Super (Book 2): Super Duper (4 page)

Miss Fine didn’t stop there, either. “I’m going to be
honest with you, Audrey. I don’t think you should be a Super.
I don’t understand how you even got your license in the first
place. I don’t know whose fault it is that you’ve been allowed
to continue on the way you have. Maybe you have friends
in high places. Maybe your incredible incompetence has just
been overlooked.”

She laced her fingers together in a pyramid, placed her
elbows on the desk, and lean forward. For the first time since
in I’d walked into the door, she smiled at me. It was utterly
terrifying.

“It stops here. This audit is going to be quick. It’s going
to be by the book. When it’s over, we’ll have all the evidence
we need to revoke your license.”

I sputtered. “You’re going to fail me.”
“I’m saying that it doesn’t matter what you do, you’re
going to fail yourself. But the rules are the rules. I have to
follow procedure or I’m no better than you are. I’m going to
test you on the core skills it takes to be a Super. We’ll start
with the guidelines. Brush up on them in your handbook and
we’ll meet here tomorrow to give you a test.”
I didn’t want to say it but I had to. I didn’t have a
chance unless I admitted it right now. “I don’t have my Super
handbook.”
“Of course you don’t.” She pulled out a handbook
and a form from one of her desk drawers and tossed it across
her desk. Then she turned to her computer and began typing
something. “Read over the handbook and the test instructions.
You’ll take your test tomorrow from today. 8AM. Don’t be
late.”
I shoved my new materials into my bag and stood to
go. “Got it”
“If you’re one minute late, Audrey—just one minute—
I’ll fail you. And we can end this whole thing and figure out
how much jail time you’ll do.

I left Miss Fine’s office and immediately headed to the
Chipotle four blocks down. I was feeling all sorts of things and
for me the best way to quell that has always been something
to eat.

The guy making my burrito looked up at me with
amusement. “You want extra meat?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Extra meat means an extra
charge. You know the line right before I have to pay an extra
charge? I want all the meat right before that line.”
He put one more piece of chicken on my burrito.
“How’s that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”
After paying for my meal, I headed to a little bit of
greenery near Rockefeller Center where most of the nearby
office workers ate their lunches or took their breaks. It was a
little early for lunch breaks so I had my pick of benches. Just
as I took my first bite of burrito, my phone rang. The caller ID
read “MOM.”
My first instinct was to panic.
Shit, does she know about
my audit already?
My parents do know a lot of people at
the Council. I considered letting it go to voicemail. But my
mom was the type of person who would just keep calling
until I answered or threw my phone in the river. “What?” I
answered, with a mouth full of burrito.
My mother’s familiar voice drifted through the phone.
“When are you going to be too old to answer the phone like
that?”
“Never.” Holding the phone to my ear with one hand
and my burrito with the other, I took another huge bite of
cheesy goodness. “Did you call me to criticize my phone
etiquette?”
“If I had to critique your etiquette in anything, I
wouldn’t have time to do anything else today,” Mom
answered back. “I called to remind you that we’re taking the
family photo soon. And I need your vote,” she added.
“Vote for what?”
“The theme, of course.”
Oh thank God. It’s just about the damn pictures.
They were
a tradition in our family. Well, it was really Mom’s tradition
and the rest of us just went along with it with varying degrees
of enthusiasm. As usual, I was the least enthusiastic. But
messing up the family picture would be getting on my mom’s
bad side—which is not a side anyone in the world wants to
be on.
“Why are we voting on a theme? Don’t you just pick
the theme every year?”
Mom sighed. “Usually. But you father wants to do
something different this year.”
I took another bite of my burrito. “And you guys can’t
just figure this out between the two of you?”
“No.” The steel beneath her voice made me pause.
With her matching linens, four course Sunday dinners, and
scrapbooking, sometimes people underestimated my mother.
But she was a force to be reckoned with, all the way back to
her days on the job. Mom may seem like the velvet glove but
the truth was that she was the iron fist
and
the velvet glove.
Dad was the easy going part of that relationship. He
mostly just went along with whatever she wanted. But every
now and then, he would put up a fuss about something.
And then Mom would have to at least pretend like she was
giving him a chance to be in charge. It’s the dynamic their
relationship had followed forever. Why were they bringing
me into it after all of these years?
“So what are the choices?” I finally asked.
Her voice lit up. “Well we can do a modern glam
theme—you know, think The Great Gatsby if Gatsby if it was
happening today and Gatsby lived uptown. I’m thinking of a
black, white, and sparkle color scheme. Party dresses for the
girls and your father in a tux.”
“So obviously that’s yours,” I concluded. “What’s
dad’s idea?”
Mom paused. “Pajamas, Audrey. He wants us to all
get dressed up in the matching pajamas and take pictures.
And I’m supposed to send that out in the Christmas cards.
I’m supposed to put that in the scrapbooks. Pajamas.”
She kept saying “pajamas” with the same tone she
would have said “dog shit.” I let out a snort before I decided
to mess with her a bit. “I like pajamas, Mom.”
“No, you don’t” she screeched.
“Um, have you forgotten which daughter you’re
talking to? Yeah, I do like pajamas.”
“No,” she emphasized. “You don’t. And you better vote
the right way if you expect to keep bringing home leftovers
from my dinners.”
That made me burst into outright laughter. “You aren’t
even going to offer to pay me?”
Now it was her turn to snort. “No. I’ve paid you
enough in bribes over the years. You’re doing this one for
food or nothing at all.”
“Why are you even having this vote? Just tell Dad that
you’re going to do it your way and he’ll go along with it. You
don’t need a vote.”
Impatience oozed through the phone. “I’m the one
who suggested it.”
“Because you want to be fair?”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re calling me to bribe me into voting
your way?”
“Yes.”
I balled the burrito foil up and tossed it into a trashcan
nearby. “I gotta go, Mom.”
“Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow for dinner. And the vote,”
she added.

