Wonder Guy (5 page)

“I didn’t want to interrupt your mother.” It took some effort to keep any snark from her tone, and Gloria set her jaw to keep from saying more. She took a deep breath. “I suppose I might go along sometimes to services at the Episcopalian Church, but it’s not what I believe in.”

“Maybe that would be best. Mom knows you’re not a regular churchgoer. She wouldn’t have to hear about the Unitarian thing.”

The thought of concealing her beliefs didn’t sit any better than having them dictated to her. “If we get a place here in South Minneapolis they won’t expect us to go to their church out in Roseville, will they?”

Pete had his own apartment, his own life here in South Minneapolis. It was sweet how he wanted to stay involved with his parents, but he’d never suggested before that he might want to move back to their neighborhood and go to church with them every Sunday. How much else might Pete still spring on her? She’d spent too many years twisting her dreams to fit around her father’s requirements. She didn’t want someone else’s parents taking over her new life.

“It’s not far by highway.” He took the exit ramp faster than she liked and braked hard at the stop sign at the cross street.

“Pete, c’mon. You don’t have to cross town to go to the same church as your parents do you? You’re a grown up now.”

“Well, I thought it would be better if we got a place in Roseville. I’ve been living near work because it’s cheaper, but we’ll need a bigger place anyway.”

“You know I need to look in on my father. He’s not responsible.”

“We can get professional care services to look after him. He might even be better off in a care facility.”

“He’s an alcoholic, not an invalid.” Obviously, she didn’t know Pete as well as she’d thought. Maybe things were moving too fast. On the other hand, it might be nice to have other people share some of the load of looking after Dad. She hated the quickly buried thought, but sometimes her father seemed like her own personal albatross.

“Maybe what we need is a second car.” Pete pulled up at the curb outside the two-story stucco house where Gloria had lived most of her life. “If we get a place somewhere in between here and Roseville and you have your own car, you can see your father as often as you want and I can go to church with my parents.”

“Oh, Pete.” Her shoulders loosened in relief. She hadn’t lost her fond dream of a secure home and future. “Just when I’m starting to think it’s hopeless, you come up with an answer. You’re my hero.”

After turning off the engine, he scooped her close. “Got time for a kiss for your hero?”

She melted into it. Pete’s kiss reassured her. One hand cupped her face, his lips brushing hers, sweet as a familiar face at a party full of strangers. He didn’t press her, just let her enjoy the simple pleasure of the moment.

For a few seconds, and then time to get moving. She had things to do. She swung the door open and jumped out. “Have a good night, you.” Gloria turned back, leaned into the car with one hand braced on the roof. “I’m going to run across to Aggie’s for a while and finish up the prototype I started. Do you want to stop in and see it?”

“Nah. I’ve got an early day tomorrow. You have fun.”

She’d hoped, like a child offering a crayon drawing to the teacher, for a word of praise, but she’d expected none. Guys. He didn’t get the arts and crafts stuff that meant so much to her. To be fair, she had as little interest in the world of golf he’d watch for hours on TV–and maybe she shouldn’t attribute it to his being a guy. She didn’t get Jo’s interest in
World of Warcraft
either.

The car moved away almost as the door thunked shut behind her. Instead of heading up the walk to the three-bedroom bungalow she shared with her father–who’d have passed out on the couch this late in the evening–she cut across the lawns and around to the back of Aggie’s house. The climbing roses on their trellis and the scent of fresh-mown grass perfumed the mild June evening. Gloria, paused, savoring the quiet darkness. She shivered. The breeze had cooled considerably with the setting of the sun.

All the talk of moving across town was too confusing and troubling. She wouldn’t just be leaving Dad. Face it, escaping the depressive aura he carried with him like a black cloud would be nice, but she’d also be leaving home. She’d be leaving the overgrown back yard where Sooty and Puzzler were buried, where memories both sweet and melancholy stirred every time she noted the spots. She’d be leaving the garden where she’d planted the rose cuttings Aggie had given her. She had the sensation of standing on the deck of a ship, watching the shores of her old life begin to slip away, seeing familiar faces grow smaller. The thought threw a fist-sized ache at her, striking just below the heart.

She’d be leaving Aggie, who’d been much more than a good neighbor to her since Mom died. She wouldn’t see as much of Aggie or the ever-present Greg. It would be a lot harder to work on her and Aggie’s joint projects if it meant driving across town.

Silly. She wouldn’t say goodbye. She’d still come around, still visit Dad, still work with Aggie. Maybe she wouldn’t do it as often as she liked. What if her life carried her in a new direction and she drifted away from her old life, her old friends? Well, that would be sad, but life got sad sometimes, right? Partings were unavoidable. She’d said goodbye to her mother, to her pets, and moved on. She could do this. Ignore the ache. It would pass.

Gloria gave a quick rap at Aggie’s kitchen door before pushing it open and entering.

* * * *

“What a dork.” Gloria glanced up from cutting rounded rectangular shapes out of clear vinyl as Channel 11’s News at Eleven cut to an artist’s rendering of the witnesses’ descriptions. It showed a comic book hero in a red leotard. Ridiculous.

A ten-year-old boy talked into the mic held by the on-scene reporter. “Yeah, that’s him. I didn’t get a good look, he moved so fast, but he’s the one stopped the robbers.” The boy stood in a suburban backyard, with a wading pool and a picnic table behind him.

“There you have it, folks. It seems Minneapolis can thank a Real Life Superhero for stopping this latest attempt by the Backyard Barbecue Bandits.” The reporter, Bob Richards, spoke in capital letters so often they’d made a running joke of it around Aggie’s worktable.

