Super Born: Seduction of Being (12 page)

“
Then I guess you picked the wrong
career, the wrong bank, and the wrong woman,” I said, moving in on
him.

He raised his arms to protect his face as I
delivered another sharp blow. He fell limply to the
ground.

I stood behind him, looked around for any more
of the gang, and then walked over to recover my bag and
deposits.

With the shots having been fired, no one else
moved. They just whimpered or listened with hands over their
heads.

I grabbed my things and started toward the side
door as the police stormed through the front. A commander saw me
walking away and gestured to a patrolman beside him. “Go stop her
and bring her back,” he said as he pointed at the side
door.

But I was long gone.

* * *

I don’t think my supervisor liked me much. She
had seen me come back from lunch fifteen minutes late, then
corralled me into her office. From behind her desk, she looked at
me with her sour puss and tapped the end of her pen on the desktop.
Then she pointed her evil wand at me. “I have warned you about this
over and over. You’ve already been written up once for being
late…Tell me, do you like your job here?”

I had to think about it too long. “Yes, I
do.”

“
Do you know the company policy
regarding tardiness?…We do not tolerate it!” She said waving her
wand in my face not waiting for my response.

“
It really wasn’t my fault. You see,
while I was at the bank…”

“
Tut, tut, tut! Don’t waste my time
explaining. You are either here at the appropriate time or not.
There are no excuses!” She said, waving her wand at me again. “Do
you think you can do whatever you want like that Bib woman whose
running around all over town?”

By now I’d decided that I liked the
sound of being called B.I.B. but Bib twice in one day was
irritating. In my mind I imagined holding her out the
fourth floor window by my little finger, listening
to her screams.. But then I thought of how bad I needed this job,
so I said, “I am sorry.”

“
Sorry doesn’t cut it, Missy! I have
not missed a single day of work in twenty-two point three
years!”

With that number of years I couldn’t help but
imagine her dressed in colonial clothes lighting a pile of wood to
set a witch on fire.

“
Tell me, what you would do if I
were late and not here to lead you and the other lolly-gagging
members of my staff?”

Cheering
was
my instinctive reaction to that thought, but I knew that was the
wrong answer. In my head I wondered what it would look like if I
were to crush her between my hands down to the size of a talking
head that I could just leave on her desk, bitching. “We would be
totally lost if you were not here on time to lead us,” I said,
trying to keep my mind on the fact that my rent payment was due.
“That is correct. Finally, you are getting the point!” She stood up
and creaked around her desk toward me. She peered at me through
slit, reptilian eyes. “I like you, Allie. You sometimes are
perfectly adequate.”

I held back my clenched hammer fist by thinking
of rolling her up and bouncing her like a basketball, which I then
tossed into the nearest trash can. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“
I am going to let you pass with a
strenuous warning this time. But in return I expect you to make up
your time and then some.”

I wondered how loud her bones would crack if I
snapped her in two and how many times I could fold her in
half.

Then she held up three fingers, thin rods with
saggy, puckered skin. “Three write ups and you’re gone,” she said.
“Remember that. Now, out of my office,” she said, pointing to the
door and then creaking back behind her desk. “You’ve already wasted
enough time with this foolishness.”

As she turned her back to me, I wondered if I
could kick her into orbit or just the next county with one swing of
my leg. “I will try to do better.”

She grumbled some sort of response as I turned
and scooted out of the office back to my cubical. I sat and looked
at the girls around me, knowing the fifteen minutes I had been late
didn’t matter in the least. I could do the whole department’s work
for the day in a few minutes, but my reward for doing so would be
to see all my friends laid off and be given even more work to do.
So I crawled at a snail’s pace and put up with Prune Face’s ancient
little ego.

****

The security camera tapes were gold. I won’t
tell you how much it cost or what laws I bent to have them
anonymously emailed to the site, but it was worth it. Suddenly, the
site was racking up thousands of hits. Advertisers were contacting
the site for ad space. B.I.B. sightings were pouring in, most of
them trash. The video turned the website into a real
job.

When the security tape first arrived, I was
disappointed and almost deleted it in disgust. The beginning part
was full of digital static; I could barely make out the fact that
it was a bank, and the people were all foggy. But then, as the
gunmen entered the bank and began the robbery, it all went suddenly
clear. The image of the B.I.B. moved from the palm tree to the
first gunman in just a frame or two—it was the same when she moved
toward the last gunman. But that wasn’t what I loved most about the
video. When I replayed it again and again, frame-by-frame, I
discovered that there was one frame at the beginning just before
the static started that showed a woman dressed in black entering
the bank from the street. When I froze that frame, I saw a grainy
image that I felt certain was the blond I had seen at O’Malley’s
that night. Delusion can be fun.

There was a growing sentiment among the people
posting on the website that the city authorities should be
embracing the B.I.B. and encouraging her efforts. Many said the
mayor should invite her out of the shadows to work directly with
police.

A day later, as I was digging through the email
leads people had sent in, in response to my reward program, I knew
I was on the right track. A young man from Texas, on temporary
assignment working the oil fields in the mountains above Scranton,
sent in a picture of a woman dressed in black with blond hair. She
wore a black mask over her eyes, a gigantic, decorative-only bit of
bling on her finger, and she was smiling, proudly displaying a
bottle of Miner’s Lite beer in her outstretched hand. Again, it was
a very grainy picture, taken in a dark bar using a cell phone, but
her image leaped out at me the second I saw it. The young man
claimed to have taken the picture at a pub called Skelly’s several
nights before. He said he had partied with the woman and her
friends there. After a few beers, she had brought out the mask and
worn it for a few minutes, saying she was the B.I.B. He took the
picture, sure she was joking, and thought nothing of it until
someone had introduced him to our website and told him to send the
picture in for the reward. He said he also had some pictures of her
later that night making a really good “fish face,” if I wanted
those.

