Generation A (16 page)

“Here—later today.”

“What is it?”

“Blackberry wine.”

“Consider it sold. By the way, I saw a basketball court over the hill. Want to shoot some hoops?”

“Sure.”

So we sat on tumbledown bleachers to watch Zack and some new friends shoot hoops. I was shivering, Sam was running laps around the block, Julien was lying down with a coat over his head, and Diana was inspecting the local women’s teeth to see who needed a cleaning. They, in turn, wanted to know who was sleeping with whom, and they must have been very bored with the answer. In a Hollywood way, one would expect Zack and Sam to become a glamorous power couple, but that was not to happen.

The sun poked out from behind some clouds and we all stopped to bask for a moment, and then one of the women, toying with Diana’s Tourette’s, said, “So, then, where are our fucking bees?”

Perhaps one had to be there.

From nowhere a storm erupted, and we raced back to the house, soaked. The storm got worse, and then it got even worse. The power failed and out came the candles. We sat by the fire on a large braided rug, and at sunset the clouds cleared, shooting bolts of beer-coloured light at us from the west. I felt as if we were visiting the past, and yet it wasn’t a déjà vu.

Into the silence Serge said, “We have a mission here on this island.”

I asked, “What kind of mission?”

“An odd one.”

“How odd?”

“Our goal here is for the group of you to make up stories and tell them to each other.”

“
What?
”

“It is as simple as that.”

“That’s absurd,” Julien said.

The five of us tried to absorb the minuscule scope and borderline random quality of this mission.

“What kind of stories?” Sam asked.

“Whatever you like. Fairy tales. Literary fiction. Detective stories. Horror.”

“Why stories?” Julien asked.

“Just trust me,” Serge replied.

Diana: “How long do they have to be?”

Serge: “As short or as long as you choose.”

Sam: “Do we write them down? How many words minimum? This feels like homework.”

Serge: “It is not homework, and no, you don’t have to write them down if you wish not to.”

Zack: “I’m ADD.”

Serge: “But you are still creative. You’ll do just fine.”

I asked, “Why stories?”

Serge replied, “Right now, it’s probably for the best that I do not tell you the specific purpose. But then, remind yourselves that you spent many weeks in an underground chamber without words or books or TV or the Internet or even logos on the mattress. Being asked to invent and tell stories is surely not as weird as that.”

Diana asked if it had anything directly to do with our not being allowed books or TV or computers in our cells, and Serge said, “Yes, it does.”

Julien asked if we were being graded on these stories, and Serge said, “Ah, Sean Penn, always the lazy student. All that is required of you is that you invent your stories on your own.”

It’s strange to be asked if you have any stories to tell. Did I? I wasn’t sure.

Zack asked, “Can I tell the story about the time I spent a lost weekend with a Japan Airlines mechanical crew who were abandoned in Sioux City during the Oktoberfest riots?”

Serge said, “I do not want anecdotes from your life, Zack. I want stories. Stories you
invent
. Stories that have no other goal in life than to be stories.”

Sam asked, “How long do we have to do this for?”

Serge replied, “Maybe a week. Maybe a year. It may all be for nothing.”

There was a quiet patch where we sat trying to imagine something to tell, trying to engage that portion of our brains or our selves that handles that activity. Hours passed in the room lit by candlelight.

Zack finally said, “I think I have one.”

Diana, clearly a little jealous, asked him, “What’s it called?”

“It’s called . . . ‘Superman and the Kryptonite Martinis.’”

Superman and the

Kryptonite Martinis

by Zack Lammle

One sunny afternoon, Superman was at the beach and got tar all over the soles of his feet. He went to his car and removed a Clark Kent shirt from the back seat, and then he popped his gas cap and dipped his shirt in just far enough to soak the tail of the shirt. He pulled it out and began to wipe the tar from his feet, and was promptly nailed by the Carbon Squad patrolling the lot. They gave him a $200 ticket for using gasoline frivolously, and a $150 ticket for destroying a shirt that had a thirty-percent synthetic-fibre content. Meanwhile, a group of fellow beach-goers surrounded the car and began heckling him.

“Ooh, look at me. I’m Superman. I can leap tall buildings and make time go backwards, but nooooo, instead I waste gasoline
and
destroy permanent-press clothing.”

“Gee,” said another, “I think I’ll go fight crime—whoops! My footsies are dirty. Looks like I’ll just have to eat shit like everyone else in this world.”

Superman asked, “What is
wrong
with you people?” He threw his shirt into the back seat and got in his car and put it in reverse, narrowly missing a quintet of snarling beach bunnies. As he drove away, he rolled down the window to shout, “You make me really happy I left my home planet to come and fight crime for you ungrateful fucks!”

Someone threw a Frisbee at the car; it bounced off the roof and landed in a ditch.