Greg muted the TV as he stood and cleared his plate from the single corner of the kitchen counter left free of craft projects and supplies. “Who’s a dork?” he asked. “The kid? He’s just–”

“Not the kid. The guy who dresses up in a costume to make everybody think he’s some kind of superhero.” Gloria rolled her eyes in unassailable argument. Wasn’t it obvious? Sometimes Greg seemed awfully slow for a smart guy. “People shouldn’t pretend to be more than they are. You take what life hands you and you deal with it.”

“But he is a hero,” Aggie broke in, mild as milk with honey. She sat across from Gloria at the worktable, cutting pieces from ultra-suede in various colors. “He saved the day. Those men had guns. Somebody could have been hurt if he hadn’t stepped in.”

“It might have been the hero who got hurt, or he might have gotten somebody else hurt,” Gloria insisted. “He should leave that sort of thing to the police. They have the training for it.”

Aggie muted the competing sound of the television, leaving Gloria’s voice echoing loudly in her ears.

“The police weren’t there. They can’t be everywhere.” Greg spoke over his shoulder in his usual matter-of-fact tones as he scraped the last bits of lasagna from his plate and turned to wash up in the sink. “I bet those people who didn’t get robbed after all are glad somebody stepped in.”

“Whatever.” Gloria sniffed in lieu of argument, turning back to her project. No point arguing with people who didn’t see something so obvious to her.

“What would a hero have to do to impress you?” Greg dropped back onto his stool and leaned across the counter toward her and his mother at the kitchen table-turned-workshop.

“I don’t know. Something big. Establish world peace? Save the environment?” She waved her bit of vinyl in the air as she spoke and did nothing to hide the exasperation in her tone. Why hadn’t he let the argument go the way he usually did? “Cure cancer, feed the world’s poor?”

“C’mon. Even Superman couldn’t do all that.” His grin bared straight white teeth framed by deep dimples. Greg should grin more. Except for now, when it just annoyed her.

“That’s my point. It doesn’t do any good to rely on make-believe heroes.” Gloria frowned to show him how seriously he should take her. “There are too many problems in the world. Every one of us needs to be out there every day, doing everything we can. It takes all of us to deal with it.”

What was up with Greg? He didn’t usually bother to argue. Gloria looked him over. Same as usual. Same scruffy, too long hair. He’d spilled lasagna on his plaid button-down shirt and left a stain near the collar.

Greg laughed. Laughed at her.

“You’re taking this too seriously,” he said, brushing aside a lock of stray hair from across his eyes. “Some guy in a costume stops a robbery and you think it’s a bad thing? You think he’s somebody to make fun of?”

“It looks silly.” She turned back to cutting the final corner on her carefully shaped bit of vinyl as if turning aside should settle the matter.

“You say the same when it comes to anything out of the ordinary.” Greg leaned closer across the counter. “But you know what, Gloria?” He waited until she met his unusually intense gaze, “Being silly or being out of the ordinary doesn’t make it a bad thing.”

* * * *

Greg grinned to himself as he crossed through the backyard to the garage. The surrounding trees shaded the yard to deepest night but his feet knew the way. He should probably be more upset. Gloria had called him a dork after all, but he’d been used to the same kind of talk from her since they were kids.

Funny how she wanted to deny anything special in a guy who moved so fast no one saw him. Funny the way she so badly wanted everything to be practical and predictable that she didn’t appreciate something out-of-the-world extraordinary when it appeared in her own hometown. She’d seen the laws of the physical universe transcended like hundreds of years of science meant nothing, and what did she focus on? A silly costume.

At least she’d stopped in after her date. He found it strangely reassuring to know she’d be going home and sleeping alone in her own bed tonight.

Entering his apartment, Greg threw his keys down on the counter dividing the kitchenette from the main room of the small space. He’d been in the habit of forgetting to lock up when he went to the main house to see Aggie, but today’s adventures served notice of the criminal element operating in town. Before tonight, he’d never witnessed a crime in progress. Crimes might be reported on the news every day, but they’d never seemed real before this.

Reviewing student papers at super speed had taken a fraction of the usual time, although some of the pages ended up singed from friction fires he quickly smothered. Greg needed an explanation for Professor Morrissey. He’d say he’d set them down too near the stove. At any rate, he’d finished in plenty of time to join Aggie for a late supper of leftover lasagna.

He eyed the stack of newly graded papers piled at one end of the coffee table. The charred patches hardly showed, but, yeah, friction fires went in the “minuses” column in assessing the usefulness of super speed. Add the wake of debris he stirred up behind himself whenever he went all out. He’d heard of tornadoes driving a straw through solid wood. Or was that an urban legend? What if the wind of his passing put someone’s eye out with a straw, or some other bit of detritus?

He slumped onto the love seat, all he’d been able to fit into the tiny apartment to serve as a couch. Growing up in Aggie’s pacifist household hadn’t prepared him for dealing with violent men or situations. He didn’t regret stopping the criminals, but his own ferocity in the process alarmed him. A sick taste rose to his throat as he remembered the sound when he’d yanked the guns from the robbers’ hands–those finger bones snapping like so many dried twigs. It came back to mind like an accusation of brutality. If the robbers got lawyers and learned his identity, they’d probably sue him. Another good reason for secret identities.

He’d enjoyed super speed, but it included too much unintended havoc, and everything he did ended before he got half a chance to enjoy the good parts. As much as he’d liked running across the surface of Lake Calhoun–even his dunking had been kind of fun–he’d better try something different in the way of superpowers.

How was he supposed to contact Serafina? He wasn’t wearing the costume hood with the built-in radio. He needed to talk to her about this.

He hitched his butt off the couch, digging in the front pocket of his slacks for the business card she’d given him. He drew it out, slightly foxed and bent, still legible, but it included no contact information whatsoever. He tapped it a couple times, flummoxed.