Hero Worship (9 page)

“Later,” she says.

“Yeah, okay … see you later,” I say, shutting the door.

I watch as the car drives away, the taillights fading as they disappear from sight. A breeze sends a shiver through my body. I flip the hood of my jacket up over my head and stuff my hands in the pockets. I realize that I was subjected to two tests tonight—the doctor's, and Eliza's. If I had to guess, I'd say Eliza's carries more weight with my prospects of joining the Core.

FOURTEEN

I don't sleep a wink. I lie in bed and wonder why my room suddenly feels so small and cold. I've never thought this before, but it's like a crypt. This is what it must feel like to be dead. I finally get up and get dressed, thinking how nice it would be to have a room like Eliza's. Lots of room, light, and windows to let in fresh air.

There's absolutely nothing to eat for breakfast, so I head over to the Gas 'n' Sip, taking along my dirty laundry to wash next door at the coin-operated Laundromat. When I step out of the Gas 'n' Sip double doors—an ICEE in one hand and a bulging garbage bag of clothes in the other—I see Eliza waiting for me in her car.

“What're you doing here?” I ask.

She sits behind the wheel, resting her chin on the open window. “Looking for you.”

“How'd you know I'd be here?”

She motions to the garbage bag. “Whatcha got in the bag?”

“Dirty laundry,” I say. “I'm heading to the Laundromat.”

“Let me save you some time. Toss the bag in the garbage.”

I chuckle and nervously slurp on the ICEE.

“No, I'm serious.” She points at a garbage can. “In there.”

“Why would I toss out my clothes?”

Eliza starts the car and guns the engine.
“We're going to get you some new ones. It's your second birthday gift.”

“You don't need to spend any money on me,” I say.

She pulls a credit card out of her pocket and holds it up. “I'm not. Mystic is.”

“She gave you her credit card to buy me clothes?”

“No, I stole her credit card to buy you clothes.”

“Is that the smartest thing to do? Can't she read minds? Won't she know what you did?”

Revving the engine, Eliza says, “Mystic can't read my mind. Let's go.”

I take a final, noisy slurp of the ICEE and toss the empty cup into the garbage. As I'm about to toss my dirty clothes, I notice a bum under the awning, escaping the bright sun. “Hey, you want some clothes?” I ask. “They need to be washed, but they're in good shape.”

It takes a moment for him to respond, but he eventually nods his head and I hand him the garbage bag. He opens it and rifles through the contents. Without looking up at me, he waves his thanks.

“No problem,” I say, turning and getting into Eliza's car.

As she puts the car in reverse, she says, “What was that all about?”

“I gave the guy my clothes.”

She rolls her eyes. “You're such a Boy Scout.” The tires
squeal as she speeds out of the parking lot. “We don't have
time to help every little old lady across the street or get cats out of trees. The time it takes to do that willy-nilly shit, we could be doing something bigger, something that can change the world. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I consider asking whether she'd rather I'd simply thrown the clothes away, but I stop myself—not because I'm afraid to ask but because I'm leery of her answer.

There's a three-block-long stretch of stores and boutiques in Loganstin where the wealthy go to shop—Treimel Drive. If you don't look like someone who makes a mid-six-figure income, you won't even be allowed to set foot in the stores. Rumor has it that cleans are hired as security to protect the patrons and guard the expensive merchandise. I don't know if that's true or not, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

Eliza and I stroll down the sidewalk. She peers into the windows, oohing and aahing at the displays of the latest couture fashions. Taking me by the hand, she pulls me into one of the stores.

We're immediately greeted by two women who have their hair pulled back so tightly that their foreheads are stretched taut, positioning their eyebrows nearly to the crest of what would be a normal person's hairline.

“Eliza, it's so nice to see you again,” the one with black hair says, hugging Eliza and making the motion to kiss her on both cheeks, but not actually planting lips to skin.

“Marta, you look lovely,” Eliza says.

