“Mom, I did call you for a reason.”
“Well, feel free to get to the point at any time, Audrey.”
“I went to the vet today with Ella and I’m afraid she’s completely crazy.”
Mom paused. “Be more specific.”
“What?”
“Between the two of you, someone goes crazy at least once a week. And for the record, it’s normally you.”
That stung but it was probably true. “The doctor said Din-Din is pregnant and Ella lost it. She’s having some mid-life crisis or something. She’s worried about having a baby. She’s talking about getting back together with that Rodney guy.”
“OK.”
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“Well, what were you hoping I’d say?”
“I don’t know. I thought you might talk some sense into her and tell her that she doesn’t have to be worried about this kind of stuff and she really doesn’t need to go back to lame ass Rodney. I’d tell her but she probably wouldn’t listen to me.”
Mom snorted. “Of course not. Even though you two are close in age, you are very far apart in maturity. Ella has been middle aged since grade school. And we’re just hoping that you get the kindergarten basics before you’re back in diapers.”
“Gee, thanks, Mom.”
“It’s true, though, isn’t it? Here you are thirty and we’re all just happy that you are employed and not homeless. Never mind that you have a secret boyfriend you’re keeping from us.”
I groaned. “I don’t have a secret boyfriend.” I was telling the truth, too. Mike wasn’t my boyfriend. Also, since everyone in the world was talking about this, the secret was out of the bag. And speaking of the not-so-secret Mike, he was coming by to hang out soon. And my place was a mess. “Mom, I have to get off the phone. I have a. . . friend coming over.”
“Whatever you say, Audrey,” Mom said in that tone I’d heard all my life. It was the I-know-you’re-lying-but-I’m-too-busy-to-interrogate-you-right-now voice. “I’ll talk to Ella. You leave her and whatever choices she’s making alone. You have your own problems to worry about it.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered to myself as I hung up with her.
*****
Mike and I spent most of our time in his place. He liked to joke that he technically had never been invited into my place and he wasn’t sure he actually he knew where I lived. There were obvious reasons for that. His apartment was warm, inviting, and clean. Mine might have been a set piece from a movie about a third tier fraternity at war with the more respectable fraternity on campus and in danger of being shut down by the dean who doesn’t appreciate their comedic brand of loserdom.
But Mike had been pushing to spend more time in my world. That really meant he wanted to meet my friends. He wanted to know more about how I grew up and meet my parents. He wanted to know what I did in my spare time. But I wasn’t ready to show him what was behind the curtain. Maybe I never would be ready. So he’d have to settle for my apartment.
As usual, I waited until the last minute to start. I cleaned up as best I could, given that I only had about half an hour before Mike showed up. I hid all of the dirty clothes in the closet. I dragged my covers over my bed and smoothed them out to look like the beds I’d seen on TV and in other people’s houses. Luckily, I didn’t have any dishes to wash because I didn’t cook. Instead, I finally took out the garbage from all of the take-out I’d had that week. All that was left was to spray everything with the Lysol I’d stolen from the cleaning supplies that came with the building.
On the way back from taking out the garbage, Crash looked at me pointedly, as if to say “But what about my bowl?”
“I just cleaned up this whole apartment, Crash. You can’t expect me to clean up after you, too. Clean up your own mess!”
By the time I was done showering, taming my hair, and putting on something that didn’t have mustard stains, I was starving. But Mike should have been there any minute with a pizza so I ignored my stomach grumbling and clicked on the TV. I’d just turned to
The Real Housewives of Atlanta
when there was a knock at my door. I went to open it, thinking about the pizza and licking my lips.
It was Nathaniel. His impossibly tall frame filled my doorway. “Hello, Audrey.”
“Hi,” I choked out, hoping I didn’t sound as shocked as I was.
“We need to talk.”
“Um—”
Before I could finish, the building door opened and Mike appeared, holding a large sausage and pepper pizza from the pizza place down the street if my nose was to be trusted. “Hey,” he said. And then he just waited there expectantly for me to introduce him.
The last thing I wanted to do was introduce them but I knew it would get weird if I didn’t. “Hey this is Mike, my neighbor. And Mike, this is Nate, my friend.” They didn’t shake hands. There was a strange tension in the air. And it was definitely male.
