Super Born: Seduction of Being (6 page)

I returned to O’Malley’s with a
sense of anticipation. Primarily, I was there to meet Ed, but I
prepared myself, just in case
she
was there. This time, I vowed not to let the SSS
effect keep me from speaking with her. The anticipation was like
being six and coming downstairs on Christmas morning, hoping to
find that toy you’d wanted all year.

But she wasn’t there. Instead of finding that
special toy, it was like the year I found Uncle Ernie drunk under
the tree—only this time it was the grizzled ol’ barkeep I found. I
turned my attention to him as he stood at a table nearby. When he
recognized me, I saw his eyes go wide, and he quickly reached over
and grabbed up a tip that lay on a table beside him.

I walked up to him. “How are things tonight, my
man?”

“
It’s been a horrible night trying
to keep up with all these assholes…” he said, as the sounds of
rifle shots rang out from the back room followed by shuffling feet.
“And now you’re just the cherry on my steaming pile of shit,” he
said, shaking his head. “What can I do for you? Not thinkin’ of
buyin’ a wee drink, are ya?”

“
Have you seen Ed here tonight?” I
asked.

The old man stroked his chin for a moment.
“Well now, it seems to me that I ain’t served you a drink yet, and
this here is what you call a bar, not an information
booth.”

“
Got ya,” I said feeling in my
pocket for any signs of money.

I pulled out my last rumpled twenty and said,
“Well, bartender, I’d like two beers, one for me and one for my
friend Ed. Is he here?”

The barkeep took the money, returned with two
bottles of beer, but no change, and pointed. “He’s around back…but
if you wants to talk with ’im, I suggest you do it quick like. He’s
next up wearing the antlers. That’ll be 'im putting them antlers on
right now,” he said, pointing.

I wasn’t sure why two beers cost $20. Either
the barkeep was a greedy old soul or he was trying to make up for
the drinks Jones and I had not bought the night before…maybe both.
In the back of my mind I debated whether to sell a kidney or try
male prostitution as a way to pay for dinner. But I needed to talk
with Ed, so I let the barkeep keep the change.

I slid into the back room with all the cool I
could muster. Remembering his pimply face and thin body, I
recognized Ed in the crowd of RFDs preparing for the Antler Game,
some having trouble figuring out how to put on the leather helmets
with the antlers attached. One had his over his face—despite the
obvious problem breathing, it was a good look for him. I marched up
behind Ed and tapped him on the left shoulder. He looked back
around over his right, but then eventually found me. “Hey, aren’t
you the guy from the news report this morning?” I asked.

Ed shyly nodded.

Beside us, Ed’s friend, Ken,was fumbling,
trying to load the rifle, trying to figure out which end of the
bullet went which way. A tall black RFD taunted him, fingers waving
in his ears, calling “Ken can’t load a rif…rife…gun!”

“
Wow, it’s really cool to meet you,
a TV star and all,” I fluffed.

Ed smiled but didn’t say a word. I guess an RFD
can get SSS with anyone.

“
It would blow my mind if you could
sit down and tell me what you saw last night.” I pulled him away
and we both sat at the same table where Jones and I had been. “Hey,
can I buy ya a beer?” I said, handing him one.

“
Thanks,” he said—still with the
slurred single syllables, but it was an intelligible
word.

“
So, dude, what happened out
there?”

It was slow and agonizing but,
eventually, Ed told me the story of how he’d left the bar and heard
the whistling sound like a plane flying overhead. Then he heard a
cell phone ring in the sky. That made him look
up, and he saw this beer truck hanging above him—a
woman
dressed in black was standing on top
of O’Malley’s, holding it up with two fingers. With her other hand
she answered a mobile phone, and he heard her say, “No, Mommy’s at
work.” That’s when the truck slipped out of her fingers and it fell
straight to the ground with a loud crash. The woman said, “Crap,”
and flew off.

