Zephyr I Read online

  “Explain yourself, Joe. This seems kinda nuts.”

  “I’m reading about Zephyr.”

  “You used to keep a scrapbook,” she says.

  “I used to be sixteen.”

  “We both used to be sixteen,” Elisabeth says and I look up, wincing through the smoke at the face of the girl I fell in love with in high school and who has since grown older, less interesting, yet even more essential to my life. I nod.

  “I have to treat Zephyr like a business. I’m thinking about . . . I’m not sure what I’m thinking about, but it’s a change from the ground up.”

  “You’re changing costumes again?”

  “No.”

  I wait a good minute before saying, “Aquanaut has an agent. . . .”

  “Bully for him.”

  “I think it’s a good idea.”

  “And who’s heard of Aquanaut? If I wasn’t your wife – Zephyr’s wife – I wouldn’t know him from half the head-cases you’ve mentioned in the past seventeen years.”

  “He calls himself Nautilus now.”

  “Whatever. That’s better than Aquanaut.”

  “I thought if I had an agent, a . . . PA, maybe even an office – even a virtual one – then this would be more like a job.”

  “A PA?”

  “You’ve got one. And you’re always reminding me this isn’t a real job.”

  Elisabeth snorts contritely. “Don’t hold it against me. I’ve been saying it for twenty years and it hasn’t mattered yet. You don’t have to have a real job, Joey. That’s what you’ve got me for.”

  “I want more than just . . . just scamming money from reporters for stories,” I say with a touch more anger than I expected.

  A spark leaps from my eye to the glass window and vanishes.

  “Is this about money?”

  I drop my gaze to the table. I’ve opened Starscene to reveal photo after photo of figures in costumes mixing with film stars, musicians, famous directors, supermodels, the Dalai Lama, Robert Mugabe, Princess Mary of Denmark, King William, Giorgio Armani. Their masked, multi-colored heads grin out of the pages at me. Overleaf, there are stills from the latest Paris Hilton video leaked to the Internet. The headlines “Masked Ball” and “Superhero Gangbang” read garishly. I recognize Sky Blue grinning, naked except for his blue-and-white wrestler’s mask, his lower torso pixelated, Paris leaning back into him with her eyes as droopy as ever. Paragon and Lionheart are also in the scene, masks intact. For a moment, the surreal idiocy of the whole thing overwhelms me and I flick back over the glossy pages with such haste they threaten to tear, and nearly invisible smoke curls off my fingers. When Elisabeth places her hand over mine, the page falls open to an image of U2 descending from the stairs of a plane painted the colors of the Pan-African flag, and the caption reads: Bono, the Edge, Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton. And I wonder what it feels like to be the guy in U2 no one knows.

  “I don’t care about Zephyr,” Elisabeth quietly says, kissing the side of my brow. “I never did. Oh Joey, can you forgive me? I was a girl. It was so surreal, so amazing . . . but I moved on. You should’ve moved on too.”

  I try to say something and fail, realizing I have nothing in my lungs, so I take a breath so deep my chest shudders. I feel the urgent need to communicate, but I don’t want to overdo it.

  “The amazing becomes mundane so quickly, honey,” Elisabeth continues. “I still love you. Do you believe that? You don’t have to make Zephyr into a . . . franchise to please me. You need to do something for yourself . . . something other than beating up bad guys and waving to photographers.”

  I am feeling calm again. I turn slightly, but in the dark, between the shadows and the smoke, I can barely pick Elisabeth from the silhouette of the city.

  “What would I do, huh?”

  “Didn’t you always want to go to college? Write? For real?”

  I’m out of the room so quickly there’s not even the chance to make a breeze. I slam the door to Tessa’s room behind me and curl up fully clothed on her short bed, a banana print comforter across me. The paneled windows are veiled by thick velvet drapes, cut by a teenage hand and never hemmed. Somewhere close by, an ambulance starts up its siren and I close my eyes thoroughly sick of this madness.

  Zephyr 1.10 “A Long Outstanding Pretend Enmity”

  IT’S RAINING MEN starts up as I’m sitting in my boxers eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and browsing Wikipedia. I’m in the wallspace again. I snap my hand over the phone and answer extra quick because of the song.