Superman turned on the radio and was listening to a program discussing profound corruption at the heart of
UNESCO
when he passed a bar whose sign read
TASTY COCKTAILS FOR THOSE WITH A HEAVY LOAD
. “Man, I could use a drink right now,” he said. Right there in traffic, he did a U-ey and pulled up in front of the bar.

The bartender, who happened to look and sound a lot like Yoda, said, “Ah, Superman. I think for you a terrific drink I have.”

Superman said, “Bring it on.” The air inside the bar was cool, and he readjusted his cape and looked around. There were a few barflies in the back, but otherwise the place was dead. The jukebox was playing “The Logical Song” by Supertramp; it brought the superhero a flood of memories. As Yoda arrived with his drink, he said, “This song was in my first colour movie ever.”

“That be the one with Christopher Reeve?”

“That’s the one.”

“Ever meet him, did you?”

“Once, at a Golden Globes after-party. We were both kind of wasted. I don’t remember much of it.”

“Your drink is on me, Mr. Caped Crusader.”

“I don’t know about that ‘caped crusader’ stuff any more. Today it’s all I can do to not blast this planet to smithereens. But thanks.”

Superman looked at his martini, frosty and chilled, dew dripping down the sides. He took a sip—
Ahhhhhhhh
—and then his mouth turned to fire. “You dirty little shit, what the hell is in this thing?”

Yoda, wiser than Superman, said, “The first time you tried wasabi you remember?”

“Yeah. In Osaka, when I was helping Sailor Moon during her Asian fragrance launch.”

“And did it not burn at first? Did not your nostrils feel aflame?”

“Why . . . yes, it did.”

“So finish your drink you will. And enjoy it you will.”

Yoda went to the other side of the bar and Superman sipped a little more of his martini. He yelled to Yoda, “These things kick like a bound and gagged hitchhiker. Very tasty—
mmmmmmmmm
.” The burn was like a new spice, and Superman became an instant addict. “Yoda: hustle with the next one.”

“Yes, Mr. Caped Crusader.”

As Superman awaited his next martini, he wondered why he bothered fighting crime any more. He still had all his superpowers, but people just didn’t seem to want him to use them. He’d recently received a condescending letter from the United Nations:

Dear Mr. Superman,

We appreciate your willingness to fight crime, but at the moment what we really need is a superhero who can separate transuranium isotopes in the soil of Northern Germany—or perhaps a superhero who can distill Pacific waters to render them free of plastic particles larger than two hundred microns. We at the UN acknowledge that everyday crime and everyday criminals are on the rise, but please also remember, Mr. Superman, that evil supervillains have all been eradicated with your help. (Note: you left your thank-you plaque and goodie bag at the dinner table after the presentation ceremony. I can ask my assistant, Tara, to forward it to you.)

In any event, we want you to know that we appreciate and support your drive to be as super as you can possibly be, and we look forward to convening in the near future!

Yours, Mbutu Ntonga, Secretary-General, United Nations Temporary Headquarters, Saint Louis, Missouri

Prick.

Superman downed his third martini in one gulp. A barfly near a keno machine clapped at this, and Superman roared, “I
am
a fucking superhero, you know.” He turned to Yoda. “What’s in these things, anyway?”

“Magic ingredient is kryptonite.”

“Kryptonite!?” Superman was about to induce vomiting with his index finger when Yoda said, “Frightened be not! It is only at a strength useful for flavour, not enough that you lose your superpowers.”

The martinis
were
tasty. “You’re not shitting me? No lost powers? Seasoning only?”

“I shit you not. Mix you another I will.”

“Done.”

Soon Superman was hanging out every day at the bar, from its noon opening time until two a.m., with a few time outs to go to the Wendy’s next door, plus one isolated incident when he chased down a teenager who had jimmied the Hyundai logo from the front grille of his car. Being drunk, he miscalculated his speed, and the offending delinquent was flattened like a taco shell between Superman’s body and the wall of the local rental storage facility. But nobody had witnessed the event, so Superman squished the teenager into a diamond and, once back in the bar, tossed the diamond over towards the barflies.

“Nasty little prick.”

Yoda said, “Hear you I did not. Mr. Superman, I am sorry to inform you, but you owe several thousands of dollars for the martinis you so much like.”

“Bar tab, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Forget cash. I know—how about I pay you in
diamonds
?”

“Diamonds I like.”

“Good.”

Superman picked up the new diamond from the floor and gave it to a smiling Yoda, who promptly made him another kryptonite martini. All was well for several days, until his next bar tab came due. Superman excused himself, went outside and jumped up and flew around the skies for a bit, trying to find someone committing a crime who might deserve the fate of crystallization. Finally he saw some guy holding up a rice warehouse. With just a small amount of vigilance, Superman was able to snag him and crush him, and soon he had Yoda’s diamond.

But as the months passed, Superman’s superpowers waned. And there came the fateful evening when, upon capturing a burglar in the act of entering somebody’s rear window, instead of being able to squish the perp into a diamond, all he created was a blob of stinking bloody mess that got all over his crime-fighting suit.