Super Born: Seduction of Being (8 page)

* * *

When I got home to my apartment, the adrenaline
from the high-speed challenge of saving flight 118 was coursing
through my veins. The sheer joy of what I had done—saving all of
those lives, seeing the passengers walking, smiling, breathing,
seeing children safe in their mothers’ arms—made me want to laugh
and dance, spin mindlessly.

What a high I was feeling. Maybe all that was
just a day’s work for a superhero, but I was new at this, and for
me, this was a remarkable feeling. I just wanted to share it with
the world, let everyone know there was hope. No one was alone
anymore. They didn’t need to fear the random acts of man. I could
even help them defy fate itself.

I was still giddy and gleeful when I ditched my
mask and cape in my car and headed through the front door. But
there Paige awaited me, not smiling.

“
Mom,” she said. “I know you weren’t
at work. I called there, like, a dozen times and they said you left
at five!”

Immediately, glee was a faded memory. I crashed
into reality, the way Flight 118 would have hit North Mountain if I
hadn’t intervened. There was no way to share my triumph with her,
and it hurt. I stopped and pointed my palm at Paige. “Honey, I
don’t wanna hear this right now,” I said.

“
Where were you? Did you even think
about answering your calls or texts? What if something happened and
I needed to get in touch with you? Who’d have saved me from some
creepy dude attacking me and Kelly at the mall or something?” she
said.

The thought hit me like a suker punch. I hadn’t
been there for her because I was there for the 137 people on flight
118. Who was my priority and who was my real responsibility? For
years, protecting Paige had been my only purpose. The image of some
mob hit man finding her sent me into a mind-warping panic. I could
feel it happening and sensed the sick, frantic guilt I would
experience. I turned away and took some deep breaths to calm down
and remind myself that it hadn’t happened.

“
What, some creepy dude like your
boyfriend, Dylan? You two have another fight or
something?”

“
Noooo, we didn’t
have another fight!”
she
mocked right back at me. Then she stopped, suddenly calm and
concerned. “Where were you, Mom?”

“
I did leave the office at five. But
I had to deliver some papers to Mr. O’Brien, the office manager…The
battery on my phone was dead. That’s all. I never got your
calls.”

“
That was hours ago,
mom.”

“
I went for a walk in the park. I
had a rough day.”

That’s when she surveyed my ratty hair, torn
clothes, and the smell of jet fuel that surrounded me. Her face
changed. “The Park at night?...I warned you not to go back to The
Banshee! The guys at that bar are losers!”

I had had enough. I walked away down the hall
toward my bedroom, “All the guys in this town are losers! And I
wasn’t at The Banshee, that’s Thursday. They have Thirsty
Thursdays, half-price drinks.”

“
Not funny! You never care what I
have to say!”

I stopped in the hallway and quieted Paige with
a frosty glare. Would she ever understand how torn she made me
feel? She had always been the most important thing in my life, but
now there was something else that was also important to me. True, I
wanted to protect her, but I was also feeling the seduction of a
new life as a powerful person. I opened my mouth without a clue how
to make that clear to her, but wishing I could. Instead I turned
and continued down the hall.

“
And what’s with the black clothes
all the time? Makes you look like a goth or something…not
attractive!” she shouted after me.

I slammed the door, making the hinges rattle,
then leaned back against it. Sometimes, being mom was a
bitch.

I stood against the door, while Paige, I knew,
stood in the hall with her arms folded. There was no way I could
tell her what I had just done, although my soul cried out to do so.
Without knowing I had just done, she had to feel that I was making
mistakes that she couldn’t make me see like she was the mom and I
was the kid.

Probably simultaneously, we both sighed and
said to ourselves, “She’ll never understand.”

* * *

When I first heard about the incident, they
were calling it the “miracle of flight 118” and praising the
captain’s incredible skills. As I read and saw more, I smelled a
rat, or maybe spilled beer; anyway, it was something that didn’t
smell right.