When I asked him for a description of the
woman, he said she was dressed all in black with a black cape and a
black mask over her eyes. When I confirmed his description, he
said, “Yep, a flying bitch in black.”

By then, the other RFDs were getting anxious to
continue the Antler Game, and I had enough of the info I needed. So
I thanked Ed and told him to enjoy his beer, and he quickly resumed
his game.

“
Bitch in
black…
” I thought to myself. How
dare that mofo call my girl a…you know. Then again, wasn’t it
better than Ms. Blue/Green Eyes or “the blond?” Maybe I could just
shorten it to the B.I.B. No one needed to know what it meant
anyway.

I walked back into the front room to talk with
the barkeep. I had to wait while he helped up an antler-wearing RFD
who had somehow fallen while running along the edge of the
bar.

“
What can I do for ya now?” he
asked, knowing I wasn’t there for more drinks.

“
If you should see the blond that
was here the other night come in again, can you give me a call?” I
said, handing him a business card I’d printed on my
computer.

He took it but didn’t even look at it. “What’s
in it for me?” he asked.

I dug through my pockets again, but came up
dry. “A hundred bucks,” I said boldly.

“
A hundred bucks?”

“
Yeah, a hundred bucks….you take a
check?”

Just then a shot rang out from the back room.
It was not the usual-sounding rifle, and it was not followed by
many other shots, as usual, nor the usual idiotic laughter.
Instead, we could hear the RFDs yelling at one another. The barkeep
knew there was something wrong as well, and we both moved quickly
to the back room.

We found Ken and another RFD wrestling with the
rifle, and on the floor across the bar from them lay Ed, shot in
the head, antlers brokenl

“
My god,” said the barkeep, “I never
dreamed one of ’em would actually hit somebody…Why did it have to
be you, Ed?” Tears began to flow and the barkeep shook with
emotion.

I lay my arm over his shoulders. “Were you
close to Ed?” I said.

“
Not hardly, Ed was a flamin’
moron,” the barkeep sniveled, “but he owed me two hundred dollars
for his bar tab!” Then he began sobbing again. I let my arm slide
off his shoulders.

Ken’s rifle was open, which made me
doubt he had ever loaded it—I wasn’t so sure that Ken was the
shooter.
Somebody’s killing
witnesses
, I thought to myself.
Followed by,
And maybe they’re killing
journalists who talk to witnesses!
My
feet did their duty.

The next morning the papers were
calling it a terrible barroom accident, and the mayor was calling
for the prohibition of the use of live ammo in the bars allowing
the Antler Game.
Duh.

***

That night, while I was licking my wounds with
the last of the Miner’s Lites in my fridge, Jones called and asked
me to meet him at his place. He had a job for me. So I headed on
over.

His apartment was more a messy research lab
than an apartment, with papers and books stacked everywhere.
Incense filled the air. I stepped through the mess sheepishly to
take a seat in front of the desk where Jones sat.

“
Yes, yes, I have for you a very
important job. I told you the answer to finding the super female
was in my briefcase, and here it is,” he said, pointing to a
blackboard filled with mathematical formulas that covered the
entire wall of his apartment. Jones drew a big circle around the
final computation. “Yes, there it is,” he said and then turned to
his desk, which was full of papers. He gingerly plucked a pair of
sheer purple thong panties off of a textbook, looked up at me with
a self-conscious grin, and said, “Research, research, you know,”
and then proceeded to look something up in the textbook.

Part of me felt sorry for the sap. Here he
thought the answer was in those numbers, and I already knew so much
more about the real-life B.I.B. I would humor him anyway, but I was
the guy with all the answers, not him. Unfortunately, I was also
the guy who had gotten Ed killed, or so I had convinced myself.
Should I tell Jones about the danger? No, he was happy in his
little world with his formulas. He was safe.

