Project Northwoods (10 page)

“Oh, they found a way,” he reassured Tim.

Tim whacked him on the arm, the gesture of reassurance lost completely in the moment of unhappiness. “Buck up, dude.” Arthur scoffed audibly and turned away to the next set of steps. “So you had a few bad tries.” Arthur made a mental note to ask Tim about his definition of ‘a few’ when he didn’t feel like strangling a puppy. “Keep plugging away.” Tim managed to keep pace with Arthur despite the latter’s much longer stride.

“Mr. Cleese called me an anachronism,” Arthur said in a forced staccato from the stairs. “I don’t even know what that means, but I know I don’t like it.” He reached the next landing and didn’t feel like moving anymore. He walked to a nearby pillar and leaned against it.

Timothy leaned next to him, folding his arms. “It sucks man, I know. I mean… damn. You’d think they’d give you a pity license after a while.” Arthur exhaled noisily, an insincere smile threatening to turn up both sides of his lips. It melted away in an instant, and he grabbed his tie and yanked it off in frustration. “And those pants…” Tim continued, laughing. “They’d want to employ you just so you wouldn’t have to walk around with stained clothes.”

“Yes, Tim, insult me. Great idea,” Arthur muttered as he shoved the tie in his pocket, the length of it proving difficult to corral.

Tim pushed himself off the pillar and turned to face Arthur. “I honestly think you’re trying too hard, Art. You gotta relax a bit. You know… start lower on the ladder.”

Arthur slipped away from Timothy, putting his hand in the air between their faces. “Okay, I’m walking away from this conversation.”

Tim called out after him, “Just ‘cause you don’t like the idea doesn’t mean it’s a bad one.”

“Tim, for villains’ sake…”

“‘Henchman Lovelass’. Come on, it’s got a nice ring to it.” With a clap of his hands, Tim’s face lit up. “Or they sometimes give you a number. With your brains, you could be Number One.” Timothy rushed in front of Arthur, stopping him. “How badass would that be? Number One? Just like Commander Riker, dude.”

“Yeah, this inspirational speech coming from a hired gun of the Tibetan Mob.” Arthur put his hand over his mouth in a display of over-emphasized shock. “Oh, wait!” He cocked his head and said, with a degree of matter-of-fact snide, “You aren’t allowed to carry guns because your bosses are all pacifists!”

Tim smiled casually. “There are worse jobs.”

“Like what?” Arthur asked. “Working for the Andorran Mob? No, Tim, because even they laugh at you.”

Tim’s smile grew wider, accompanied by an airy laugh of indifference. “I’m going to attribute that comment to the fact that you only hurt the ones you love.”

Arthur immediately felt the crushing weight of his attitude hit him full-force with guilt. He hadn’t meant to sound like he thought less of Tim, even if that’s how it came out. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m being a jerk.”

“Yes,” Tim said with a solemn nod. “You are being a jerk.” Most would have lied in an effort to help Arthur’s already wounded self-image, but not Tim.

“I’m not henchman material. I’m not super-fast or strong… or even nigh-invincible, like you.”

Tim smiled crookedly. “Baby,” he clicked his tongue and winked, “no one’s nigh-invincible like me.”

Arthur was starting to feel better, which was irritating unto itself. “First day out, and I’d come face-to-face with a nightstick happy cop.” He mimed the snap-wristed motion of an officer beating an imaginary suspect on the head with an accompanying ‘thump’ sound effect. “One whack and I’m out.”

“All I’m saying is you should give it a chance. You can network. Make friends, actual friends, with people who aren’t me. And when the time comes, you can go back in there prepared. Villain name, references, a rap sheet, what have you.” Tim bobbed his head in agreement with himself. After a moment, his eyes squinted, as though pulling important information from the recesses of his mind. “But whatever you do, don’t go into the interview with a green costume.”

With a scoff of incredulity, Arthur asked, “Why? Why not green?”

“I don’t know,” Timothy said honestly. “Ariana said something last week about green being the new beige.”