“It’s Nathaniel, actually,” the big inconvenient Super in my doorway corrected me.
“Neighbor?” Mike asked at the exact same time.
I ignored both of them. “Soooooooooooo. . .” I don’t what I was thinking. Maybe that if I drew it out long enough something would happen to make the situation less awkward?
When it became obvious that I wasn’t going to say anything worth hearing, Nathaniel cleared his throat. “I just stopped by to talk to you about the project. I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.” He looked meaningfully at Mike.
“I can just take this inside and wait for you,” Mike offered.
“Yes. That’s a good idea. Just go ahead in and I’ll be there in a minute. We just need to talk about this. . . project we’re doing together.” Nathaniel and I moved aside and let Mike go inside my apartment. As soon as the door closed, I turned to Nathaniel. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”
He was still looking at the closed door. “He’s not a Super.”
“No,” I answered, even though it wasn’t a question. I didn’t ask how he knew. You can’t really tell a Super by looking at him. Well, unless he was shooting lasers from his eyeballs or something.
“Civilians always complicate things. I know we have to live
among
them, but we don’t have to live
with
them.” Disgust oozed from his voice and into the hallway between us.
“He doesn’t know about me.”
“He better not. You’d be breaking your Oath if you told him anything. You know that, right?”
I nodded. “I’m being careful. So what’s up?”
“I wanted to talk to you about the task force. We’ve got some info on El Gato. We think we have a shot at him and we’re going to take it tomorrow night. Meet us at St. Jude at nine. Come ready to work.” He started to leave.
“I’ll be there. I’m on it. But, why didn’t you just text me or something? You didn’t have to come all the way over here.”
He didn’t turn around to answer me. “This is important to me, Audrey. I hope it’s as important to you.” He left before I could answer.
I went back into the apartment and found Mike sitting on my crappy couch watching TV. He hadn’t even opened the pizza box, yet. Another reason he was better than I was—I wouldn’t have waited for him. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem.” He pulled out the paper plates from the bag, opened the pizza box, and started doling out slices. “Who was that?”
I sat down on the couch next to him and took my slice from him. “Just an old friend. He’s doing a home improvement project and wanted my help.” Lies, of course.
Mike made a face. “He needs you to help him do home improvements? No offense or anything but why doesn’t he take a sledge hammer to whatever he’s working on and call it a day?”
I’d forgotten that my first few months on the job as a superintendent I’d made a lot of mistakes trying to make simple repairs around the place. In fact, I’d mangled my hand in Mike’s garbage disposal. Of course, he didn’t know that. He just knew I couldn’t fix it. “Hey! I’ve gotten better!”
“Barely.” Mike took a bite of pizza and chewed thoughtfully. “He doesn’t look like the type of guy who needs any help doing anything.”
“Hmmm.” I made a few more noncommittal sounds and kept chewing. All roads from this conversation led to places I just couldn’t go. “Oh, this is good. This is where they get all dressed up, go to the party, and then have a bitchy unnecessary fight. My favorite part.” I reached for the remote and turned the volume up loud enough to drown out any pesky feelings of guilt I might be feeling.
Chapter 9
“I’m late!”
I was standing in Mike’s doorway banging on the door. It was the night of mission. I’d spent the day cleaning apartment 2C and showing it to the people who had answered the Craigslist ad. After that, I took a shower and a nap. The next thing I knew, it was after eight and my Super mission call time was nine.
Being the lowest of the low of Supers, my work required me to be wearing street clothes most of the time. I mean, if you show up in a suit and a cape to catch shoplifters, you might as well wear a sign that said “Look over here because something funky is going on.” But all Supers get trained in high concept mission tactics in school. I failed that class, but the teacher gave me a D out of pity. Still, my parents gave me a custom Super suit for graduation. I accepted it, even though I knew I wasn’t going to be using it very often.
When I pulled the suit out of the back of my closet that morning, it looked exactly the same as it did when I stuffed it back there during my move four or five months ago. My suit was black with dark gray piping, made of quadruple weaved high tech neopolyester. It was self-warming and self-cooling. It came with a dark gray cape that was great as anything from a shield to a parachute. Custom made for my body, it was dry clean only and no ironing required.
