Super Born: Seduction of Being (16 page)

I covered the copter lift for the local news.
The conference room had been turned into a media room, complete
with refreshments.. The mayor made certain everyone knew that he
was the one promoting the event—with the public demand for the
B.I.B. growing, he was clearly hoping to skyrocket his
popularity.

* * *

Gregorio Gambrelli had his own version of how
the Searchlight Event would go down, and, as his right hand man, I
was in charge of it. Gregorio relayed the basic plan to me over
dinner at Giovanni’s and left the particulars up to me. (The best
lasagna I ever had; just the right amount of sauce.) I designed a
gem of a hit. The buildings across from the searchlight would be
kept dark on that night. I would place four teams of snipers and a
central spotter on the buildings at different heights from the spot
where the Mayor and the chick would stand. This way, they would
have a clear shot of the entire balcony. Where they put the
searchlight and the podium was decided by me and the spotter to
ensure our men would have the best possible shot. With the union
crew in charge of setting things up, getting that arranged was a
piece of cake.

The spotter would control all four teams of
snipers via a radio link, not only to keep one team from going
crazy, but also to put a lot lead in her face at the same second.
Also, any cop with the nerve to raise his head after the shots were
fired would be confused as to the number and direction of the
shots, as they would echo off the buildings. I imported a team of
snipers from Providence and Newark to go with my local guys that
were supposed to be the best. The B.I.B. would be walking into the
Searchlight Event, but they would be carrying her out in
pieces—little baby superwoman pieces.

Of course, the mayor was left in the dark. I
told him that this first meeting would be to make contact with this
“super broad,” B.I.B., whatever, and taking her out would happen
later, when he was not around. I did this based on experience: if
he knew that bullets would soon be hitting the person next to him,
he’d be a nervous wreck, and the douche bag would mess up the plan.
If a stray bullet or ricochet were to also hit the mayor, I wasn’t
gonna lose any sleep. He could be easily replaced. Hell, my dog
could do a better job, and he looks better…even walking backwards,
if you know what I mean.

Thirty seconds after the shots were fired, I
would cue my guys to cut the power to the entire building, creating
panic and chaos that would cover everyone’s escape.

* * *

There I was the night of the Searchlight Event,
standing among the crowd on the balcony with my media badge on and
a glass of champagne in my hand. I had even worn an all-black
outfit as a personal joke to the B.I.B., should she arrive and see
me. She wore black. I wore black. We were a match. I hoped she’d
get it.

We all stood in the cold night air, but no one
was bothered by it. As I mingled, I could hear the greatest
speculation was about how the B.I.B. would choose to arrive. Would
she fly in, walk in, or just appear? Was she going to be a
disguised member of the crowd, and then suddenly remove her street
clothes to show her costume and reveal herself? Was she you? Was
she me? Or, being that it was Batman premiere night, would she
drive up in some high-tech car or motorcycle? Would one of those
bat ropes suddenly raise her up to the balcony from the sidewalk
below?

My money was on what I had seen outside
O’Malley’s the first time I had seen her. A fog would appear and
then she would appear from out of it. In my mind, she’d see me and
I’d see her. We’d be drawn together, ignoring the madding crowd,
while violins suddenly played. Then her eyes and lips would
surrender to me and we’d fly off into the night and make passionate
love…while all these losers stood on the balcony. (It could
happen…right?)

With all the potential and excitement in the
air, I could not help but feel a pounding in my chest. I had no
clue what was going to happen and, for the first time in my life, I
was quite happy with that. I felt vibrantly alive with expectation,
completely exhilarated. Right there I should have known the rug was
about to be pulled out from under me.

Finally, the mayor emerged from the media room
to an enthusiastic round of applause. He walked over to the podium,
accepted the applause, and opened his coat and jacket to expose a
Miner’s Lite/B.I.B. T-shirt.. After milking the renewed applause,
he began, “Tonight is an historic time. It is a proud moment for me
as your mayor as, with the lighting of this searchlight, we invite
the woman known fondly to us all as the B.I.B. to become our
partner in moving our city forward into better and safer
times.”

