Super Born: Seduction of Being (31 page)

My body found a new supply of adrenaline and
shot into a panic. I leapt to my feet and started turning left and
right trying to decide what to do next.

“
It’s still three hundred dollars,
right? You said three hundred if she were ta show.”

“
Sure, sure, whatever.” I knew he
had inflated the reward, but I didn’t care. (What, money didn’t
matter anymore? Did I have a fever?) “You hold her there. I’m on my
way!”

“
Sure, sure, I’ll just sit on her
till you gets ’ere…If she leaves, it’s still three
hundred!”

“
Give her free drinks,” I stammered
as I fumbled for my shoes in the dark and ran my toe into the table
leg instead. “The drinks will be on me—whatever, free
food—

just keep her there!”

“
It’ll be my pleasure. I’m sure
she’ll love the lobster flambé special we’re havin’
tonight.”

I remembered the greasy chili fries O’Malley’s
served and knew the old man was just telling me that he was
inflating the bill some more. “Just keep her there!” With that, I
clicked the phone off and started through the door. I returned a
few seconds later, remembering that a pair of pants would be a good
idea….and a shirt.

* * *

When I walked into the bar and found her
sitting at the same table where she’d been sitting in all my wet
dreams, my heart changed neighborhoods and began bouncing around in
my body. But I kept my composure and walked slowly toward her
without a word in my head to say. Martin broke my cool when he came
running over with an order pad, trying to collect his money up
front. But I gave him a glare that put him in his place. He and I
handled the quick negotiations in relative privacy and were done. I
slid into the booth across from her like I owned the place and
feasted my eyes on her, waiting for the blue/green flash, prepring
the greatest opening line ever.

* * *

When he walked into the bar and stood staring
at me I thought that at first he was going to hurl. Then, when the
old bartender nearly ran him over I had no idea what to think. He
slipped something into the old man’s hand, they exchanged some
rough words, and then he zigzagged his way back toward me. For a
minute, I thought he was going right back out the door, but then he
zagged and stood over me.

“
Mind if I sit down?” he asked
uncertainly, and was that a belch he muffled?

I gestured for him to join me. He sat, looked
at the table for a minute, and then looked up and said, “You come
here often?”

* * *

She was obviously impressed. Apparently, I had
made the same kind of impression on her that she had made on me a
few months back, with the possible exception that she hadn’t
created a website for me, been searching for me feverishly, or
appeared to be under any sort of gaseous attack, as I was. Other
than that, she felt the same as me. I was sure. Her eyes glowed and
she smiled at me. “I remember you! You sat right over there,” she
said, turning and pointing, “with that Dr. Jones I’ve read so much
about in the paper. I saw him on TV. He’s the big B.I.B. expert,
right?”

I nodded. “Dr. Jones and I
have
both
been…in
the media a lot lately,” I said. “I have a website…”

“
I know. Pub Crawler and B.I.B.
Rescue—love those games you have,” she interrupted in a milder
tone, her eyes dropping to the table, which was littered with empty
Miner’s Lite bottles and two barely touched orders of O’Malley’s
finest. She offered me a basket of untouched chili
fries.

“
No…thanks.”

After an RFD slid past us on a chair pushed by
two other RFDs, I felt the words escaping from my mouth without
control; hey, at least it wasn’t another burp. “Look, it’s no
accident that I ran into you tonight. I paid the bartender to call
me if you showed up. Your feast here,” I said, gesturing
sarcastically to the table, “was to keep you here until I
arrived.”

“
Why?” she asked vaguely amused.
“Most guys…”

“
No, that’s not it…I’m not most
guys. You see…I just have to know…are you the woman who complained
the other night about the fish-face picture on my
website?”

She waited a long minute and stared off at a
distant speck before answering. “Are you the one who took the
picture off?” she said, turning to stare right through
me.

“
Yes.”