Arthur digested this information. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Tim shook his head, looking as confused as Arthur. “I know. But the woman packs my lunch. I’ve learned not to argue.”

“Maybe I should… take some time off.” Arthur started toward the steps again, Tim walking beside him. “Give myself time to think.”

“News flash, Art: if you don’t get a job sometime soon, you, me, and Ariana are all going to starve to death.” Arthur rolled his eyes and gestured with his free hand as though it was incessantly talking. If Tim was irritated by the dismissal, he didn’t let it show. They finally hit the sidewalk and stopped in front of the throng of people moving along to their own lives. “We’ll talk about it later.” The two turned to face each other. “I’ve got to get back to the Mob.”

“Yeah,” Arthur said, exasperated. A thought struck him. “Wait a minute.” He jabbed a finger at his friend. “Aren’t you supposed to be there now?”

Tim half-laughed with practiced bravado. “Asked for the morning off. Had some errands to run.” He leaned in close to Arthur, as though sharing a secret. “But I told them I needed three hours to find the bliss in ignorance of worldly desires.”

Arthur smirked and shook his head. “They bought that?”

“I know, right?” Tim whacked Arthur on the shoulder, making the taller man distinctly aware of a growing ache beginning to nest there. “Take it easy, man.” Tim spun on his heel and vanished into the current. Arthur joined the stream of people heading in the opposite direction.

The Live Hard Café was surprisingly packed, the early afternoon heat prompting most patrons to take refuge in the air-conditioned interior. In keeping with his day, Arthur was forced to endure the temperature under the minuscule shade of a too-tall umbrella on the patio. The corner where he sat was farthest from the street, a move which had gone all but unnoticed by his demoralized mind.

He wasn’t alone, of course: others had rejected the artificial coolness in favor of sunlight and shouting above traffic. One woman was reading a book with her feet up on the table, her dog leashed to her chair leg. The dog itself, an Irish Setter, looked painfully overheated as it occasionally lapped at a water dish the café provided.

A cola rapidly perspired on the table, the moisture slowly forming a puddle on the metal surface. The expanding pool threatened a folded white piece of paper with his named etched on it in familiar, too flowery handwriting. The urge to rip the note up was successfully fought back by his urge to sit and wallow in self-pity, which was also serving to suppress yet another urge to throw himself in traffic.

Deliberately, he leaned forward, placed his forehead on the table, then proceeded to pound his head. If he afforded just enough leverage, he reasoned that he could give himself a cerebral hemorrhage.

He was dimly aware of the feminine voice above him. “I tell you, Arthur, my back is killing me.” Without an acknowledgment of the woman joining him across the table, he continued to ram his head into the unyielding metal. “Could you stop that?” his visitor asked without a solitary note of concern. “We only just finished buffing out the skull indentations from the last table you brutalized.”

“This is the worst day ever,” Arthur grunted into the table. He pulled himself upright and looked at Ariana. She smiled at him toothily as she threw her wadded-up apron on the table. She was gorgeous, more than anyone not famous had any right to be. Straight black hair, shoulder length, was held back in a sloppy bun from her freckled high cheekbones. Her left ear had two small metal loops – one in the lobe and one in the cartilage – connected by a short chain which glittered against her naturally tan skin. She was two inches taller than Tim, always a source of stares whenever they’d walk down the street. Her deep brown eyes glinted with just enough light most of the time to give her an almost aggressively friendly appearance. This, naturally, made insecure women hate her instantly and most shallow men adore her at roughly the same speed.

Not that Arthur noticed any of this.

He made eye contact momentarily before shifting his gaze back to his soda. “Why can’t I do it, Ariana? Why?” He flicked part of the puddle, a streak of water arcing away in a line before forming up into a droplet again. “This thing was foolproof.” He kicked the case under the table.

“Well, there’s your problem,” she said matter-of-factly. “If it’s foolproof, a hero can’t stop you. Society needs heroes, neutrals, and villains. If everything is in order, everything works.” Arthur fought an urge to roll his eyes. She had gone to a villain-run university for a degree in art and, thanks to her ‘breadth of knowledge’ classes, bought the ‘balance’ theory as much as the next straight-A student.

