by Pab Sungenis
Every bit of gymnastic training I’d gotten from Uncle Jack, the other heroes, and the YMCA kicked in. I arched my back and extended my arms to control my momentum. My plan was to land on one of the ties and recover, standing up in the split second before the train reached me and jumping back into my boots. I needed to time it perfectly. I twisted, rolled, and … fell between the ties, zooming straight down toward the street below.
On the Beach
Your whole life doesn’t flash in front of your eyes right before you die. You’d never have time for all of that. Even though your brain really does speed up when you’re in a situation where you think you’re going to die, making it look like time slows to a crawl, it doesn’t slow enough to see your whole life. Even when you’re just a punk seventeen-year-old who pulled a very boneheaded move on the El tracks, there was way too much experience to go through. So what happens is your brain picks certain strong memories and flashes them before your eyes instead. Sort of like a single track off a “Greatest Hits” collection. The memories chosen for my pre-death entertainment, appropriately enough, centered around Sarah, and one of the times she’d visited me here in the City.
That night when I found myself plunging head-first toward asphalt had been the first time I’d shown Sarah the City the way I thought it looked best, from high above where we could see all the action. But it was hardly the first time I’d shown off my town to her or the other sidekicks. They spent so much time at the mansion with Uncle Jack and me over the years that the other heroes had started joking about Jack having four sidekicks.
My favorite time of all of them would have to be my fifteenth anti-birthday.
You see, no kid who lives in a seaside town and has a birthday in January gets to enjoy their celebration properly. It’s obviously much too cold to go to the beach, and most of the stuff that catered to kids is shuttered. Tommy had the brilliant idea of celebrating the day as far from my birthday as humanly possible. That put us right in the middle of July, which just happened to be the height of beach season and perfect for us to go out and have a good time.
We’d started the morning on an amusement pier, but when Rick and I proved incapable of winning some stupid stuffed animal (we didn’t let Tommy try because his super-fast perception would have been cheating, not to mention he’d make the two of us look even worse), we headed out onto the beach. We spent some time sitting on the sand, enjoying the heat, and once she was certain the sun had warmed up the ocean enough, Sarah went for a swim. Rick and I set up a volleyball net and started a game. Tommy, naturally, played on both teams (although we made sure he kept his speed to believable levels just in case anyone was watching). I beat Rick twenty-five to twenty, something I made sure he didn’t forget for the better part of a year. Just as we were taking the net back down, Sarah came out of the water.
I stood, transfixed, as she walked toward us, salt water glistening all over her body. She unwrapped her ponytail and shook the water out of her hair. I marveled at how long her hair was and how beautiful it looked when she let it flow freely like that. It would only be in hindsight, years later, that I realized the full extent of the thoughts that bombarded me upon seeing this vision, but I was determined to commit every single detail of that image of Sarah to memory.
I didn’t get the chance to do that, however, since while I was watching her cross the sand, I felt a sudden, out-of-place breeze and heard a very loud laughter from my two compatriots.
Tommy had pantsed me, right there on the beach.
Worst of all, he had pantsed me while I was wearing a bathing suit, and only a bathing suit.
As soon as I realized what had happened, I dove face-first onto my beach blanket, grabbed it, and rolled quickly to wrap myself up. I turned so red I was certain that if a lifeguard looked at me, he’d rush me off to the first aid shack thinking I had sunstroke.
“You bastard!” I shouted as I pulled myself up, tied the beach blanket as securely around my waist as I could, and worked my bathing suit back up while letting as little as possible be seen. Once I had my pants back on, I took off like a madman after Tommy. I didn’t have a chance of catching him (because even when he restricted himself to normal speeds he was pretty damn fast) but secretly hoped that in his haste he’d trip over something and I’d get the chance to beat the shit out of him. He was laughing, Rick was laughing, and in spite of myself, I was laughing. Funny, now that I think about it, I don’t believe Sarah had been laughing, even though I got the distinct impression she’d been enjoying herself.
Just when I was starting to enjoy that memory, I blacked out, and I assumed that meant I’d hit the pavement. It didn’t hurt nearly as badly as I’d expected.
***
“Why, Sergeant Simpson, I didn’t know you cared.”
When I regained consciousness, I was pleased to find every bone in my body wasn’t broken. Yeah, I had bruises and severely strained muscles reasserting their presences, but nothing I hadn’t encountered during the fight itself, or from pushing the train. I was less pleased to find Sergeant Simpson, the guy who had escorted me off school grounds a week before, staring down at me, but I figured it was a small price to pay to not have gone splat. Unless, of course, I had gone splat, and the face of Simpson staring down at me was proof I’d wound up in Hell.
“Slick move, Knight,” Simpson said with more than a little admiration as he helped me out of the rescue net and down to the street with him. “Good thing we’d managed to get the net set up before you took your dive.” Whew. That meant it was probably the shock of the drop and maybe the possible concussion that had blacked me out, not the impact. Of course, it meant this time it was the cops who’d saved my life, not the other way around. Who knew if I was ever going to hear the end of it?
“The train. Did it—?”