“
I wanted to thank you. My friends
and family know that face and they were sure…”

I held up my hand to stop her. “I know who you
are.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
You were born January 18, 1976,
during the Super Bowl, around halftime. You have growing powers you
can’t understand and aren’t sure you want.” I lowered my voice.
“You’re the B.I.B., and now it seems everyone is after you, me
included.”

“
So that’s it. You think ‘I’ am the
B.I.B.?”

My heart stopped flopping and I became deadly
serious as I fixed my eyes on her. “I know you are…but don’t worry.
I’m the one who took the picture off the site. Remember? I won’t
tell anyone.”

“
Then what’s this all about? You’ve
got your story, don’t you?” she grew angry. “Are you the one who’s
got the dogs on me? Was that woman outside my apartment working for
you?”

“
What woman? No one knows but me,
not even Dr. Jones knows about you. And you might want to keep your
voice down.”

“
She was sitting outside my window
for an hour. I haven’t been able to go back home since. That’s why
I’m hiding here. Everyone knows only morons come here.”

I ignored this comment. “Describe this
woman.”

“
Well, about my age, well dressed,
short dark hair, rose-colored glasses…definitely not the mob or a
cop. She could have been a reporter. She kept talking on her cell
phone. She was arguing with someone on the other end. She was
alone…little economy car.”

I began to match the description to all the
reporters with whom I’d worked, no match. Clearly, this wasn’t
Jennifer Lowe—even a woman couldn’t have failed to notice her
looks. I drew a blank until I matched the rose-colored glasses to
Rebecca. How could it be mild, sweet, efficient Rebecca? Then it
hit me like a ton and a half of bricks. “Goddamn it!”

“
What? What is it?” the B.I.B.
wondered, concerned at my extreme agitation.

“
God fuckin’ damn it.” I slammed my
fist on the table. “I am such a friggin’ sap!”

“
You know her, I take
it.”

“
Son of a bitch!”

“
Okay, you really do know her. Who
is she?”

I continued in my self-pitying rage, shaking my
head and staring at the ceiling.

“
Okay, now. Let’s focus
here.”

“
I don’t believe that bitch set me
up!” It all flashed through my mind and connected, like the last
ten minutes of an old black-and-white detective movie. I’d thought
I was hunting the Super Bowl born with my little survey and list of
women born on January 18, 1976, and all along, Rebecca had been
playing me. It was too easy that I’d needed a graphic
designer/computer geek for the website, and up pops Rebecca, the
perfect candidate. She’d put the site together so well and so
quickly, I was willing to bet it had already been planned and
programmed. She’d taken over full control of the site and all its
information, no problem, because she knew I was a lazy asshole,
just counting my money and TV appearances. I was the front that
kept her out of sight.

All along, she’d been monitoring the website
for a way to locate the B.I.B.—and, like the patsy I was, I handed
her to Rebecca with the goddamn fish-face picture. She had traced
that contact from the B.I.B. even before I asked her to do it.
She’d fed me the wrong address to try to dead-end my lead and to
try to give me finger herpes, I guessed, but Rebecca? What would
she want with the B.I.B.? She seemed so sweet and…and
what?

Then the mobile phone calls while Rebecca was
watching the B.I.B.’s apartment hit me. Sure, one may have been the
call I’d made to her after almost being forced to get lucky in the
Eastern European jungle—I’d known she wasn’t in her house; I’d
heard the cars go by. But we hadn’t argued, and that was just one
call. She was working with or for someone else. It had to be
Jennifer Lowe. Hadn’t she told me, point blank that she was looking
for the B.I.B., not once, but twice?

My god, were all the Super Bowl born working
together? Why? What did they want with the B.I.B.? How many of
these “mothers” were there? Then I remembered the two Super Bowl
born that had died mysteriously, and, with a face frozen in fright,
I looked across the table at the B.I.B.’s soft features and
shimmering eyes, afraid of what they might have planned for
her.

“
What?” she asked. “You have to tell
me.”