I immediately contacted the young man, sent him
the reward, and offered more for the fish-face pictures. I asked
him if he had her number or address or had seen her again, and he
replied that they had parted ways just after the pictures were
taken and he had no way of getting in touch with her
again.

Next, I put the picture of her
wearing the mask and holding the beer front and center on the Web
site home page with the title, “This is the B.I.B.!” Then I used my
contacts at the
Times
Tribune
to get me a meeting with the
Managing Editor. It was a hard sell, back then, but I got him to
agree to let me create a B.I.B. column in the paper. He balked a
bit when I told him what the name meant, but he liked the amount of
traffic the site was seeing, and that was, after all, the url:
www.thebib.org. I gave him the picture and my first feature, which
I had compiled from various things I had already written for the
website. He buried it on page eight the next day.

* * *

Once or twice each week, Paige and I have
dinner at my sister Lori’s house, which is located near our
apartment. It was convenient, saved on the expense of cooking for
only two, and allowed us some time with the family. On this night,
I had worked late to make up for the time I had missed the previous
day, trying for some brownie points with Ol’ Prune Face. By the
time we arrived at Lori’s, her husband and kids had finished their
dinners, so it was only Paige, Lori, and me at the
table.

We sat at the dining room table, digging into
our reheated dinners, while Lori paged through the newspaper. “Can
you believe these stories about this ‘bib’ woman?” asked Lori, as
she reached page eight.

There it was again; someone saying ‘bib’
irritating me like cracker crumbs in my bed. I closed my eyes and
tightened the muscles in my face trying to remember that she was my
sister and murder was out of the question…or was it? She was asking
for it. I wrapped my arms around my stomach to keep them from
striking. “It’s not bib,” I began struggling to be calm, “Please
don’t call her that. It’s B.I.B.”

“
No one calls her that,” added
Paige, barely looking up. “Bib is just gross. It misses the whole
point. She’s not a baby.”

Lori gave us both a wave of her hand. “Bib
Smib,” she declared, risking life and limbs again as my fingers
clenched and shook.

“
Whateverrrrr,” added
Paige.

Oblivious to her near-death experience, Lori
shook her head. “I don’t believe they call her by those initials,
and right in the paper. A strong woman who wears black, you just
know it means Bitch in Black.”

“
That’s what B.I.B. stands for?” I
asked in naive surprise. “All this time everyone’s been calling…her
a Bitch right to her face?”

“
Mom, please. You didn’t know that?”
said Paige shaking her head, “You really need to get out
more.”

Now I knew why I hated being called ‘bib’. A
Bitch in Black was a totally different thing. “I don’t know. I kind
of like it. At least a bitch doesn’t take any shit, right?” I said,
coming to my own defense, and I did like it. After years of being
“just” a single mom, being bad ass seemed pretty good.

“
She’s amazing…Now they have a
picture of her in the paper,” Lori continued, seeming to half agree
with me.

I stopped, a forkful of mashed potatoes just
before my lips. “Picture?”

“
Yeah, look, there she is,” said
Lori showing the paper to me. “But with that mask, what good is the
picture? She could be anyone.”

My fork continued to my mouth, relieved that
even my own sister was unable to put the picture together with me.
“Boy, she looks great,” I added, remembering the night the picture
was taken. I smiled briefly, thinking about the bar and Mr. Texas
that night. Then the smile drained. I’ve got to be more careful, I
thought, remembering the number of beers I’d had.

I didn’t really remember everything about that
night, but I do remember going to Skelly’s with the girls from the
office. After several rounds of beers, all of us girls sort of
adopted the Texan when he dared stop by our table. You could tell
by his body language that he was concentrating his charms on me,
but having recently injured Jason, I was in no mood to humor him,
or do him any damage. He bought us all some flaming shots, but gave
me a couple extra, as I remember.

Then the conversation turned to the news that
day about the B.I.B.; what a bad-ass she was. So I whipped the
black mask out of my purse and put it on, telling all that would
hear that I was the B.A.B.I.B., the Bad Ass B.I.B. Every one howled
and the friggin’ Texan took my picture as I saluted him with the
Miner’s Lite bottle, dressed in my work clothes with the black mask
over my eyes. That was dumb, and now it had come back to haunt
me.

“
You wanna see the picture, Paige?”
Lori asked my quiet and sullen daughter holding the paper out for
her to see.

Without looking up from her plate, Paige lifted
her tablet computer from beside her and held it up for us to see.
There was the same picture in glowing color and much better quality
than the printed version. “You old people really need to get with
the twenty-first century. I saw that picture this morning. Where
have you been? “ she said popping a bite of meat loaf in her
mouth.

Lori was taken aback.

“
I think Mom’s the B.I.B.” Paige
said matter-of-factly, staring at her plate.

My mashed potatoes came to a sudden halt
halfway down my throat.

Then Paige turned to us and said more lightly,
“She appears mysteriously in the middle of the night. Her hair is
all messed up and her clothes torn. You should have seen her when
she came home from The Banshee!” Paige laughed, knowing she had
gotten me into trouble with Lori.

“
The Banshee?” Lori asked me, like a
mother to a child. “I thought you said you weren’t going
there.”

I was relieved that Paige was only joking and
my mashed potatoes continued on their way. “Don’t worry; I’m not
going there anymore.

“
Promise?”

“
Yes, I promise.”