In Hero Years... I'm Dead Delux Edition (5 page)

I tipped the doorman, then checked in. A wad of cash got me a room, a visit from a tailor in the lobby haberdashery and, three hours later, two suits, five shirts, four ties, underwear, socks, shoes and luggage to carry it all. The Excelsior was happy to give me a complimentary toiletries kit and the staff was very understanding about how my bags had been lost by the airlines.

The concierge became my special friend when I handed him two Reagans and told him I needed to see Selene Kole. “Very good, sir. I’ll arrange it for an hour from now. Shall I call a car?”

“Please.”

I wore the black wool suit, blue shirt, university tie. I don’t know which university, didn’t care. Others would make assumptions and the stories they told themselves would insulate me. I needed the insulation. I wasn’t understanding much, and prospects on that front weren’t getting better.

The driver brought me to Selene’s gallery. Doorman had instructions to let me into the building. I passed on the elevator. Three flights up, the gallery occupied the entire floor. Tasteful and elegant, but minimalist. Paintings hung from the ceiling on wires. Pinpoint spots illuminated statues. All Old Masters or a few promising newcomers. I assumed the latter anyway. She’d always had exquisite taste.

Amid the new stuff I recognized one signature. Scarlet Archer. A hero doing art. Celebrity cachet, I guess. It wasn’t bad. Strong and bold, a bit over the top. Fitting.

Selene emerged from the shadows, putting the art to shame. Tall and slender like her daughter, moving with fluid, regal confidence, she stalked me. Strong features–but not cruel or edged–in a beautiful face untouched by time. Red-gold hair splashed over her shoulders and fire filled those blue eyes.

Her gaze had a razored quality. “Should I say hello, or are you here for a belated good-bye?”

I’d worked out what I was going to say. Face to face it all evaporated. Anger I expected. The degree of hurt, though, that I didn’t.

“She told you.”

“She’s a good girl.” Selene hugged her stomach. “I didn’t want to believe her. Then I saw the report. The damage done with the rod. Had to be you.”

I shrugged. “Old habits.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Where did you go?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Where?”

“I had to get some milk.”

“I had milk.”

“Two-percent. Yak milk.”

“Fine.” She held a hand up. “Why the hell are you here?”

“I could use a friend.”

“Go buy yourself a puppy.”

I looked down at my shoes. “I need someone I can trust.”

“You’d
trust
me, but you can’t tell me why you left? “

“It’s complicated.”

“So’s life.” A chill entered her voice. “My life, to be specific. I don’t need you to make it more so.”

“Selene…”

“No. You walked away twenty years ago. This time I do.” She started to turn her back to me, hesitated. Her voice quiet. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Very.” Somehow the word squeaked out past the lump in my throat.

The fire diminished in her eyes. Might have been the glimmering of a tear. “You want a friend? 5237 West 44
th
. Don’t tell him I sent you.”

“Selene…”

“No. I don’t know you. You don’t know me.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Darken my doorway again and, search as they might, they’ll never find all the pieces.”

Chapter Five

I left. The doorman was cordial, so she’d not called down. That wouldn’t have been like her anyway–not the
her
I’d known. On reflection, it surprised me that I’d not been pitched through window. That sort of fury I could understand.

But was that pity in her voice?

That hurt.

I started walking on automatic pilot.

I couldn’t blame her for being angry. I’d disappeared without a word. She had to think it was a deliberate choice. By refusing to tell her where I’d gone, I reinforced that idea.

Tossing me through the window would have been too quick.

I still remembered that last night we’d shared. I’d told her I had to go away, but that I’d be back. She understood because that’s what we did. And she knew I’d be back because that was how things worked.

And yet they hadn’t.

I’d replayed the night many times. The memory fueled my determination to return. It became the only pleasant memory I had. I clung to it. It kept me alive sometimes. I let myself believe she might be waiting, a candle burning in the window of a snow-covered cottage like in some sappy Kincaid painting. We’d laughed about those pictures and how popular they were. She hated them and had turned down an offer of over a million to steal an original.

Had she known she was pregnant?
I’d not seen it on her face nor heard it in her voice. So, maybe that night? A month later, I’m not back. Two, four months, the full nine and no word. Joy at having a baby, fear, anger and despair at my absence?

Yeah, I should have been lying in the street on a bed of broken glass—with her laughing as I bled out.

I let the city distract me. Twenty years had changed it a lot, but nostalgia had reestablished things I remembered. Parts looked like a cultural museum, with actors playing vintage characters–a disco version of Colonial Williamsburg. A scene would look incredibly familiar, then some sleek modern sports car would slither into sight and ruin it.

Weirdest of all was what they called Neo-retro. I dimly remembered there’d been something called the Society for Creative Anachronism, where folks dressed up and played at a Middle Ages that never really existed. They’d whack each other with sticks, wear armor and hold thirteenth century jamborees. Neo-retro flipped that. People looked back at the future promised in the 40s and 50s, then adopted those fashions and that lifestyle. Technology had long since made portable communications devices tiny, but these people wore bulky wrist-radios straight out of the funnies. Fashions were Jedi, Trek or Jetsonian. I gawked. No one else did.

I wandered into Argus Square. Graviton Drive split it, dividing the city in half. No surprise
he
had a street named after him. I wondered if, after sundown, the signs flipped and it became Nighthaunt Road.

Argus Square had always possessed lights and glitz, but now thousands of Murdochs flashed countless messages. Grouped into Jumbotrons, they advertised soap, encouraged good citizenship and told people how they, too, could be chic.

Chic being the by-product of drinking the right beer, wearing the right shoes and eating the same brand of baked beans as Colonel Constitution.