“What can we do for you?” the other asks, embracing her, too.

“I have an emergency, Brett.” Eliza motions to me and asks, “Can you do something with this?”

Trying not to stare, I steal a peek at Brett and realize that her eyebrows are actually drawn on. The women's faces pucker as they inspect me like a piece of furniture that needs to be reupholstered. “Oh my, my, my,” Brett mutters.

“We can help,” Marta says. The two women usher me away. “Give us some time.”

“Take all the time you need,” Eliza says.

I'm escorted into a dressing room. But it's not like any dressing room I've ever been in. There are no changing stalls. It's just a big, open, circular space with lights that simulate natural lighting. The rounded walls are covered with floor-to-
ceiling mirrors, and there's a platform in the middle of the room.

The women proceed to remove my clothing, pulling my shirt over my head and pulling down my jeans. As I stand there in my underwear, they handle my clothes like rotten food, bundling them up and tossing them into the trash.

“Please stand on the platform,” Marta says, motioning to it. I gingerly step onto it. She flips a switch, and the platform slowly spins around, rotating me like a rotisserie chicken. They study me.

“He's warm,” Brett says.

“You think?”

“Absolutely. Look at his golden skin. Warm.”

Marta steps forward and squints. “Yes, I suppose you're right. Clear or muted?”

Brett taps the tip of her fingernail against her front teeth. Click. Click. Click. “That's tougher. Hard to say.”

Marta takes a step forward and peers at me as I slowly spin around. “He's clear,” she says.

“Marta, you're right!” the other says, clapping her hands eagerly. “He's spring.”

The ladies hurry out of the room. “We've got work to do,” Brett says in a singsong voice.

I'm left alone, spinning around on the platform. “Am I supposed to wait here?” I call. Nobody answers me. I'm left to spin, accompanied only by the dull hum of the platform motor.

The next hour is an endless parade of shirts, pants, belts, and shoes. I try on a shirt, but that requires me to put on three different pairs of pants. And once that's settled, I slip on shoe after shoe. Brett and Marta approach buying clothes like playing chess—each move requires another calculated one, followed by another and another. It's a tireless process not for the faint of heart.

Eliza watches from a leather recliner that's rolled into the room. She sips champagne from a crystal flute and nibbles on cheese, crackers, and olives. “Eliza, what do you think?” Marta asks. I'm wearing an outfit that was twenty minutes in the making.

Eliza sips her champagne and gets up to inspect me. She nods her head, signaling her approval. “I like it,” she says. Her nose crinkles. “But do you have a different color belt than that hideous brown?”

Brett unfastens the belt and removes it from around my waist in one seamless motion. “We'll be right back.” She exits the dressing room with Marta.

“How much longer?” I ask.

“Oh come on,” Eliza says, draining the last of her drink. She twirls the glass between her fingers. “This is fun.”

I look at myself in the mirror. The cost of the clothes I'm wearing is more than I'd like to think about. Eliza rests her chin on my shoulder and slips her arms around my waist. “Eliza, I'm not really down with all of this,” I say.

“Why?”

“It's just not my thing.”

“But it looks good on you,” she says.

“It doesn't fit.”

“What doesn't?”

“The whole thing,” I say.

“But these clothes are so nice,” she says. Our eyes meet in the reflection of the mirror. She sees something in them and says, “We're going out on official business.”

“What?”

“We're going to follow up on the leads on IWPs that Klaus gave me. Hopefully one of them will end up being the person who drugged Streak.”

A lump sticks in my throat, but I mange to croak, “Are you serious?”

“You're coming with me.” Eliza pours herself another glass of champagne and says, “It's about time we pop your cherry.”

FIFTEEN

We drive through Little Saigon, across Little Italy, and into Little Armenia. All the storefronts are decrepit and rundown. Eliza drives slowly, and she's either scanning the street or making sure we're seen. I can't tell for certain.

