Superpowers (17 page)

None of which pointed to Harriet. Except that she had gone with the blond boy. Was she Sherlock? No. Ray had read enough of Harriet's writing over the years to know her style, and none of the accounts he'd seen over the past month matched it. Maybe she wasn't involved. None of the witnesses had mentioned an African-American female.

Then he knew. The invisible girl that Ben Thatcher had talked about, the one that had popped up in a few witness reports. No one had said anything about an African-American female because none of them had seen her.

Horns were honking at him, and he realized that it was his turn at the drive-thru. He eased off the brake.

Jesus, he thought as he pulled forward.
My daughter's a superhero.

 FRIDAY

Jack drove with the windows open and no radio. He liked to listen to the morning sounds. The residential streets were nearly silent; lazy wind chimes and early-risen birds made soft, musical sounds, but most of the alarm clocks and automatic coffee machines would make no sound for three hours yet.

He left the truck running at the end of the block. He retied his shoes and loaded a few dozen newspapers into his bag. A dog barked in its sleep.

Jack shut the door of the truck, strapped his watch to the rearview mirror, pressed the button to start the stopwatch, and took off running.

Now the silence was complete, except for the sound of his breathing and his heart. Five blocks, down and back. Thirty-five newspapers. When he got back to the truck the stopwatch was just turning over to one-hundredth of a second.

He climbed in the truck and pulled up to the next block. There were two apartment buildings on this street, and he had a key for the outer doors. Forty-six papers. It took him fourteen seconds, most of which he spent unlocking the doors without destroying the keys. The next street was a short one, and he didn't even set the stopwatch. He drove to the last route.

The distribution manager had started him out with four routes. He said that was all anyone had ever been able to finish in time. The first night Jack had done the routes, gassed up the truck, eaten a big meal at Perkins, and taken a nap in his truck before going back to the warehouse. He stayed there with the manager until eight in the morning just to show him that he had plenty of time left over for more routes. When there were no complaints, the manager gave Jack two more routes, saying that was all he thought was humanly possible. Jack didn't argue. He didn't want to arouse any suspicion.

Today he was taking his time between routes, breathing the morning air and pretending that there was nothing to think about. When he started to think he thought about food: rare, juicy steaks, peppery mashed potatoes, warm apple pie. Sometimes he dreamed about food now. He was losing weight; his mom had noticed. He had told her he was worried about summer finals, which wasn't true. He had more time to study than he knew what to do with; he'd read his texts three times or more, and the only thing tricky about the tests was writing slowly enough not to attract any attention.

The last paper route was all apartment buildings. The tricky thing was carrying all the papers—seventy-two in one building alone—but he just stacked them near the inside door and went back when he ran out. The route took him twelve minutes, most of which was driving between buildings. Altogether, the six routes had taken him forty-seven minutes. He drove to Perkins, picked out one of the extra papers, and brought it inside.

The waitress's smile faded as he ordered three omelettes and eight pancakes, with all the bacon, toast, and hash browns that came with them. Jack had to repeat himself twice because he was talking too fast. He ignored her sigh and started on the sports page, stretching his legs out in the booth.

"Is it not bad enough that you must deliver it? You read it as well?"

Jack peered over the top of the paper and saw a tall Asian man smiling at him. The man's face was familiar, but Jack didn't think he'd ever spoken to him before.

"We have not met," said the man, with only the barest hint of an accent. "Yet I feel that we must have much in common. We have many of the same classes, you recall? They herd engineering students here, have you not noticed? First this course, then that one, single file, do not push. And then I see you have begun to deliver the papers as well. This is strange coincidence, don't you think?"

Jack folded the paper shut. "Strange, yes. I— My name is Jack."

"I am Solahuddin Sutadi," said the man, and he sat down opposite Jack as if invited. "It is more than most Americans can recall or pronounce, so you may call me Sol."

"Sol," Jack said. "It's nice to meet you, Sol."

"Of course." Sol glanced at the paper. "You are missing nothing. By the time we deliver it, it is old news. The world will not suffer to be put down in black and white. And in this country, you are not allowed the truth in any case."

Jack tried to think of a response, but Sol shook his head and waved a hand, as if to say he could handle the conversation on his own.

"Not that you are unique in this respect. And there are other considerations in favor of this country. Amenities, one might say. Such as education. There are perfectly serviceable engineering schools in my country as well, but it is important to broaden one's horizons, as they say."