  It’s Sal Doro.

  “You owe me five hundred,” I say.

  “It’s five hundred for a story. Have I run a story I didn’t pay you for? I don’t think so.”

  “I never said I was reforming the Sentinels, Sal.”

  “Zephyr, I connected the dots anyone else would when they read about your heavy metal friend Hermes. So I gave you the credit. You want me to make like it’s Pykes’s idea?”

  I can’t really refute that, so I say nothing.

  “I’ve been digging around a little with that info you gave me,” Sal continues. I hear a cigarette lit and after an intake of breath he adds, “Martin Hurson. Name ring any bells?”

  “He’s the scientist I told you about,” I say. “That Professor Prendergast’s pal.”

  “Right. No other bells?” When I say nothing, Sal says, “I have some paperwork on my desk right now that tells me your pal Prendergast and this Thurson fella are business partners.”

  “Is that . . . unusual?”

  “Not at all. Prendergast’s with Bell University, associate professor or something, but there’s nothing unusual about having a research company, which he does, and nothing unusual about a few scientists with similar, uh, fields of . . . anyway, sheesh Zephyr, I have paperwork here telling me this egghead’s company is the recipient of major funding from a shell company run by your friend and mine, Tony Azzurro.”

  “Tony Azzurro?” I say the name but I practically think, Twilight’s uncle.

  “Tony ‘Toecutter’ Azzurro. That’s right.”

  “Weird.”

  “It gets weirder yet. Dr Martin Thurson went missing seven weeks ago. Last purchase on his credit card was an American Airlines flight to Newfoundland – which is home, by the way.”

  “How the hell do you know what he spent his –”

  “He paid out the remaining three months of his lease in full, and I dare say he either told this Prendergast he was leaving or else he had a reason not to tell him. You capiche?”

  “I think so.”

  “And then he went missing.”

  “Maybe that was his plan?” I say. “Maybe the rest was a ruse.”

  “Either he’s missing or he’s hiding then,” and I can practically hear Sal shrug. “So what of it?”

  “Hmmm, well it is sorta interesting, Sal.”

  “But it don’t make you no five hundred bucks, I know. I’ll call when I’ve got more. I thought maybe I could tickle your interest and see if you’d look into it from your end. Prendergast, the mayor, him meeting with all these supers, and then Prendergast kind of building him one, you know?”

  Sal signs off with the whiff of more money firmly under my nose. What I might actually have to do to get it rather takes the edge off my hunger. Still moody with Elisabeth’s words from the night before, I sit and fiddle with the phone for a while and finally manage to change the ringtone to something that just bleeps infuriatingly. I am almost happy. Then the phone rings again.

  “Nautilus,” I say, breathing slowly into the phone. “I thought we could meet up, have a drink, if you’re still in town.”

  “Sure, Zee-man. There’s a cast party for the new Die Hard movie at Transit tonight and you’re invited.”

  “I am?”

  “Sure, I’ll get Saul to arrange it.”

  “OK,” I say. “But I need to talk to you.”

  “Yeah?” He sounds afraid to ask. “Everything OK?”

  “Yeah, I just nee
d to talk.”

  “OK, just don’t ask me to join the Sentinels, man, OK? I’m on the east coast now. I head back on Sunday.”

  “I’m not reforming the Sentinels, Aqua – uh, Nautilus, OK?”

  “OK.”

  We ring off and I ease slowly back in my seat.

  In the apartment beyond, the phone starts ringing. I sigh, grab my dirty bowl and coffee cup, and exit my fortress of solitude.

  *

  THE NEWS IS not what I expect to hear. If I wasn’t the lovechild of a cantankerous old lesbian couple and conceived in vitro (or so the story goes), I’d almost be shocked. Instead, mere run-of-the-mill gut-wrenching surprise greets the announcement my daughter has been suspended from her school for “inappropriate relations” with a fellow student.

  Since Elisabeth slaves away at her downtown law firm to ensure Tessa gets a head start in life by not being distracted by boys – it’s an all-girl school, get it? – I can almost laugh at the irony as I quickly change into my Zephyr costume and fold a change of civvies into the flat panel pocket concealed beneath the costume’s leather back.