Not everyone drifted with the cultural tide. Ground-level Murdochs had been pasted over with posters for some Grunge-Goth-Glam rocker named Gravé. City maintenance supervisors oversaw chain-gangs pulling community service. They scraped, but did so lethargically. More than once supervisors had to prod workers to stop them staring at the newly revealed images.

That was pretty much the only place where anyone interfered with
viewerism
. Murdochs were everywhere. Playing-card sized screens imbedded in bars lit taverns. Slightly larger ones graced diner booths. Upscale restaurants didn’t have them at every table, but just try finding a spot where you didn’t have sight-lines to one. People stared as they drank or ate. Images flashed, conversations lapsed.

Lenin once called religion the “opiate of the masses.” He meant television. He had
opiate
wrong, too.

Should have been embalming fluid.

Not wanting to be one of the living dead, I tore myself away from the colorful screens and flagged a cab. I gave the driver the address Selene had given me. He grunted and started chattering. I grunted at the appropriate moments. They came when he said, “Am I right, pal?”

Fourteen grunts later I paid him and got out in front of a ten story building on the corner. The bottom floor was the “Rock Solid Gymnasium.” I entered. The owner’s smiling portrait hung behind the reception desk.

I connected the dots.

A perky blonde looked up from behind the desk. “I can have an account executive with you in a moment, sir.”

I nodded at the picture. “I’m here to see Grant Stone. No appointment.”

“Would he know what this is regarding?”

I gave her an easy smile. “I’ve not seen him in years. I thought I’d say hello.”

She returned my smile, but slowly. “And who should I say is here to see him?”

That’s where I almost blew it. I had to think. I peeled back the years, but it wasn’t easy. “Tim Robinson. He probably won’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

“Please have a seat.”

I sat. The upscale lobby screened the gym from the street–visually at least. A gym’s scent is unmistakable, and pervasive. The rhythmical clack and clank of weights rising and falling made for a clunky soundtrack. Distant voices encouraged people to go for one more, then pretty laughter eclipsed them. Flirty-laughter, the kind you hear when the guy has used his best line and the girl is waiting for better.

Grant paused in the doorway, striking a heroic pose. In his nature, I guess. He broke it fast and crossed to me. Simple short-sleeved shirt, chinos and loafers–more casual attire than I recall him favoring before. He still sported the tinted aviator glasses. They’d always seemed to be an awkward attempt at appearing adventurous. His black hair had lost the battle with white, save for a stubborn forelock.

“Tim Robinson. Been a long time since I’ve heard that name.”

“Twenty years.”

“The prodigal returns?”

Not if you knew my father.
I stood and offered him my right hand. “Good to see you, Grant.”

His right remained in his pants pocket. He offered me his left. “Passing through?”

“Maybe.” I shook his hand. “Gonna show me around?”

He nodded, then turned to the receptionist. “I’m not available for an hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

Grant waved me further into the facility. The room spread out. Mirrors covered the walls and Murdochs had been strategically placed so folks could watch while they sweated. Entryways to locker rooms stood on either wall and a juice bar lurked along the back.

“State of the art facility–my fourth, third in the city. Sauna, massage and hot tubs in the back, through the locker rooms.” He jerked a thumb toward the ceiling. “The thumps are from the dojo and the boxing ring. Cardio is done up there, too.”

I nodded. “Everything anyone needs to get in fighting trim.”

“Is that what you want, Tim? To get in fighting trim?” His questions came with a challenge.

“You tell me.”

He stared at me for a moment. His eyes tightened, then his voice. “How is it you’re even walking?”

“It pisses off the guys who don’t want me to.”

He took a moment to process my response, then nodded. “We have personal trainers. Terry Veck is the best.”

I followed his gaze. Veck I recognized quickly. He was older, of course, and had shaved his head. He’d gotten stout, but in that drill-instructor way. He was helping some skinny guy pump iron, really driving him. The victim was working hard–more out of fear than any desire to bulk up.

“Veck. He’s not…?”

“Golden Guardian? Retired eighteen years ago. Came to work with me.”

“What happened to his sidekick?”

“Goldie?” Grant shook his head. “You really have been out of it, haven’t you?”

“Buried any deeper, it would have taken a paleontologist to find me.”

“So why would a fossil come back?”

“I want to know why I was buried.”

Grant frowned for a heartbeat, but that melted into a smile. He turned toward the entrance. He was ready before I heard anything, or caught the white glare.

Had to expect that. Grant Stone wasn’t human, and had the hyper-sensitive senses to prove it. Last son of some distant planet that got eaten or sucked into another dimension or blew itself up, he’d rocketed to Earth as an infant. He’d been raised on a farm, had been an eagle-scout and otherwise all-around all-American Boy.

As Graviton, he’d been the most powerful being on the planet. Able to shift tectonic plates, so fast he could lap the sound wave he made breaking the sound barrier, and invulnerable; there was no stopping him. Well, not wholly true–magic gave him trouble, and
jadarite
could kill him. His radiographic-vision, nano-vision, hyper-hearing and therma-vision all provided him means for avoiding most traps; and when he got stuck, someone like Nighthaunt or L’Angyle–the French sorceress he’d eventually married–helped him out.

I turned toward the doorway too. A TV camera-man backed into the room, lights bright. Another one tried to maneuver around, but smacked into the doorway. Two reporters–both young, gorgeous and eager–thrust microphones into the face of a slender young man. He had a thick mop of wild black hair, smoldering eyes and half-sneered smile oozing equal parts contempt and amusement. Silver chains decorated his black leather jacket and silver buttons ran up the side-seams of his leather jeans. He had a couple t-shirts on, black over red, with the black slashed artfully. He’d bisected his own image on the black.