I started by putting five hundred dollars in
the palm of a man who had worked the airport tower that night. It
was painful as hell to count out those five crisp hundreds—it felt
like losing five hundred close friends—but I knew this
money-grubbing turd knew something and I needed to find out. He
didn’t say everything he knew, but it was enough to confirm that I
was on the right trail and off to a great start.

I gathered the rest of my
information about flight 118 from interviews, research of records,
TV interviews and reports. Even though I wrote the article, you can
believe it’s all true…really, no kidding. (Okay, they
made
me write that article
about aliens living under the White House.)

When Dr. Jones heard my story, he danced around
like a featherless chicken hip-hopping on a sun-baked asphalt
road—not that I have ever seen such a thing, or that anyone else in
the world has, for that matter. (That’s just how his image struck
me at the time. “My boy, I am telling you now, we are so close!
It’s not a theory anymore! She is here, and we will be finding her
soon, very soon, I’m telling you! What did I say? This will be the
story of your lifetime!” Then he bent over for a second, tapped his
butt, and said, “Mom and Dad, you will be kissing my professional
ass!…‘Little man with a little mind,’ they said at grad school…They
will be the ones bowing down to me!” Jones shook a finger at me, as
if I were one of his tormentors. “We’ll see whose thesis is
unimaginative crap!” Then he paced in a circle and calmed a bit
before mumbling, “Little fuckers.”

I had told him Ed’s story of the beer truck,
just leaving out the minor detail of his death. I had told Jones
about the airplane landing, how I had researched and interviewed my
ass off to get the story, until I was certain the miracle of flight
118 was just a pretty myth that even the FAA was starting to doubt
(though I embellished on how much it had cost me to do so). I just
could not bring myself to tell him about the blue/green eye flashes
and that we had been within inches of our prey days
before.

Then, when I told him that I had tracked down
the first of the women born during the Super Bowl and I would be
meeting with her that evening, the dance started again. It made him
so happy that he literally showered me with money. He grabbed a
wrapped stack of bills each time he passed his desk and threw them
up in an arc to me, mumbling and muttering joyfully to himself as
he went. Whether he spoke English or an Indian dialect I could not
say, only that I just kept waiting for him to pass that desk again.
One thousand dollars…five hundred dollars…two thousand
dollars—thank heaven for Mom, Dad, and that trust fund. I could
tell money meant nothing to him…but it did to me. How about one
more trip past that desk?

Finally, he began to pant a little from his
exertions, and slowed down. “You have done well, my friend. This is
true progress. Are you prepared for your meeting with this woman?
Was she born near halftime?”

I took my notebook out of my bag and fingered
down the list. “Her name is Jennifer Lowe. She owns a flower shop.
And she was born the closest to half time of them all.”

“
She has lived here her whole life?”
he asked, patting the sweat on his forehead with a black bra he had
lifted off of his desk.

“
Yes, her whole life. That’s what
made her so easy to find. Never been married.”

“
In a town like this I can’t blame
her... Nothing more notable in her background than a
florist?”

“
No…but our B.I.B…that’s what I call
her…”

“
B.I.B? What does it stand
for?”

I told him the story of how Ed had come up with
the name, bitch in black.

Jones shook his head. “Best we stay
with just B.I.B., okay?” He said it again with musical tones,
the
I
being the
highest note. “I think I like it. Kind of catchy.”

“
Sure…what I was saying was our
B.I.B. is undercover. She’s not like Olga Settchuoff—movie star,
cosmonaut, and the whole nine yards. She doesn’t want to be known,
so she will have a cover. She could be a florist, an accountant,
anyone.”

“
Maybe we should have this Jennifer
Lowe followed, a private investigator, perhaps?”

Inside I thought,
Fat friggin’ chance of my handing her over to
you! This girl’s eyes glow and you’ll never see either of us
again!
Outside I said, “If she looks
like a good candidate after our meeting, it would be a good
idea.”

