His hat’s a Borsalino, silk-trimmed, just like on TV. He dons it smoothly.
“Yes,” he says. His voice is different, though: clipped, calm, professional. “It was necessary to temporarily achieve a measure of protection against agencies desperate to conceal their existence. Fame served admirably.”
She hesitates. He smiles.
“Your skills will prove invaluable, Ms. Fairfields, in completing my squad.” He gestures, and three of the most dangerous women on earth step forward. “Rita: Tina, Sandra, Mary. You see,” and there’s a ghost of a laugh there, “those who joked about Numbers One through Four were more right than they knew.”
Friday, November 14, 2003
Lissa’s skirt is a short leather sleeve, laced bootlike up front and back; together with halter top and garter belt, it’s just not a role model outfit. Not that superheroing was the plan tonight–that was margaritas and dancing to drive Shaun wild–but here come the Black-Masked Bastards! Carnival must be the perfect place to blow stuff up.
At least she’s got a mask already: big, white and feathery. She’s grateful for that, and, vaulting off a streetlight, almost warms to Black-Masked Beefcake.
Then she notices Shaun carrying some other girl to safety.
She hits Beefcake with a coffee shop.
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Amy’s either shorter or taller than she’d really like to be. She likes old-school hip-hop but she sings loud bad Aerosmith. She’s embarrassed about wearing sweatpants so much. She doesn’t know she’s extraordinary for using words like “aegis” and “anacrusis” in everyday conversation.
Brown hair, B cup, freckles when she runs. Her only poster is of Jon Stewart. She used to drive fast, but she had to quit.
Writing Amy, Jake’s astounded by how easily she comes into his fingers. She’s like cheating. All that time inventing genius space-spies with the French Pox, and for what? Amy was here all along.
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Bashford Manor’s dying, painfully, the way most large buildings die: long before anyone gets around to imploding it, the reversed-out missing logos of empty stores look like whimpers for lost children.
Half mall, half pseudogothic mansion, it looks like a Place You Don’t Go. One or two establishments hang on by their regulars, but nobody cleans the windows and the graffiti’s a solid mass. It’s all dark at night. The streetlights are becoming spidery naked trees.
Rob finds it around a dark corner, shining from under a fire door: a glow. Somebody’s in there.
He pushes it open with a stick.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Luther’s got his shopping list in his pocket, and it goes
and it’s everything he needs to get. He only has unsalted butter because he’s been baking and unsalted butter is better for batter and he hiccups with laughter on that thought. Then he laughs some more, and throws his keys as high as they’ll go, and tries to catch them before they hit the lawn. He misses.
He feels like some ridiculous children’s museum exhibit where everybody gets sogged and soapy, just an explosion of bubbles and a placard that nobody reads. Butter and Jared. Jared and butter.
Monday, November 10, 2003
Alex is trying to play a song. The rhythm of it is a little off: it’s a syncopated pop-rock riff turned backwards. Down-and. Down-and. Down-and and down-and. Almost everything involving his hands is easy now, which makes the difficulty of finding this chord surprising, and worthwhile.
He picks up the phone when it rings–he wants to be interrupted, so he can say something biting.
“Hello?” he says. He can’t make out what’s on the other end, exactly: is it laughter or chimes?
“Hello?” he says again.
His face changes. You can see him forget the guitar.
“Dylan?” says Alex. “Hi?”
It’s to the point now where they can’t pop their knuckles separately. When one of them tries, the other will accidentally run into a wall, or something, and crack! Simultaneous. And always on beat.
At first it was just their drums, then footsteps, then heartbeats and breathing and now their joints. It was cool at first, and now it’d be amazing if they did it on purpose. But actually, it’s getting scary: Dalton and Huecker are stuck in rhythmic lockstep, synchronized in everything but speech. Dalton’s thought of that, but he hasn’t mentioned it. He’s afraid. It can’t be very long.
Thursday, November 6, 2003
Achin drops to her knees, her eyes dull from the drugged ash-wine. Behind her, the rest of the Heavenly Choir does the same, voluntarily or at the hands of the guards.
The emperor is propped up before them, pale, like a thing already dead. The soothsayer Quan-ti turns from the fire and nods to the bard, who bends his head to his lute. The Choir begins to sing; Quan-ti, smiling, approaches their leader.
He draws the short bronze knife across her throat and moves on; behind him, the emperor flushes with health. Achin’s voice dies in gurgles. The blade keeps singing.
Wednesday, November 5, 2003
Martinez pushes through the gelatinous wall and feels it seal up behind her, jams her filtration mouthpiece into the bubble over her lips, and one dive later she’s plowing through a blue-black world. The Fishbelly Slick hews warm and tight to her skin, and its hydrophobic surface makes her dolphin stroke feel like a skid on buttered tracks.
Martinez goes down and down. The schools barely bother to explode at her passage, and she thinks about the drawings from a childhood magazine, primeval whales with hands. Slicked and insulated, she imagines herself another curve back into evolution: swimming, walking, swimming again.
Tuesday, November 4, 2003
They gave him a name when they took him from his catatonic mother to the care facility, a different name when they placed him with a family, yet another at Confirmation and finally, on turning eighteen, he fought and harassed and stood in the clerk’s face until they found it, his original birth certificate. On it were his mother Jane Doe, his father Unknown, his birthdate December 10 and his first last name, his point of origin.
He had it changed that day. He left town with two pair Jockeys and ten dollars, feeling clean as spring water: henceforth, Hyphen Blank.