“Your trick with your flying boots slowed it down, and your girlfriend got the brakes engaged. It stopped with just inches to spare.”
Girlfriend? He had to be talking about Pandora. “Where is she?”
“She’s been helping evacuate the passengers. Handy to have someone who can fly for that kind of job, isn’t it?” He grinned down at me. “I’ll lay even money she’s pissed at you. You know what it’s like. If you die, they never forgive you. If you live, they never forgive you for not dying when they were so convinced you were going to.”
I smirked, not that he could see it through the visor. “Sounds to me like you’re a married man.”
“Are you kidding? I know better than to put a wife through all this.”
“Man after my own heart.” I managed to find my way to my feet without falling on my ass. Maybe it wasn’t a concussion after all, just my own natural stupidity that had me dizzy. “Any injuries on the train? Other than the conductor, I mean.”
“Nope. Looks like you two sure saved the day this time. Getting to be a habit with you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Some habits are too hard to break.” I dusted myself off and looked up at the train. A ladder from the fire engine leaned against one set of windows, with passengers slowly being lowered down, one at a time. Another set of windows stood wide open and Pandora slipped through them, carrying two children under her arms. She drifted down toward what looked like a staging center for the rescue operation, but when she saw I was up and about, she changed course and came over to check on me.
“Are you hurt?” Her tone held more than a tinge of annoyance, but I was glad to hear it nonetheless.
“I’ll live.”
She smiled as she put the two kids down. They immediately ran over to me and gave me a hug that nearly knocked me off my feet. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” they both shouted, and then gave Pandora the same treatment. She smiled at them, and so did I, even though they couldn’t see it. One thing I will say about this job is you never get bored of that kind of stuff, kids showering you with gratitude for saving them. Sometimes it’s the only reason some of us heroes keep at it.
Pandora turned to Simpson. “Sergeant
, can you spare me for the rest of the evacuation? It looks like your team has everything under control here.”
“I think so. Get this guy home before he really hurts himself.” Simpson called another cop over and gestured to the children. “Murphy, take these two over with the other passengers. I’m sure their folks are worried.” The patrolman nodded, then took the kids by the hand and led them away. Simpson turned his attention back to us. “I really don’t know how to thank you two.”
“It’s all in a day’s work,” I said without a bit of irony in my voice. “Anything we can do to help.” Pandora scooped me up like I was one of the riders she’d just ferried off the train and was ready to take off when Simpson stopped us.
“Hold on a moment, Knight.” He ran over to his cruiser and popped the trunk. He pulled out something long and brought it over to us. “Here, I’ve been holding onto this since … well, you know. Figured it would be safe in case I ran into you again.” He handed me my sword.
This time, only my jaw plunged toward the pavement, not my whole body. “I don’t know how to thank you, Sergeant. This—”
“Just keep doing stuff like you did tonight, that’s all.”
I saluted him with my sword. Pandora rolled her eyes as she took off, carrying me in her arms as she headed out for the sand dunes.
“Funny, isn’t it usually the hero who’s supposed to carry the girl as they fly over the city?” She glared down at me to let me know she didn’t appreciate my attempt at levity. I wisely kept things quiet as we headed down through the trap door and along the tunnel to the base, but she still made a point of dropping me flat on my ass when we arrived. “Ow. That hurt.”
“Not as much as it should have.” Her tone was angry. She took off my helmet and looked me right in the eyes. “Please be a little more careful next time, okay?”
“Okay,” I meekly replied as she ran her fingers through my hair. My muscle aches were suddenly replaced by an electric feeling that shot straight through me and covered every inch of my skin as she leaned forward again and kissed me firmly on the mouth. I gently grabbed hold of her and kissed her right back. I swear we didn’t come up for air for at least two minutes before she looked me in the eyes again and grinned.
“Is that a sword in your hand? Or are you—”
I kissed her again before she could finish the terrible joke.
The Inevitable
Something I had pondered a few years before popped into my head. When heroes had sex, did their secret identities count as partners? Were you making love to the hero persona? Or to the civilian identity? Was it possible to shift halfway through the act? Might you find yourself going to bed with a perfectly normal person, then wake up next to someone you didn’t recognize who could bend steel with their bare hands and change the course of mighty rivers?
Even if you took sex out of the equation and only focused on the greater issue, you still had a major dilemma. What happened when you fell in love with a hero? Did you fall in love with the costume or the schlub trapped inside? And how could you be certain the person you thought loved you was really in love with you and not with the larger-than-life persona you put on to serve the public? I guess firefighters, cops, and soldiers had the same issues. Did you love the good deeds, or the deed doer?
