Super Born: Seduction of Being (21 page)

When I was done, my thoughts turned to where
this whole thing had started. I needed to get back to my research
on the women born during the Super Bowl. It was the only way I
could think to find her. None of the glitz, none of the glamor,
none of the fame had lured the B.I.B. to show herself. I was sure
that Dr. Jones had not shared his Super Bowl theory with anyone
else. It was the one connection he and I had left. The appearance
of Jennifer Lowe at the Searchlight Event and her melted pen at the
coffee shop made me feel certain Dr. Jones’s theory was correct.
But at that time, I still didn’t know if Jennifer was there to help
me or hurt me.

* * *

That night I purposely stayed late at work.
First, to earn some brownie points, and let the prune know how
sorry I was (yeah right), and second, to watch her leave. She was
almost always the last to go; vampires and witches traveling best
in the dark, I guess. I followed her out and watched from the lobby
as she worked her slow, deliberate way out of the door, down the
sidewalk, and around the small, treed corner to her car with her
key remote in hand. Seeming to be on autopilot from having done it
for some many years, she arrived at where her car should have been.
She reached out with the remote to open the door, but there was no
door. She paused, then looked up to see a Miner’s Lite beer truck
standing on end, having squished her vintage Ford like an
accordion.

Somewhere below in the twisted metal was the
lock the remote opened, and she bent over to try to find the door,
apparently unable to conceive that anything such as this could have
happened. The old biddy pushed the remote over and over, and the
car gave off an occasional mournful beep of recognition. She began
pacing to the front of the mess and then to the back of her ex-car,
where she stood with a look of disbelief. That was when the Miner’s
truck creaked and gravity dropped the front end down with a
bouncing crash over her car. The old prune stared at it for a
minute, looked at the key remote in hand, pushed it, and then
collapsed to the ground as a security guard ran to
investigate.

He was quickly standing over her asking,
“Ma’am, are you okay? Ma’am!” When he got no reply, he said to
himself, “Man, she looks like she’s been dead for
years.”

Suddenly her eyes popped open, shocking the
poor security guard, who must have thought she was rising from the
dead. She looked at him and was instantly herself. “Young man, I
have had this car for fourteen point two years, and never has my
remote failed to open the door properly!”

When I knew she was all right, I strolled over
to her. “Oh my god! You okay?”

She sat up and gave me a snarling look. I’ll
bet that I was the last person she wanted to see her having a
problem.

“
Boy, I’m glad you made me move my
car, or that would have been my Ford under there… squashed like a
bug…destroyed beyond recognition. I hear these beer truck are
dropping everywhere. Glad you’re okay… maybe you should write that
truck up for double parking.” Then I walked away with a cocky
smile.

“
I believe I will do just that!” she
yelled after me. “Help me up, you fool,” she yelled at the security
guard.

I got in my car and was home in seventeen point
three minutes.

***

Being Jennifer Lowe had its advantages, my
quiet penthouse being one of them. Rebecca and I sat across from
each other on leather sofas before a small gas fireplace whose
flicker and glow calmed me. I had my legs tucked up under me while
I sipped from a long-stemmed wine glass. To anyone, I would seem
the image of relaxation and comfort. Anyone would be
wrong.

“
Gee, Jennifer, your place is
great,” Rebecca said to break the silence. She sat hunched over a
small coffee table between the sofas, not sure what to do with her
glass.

“
I’m sorry about the wine. I know
you like that Miner’s Lite beer, but you just can’t get it anymore.
I even tried the black market for you. No one’s got any,” I
apologized, trying to be the gracious host and calm Rebecca, who
seemed nervous.

“
It’s okay. For me, it’s Miner’s or
nothing. I never liked any other beer.” Rebecca spun the wine glass
in her hands and looked around the condo with its large windows and
view of the city. Nothing in Scranton was really tall, but this was
about as high as it gets. “Your place is amazing,” she said,
getting up and walking to the windows. “How do you afford a place
like this being a florist? Your family have money?”

That made me laugh out loud. Was she kidding?
“Me? My family had nothing. You wouldn’t want to know where I came
from.”

“
So, how’d you get all this?”
Rebecca asked, sitting back down and drinking some of her
wine.

“
Rebecca, I’m about as much ‘just’ a
florist as you are ‘just’ a graphic designer.”

Rebecca blinked, and she put down her
wine.

“
Oh dear, you
are
just a graphic
designer…”

Rebecca’s face had become upset. “Yes, I am,
and a damn good one!”

“
I’m sorry,” I said, sliding off my
sofa. I sat down beside Rebecca and put my hand on her shoulder. “I
know you are. I saw what you did on that B.I.B. website. It’s
terrific.”

“
It is! Everyone likes it! I started
from nothing and now look at it. That was the first time in my
career someone just let me take the ball and run with it. He’s
really given me the freedom to be creative and not look over my
shoulder all the time. He gives me a cut of all the money the site
takes in, and I’m doing very well, thank you very much…I just wish
I didn’t have to hide things and lie to him. When you told me that
taking over his site and using him as a front would help us find
her, I had no idea he would be such a good guy.”

“
Good guy? Please. Don’t make me
ill. The little loser can’t even get it up.”

“
You know why. She’s marked him.
That’s how we know they’ve been together…right?”

“
The man has no taste,”. I sipped
some wine, and memories of the coffee shop brought a flurry of heat
energy to the ends of my fingers. I calmed my anger, and it flowed
back into me.

“
I just hate lying to
him.”

“
You know how important this is.
That twerp knows where she is! Eventually he’ll go to her, or
she’ll come to him.”

Rebecca clearly began to run through a full
circle of emotions and insecurity. “I told you I wasn’t a wine
drinker,” she said, and put down her glass, tears appearing in the
corners of her eyes.