She motions to a couple of young men tossing each other hand signs from opposite sides of the street. “Those are gang signs. They're saying that you and me, we're trouble. They're warning their peeps to step aside and let us pass.”

“How do they know?”

“They can sense danger,” she says. “But they're just your garden-variety lowlifes peddling dope and fake IDs. They're minnows. We're after the whales.”

We drive past a black guy with a shaved head who leans casually against a chain-link fence. He wears sweatpants with elastic cuffs that cling securely around his ankles. While I can't see his eyes behind the sunglasses, I feel his hard stare.

“See that guy?” she says. “The bald eagle trying to act innocent? Guaranteed he's got nearly a pound of dope in his pants.”

“Aren't we going to stop him? Pick him up or something?” I say.

“His name's Chester Magnolia,” she says. “Ran with the Izzy Chocolates, a syndicate rooted in the East Coast.”

“The dirty gang?”

“You've heard of them?”

“Yeah,” I say. My morbid curiosity makes me stare at the guy like he's a deadly accident on the side of the road.

“When he was thirteen, he got shipped to UTM.”

“The supermax prison?”

“Normally that's a one-way ticket,” she says. “But I got him sprung, and he works for me now. He goes about business as usual, but he lets me know when a whale is in the harbor.”

The guy points his finger at me like it's a gun. He smiles as he mimics firing it at me.

“There's always going to be someone stronger and faster,” she says, “so we've got to be smarter.”

“Is school in session?” I ask.

“Goddamn right it is. When I'm done with you, you're going to have earned a PhD. Being a member of the Core ain't all glamour and photo ops. You gotta be willing to do a lot of grunt work. You good with that?”

“Absolutely.”

She fiddles with the temperature control and adjusts the vent near me to blow on her. “I've personally been responsible for the arrests and convictions of thirty assholes, and the majority of those arrests were made when I was naked.”

“Excuse me?”

She smiles and says, “‘Naked' means going out as a civilian. No costumes, no powers. Naked.”

My cheeks flush. “Oh.”

“You dirty dog,” she says. “I know what you were thinking.”

I clear my throat and tug on my collar.

“As of right now, the clock's ticking for you. You've got to show me that you want this and will go to any lengths to get it,” she says.

“Sounds good.”

“Today you're going to get a crash course in the reality of the world we patrol, and it ain't the candy-ass world they present on those tabloid television shows.”

I realize that this isn't the proper moment for me to wear a cheesy grin, but I can't help it. The more I try not to smile, the wider it grows. My cheek muscles actually start to hurt. “I'm ready,” I say.

Eliza's brows furrow as she glances at me. I put a hand to my face and try to rub the smile from it, like I'm removing a stain from a garment. She turns her hard gaze back to the road. “You think you're ready? We'll see,” she says.

As we head farther into Little Armenia, a sound like clapping thunder rips through the sky. I look up and instead of a bolt of lightning, I see a flier zooming into the horizon.

“Who is it?” Eliza asks, straining to spot the flier.

“I can't tell.”

“Whoever it is should know better than to go supersonic within the city limits. I freaking hate fliers. Think they're so superior and above it all. Idiots.”

We turn down a street that resembles photos of a war-ravaged city. Burned-out cars are discarded on the asphalt like carcasses of slaughtered buffalo on the range. There are
more condemned buildings than not, and the ones that
aren't probably should be.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

Eliza produces the paper Dr. Klaus gave her. “To the first name on the list.”

I try to sneak a peek at the names written on the paper, but she stuffs it into her pocket. “Who are they?” I ask.

“Just a handful of dirties. A bunch of nobodies,” she says. “But the first name is someone I know. So he's our first stop. He isn't our man, but I like busting this guy's balls and reminding him who's boss.”

“How do you know he didn't do it?”

“McKay is a reptile who eats his young, but I seriously doubt he has the nuts to make a move against a member of the Core.”