The waitress set a large orange juice in front of Jack. "Would you like to order as well, sir?" she asked Sol, offering him a menu.

Sol didn't reach for the menu. "Please, yes. I would like two eggs sunny-side up with two wheat toast, hash browns, and a blueberry muffin."

"It comes with bacon," said the waitress.

"I do not eat of the pig," said Sol. "I would like to substitute the muffin for the bacon, if that is possible. I will have coffee, however, if it is very hot."

"OK." The waitress swept away from their table in a rush.

"This is a terrible place, you realize," Sol said. "But at this time of morning one has few choices. Are you aware of an establishment near the confluence of Lake Street and Washington Avenue where men gather early in the morning to eat breakfast and watch pornography?"

Jack shook his head. "I hadn't heard of that, no."

"I was once forcibly ejected from those premises," said Sol, "due, I believe, to the fact that I am neither bearded nor a member of a labor union. I am at a loss to understand it otherwise. Do you enjoy pornography?"

Jack coughed and looked around for the waitress. "I suppose," he said. "If it's tasteful."

"My friend, what point is there in tasteful pornography? I have some videotapes I could show you. They are not only not tasteful, in some cases they may be illegal. But I see that this subject of pornography makes you uncomfortable. The legacy of the Puritans will never die, it seems. What would you rather we discuss?"

"I don't know," Jack said.

"Do I offend you?"

"No," Jack said. "I just don't know you very well, that's all."

"May I ask you, how do you come to know someone, in your country, generally?"

Jack laughed, shrugged. "By talking to them, I guess. So you're from where, exactly?"

"I am from Indonesia. Jakarta, or close enough that it's not worth mentioning the actual village, because you won't have heard of it anyway, any more than I had ever heard of Madison, Wisconsin, before I applied to the university here. Our family was the only family in the village with money, for which fact I assure you I am properly ashamed and in atonement for which I will someday build a mosque."

"So your family has money?"

"Yes. Enough to send the eldest son to America and pay his tuition, but not enough to pay for books. One semester, eight hundred dollars' worth of books! This, and my desire for a car, necessitated the taking of a job at Taco Bell. After I had earned enough to purchase a sporty yet dependable Toyota Camry, I took on a couple of motor routes as well. Is your story similar in its tragic scope?"

Jack shrugged. "Financial aid covers tuition and some rent. I do work study at a lab on campus, I work at a restaurant on State Street, and I deliver the paper."

"So we are both oppressed workers under the thumb of the American Man, do you agree?"

Jack laughed. "I don't feel that oppressed."

Sol's smile disappeared. "Then it is more serious than I feared. You are so far gone that you are numbed to the indignities you are suffering. There is only one cure."

"What's that?"

"You must come with me tomorrow morning to watch pornography and eat eggs. We will demand our right to watch acts of sexual perversion with skilled workmen both active and retired."

"You've got porn on the brain."

"I am twenty years old, my friend. I would not be healthy if I did not think about sex constantly. Would you prefer to think about the problems of the world? There is poverty, war and hate, oppression, persecution and discrimination. But you and I are but students. We can do nothing to combat these things. Only study. And when we can study no longer, we must release the tensions heaped upon us by our mad professors. We must fornicate in defiance of the madness of the world. It is our divine animal right to watch acts of perversion on videotape, and to participate in them whenever possible!"

The waitress arrived at the table as Sol was speaking and set Jack's omelets and pancakes in front of him. "I'll bring your syrup right out," she said.

"Maybe you could keep it down a little," Jack said. "You'll offend the waitress."

"I was not speaking of her. But come to speak of her, do you think she does not think of fornication? Do you think that the fact of her ovaries forces her to think only motherly thoughts, that she sees herself as a virginal Madonna? You give her too much power when you think of her in that way. She is as much a slave to her biology as you and I. She desires the sexual act as well."

"Your syrup," said the waitress faintly and ran from the table.

"I am doing it again," said Sol. "We will discuss something else. Do you know these All-Stars?"

Jack chewed with deliberate care. If he'd been alone he'd have finished the plate already, but he was being careful around Sol. He wondered if he could have given himself away somehow.

"The superheroes?" he asked, once he had swallowed.

"What is happening there, do you think? Is this more of your government's smoke and mirrors?"