“
You have all the papers from the
university about the research project and survey?”

“
Yes,” I said. He was referring to
the “real” Penn State Psychology Department survey that would be my
cover to meet Jennifer. I’d told her that she fit a profile our
researchers were looking for and that we would give her a whole
twenty-five dollars just to meet with me and answer a few simple,
confidential questions about her parents and her success later in
life.

“
Good,” he said, then patted me on
the shoulder and pushed me toward the door. “I’m certain you’re
right about the private eye. Good luck and good hunting, my friend.
Now, if you will excuse me, it’s ladies night at The
Banshee.”

Chapter 4

Jennifer Lowe (Bitch): Not My Finest
Hour

I now know what a bug feels like just before it
gets fried by a bug zapper. The exhilaration, heightened by
anticipation and hope, totally overrides what should be an
impending sense of risk and doom. As I approached the coffee shop
where I was to meet Jennifer Lowe, the hope that she was the blond
with flashing eyes made me ignore all else. Simple things, like how
I was going to communicate in more than single slurred syllables,
or what I would say to her, or what in heaven I could offer someone
like her, or if I would end up like Ed if I got too close and she
felt exposed.

“
Hi, I’m a rarely published writer
whose work you’ve probably seen in your cat’s litter box. Pardon
me, but did you flash your eyes at me and save a hundred people on
flight 118, and do you have super powers? Do you want to go get a
burger or something?”
somehow just didn’t
seem to cut it. I wondered what Jones said to attract all of his
women. Or did he just open his wallet? I shook my head. Jones’s
women were great, I’m sure, but she…she was a super
woman.

I concluded that the excitement I had felt
since learning of her existence made any risk worth it. She had
brought me back from a dull life that now seemed meaningless to one
alive with the risky anticipation of what was around every corner.
But in actuality, it wasn’t a logical choice at all; I was
emotionally compelled to be there, and that was that; just a bug
drawn to a light.

I arrived way early to be certain I got there
first and found a table near the window. I would see her before she
saw me—that was for sure. What possible good that would do, I don’t
know, but give me credit; it sounded good. Despite not needing the
artificial energy, I sipped a coffee as I waited.

For the next half hour, people came and went
with their lattes and chai teas: some groups, some couples, and the
occasional lone female. No one I saw fit the bill. I was just about
ready to get a refill on my coffee when I heard a voice , “You must
be Mr. Penn State,” a woman said in a cheery tone, suddenly
standing beside me.

I got through an instant of surprise and panic
without showing much of it, then rose and offered my hand. “You
must be Jennifer,” I said to the woman, who was obviously not the
blond. “I’m Tom,” I lied—why, I don’t know. “Have a seat. Can I get
you a…”

“
Latte, please, extra foam,” she
answered, slipping off her coat revealing a rack the visual guy
half of me couldn’t help but notice.

I put my eyeballs back in my head and asked,
“And?”

“
How about a cinnamon roll,” she
said, sitting down, crossing her legs, revealing muscular skater’s
thighs pushing the limits of her jeans.

I went to the counter, placed her order and got
my refill, then leaned back against it to try to figure her out
while I waited. The hopeful anticipation had drained out of me
faster than money through my checking account…on a Friday. Jennifer
had reddish-brown hair down to her shoulders and a sober, almost
cocky look on her rather plain face. She wore jeans and a
light-colored blouse, expensive but not flashy; but oh, the way she
filled them. Oddly I noticed her feminine form but didn’t feel
aroused by her in the least.

With the “guy” half of my brain sleeping I
could tune into my journalistic reasoning. (It could happen.) This
woman didn’t seem like the florist type. I could imagine her
Congress or on the board of a corporation. Self-confidence and
assertiveness flowed out of her like the Amazon River. Her gaze was
surgical. Although she acted very calm, you could feel the whirling
of a keen intellect unnecessary in the floral trade.