The applause spiked again. I stood
and thought to myself,
That T-shirt is
mine. The B.I.B. name, that’s mine.
It
blew my mind, could this be happening?

“
So without further ado, let me say
here and now to the B.I.B., the City of Scranton needs you, wants
to be your partner, and is asking for your help. Please join us,
whenever you see this light.”

With that, the mayor nodded to a technician,
who started the generator that ran the searchlight. When the
generator had reached full power, the technician nodded back to the
mayor, who dramatically raised a large lever on the electrical box
that controlled the light. A huge beam burst forth several hundred
feet into the sky, until the beam found enough cloud cover to
support a gigantic, sexy silhouette of the B.I.B. surrounded in a
white circle.

Even though it was just a silhouette, there was
something unexplainably magnetic about it, about her. It was the
same thing I had felt at O’Malley’s when she left me speechless. At
first I thought it was just me, but the silhouette drew everyone
standing around me like bugs to a light. The men were drawn by her
mystical beauty, the perception of which was a magnitude higher
than its fact, and even the women were drawn by the strength,
power, caring, and control she projected. As they say, women wanted
to be her and men wanted to be with her. Everyone in the crowd
screamed joyously, but you could barely hear them over the sound of
the diesel generator. With the sound and the fact that we were all
staring up at the light, we were unaware of the response to the
beacon in the city at large, but it was immediate.

From the streets below came the sounds of car
horns and then the crashing of metal as drivers, whose attention
had been drawn to the sky, plowed headlong into other cars and
lampposts, ran up over curbs onto mailboxes, or into the windows of
retail stores. There were shouts. There were screams. Virtually
every dog in the city began to bark nonstop. Small fires erupted.
City workers stepped straight into open manholes. The engineers of
a freight train could not help but stare at the silhouette and ran
a stop signal, derailing the engine and three cars.

At the air traffic control center that covered
Scranton, controllers put down their coffee cups and spread the
alarm as dozens of small aircraft and a few larger aircraft inbound
to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport suddenly
abandoned their flight plans and began converging in the air space
above the city. The controllers became frantic, watching the blips
on their screens leave their nicely spaced order and begin a
beeline for one another. A squadron of fighter jets was scrambled
in fear that a mass high jacking was underway. The aircraft were
the bugs and her silhouette was the light.

On the balcony, I watched the mayor staring
hopefully at the silhouette. When he noticed small orange and red
explosions around it, he smiled and turned to his assistant,
Edwards, and had to literally shout in his ear, loud enough for me
to hear, “Good job. I think the fireworks are a great
effect!”

After a second, I heard Edwards shout back,
“Sir, I did not contract for any fireworks.”

I could see the mayor’s jaw dropped as he
realized the “fireworks” were aircraft colliding after being drawn
like moths to the B.I.B.’s image. He ran to the railing of the
balcony, looked down into the street, and cringed. Looking over his
shoulder at the totally stopped zigzag pattern of the cars below
and the image of a city bus, driven halfway into a coffee shop,
made me aware of his worst fears. As slowly and stately as an
asshole can walk, he moved to the searchlight and pulled down the
handle. He extinguished the generator and its beam, put his head
against the searchlight and pounded his forehead on the cold
metal.

A mobile phone rang; Edwards answered it and
handed it to the mayor. “Sir, it’s the Federal Aviation
Administration for you.”

The mayor pounded his forehead again and
again.

Edwards stammered, trying to make sense of
events. “I…I guess we hyped this a little too much.”

I watched the mayor turn to Edwards, then come
at him like an attacking wolf. “Ya think?”