"I don't think so," Jack said.

"No? Why not?"

"They had some pictures the other night."

"They were not good pictures. One blurry glimpse of a woman in blue does not constitute evidence. You are familiar with the X-Men?"

"I've heard of them."

"In the Fall of the Mutants, after they sacrificed themselves to defeat the Trickster, and then were brought back to restore the balance of the cosmos, they could no longer be detected by electronics. They did not show up on cameras."

"That sounds pretty out there," Jack said.

"By which you mean what?"

"It sounds pretty hard to believe."

"Perhaps. But it is the type of thing that superheroes are known to experience. I am not convinced that these All-Stars are true superheroes. There have been no lights in the sky, no rifts in the fabric of the dimensions. There are no supervillains. And what is a superhero without a supervillain?"

Jack shook his head. "I don't know," he said around a mouthful of eggs and toast.

"A fool in tights."

MONDAY

Harriet stood in front of the house and looked at the note again.

"Exclusive Story on All-Stars Developing—Need Your EXPERT ASSISTANCE—See Me at Office ASAP."

The note wasn't signed, and the envelope had no return address—it had been slipped under the door at
The Campus Voice
offices with just her name on it. But she knew who it was from.

She strode up the short path and mounted the concrete steps to the small, cluttered porch. The house had recently been repainted a light, inoffensive green, and the hedges that dominated the tiny lawn were freshly trimmed.

She stabbed at the doorbell.

Was "EXPERT ASSISTANCE" meant to imply that she had some special insight into the All-Stars? Could he actually know that much? Or was he just trying to appeal to her ego?

She rang the doorbell again just as Marcus opened the door. "I hear you, Miss Bishop. You must have received my message."

He looked good and managed to dispel the effect entirely by knowing it. Harriet wondered if he had ever owned a T-shirt that wasn't a size too small.

"I got your note. I don't know why you sent it to me, but I got it."

"I can see you're not interested," Marcus opened the door wider. "Why don't you come in?"

Harriet pocketed the note and stepped inside. The place hadn't changed, as far as she could tell. The front hall was still empty and needed vacuuming. The two rooms to the left of the entrance, divided by a wide arch, were still cluttered with books, file cabinets, computers, and a couch littered with blankets and pillows.

"Still sleeping on the couch?"

Marcus shut the door behind her. "It's been a while since you worried about my sleeping arrangements."

She avoided his eyes. "What's this about, Marcus?"

He sat down at a computer and started clicking through folders.

"Are you going to answer me?" she asked.

"I'm showing you," he said. "Look."

What she saw was a blurry image of a brown-haired woman wearing green. The background was even more indistinct, and she seemed to be surrounded by flowers.

"Is she on a parade float?" Harriet asked.

"What?"

"It looks like she's on a parade float."

"That's Green Star."

"Is she a parade marshal? Is that what you wanted to show me?"

"Let go of the parade thing. Let's not play games."

"It's a bad picture, Marcus."

"She was running past the capitol gardens. Let me show you the next one."

The next was not quite as blurry but showed only the masked head of the woman in green, in shadow. "Look familiar?" Marcus asked.

"She looks like Green Star is supposed to look, I guess. But it could be anybody,"

"Could it be your roommate, Miss Layton?" Marcus clicked to the next picture.

The next picture was clearly Mary Beth, without her mask. Although the photo appeared to have been taken through the half-closed blinds of her window, her face and costume were clearly visible.

"You see now why I called you in to consult on this."

"To remind me that you're a pervert?"

"I didn't take any nudes. And if you insist on bringing up our sex life, you were the one with the problem, not me. But you're just trying to change the subject." He smiled. "Not much fun being on the other side of the interview, is it? Tell me what you think of this one."

The next image was of Harriet's house, from across the street, after dark. The silhouette of a person was clearly visible in midair, emerging from the attic window.

"You've been spying on my house?" Harriet asked.

"I notice you don't seem surprised by the content of these photographs."

"Marcus, you don't seriously think Mary Beth is strong enough to do the things Green Star is supposed to have done."

"All I have are facts. I personally saw Green Star lift two men with one arm, and credible witnesses say they saw her lift an SUV over her head to prevent some convenience store robbers from escaping. And I know now that Mary Beth is Green Star."