“
Tomorrow, first thing, you must go
to the Hall of Records. I have used the epsilon radiation readings,
adjusted for halflives and periodic conversion, of course, to tell
me the most likely time that a super female would have been born
and where. According to my calculations, she would have been born
in Scranton at one of these two hospitals during the Super Bowl of
1976. That would make it…January 18, 1976. The closer to halftime
she was born, the more likely it is that she would develop into a
super female.”

I had a hard time keeping a straight
face. Super Bowl?
What does that have to do
with anything?
I began to doubt Jones,
right then and there. Christ, I knew more than he did. This was
true crap. But I hid my smile and nodded—what a pro.

“
You must check for women born in
Scranton on January 18,
1976. Make a list
of them all. We will prioritize them by how close to halftime they
were born. If my theory is correct, the one born closest to
halftime will be the one with the greatest chance of having
developed super powers,
”
Jones smiled and handed me a paper with all the
date and time information. “So, can you do this tomorrow, Logan, my
friend?”

I saluted with a couple of fingers. “Can do.
But this seems like chump work. Why would you need me, when you’re
such a great researcher yourself?”

Jones was perplexed—clearly he felt always
being the smartest person in the room was hell. “Because of this,”
he said gesturing to his wall- sized black board filled with
equations. “And these,” he said, gesturing to his ocean of books.
“And my lab and class schedule at the university. But, most
importantly, all my nights are full. Monday’s are Manic Mondays,
Tuesdays are Two-For-Tuesdays, Ladies Night is generally Wednesday
at most bars…do I have to go on? For God’s sake, man, can’t you
think for yourself?”

“
Sounds to me like your ‘research’
every night at the bars has become more important than the Nobel
prize.”

“
Must I tell you again? Okay, you
have an entire generation of women in this town with increased
abilities and desires—that includes sexual desires and abilities,
huh? Get it now? And a generation of like-aged men who still think
they have a ‘pee pee.’ The women in Scranton are an untapped
goldmine of amazing, intelligent, potent, yet unsatisfied female
nuggets with no one to mine them but me! After all, it’s not their
fault all the men around them are idiots. I do my best to make as
many of them happy as I can, but in a town like this, believe me,
there is not enough of me to go around. I’m a goddamn public
utility for these poor, women. So you do the fucking leg work, it’s
Two-For-Tuesday at Skelly’s bar tonight and I’m up to my ass in
research!”

There was a crashing sound and a
female voice from the other room. Jones glanced at the bedroom door
and then turned nervously back to me. “Well, research calls, my
friend…just checking to see if that’s
her,
you see.”

“
And how’s that going for ya? Was
she born January eighteenth?” I joked.

“
No, no, no, my friend, I don’t
believe so. But if you will excuse me,” said Jones seeming
embarrassed and made edgy by my discovery of the ‘research’ he was
doing in his bedroom. He turned away and then turned back to me.
“You will be needing some funding by now, I am guessing.” He opened
a drawer, pulled out a stack of bills with a wrapper that
read
$5,000,
and
tossed it to me.

I caught it and felt its comforting
crunch in my hand.
Just what the doctor
ordered
, I thought, trying to contain
the smile I felt inside.

Then it hit me.
All these strong, beautiful women want
him?
What am I, chopped
bologna?

“
You can let yourself out.” Jones
walked toward the bedroom mumbling, “Research, lots of
research.”

Again, I beat feet. It was beginning to become
a habit.

* * *

The next day, I halfheartedly began
work on the assignment Jones had given me. After all, there was
nothing for me to do until
she
surfaced again, so I might as well keep busy with
this. As it ended up, the information was mostly online, so
assembling the list of births was easy. Of the nine thousand and
some births that year in Scranton, only thirty-two were on January
18. Surprisingly, thirty-one of them were female, and twenty-seven
of them were born during the Super Bowl. Those percentages defied
all statistical logic; there should have been one or two more boys
than girls born, and they should have been more spread out
throughout the day. It all struck me as stange.