  Elisabeth was the girl every guy wanted at school. Too hard-nosed to be a cheerleader, she was Prom Queen on sex appeal alone. And I was her date. True, Darren Aronofsky was voted Prom King, but that didn’t matter. I had something nobody else had. I was electric. And showing just how desperate I had been to impress young Elisabeth O’Shaughnessy, I proved it to her one afternoon way, way behind the football bleachers. Right where school property met the forest, in fact. And she was mine ever since.

  For one – excuse me, fuck – electric moment, we were so close.

  That we’ve been on separate paths since then seems as obvious an observation as it is trite. Beth is a long way from the ringleted high school beauty more impressed by a guy bench-pressing two thousand pounds and firing sparks from his eyes than someone with a talent based on something other than surviving a direct hit from lightning. Now she only gets that dreamy, faraway look in her eyes when she talks about her work, older colleagues, charity work, secondments to the United Nations, African aid camps, working pro bono for Medecins Sans Frontieres. . . . The list goes on and on.

  If my little girl’s gone girl crazy, you’ve got to think it’s in the genes somewhere, passed down from Granny George. My mothers stressed pretty early on that my sperm donor wasn’t one of their male friends, afraid, probably, I would grow up worrying I would turn out gay. When I was fifteen I reassured Max and George that I thought I was a lesbian too. The joke didn’t go down too well.

  But it does make me wonder about that other half of me. Scientists – well, Chamber, anyway, who has God-knows how many science degrees – once said people like me, struck by lightning and empowered ever after, were the “next step” in human evolution, just waiting for a metabolic catalyst to kickstart the process. Mutants like Mechano and any number of other freaks like Crosswind and his hangers-on who live under the bridge downtown, and those other degenerate fucks living out in the ruins of Manhattan, were the result of the human genome shaking its collective leg and coming up with freaky and universally useless variations, like a dress rehearsal for the world of tomorrow in which we’re just born with our powers, as well as the expanded cosmic consciousness Chamber always believed will inevitably lead us to world peace. I think perhaps he read too many Julian May books. But this isn’t a novel or even a comic book: there’s nothing cool about being a mutant, born with corrugated skin or six sets of eyes or crab claws instead of labia. And though for many years I thought I was the smokingest shit because I could fly, channel electricity, give the weather a nudge, move super-fast, and flick away bullets, I can’t help hoping Tessa has indeed got the queer gene – and takes after her grandmother instead of the more mysterious side of my family.

  *

  I HAVE TO go back in and make a sandwich or something before I take to the air because I’m starving and I learnt a long time ago not to go hyping up my metabolism on an empty stomach. World-pounding headaches result. So I’m standing there in the living room gobbling down Zephyr’s patented triple jelly sandwich with extra jelly and the TV’s on and I’m watching the new season of Phil Donahue’s show. The guests are semiotician Nelson Mandela, some black academic trying to explain to middle America what the hell he does for a living; the actor formerly known as Tom Cruise, explaining why he abandoned his birth identity and is now totally committed to Richard Gere and how they are breaking the stigma of being Hollywood’s first open sub-dom couple . . .

  And Lady Macbeth.

  I wouldn’t normally watch such drivel except I have to finish my sandwich and then fly halfway across the city so I can attend a crisis meeting because my little girl’s taken to munching rugs for a hobby. So I stand there like a robot, the jelly on stale rye, while Lady Macbeth breaks into tears as Phil explains to the audience how the former villainess wants to be known now as Jocelyn now she’s reformed.

  “Oh God, oh God. . . .” she blubbers.

  A spark from my fingers, subtle and low grade, is enough to switch the television off without frying it. I stomp back through the secret door of white tiles and it’s only a few seconds later that I’m jetting on a tight angle up into the sky.

  The day is crisp, reminding me that autumn has full sway. The white streaks left by jetliners mark the ocean-blue sky like chalk marks on the wall of a child’s bedroom. The city’s hundred-odd skyscrapers are an uneven cluster like crystal shards reaching from the river mouth and the Atlantic beyond. Over a leaden grey ocean reflecting the distant clouds, a storm-front moves like an army, tactically deployed to lessen cheer and spoil Friday night barbecues.