"That's ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous is you pretending you don't know what's going on. You're in on this somehow, or you wouldn't even be here, the way you avoid me."

"To avoid you I'd have to think about you."

"You think about me. You're still in love with me."

"I was never in love with you."

"You were. You never said it, but you were."

"You're so goddamn conceited."

"And you're so afraid of losing control that you can't relax. But this really isn't taking us anywhere. I'm curious about your reaction to these photographs."

"They're obviously fake. You pasted Mary Beth's face in there with Photoshop and drew in that silhouette above the house."

"That's possible," Marcus said. "But you know me pretty well. Do you really think I'd do that?"

"If you thought I knew something you might doctor up some fake evidence and show it to me, hoping I'd give something away. It might even work, if I knew something."

"I think you do. I think you know everything that's going on with the All-Stars. But I don't need to get answers from you. The police are investigating this, you know."

Harriet knew. Charlie had told her that her dad was on the case, and he scared her more than Marcus did.

"If I were to publish these pictures I bet I'd get a lot of attention. The police would probably want to ask your roommate some questions. Probably both your roommates, and yourself as well. They'd start keeping an eye on your neighborhood to catch any costumed crusaders slipping through backyards to their secret base in your attic, or wherever you have it. I have to say, it's sort of sexy. What's your connection to it all?"

He doesn't know I'm one of them.
Harriet was surprised by her reaction to that. Of course, no one had ever mentioned a young black woman at any of the All-Star appearances, because no one had ever seen her. But she had an urge to tell him about Black Star and the costumes and how it felt when things went right and they caught the bad guys and saved lives and how it felt when things didn't go right, like at the pizza parlor which she still had nightmares about and how she had gone to the hospital five nights in a row to check on the manager and sent flowers to him anonymously when he'd gone back to work but she still didn't feel any better. She wanted to tell Marcus how the colors went fiat and bright and elementary when she went invisible and how sometimes she deliberately ran into things to be sure her legs were still there. She even wanted to tell him about how sometimes she watched people when they thought they were alone, listening to their conversations in restaurants and a few times even following a couple home and slipping inside with them and watching them talk and get ready for bed and pretending she was one of them, a normal person in a normal relationship instead of a fucked-up person pretending to be normal. She wanted to tell him all those things, and she remembered then that she had been in love with him, damn him, but it could never have worked because she couldn't have a normal, healthy relationship.

What she finally said was, "What is it you want, Marcus?"

"Is that some sort of admission?"

Harriet wanted Charlie here so he could tell her exactly what Marcus knew. She should have talked to the others before coming here, but she'd thought she could handle Marcus the way she used to when they were together. It wasn't like that now.

"What is it you want?"

"I want an interview with Mary Beth. I won't print any pictures. But I want to ask her some questions. In return I'll keep her identity secret."

"And stop the surveillance?"

Marcus hesitated. "For a while."

"For good."

"I won't lie to you, Harriet. This is too big for me to sit on indefinitely. I have to keep investigating. But I'll promise to protect Mary Beth's identity and that of any other All-Stars I discover. It's not important to me to unmask them."

"You're going to make it political, aren't you?"

"How would I do that?"

"You're going to make Green Star into a poster child for your causes. I know you. You're going to twist this."

"I'm going to report facts."

"Marcus, you pick and choose your facts. You know what you're going to say before you do your research. Look at this!" She waved at the bookshelves around her. "All you read are crackpot conspiracy theorists who think there's a secret cabal behind the assassinations of everyone from FDR to Buddy Holly to Tupac. I don't want you painting my roommate as a revolutionary. She doesn't need a high profile."

"She's already got it."

"Not as an enemy of the state!"

Marcus stood and moved toward the front door. "Why don't you go talk to her. I'm running something about the All-Stars in next week's issue. It's up to you and her whether I run her story or my pictures."

He was hurt, Harriet realized. She'd just said all the things that other people said about him, taken all the doubts she'd ever had about him and thrown them in his face.

"I'll call you," she said.

"One more thing," Marcus said. "In case anyone thinks they can come in here and wipe those pictures off the hard drive, they might want to know that I've installed cameras here. I've also got backups on disk and printed copies in a safety-deposit box. Just in case anyone was to think they could get rid of all the evidence."

Marcus wasn't even gloating. He wouldn't look at her.

"I'll be in touch," Harriet said, and left.