On the train back to Brooklyn, I pulled out my
new handbook and took a look at it. It was bigger than I
remembered. But then again, the last time I’d opened it was
when I was taking my test for my super license over a decade
before. And truthfully, I hadn’t looked at it much even back
then.

This time was going to be different, though. Back then,
I had nothing to lose. Now, if I didn’t pass, I’d lose everything.
I had to take it seriously.

I stopped by the bodega on the corner for supplies—
Doritos, cream cheese, some KitKats, a pint of triple chocolate
ice cream, a two-liter ginger ale, and toilet paper. Rafi rang
up my order with a smirk. Usually he was OK but today that
smirk irked me. “What?” I asked

“Yeah, but not the way you think.” I slid the money
across the counter.
He counted the money. “This isn’t enough.”
“I paid for a breakfast roll I didn’t get yesterday,” I
reminded him.
“Fine.” He bagged my stuff sullenly. “Have a good
night. I hope you get the runs from all of this.”
I ignored him and gathered my things to leave.
You can
do this
, I repeated to myself over and over again.
You passed the
first time. You can do it again.

In front of the building, I saw Outside Bob holding a
pink and orange kite with a kitten emblazoned on it.
What’s
a homeless guy doing with a kite? Shouldn’t he be panhandling or
something.
But I’d never seen Bob asking for money. In fact, I’d
never seen him ask for anything.

He gave me a terse nod as I approached. I was tempted
to ask him where he got the kite and what he planned to do
it with. But I had plans tonight and he was on the public
sidewalk so I just let him be and went inside.

My apartment door was indeed locked, thanks to little
Cindy Pham. It was little cold, though. My broken window
had been letting the fall air into the apartment all day. I put
down my supplies on the coffee table. Using a bit of cardboard
from the box I’d dragged home yesterday, I patched the hole
and made a mental note to get it fixed.

Satisfied with my patch job, I grabbed a spoon from
the kitchen, collapsed onto the couch, and dug into the ice
cream. Crash eyed me curiously as he swam around his bowl
in long leisurely circles. “I’m glad you’re up, Crash. I may
need you to quiz me later.”

Settling the handbook in my lap, I opened it to page
one and squinted to make out the words. I wished I knew
where my glasses were. “Introduction,” I read aloud through
my second mouthful of chocolatey ice cream. “It is widely
understood that— “

I stopped to answer my phone. “What?” The word
was muffled by the ice cream in my mouth.
“Are you always eating when you answer the phone
or are you just always eating?” My sister’s voice drifted to me
through the receiver and I instantly regretted not checking
the caller ID before answering.
I swallowed to clear my mouth. “What do you want?”
“I want to go back in time and not let you talk me into
taking this cat from you, Audrey.”
“I’m too busy for this.”
“Doing what? Eating ice cream?”
Of course she guessed I was eating ice cream. This is
part of the reason I thought she was so annoying. Imagine
having that around your entire life. “Ella, did you actually
call me for something?”
“Mom told you about the vote, right?”
I sighed. “Yeah. How are you voting?”
“With mom, of course.”
“Of course.” Mom and Ella were two sides of the same
coin. Of course they would vote together. And Dad would
obviously vote for his own idea. Which left me as the vote
that could decide a tie or give it to Mom.
“Well, I’ll see you at din— “
“Wait. Ella, you’re good at tests, right?” I immediately
realized how stupid it sounded. Ella never forgot anything.
Of course she was good at tests.
“Of course I’m good at tests,” she echoed my thoughts.
“Why? Are you testing for something? Because you’re not
good at tests.”
“Yeah. A, um, superintendent test.” The words
stumbled out of my mouth before I could think whether it
was the right answer. But once it was out, I just went with it.
“Yeah, it turns out I need a license to manage a building. So
my boss has me taking a test and I need to study. Any tips?”
“Sure. Remember when you took your Super licensing
test? Remember how nervous you were about it and how we
all thought you were going to fail?”
If only she knew how close to home she was hitting.
“Get to the point, Ella.”
“Well, you passed. So I’d tell you to just do whatever it
was you did on your Super test on your superintendent test.
Whatever you did obviously worked.”
I rushed Ella off the phone and took a deep breath.
Obviously, Ella was right. But I didn’t want her to be. Because
the last time I passed this test, I cheated.