  As befits one of the world’s greatest cities, the skies are not mine alone. Apart from the planes ascending and landing at the distant airport, I spot corporate helicopters lifting from the pads of at least three roof-tops. There is a guy on a hang-glider out over the bay. Another flying figure makes a brief appearance, the merest speck against the cerulean background. It is my custom to climb to a height and then re-orient myself towards my destination, heading straight down again rather than fly in a lazy arc over the town, but on this occasion it seems I’ve been spotted. I shouldn’t be surprised. Most the city rooftops bristle with antennae, satellite dishes and receivers. “We’re in the Panopticon, baby,” as Mastodon, not exactly a voracious reader, once slurred to me across a table festooned with bongs and cocaine-dirty glass.

  The chopper is innocuous enough. No sleek black lines, non-reflective armor or curious rocket-shaped attachments. It doesn’t look likely to transform into a Japanese robot anytime soon. I guess the gigantic yellow E! with the exclamation mark might be a deliberate clue.

  In one of her more moronic deployments yet, Leeza hangs from the doorless cockpit with black plastic safety straps giving her a second boob job. Gravity and the wind factor suck eagerly at her face as she holds an enormous-headed microphone up like the prop it is. From the helicopter, her irate-cum-chatty voice booms.

  “Ahoy there Zephyr, looking good!”

  I wave a salute and dutifully hover a hundred yards away with a fake grin feeling like a circus clown about to get paid to get a blowjob. Leeza doesn’t say anything for a moment. I guess the pilot or the producer is giving her instructions and the nose of the chopper comes about, slowly easing towards me. I swoop around the giant insect, the outside studded with cameras, and note an actual cameraman poised over Leeza’s shoulder. Nearby roof cameras with telephoto lenses will provide the reverse feed later, the footage either sold to the entertainment show by freelance entrepreneurs or sourced ahead of time by the actual producers.

  When the open door and I coincide once more, I give Leeza another wave.

  “How’re you going there, Leez?” I groan with just the right amount of zing. Hard to believe their producer once sent my fan club a letter addressed to me, criticizing me for “inadequate composure forbading close-ups” (sic). Just another reason to get an agent so I can learn more handy
tips like those.

  I grimace a smile and Leeza says something in her customarily flirty way and I respond with a quip about the air temperature up here that has her double-taking her nipples, which are standing up like chapel hat-pegs, as the old book says.

  “Zephyr, what do you say to the buzz around town that you and your old teammates are planning a big announcement? Is there an exclusive you want to give our viewers?”

  “I guess you’ve been reading that old hobo Sal’s column in the Chronicle, Leeza, and like I told him, there’s no substance to it.”

  I smile, imagining Doro’s all-day-sucker face and his grin at our shared joke, a long outstanding pretend enmity. All the expression goes from Leeza’s face and the voice booms back, “Hang on Zee, we’re just checking the tape. Did you call Sal Doro a ‘homo’?”

  “No,” I snap. “Hobo. You know, like a homeless guy? Though I guess that’s not so cool either.”

  Leeza gives a trilling laugh and an effete wave and signals we’re rolling again.

  “Dana Ray puts you at Mechano’s after the U2 show the other night and we have to ask – if you’re not putting the team back together, what’s between you and former teen sorceress and 2007 Penthouse Pet Miss Black?”

  “What?”

  “Are you an item?” Leeza positively squeals. “Do please tell us we can scorch that nasty rumor.”

  “Miss Black and I are just old friends, former teammates. . . .”

  “Former friends as in ‘just friends’?”

  Leeza’s voice halts, creating a pregnant pause quite hard to imagine hanging there almost eight hundred yards in the air beneath whirling rotor blades. My palms are prickling at the merest suggestion of closeted homosexuality. I reply without even thinking.

  “Well, you know, ‘been there, done that,’ Leez.”

  The reporter erupts in duplicitous laughter and the helicopter moves off for a moment, the pilot shuttling around, adjusting for the change in breeze and then bringing it back while I continue to hover, uneasily aware I may have just committed a faux pas, throw in a little borderline defamation too, but not quite yet able to scrutinize the meaning.