The difference was that as far as the public was concerned, there was no dichotomy. The guy wearing the slickers and carrying the hose was the same guy when he was sitting alone in his kitchen eating cereal in his boxers. But for people like us, that doesn’t happen. If I rescued a family from a burning building, the Scarlet Knight got all the acclaim. But when I got home and took off the bulletproof pajamas, the world didn’t consider me the same person I’d been a few seconds before. And to be completely honest, there were some days when even I didn’t feel like the same person when I’d swapped the uniform for mufti. I’m sure there were thousands of women, and at least a couple of handfuls of guys, who would jump into bed with the Scarlet Knight at the drop of the hat, but what would they have to say about mild-mannered Bobby Baines? Could they ever fall in love with the real me, instead of the vision of me stuck in their imaginations? I wouldn’t want it the other way around, and despite the perpetual state of horniness we red-blooded American boys find ourselves in, I didn’t want anything less.
These thoughts had kept me up late at night a few times over the years I’d gone out in costume, but they resonated even more for me as I lay there, wide awake, listening to the soft breathing beside me and feeling the warmth of the body of one of my best friends in the world next to me. In less time than it takes to think, which is obvious because neither of us did much thinking before doing what had gotten us into this situation, we had gone from being comrades-in-arms to lost in each other’s arms and from there into parts unknown. Don’t worry, I’ll spare you the gory details. All I’ll say about the act itself is that I’d never known two people could share so much true emotion with each other, and no matter what happened after that point, I would never, ever regret what we did.
As I stared at the woman curled up next to me, the old issues came racing back, and I found myself wondering exactly who I had gone to bed with. Had I made love to Sarah Marsh, college freshman, antiquities major, and assistant librarian from Buffalo? Or had Pandora, sidekick of the mightiest woman in the world, lured me into bed? Did I fall for the shy, retiring, bookish girl who had brought me my favorite food earlier in the evening? Or had I lost it for the strong and agile hero who wore a costume guaranteed to bring up more wood than a reforestation project?
And was there really a difference?
This naturally raised the more important question: where did she stand on the whole thing? Had she gone to bed with the kid she’d hung out with for nearly a third of her life? Or was it the guy in the suit who’d nearly sacrificed his life to save a trainload of people neither of them really knew? Was it me she wanted? Or my tights?
I thought about my Uncle Jack and Phoebe. No matter how much they might have denied it, everyone, hero and sidekick alike, could tell how much they’d loved each other and how they’d longed to be together. Yet, they’d never acted upon it, and now it was too late. Did they have the same concerns I had? Were they sure the Scarlet Knight and Prism loved each other but uncertain of the bond between Jack Horner and Phoebe Penobscot? Or vice versa?
If you weren’t careful in the superhero world, you could find yourself going from single to something right out of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers without a second thought. Love me, love my secret identity, you get the idea. Two heroes getting together could sometimes mean four personae getting it on, and before long you’d find the bed wasn’t big enough for the two of you.
Then the words of Sergeant Simpson flooded back: I know better than to put a wife through all this. Was it fair to create an emotional bond with someone when there was a good chance you wouldn’t be coming home that night? Even before we’d slept together, remembering the look on Pandora’s face when she’d realized what I was about to do, of the risk, gave me an idea of what a hero’s romantic partner must go through every night, not sure whether their better half was going to survive patrol.
Then again, what about two heroes falling in love? No one could ever say there wasn’t full disclosure in such a case. You knew the risks involved because you faced them yourself. It wouldn’t stop the worrying, but at least when the inevitable happened you’d be a little less surprised. Besides, knowing the odds of one or both of you not surviving the next confrontation with the Big Bads, didn’t you owe it to each other to make the time you had left as pleasant as you could? What would I regret more: losing a lover, or maybe even a wife, or never sharing my life with them and losing them anyhow?
I felt a stirring beside me. Had I woken Sarah up somehow? She stretched and yawned, blinked twice, then looked up at me.
“Bobby?” Her voice was soft and full of meaning. “Bobby, are you okay?”
I thought about unburdening my soul, sharing all my doubts and
misgivings, but she looked so happy and peaceful that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Then her words clicked, fighting their way past the self-doubt and woolgathering I’d been engaged in, to make me realize the answer to at least one of my questions.
Bobby. She had called me Bobby. It wasn’t the suit she was interested in, but the guy who wore it. She hadn’t seduced the Scarlet Knight, she’d taken her old friend Bobby to bed with her.
Or at least it was enough of a suggestion for me to grab hold of and hope. And it told me what my answer would be.
“I’m fine, Sarah.” If it came down to having to discern between the two identities, I knew who I was in love with. “If anything, I’m actually a little north of fine.” I gave her a discreet peck on the cheek, then pulled her closer to me. She nestled her head against my chest and fell back asleep. A couple of minutes later, at least one of my great questions answered, so did I.
***
I’d often heard about how the morning after could be awkward, and for the two of us that proved to be the case. I didn’t know if Sarah had been plagued with the same questions and doubts that had kept me up most of the night, but she certainly had something on her mind.
I’d woken up first; to be honest, I’d barely slept at all. When you’re not used to sharing your bed with someone else your brain has a tendency to keep firing the “something’s different” message down your neurons, even if that something different is a pleasant something. I debated about whether or not to stay in bed, but since we were at my place, I figured she wouldn’t panic if she woke up without me next to her. There would be less of a tendency for her to think I’d run out on her or feel like she ought to check to see if I’d left cash on her dresser.