“You’d just think,” Arthur began his rationale, “that people would want a villain who could smack around a few dozen heroes. At least to keep things interesting.” He gestured to the people on the street. “Instead we have a bunch of misfits whose idea of villainy is walking into a bank and asking politely for money, then waiting for a hero to show up and save the day.”

Ariana smiled wisely. “People don’t want unmitigated conflict, but controlled chaos isn’t much better. When World War Two ended, all those super heroes came back from Germany full of self-righteousness and sausage.” Arthur looked at her wearily. She always seemed to forget that, in terms of historical information, she got most of it from him. “When they were allowed to run wild, they lost track of Desecrator until he flattened half the city. The government stepped in, and then the heroes became too efficient. People died. And then the villains blew up a ton of Heroes’ Guilds. More people died.” She shrugged. “We all know that both sides have the capacity for being awful.”

“I know,” came his carefully modulated interjection.

“All I’m saying, Art, is the Bronze Age has barely started. Give it time.” She leaned across the table and onto her apron. “You’ll find a niche.”

Arthur made a face at that phrase. It cropped up whenever Ariana and Tim ganged up on him to join a mob or a street crew. They were trying to be supportive, and it irked him every time. “Can we just not talk about it at the moment? I’d rather not discuss how worthless I am.”

“Fine.” Ariana turned her head sideways, hiding her eye roll. The sigh, however, was quite audible. She shifted her weight in the chair and pointed at the folded note. “What does the lady have to say? Something uplifting in this dark time?”

Arthur had managed to keep the note out of his mind until this moment. Despair welled up within him. “Can we go back to how stupid I am?”

“Oh, no,” she said with a partial laugh, a smile forced down with great effort. It wasn’t meant as cruel, but her dark sense of humor must have loved the clusterfuck of it all.

“Damnation,” Arthur muttered as his head lolled backward. He brought his hands up to cover his face.

Once again, Ariana leaned on the table, apparently under the impression that proximity could fix his mood. “Come on. It could be so much worse.”

“I didn’t think she’d do it,” Arthur said as his hands fell to his thighs with an audible slap. “She threatened to, but I thought it was…” He shook his head.
A joke? A poorly worded and ill-phrased joke that sounded suspiciously like a threat?
“It’s like she knew I was going to fail.” He gestured to the note, not even noticing that Ariana was trying to look as sympathetic as possible. “And, instead of breaking up with me in person, she left a note with my best friend’s girlfriend.”

Ariana’s face immediately broke into a forced smirk as she leaned back in her chair. Arthur hadn’t noticed the hard gleam flashing across her eyes. “Still just your best friend’s girlfriend, huh?” Art slumped onto the table, arms supporting his head. She reached for the note, annoyed. It wasn’t like she particularly liked him, but his inadvertent dismissal of her friendship was a sore spot. And, even if she thought he was useless, at least she believed he liked her. Unfolding the paper, her eyes flitted across what could only charitably be called a letter. “Arthur. I quit. Kirsten,” she narrated. One of her eyebrows arched. “How fitting,” came the judgment as she put the note back onto the table.

“Mff mff mff,” Arthur said into the crook of his arm.

She looked at him. “Up here, Art.” Pointing at her ears, she continued, “My ears are up here.”

He lifted his head up and stared off into the distance. “I need to get her back.”

Fighting the urge to heel-stomp his ego, she instead offered, “You can do better. Kirsten’s eyes were too far apart. And she looked like a lobster.”

“No, no, I don’t want to date her,” Arthur said as he waved the thought away. “She got approval from the board a couple of weeks ago. I can use her to finally get my license.” He nodded to himself as he plotted before his thought process derailed. He looked at Ariana with confusion. “What do you mean, ‘She looked like a lobster?’”

She chose to ignore confronting the conspiratorial opinion held by almost everyone who had ever met Kirsten. “No one can say you’re one to waste time mourning.”