We come to a storefront on a warehouse, where a sign hanging over the door reads
McKay's Septic Sucker
. The paint outside is cracked and sun-faded. The windows are so grimy that it's impossible to see inside. Eliza presses the doorbell. Not hearing whether or not the doorbell rang, she presses it again, followed by a kick for good measure.

A muffled voice yells, “Hold on! Hold on! I'm coming already!” From the other side of the door comes the sound of a series of deadbolts being unlocked. When the door opens a crack, a pair of eyes peers at us through a security chain that's still attached. “Whaddya want?”

“McKay, open the freaking door,” Eliza says.

“Eliza?”

“In the flesh.”

The eyes dart from Eliza to me and back again. The door slams shut, the chain is unfastened, and it opens wide, revealing the roundest man I've ever seen. I can't stop staring. He's as round as a snowman, with a perfectly round head, torso, and legs. “Hurry up if you're coming in,” he says.

Eliza and I step inside and are immediately hit with a flood of noxious fumes, the most god-awful stench I've ever smelled. You know how when you smell something horrible, it loses its potency after a while? Well, the smell in McKay's doesn't slacken with time. It's a tour de force of grossness that never wanes.

McKay slams the door shut and refastens all the deadbolts and locks. A septic truck with a huge tank rests in the middle of the warehouse. An assortment of hoses caked in filth is coiled on the floor. “Follow me,” he says, waddling past us. He perches on two stools in order to sit, resting a butt cheek on each one, the metal groaning under the weight. “Sit.”

Eliza makes a face as she inspects the filthy chairs. “I'll stand, thank you very much.”

“I've been hearing rumblings that there's gonna be a move made on Darren,” McKay says. He raises his ample man-boob and scratches under it. A satisfied expression spreads across his face.

“Is that so?” Eliza says.

“He's had his hand deep in the cookie jar for too long. Only so long people gonna put up with that.”

She rolls her eyes. “There are always going to be complainers. Nothing new.”

“One of these days somebody is going to knock that guy off his pedestal, and my only hope is that I'm around to see it,” McKay says.

“Nobody has the balls to make that move,” Eliza says.

McKay's hand nearly disappears inside the crevices of his fat rolls as he scratches himself like a dog. “I'm guessing this isn't a social call.”

“No.”

“What are you going to try and pin on me this time?” he asks.

“McKay, you're so cynical,” Eliza says.

He glares at her.

She produces the piece of paper and waves it around
like a flag. “Your name came up on a list.”

“Of course it did.”

“Where were you a week ago?”

“Can you be a little bit more specific?”

“September 10th around noon.”

“Why? What happened?”

“That was the day Streak was drugged in the park.”

McKay settles back on the stools and chuckles. His excess body envelops them like muffin tops spilling over onto a pan. “Yeah, I read about that. But it wasn't me. I was out on a job that whole day.”

“Are you sure?” Eliza says.

He glares at her. “Honey, the only thing I've ever been sure about is that right after I ate my first egg, I was sure that I would do it again.” A forked tongue emerges from his mouth but disappears almost immediately, making me question whether or not I saw what I think I saw.

“That's disgusting,” she says.

Without warning, McKay jumps up from the table and rushes over to the septic truck, waddling like a penguin. He grabs a hose that's attached to the tank and carries it to a kiddie pool, the small plastic kind you buy at drugstores during the summer. He squeezes the nozzle and brown waste shoots into the plastic pool. More of the gunk lands on the ground than in the pool, but McKay manages to fill it. Dropping the hose, he digs both hands into his neck as if trying to grab his tonsils through the flesh and fat. Then there's a loud snap, followed by a hissing noise as a crack appears in his head and spreads down the front of his body. He opens the crack, pulling the flesh apart to reveal a green and scaly body. The scales ripple, opening and closing as McKay breathes like gills on a fish.

“What the hell?” I say, taking three steps back.

Removing the outside body, which drops to the ground like discarded clothing, the newly revealed lizard arches its head back and stretches, shooting its forked tongue into the air repeatedly. The green beast looks rather menacing standing on its two hind legs—like a Komodo dragon, but larger and scarier.