My Super suit was the most expensive thing I owned. I probably only wore it once a year, just to make sure that it still fit. When I stuffed myself into it, it still fit. Well, it still fit as long as I didn’t try to breathe too much.
I decided to leave the cape at home. Still, I couldn’t walk out of my apartment wearing a Super suit. If I ran into one of the tenants or someone else I might know, they’d wonder what the hell I was doing. So I pulled a hoodie over it until I met up with the rest of the task force team.
Now, there was just the little matter of me being late. There was no way I could get there in time by subway. I couldn’t get a cab to save my life. But I had an idea.
After a few minutes of banging, Mike finally opened it wearing a pair of pajama pants and a sleepy look on his face. “What?”
I didn’t have any time to waste with buttering him up. “I need to borrow your car.”
I could tell that he was still half asleep. He disappeared back into the dark apartment and reappeared with a set of keys. “Here.”
That was a little too easy. “You’re not going to ask me why I need your car?”
“No. It’s the blue Volkswagen. I have to be at work at 5AM. Be back before then. It’s parked on the Lefferts side of the building.” He shut the door in my face without saying goodbye. A moment later I heard him yell out from behind the closed door “Don’t crash my car, Audrey!”
“No problem!” I shouted as I ran down the stairs and out of the front door of the building.
*****
I arrived at St. Jude at 9PM on the dot. With my track record, that was a damn miracle. I parked in the tiny parking lot around back and saw Nathaniel immediately. He was standing with two others that I recognized from the meeting. They were all dressed in black Super suits. No capes, though. I breathed a sigh of relief that I’d made the right fashion choice for once in my life.
I parked the car and hopped out. “Hey—”
“You’re late,” Nathaniel interrupted.
“No, I’m not. It’s exactly nine.”
“Early is on time. On time is late. And if you’re late, don’t even bother,” he quoted. “No one every taught you that?”
“No. Based on that, I’d never leave the house.” No one laughed with me. They all just stared at me expectantly, like they were waiting for me to explain myself.
Nathaniel introduced everyone. “Audrey, this is Rocky and Frankie. Guys, this is Audrey. You should all remember each other from the last meeting.” They all continued to stare at me awkwardly.
“Hi—”
“We don’t have time for small talk,” Nathaniel interrupted me again with a pointed look. “Since you’ve made everyone late, we have to make up for lost time. I got a tip that the Noches are working out of an abandoned warehouse in Sunset Park. My intel says that El Gato is having a meeting with all of his soldiers there tonight. The plan is to get inside and take him into custody as quickly as possible.”
Nathaniel got down on his haunches and grabbed a stick to map out his strategy in the parking lot dirt. We all huddled closer to watch him present his plan. “Rocky, you and I are going to fly in. I’ll come from the north side. You come from the south side. Frankie, there’s a side street on 49th Street. I want you to bring up the flank from there. Remember, we don’t care about anyone but El Gato. If we get him off the street, the rest will be easy pickings for the future.” Everyone nodded.
He hadn’t mentioned me. I didn’t even want to say anything. He hadn’t been all that receptive to anything I’d said so far. But I had no idea what he wanted me to do. I was screwed either way. “Um, what about me?”
“You’re the lookout.” Nathaniel picked up a rock and plopped it down outside the back side of his dirt map. “You’ll be here. Give the signal if you see anything we need to know. Just whistle.”
I pointed to the rock. “But how would you hear me?”
They all exchanged amused looks and Nathaniel said “I’ll hear you.” He stood up and spit out an address. “We need to get going. El Gato has been staying off the radar lately and he probably won’t want to be there too long. Rocky, you’re flying with me, right?”
“Ready when you are,” she replied with a thumbs up.
Now he turned to Frankie. “And you—”
“No worries, Boss. You know I’m always on time.” He punctuated his statement by running six or seven circles around us in the time it took for me hear him finish the sentence. I tried not to look as impressed as I felt.
“And Audrey?” Everyone looked at me expectantly.
I cleared my throat. “I, um, I have my, um, neighbor’s car.” I pointed to Volkswagen parked a few feet away.