* * *

While the Searchlight fiasco was in progress,
Paige, Kelly, and I were attending the Batman movie premiere; none
of us were crazy about superhero action movies, least of all me,
but the latest installment was supposed to be filled with hunks. We
sat watching the movie, wearing the B.I.B. T-shirts we had
purchased from a street vendor just before the searchlight was
turned on. I wore the Miner’s Lite/B.I.B. version while the girls
wore girly colored versions of the “We’re Not Afraid Anymore”
shirt. It was hilarious for me to be the B.I.B. and wear a B.I.B.
T-shirt with no one the wiser. How they had expected their lame
event would motivate me into the public eye was beyond
me.

I had a hard time containing myself during the
movie, though. Every time Batman took a punch from a henchman or
pulled some gadget off his belt, I sputtered, shook my head, and
mumbled “wimp” or “pansy.” During the fight scenes, I couldn’t help
but laugh out loud. Paige glared at me, embarrassed of her mother’s
weird behavior in front of Kelly. Eventually, she gave up and just
tried to distance herself with a tilted body lean. I tried to stop,
but I mean, seriously, Batman wouldn’t last a day in my
world.

On the way out after the movie, Kelly asked me
if I’d liked the movie. “It was okay,” I said, and sneezed. “I
didn’t know it was a comedy.” Kelly looked at Paige, who just shook
her head and shrugged.

When we got to the lobby, it was as if we had
entered a different world. The first set of doors to the theater
was just so much broken glass, and a car with flat tires had
crashed into the lobby. The second set of doors was blocked on the
outside by a car that had struck one of the building’s exterior
columns and turned broadside against the doors. Everyone was filing
out slowly, uncertainly, through the third, undamaged set of
doors.

“
What happened?” I asked a theater
worker who had begun sweeping broken glass.

“
When the mayor’s searchlight went
on downtown tonight, everybody was looking up, I guess. They say it
was hypnotizing. Nobody was watching where they were going. I heard
it’s like this all over town.”

“
Looking up at what? Did the B.I.B.
show up?” asked Paige, excited.

“
I was behind the counter and didn’t
see anything. I heard no one who saw it could take their eyes off
it.” He shrugged and kept sweeping.

I led the girls out into the street as a
panic-stricken man ran by in the cold night air, tearing off his
coat and shirt, and was gone. Out in the street, men from the bars
had moved their Antler Game out into the street. They wore their
leather helmets with antlers on them, and ran, beer bottles in
hand, then ducked behind the cars that were parked the sidewalk or
had hit one another. Other Morons chased them with rifles, shooting
off blanks. They were all grinning hugely at having found an
exciting new venue for their game.

Drivers stood around arguing and trying to
reach 911 or a tow truck on jammed mobile phone lines. Other
drivers whose cars were not that badly damaged tried to maneuver
with dangling bumpers or tires rubbing on crumpled fenders. What a
bunch of assholes, I thought.

“
It may take awhile, but we’ll get
home, girls. Don’t worry,” I said in a hoarse voice, feeling a sore
throat coming on, and my nose beginning to run.

Kelly asked, “Did the B.I.B. show up or
not?”

“
No, she didn’t,” I answered without
any apparent way of knowing.

“
How do you know that, Mom?
Mom?”

I just kept walking. “This way, girls,” I said,
wishing I had a tissue.

“
Mom?”

* * *

At the searchlight event, it took a long while
for the crowd to understand that they were being told to leave,
most having no idea what had happened on the streets below. What
had happened wasn’t wasted on Megabyte, the mayor’s assistant who’d
come up with the searchlight idea. He crept along the wall until he
had passed the mayor, found the door, and then he was gone in a
flash.

I had dropped so quickly from a high to a low
that I took it very hard. I hung my head and just stood as the
crowd flowed by me. The mayor had escaped early on with all of his
advisers. The news crews and their cameramen had run to cover the
real story in the streets below. I remember taking no special
notice of it at the time, but I saw Jennifer Lowe in the crowd of
people as they filed by me. She wore a long, dark coat and a
generic beret, but there was no mistaking her face, which was
burned in my memory.