I began to feel sorry for her. She was upset
and I decided to reroute the energy I was feeling myself.
“Rebecca,” I began, “Let’s forget about finding the B.I.B. and
websites and everything for a while. Would that be
okay?”

Rebecca nodded. “Sure.”

“
This may sound a little out of
nowhere, but do you find it hard to have sex now that you’re
discovering your powers?”

“
Oh yeah, do I. The men I’ve met
lately are like toys—five or six quick ones and they can barely
move afterward, and there I am, without even getting my motor
running…I can’t even tell you how many batteries I buy a
month.”

I picked up Rebecca’s wine glass, put it to her
lips, and tilted it. “Here, you’re gonna need this.”

“
What?” said Rebecca before drinking
down the entire glass.

Despite beint with man after man, none had been
able to quiet the erotic fires in me. With all the frustration I
had experienced lately, I felt open to experimentation. It was a
new concept to me, but I reasoned that, if even a bunch of men
could not satisfy a superwoman, then maybe a superwoman could. I
began to move slowly toward Rebecca until we were nose to
nose.

“
What are you doing?” Rebecca asked.
Then Rebecca began to feel the power in my hands as they roamed her
shoulders, neck, and hair. I pulled off Rebecca’s glasses and
removed my own. I slowly ran my hands down Rebecca’s chest, took
hold of her sweater at the waist and lifted it over her head. She
sat motionless, stunned, while I tossed the sweater and her bra to
the ground. I began a show of slowly unbuttoning my own silk shirt,
all the while smiling and staring into Rebecca’s eyes. When I
released the last button with flair, Rebecca looked down to see me
bare to the navel. She trembled, waiting in anticipation and
uncertainty. In a second, the slow dance was over and we were a
combined mass of lips, arms, thighs, and hands.

* * *

One minute and twenty-nine seconds later, we
emerged from my bedroom and walked back toward the living room,
searching for our clothes and straightening hair. As we reached the
living room, Rebecca said “Well that really sucked! No
offense.”

I followed and shook my head. “Yeah, how do men
do that? What the hell was I thinking? I’m really sorry about that,
Rebecca. I hope you’re not mad.”

“
I understand. It was your
frustration coming out. Believe me, I know what that’s like.
“

“
Now we know that’s not the answer
either.”

“
But what is? Do you think ‘she’s’
found the answer?
Like, maybe that’s why
you couldn’t break the mark she left on Logan. ”

I shrugged. “You wanna talk shop?”

“
Definitely,” Rebecca answered,
bending for her sweater and glasses.

“
Good. I’ll get the ice
cream.”

I went to the freezer and then joined Rebecca
at the granite island in my kitchen. We leaned on it and dug into a
quart of premium peach ice cream with a couple spoons. There was a
long silence, which I finally broke. “I’m really sorry, Rebecca.
Not just for the sex, I mean everything. That website you made is
amazing.”

That made her smile. “You think so?”

I nodded. “And you don’t know about me because
I didn’t tell you. I should have. You deserve to know.”

She turned toward me. “Yeah?”

“
Yeah…I’m a florist because my aunt
was a florist. My aunt raised me. When cancer got her a few years
ago, she gave the shop to me. It ended up probably saving my life.
It was all I had left. But you’re right, that’s not where the money
comes from for this whole B.I.B. search. All that has come since I
got the powers.”

“
What happened to your mom and
dad?”

“
They were murdered when I was
fourteen.”

“
Oh my god.”

“
It messed me up for a long while.
If it weren’t for my aunt…I don’t know…Then my aunt died, and it
was like my parents all over again…I turned to drugs and drinking.
All I had was a friggin’ floral shop.”

“
That had to have been so hard for
you.”

“
It was, especially because I don’t
know a carnation from a geranium. Lucky for me, my aunt had someone
who ran the shop, Anna. She became the only friend I had. I would
get so angry. We’d spend weekends up on her family’s farm. It
settled me down.”

“
When did you get our
powers?”

I dug out a couple of spoonfuls of ice cream
and instantly, they melted in my mouth. “I was at my apartment
sitting in a Jacuzzi, believe it or not. I was thinking too much, I
guess, about my parents, about my aunt; just feeling sorry for
myself. Anyway, I got angry. It was just so unfair, you
know?”

Rebecca nodded . clearly sympathizing with
me.

“
I closed my eyes and started to cry
and let all the emotions out. When I opened my eyes I couldn’t see
a thing. The room was filled with superheated steam streaming out
the window and through the doorway. The water in the tub was gone,
flash evaporated—like a drop of water on a red-hot coal. My arms
and legs glowed with an energy that pulsed through them. I thought
I was some kind of freak.

“
I had to get away, so I put my
clothes back on and just left the apartment. I was walking down the
middle of the empty street, my eyes full of tears, when a car came
speeding over a hill weaving, with its tires squealing. It came
right at me like a missile. I threw my arms up in defense Then a
cone of, lava-red energy formed around me like a shield, and the
car hit it.

“
The energy cone pulsed, then slowly
faded, leaving the car squashed, like it had hit a
wall.”

“
My god,” Rebecca said, “that’s
amazing.”

“
And scary, and weird…I just fell to
my knees and then passed out.”

“
You command energy with your
thoughts?”

“
Hot, powerful, instant energy, with
my emotions more than anything else. It scared the crap out of me
at first, until I figured out the connection between the energy and
my emotions. When I calm down, the energy goes away.”

“
Yeah, when you first stumble onto
your power it’s scary. It was for me too, but nothing like what you
went through. Go on.”

I went to the fridge and pulled out another
quart of ice cream to replace the one we had finished. “It took a
while after that to understand what was going on, I mean, accept
what was going on. I couldn’t talk about it to anyone…Who’d believe
it, right?”