After I got off the phone with Ella, I had mixed feelings.
As usually, Ella was right. As a slacker teenager, I’d passed the
test by cheating because it was the only choice I’d had at the
time. As a slacker thirty something, I didn’t even think it was
an option. Miss Fine seemed to have it out for me. I doubted I
could even pull it off if I wanted to. So I shoveled some more
junk food in my mouth and went back to studying.

This time I got about an hour into it before being
interrupted by a knock at my door. I reluctantly got up to
answer it. On the other side of the door was little Cindy Pham
looking at me expectantly. “Again?”

She nodded and pushed past me. “Did you get toilet
paper?”
“Yeah.” I tossed a roll from the pack I’d bought a couple
of hours earlier to her.
“And my mom wants to know when the toilet is going
to be fixed,” she added as she closed the door to my bathroom.
“Soon,” I called after her. “The plumber is coming
some time to— “
“Audrey, I need you to come down to the laundry
room.” I turned to see Mr. Kortis was standing in my
doorway. He lived across the hall from me in 1B. He was
thin with longish brownish hair and dressed mostly in tweed
suits. He was probably the tenant I spent the most time with.
He always had something going on, whether it was a squeak
in his bedroom door or a draft in his kitchen. Seeing him was
never a good thing.
I tried not to look annoyed to see him. “Um, hi, Mr.
Kortis. What seems to be the problem?”
“The problem is that one of the washers is
malfunctioning,” he huffed.
“Ok, I’ll take care of that. For now, use a different
washer.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, of course. But I can’t do that
because the washer won’t open. So now you see why I need
your help.” His voice had gone up an octave in the short time
it took him to explain.
“OK, OK. Go ahead back down there. I’m coming.”
I ducked back into my apartment while Mr. Kortis hurried
down the stairs to the basement. “Cindy,” I called out. “Hurry
up. I have to go.”
“I’m trying,” she whined from behind the door. “It
might be awhile.”
I groaned and grabbed my keys and tools. “Use the air
freshener in there. And lock the door when you go.”
Downstairs in the basement, we had two washers and
dryers for the tenants. There was also a janitor’s room off
to the side with a mop sink and a toilet. When I got down
stairs, I saw one of the Pham kids coming out of the janitor’s
room. He waved at me and ran up the stairs. Mr. Kortis was
standing next to one of the washers impatiently. “It’s this one,
Audrey.”
I walked over and put down my toolbox. “Ok well
let’s just see what the problem is here.” Inside, I could clearly
see that wet clothing that I assumed belonged to Mr. Kortis.
Yanking on the door didn’t help. It was locked tight like the
machine was still in wash mode.
“I tried that already,” Mr. Kortis offered.
“Well it never hurts to try again.” I gave it one more
yank and then stepped back. Then I pulled out some sort of
screw driver and tried to wedge it into the door. It wasn’t
fitting. I messed with it a little more but didn’t make any
headway. Behind me I could practically hear Mr. Kortis
steaming. I tinkered faster.
“I think there’s a release latch under the bottom” came
a voice behind me. I turned to see Mike standing behind me.
He was carrying a full laundry basket.
“Uhhh, right. Yeah, I get to that by. . .” I trailed off in
hopes that he would finish my sentence.
“By moving the access panel,” he finished for me.
“Here, let me see that.” He reached for my screw driver thingie
and I gave it to him with what I hoped wasn’t an audible
sigh of relief. He kneeled down and unscrewed something
at the bottom of the machine. I tried to pay more attention to
what he was doing instead of his butt and failed. Then he slid
a panel from the machine and reached underneath. With a
definitive click, the door to the washer popped open.
“Oh thank God!” Mr. Kortis cried. “Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you!” He rushed over to the washer, grabbed all
of his clothes, and ran up the stairs mumbling something
about air drying.
Mike handed me back the screwdriver thingie. “These
old machines have all sorts of quirks. You just have to keep
an eye on them.”
“Yeah, I’ll remember that.”
Mike turned and started loading his own clothes into
the washer without quirks. “I hope you don’t take offense to
this but how did you even become a super?”
“You have no idea,” I mumbled.
He turned back to me. “Huh? What was that?”
“I said that I’m learning on the job,” I covered.
Just then, little Cindy Pham came running down the
stairs. “Audrey, the plumber is here. He’s at your apartment
looking for you.”
“The plumber’s here,” I announced to Mike. “I’m
gonna take him to the Phams and then I’ll get him to look at
your disposal.”
He gave me the thumbs up and a megawatt smile. “And
I will definitely be waiting for you.” I tried not to blush, failed
miserably, and finally ran up the stairs to meet the plumber.