“
I know who was at your house, and I
know how she got your address. She’s the Web designer who manages
my website.”

“
So it was you,” she
glared.

“
No, no, she only does the Web
design for me. She is working with another woman behind my back,
using me, using my site to gather information about you. I didn’t
realize it until just this second. To get to you, they used me and
my website, and I fell for it like a one-legged Irish dancer.
That’s why I’m so mad. I swear I didn’t know what they were doing,
until you told me about the car outside your apartment. But it all
makes sense now.”

“
Who are they? What do they want
with me?” she asked.

I sighed, realizing how big the answer was.
“Dr. Jones’ theory is that women born the same day as you have a
very high chance of developing superpowers. The others I’ve met
seemed normal to me at first. I thought you were the only one. Now
I see that you probably all have superpowers, but have just chosen
different ways to use them. You stand up for the defenseless, the
underdogs, for all-American morals. One of them is using her powers
to make money; she’s a multimillionaire, at least, but acts like an
everyday woman. The other is the one you saw outside your
apartment, Rebecca. She’s somehow mixed up with the rich one,
Jennifer Lowe. I didn’t think Rebecca had any powers, but now I
have to wonder. She acts like any average woman you’d see
anywhere.”

“
This rich bitch, Jennifer—what
powers does she have?” the B.I.B. asked, seriously concerned,
apparently believing my spiel.

“
Well…I’m not a hundred percent
certain…She melted my pen.”

“
Melted your pen?” she almost
laughed. “What kind of power is that?”

I shook my head. “Tip of the iceberg. This
woman owns real estate all over the world. Who knows where else
she’s connected. I just know she’s not the kind of person you
are.”

“
What would you know about the kind
of person I am?”

I dropped my gaze to the table, wanting to tell
her how she made my body rebel against my control, how much I
admired the things she had done, and how I could think of little
other than her since the flashes of blue then green from her eyes
had hit me. I looked up at her, wanting to tell her how beautiful
she was, how her scent was driving me wild, how I wanted my mouth
on her lips that instant, and how I had done all this just for this
opportunity to see her again. I wanted to tell her how important
this meeting was to me, explain how I had risked my life in the
Eastern European jungle to find her. But it all sounded too
childish to believe. I fumbled for the words. Her face slowly
switched from a smile of warm anticipation to one of concern that I
had a bomb to drop on her.

Luckily, I didn’t have to answer. The barkeep
came through the front door with a couple of plastic bags and
plunked them down on our table without much regard for their
contents. “There ya go,” he said putting out his hand.

I handed him some cash. When he started to walk
away, I had to grab him. “Hey, hey!”

He stopped. “What is it now, sire?”

I started taking containers of food out of the
bags, real food. “You have any plates, spoons, forks in this
dump?”

“
Next you’ll be wantin’ a wee rose
for the table, I suspect.”

I snapped my fingers, as if to
say,
give me back my cash.

“
Oh, bloody hell, I think I can find
something.”

“
Good lad,” I said. He responded
with a disgusted wave of his hand.

“
What’s this?” asked the
B.I.B.

“
I felt bad about the chili fries
and asked him to pop around the corner for some real food from
Michael’s. Hope you like shrimp and chicken.”

She looked taken aback at first but then
started checking out the food as I unpacked it. “That smells
great.” (I soon learned that food was an easy sell to a Super
Born.)

The barkeep shuffled back with some old,
unmatched plates and silverware and dropped them on the table as a
small group of RFDs started gathering around, staring at the food,
pointing at it and discussing it among themselves. I called to the
barkeep, and he returned with some empty chili fry baskets and
plastic forks. I made up four or five baskets with small amounts of
the courses of our meal and handed them out to the RFDs, along with
the cold chili fries. That seemed to satisfy them, and they drifted
away, chuckling—except one that dumped out the chicken and shrimp
on the floor, preferring the paper basket as a more valuable
prize.