

  “You just said I never aspired to much,” I answer her back and grin.

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t want for things though, does it? Things you can’t even name?”

  I sigh and feel the gunja throb through me.

  “Probably not.”

  “Are you gonna let me meet her?”

  “Who?”