“McKay, we don't have time for this,” Eliza says. “We're in a hurry.”

Ignoring her, the lizard slithers into the kiddie pool, circling around on all fours like a dog spinning around on its bed. It wallows in the brown waste, nudging it with its snout. It spins some more, going faster and faster until it stops, sticking its rear into the waste. It hisses loudly.

“Jesus!” Eliza snaps. “You couldn't have waited to do this? Way to keep it classy, you stupid iguana.”

“What is it doing?” I ask.

“He's laying eggs.”

I watch in horror as white eggs emerge from the lizard's rear end and plop into the waste.

“Oh. My. God,” I say.

Finishing its task, the lizard inspects the dozen or so gleaming white eggs lying in the sludge. Its tongue flicks out and touches each and every egg, cleaning them off. Satisfied, it slides out of the pool, leaving its eggs behind. Slithering over to the discarded body, it begins the process of putting it back on, struggling with it like a surfer putting on a wetsuit. It notices us staring and says, “What? Haven't you ever seen a guy lay eggs before?”

“When you said that you eat your eggs, do you mean those eggs?” I say.

“Don't knock it until you try it,” McKay says.

I don't know if his admission makes me more disgusted or mortified. My human sensibilities can't wrap my mind around this.

Sealing the body suit, McKay glares at us. “I'm not the dirty you're looking for. I wish I was the one who dropped Streak, but it wasn't me.”

“Any ideas who it might be?” Eliza asks.

McKay waddles over to a cabinet, opens a drawer, and removes a jar of bugs covered in plastic wrap. Tossing back his head, he pours the bugs into his mouth. A handful of the tiny creatures cling to the glass, but McKay's tongue shoots out and snaps them up. I hear the sound of the bugs screeching, followed by crunching as McKay chomps his teeth down on them.

“You might wanna track down Chrome and Silver,” he says.

“The twins?”

“Yeah. That sounds like something they might do.”

Eliza inspects the list of names on the piece of paper. “Do you know who Yvonne McCalmon is?”

My heart skips a beat. I feel Eliza look at me, but I take great pains to turn my face away from her. I'm afraid that she'll take one look at me and put two and two together.

McKay uses his dirty fingernail to pick remnants of bugs out of his teeth. “Nope. Never heard of her.” A bug crawls out of his mouth, doing its best to escape death. He pushes it back in, grinding the poor insect into wet pulp.

“So, McKay, what're you up to these days?” Eliza asks.

“I'm completely legit.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.”

Eliza scans the warehouse, taking her time, like she's studying a puzzle and working at putting all the pieces together. “Let's hope so, for your sake. Because if you're not paying the toll, you'll make a lot of people angry.”

Something resembling a growl builds deep down inside of McKay. It rumbles like the sound of distant thunder. Through clenched teeth, he says, “Little girl, are you threatening me?”

“I don't make threats,” she says.

McKay and Eliza glare at each other, locked in a war of wills where the first one to blink loses.

“I paid my dues in full back in Belize,” he says.

“Belize? That was a lifetime ago,” she says.

“It was two years ago,” he says. “We're square. And the two of you should get the hell out. I've got things to do.”

With the effortless grace of a gazelle bounding through the Serengeti, Eliza makes her way over to McKay. She gets right up in his face. “Listen up, you salamander-faced ass maggot. I don't give a shit about Belize. That episode changes nothing. All I have to do is say the word and I'll have a new pair of reptile-skinned shoes.”

McKay's tongue flicks out of his mouth and nearly touches Eliza's cheek. She shoves him, sending him toppling to the ground. His arm accidentally hits an egg, cracking it. Red and yellow fluid oozes out, running over his hand.

“My egg!” McKay yells. He flounders on the ground, trying to build enough momentum to rock onto his stomach and get up. It reminds me of a turtle trapped on its back.