Fiction
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Mainstreaming
Quick as a striking snake, Lance Kirkwood uncoiled from my plush leather guest chair and snapped a perfect side kick into the Serbian assassin's solar plexus. The Serb spasmed and arched backward. His AK-47 sprayed my office walls, punching ragged holes into several carefully framed Cezanne prints. Lance whirled around the paralyzed villain, wrapped his sinewy arms around the swarthy neck, and twisted once, sending the Serb to his final reward.
"See what I mean?" Lance released the Serb with a sneer of contempt as I crept out from under my desk. The corpse flopped onto my Bokhara carpet. I made a mental note to forewarn the janitor.
"I never get a rest," Lance said. "Movie theaters, grocery stores, gas stations, psychiatrists' offices, it's always the same. Gunfire, explosions, screams from ripping steel and shrieks from terror-stricken women. And I have to bounce around like a goddamned clown dealing out death and vengeance." Thick cords of muscle rippled in his neck. "Not one day off in seven!"
I pursed my lips and pondered.
"You can't say you're unequipped for the job, Lance. Six feet three, two hundred pounds of perfectly toned power, with all the battle skills of the centuries at your instant command. You were made for this, and the rest of us thank God that you're here to handle it."
His sculpted jaw set into an unpleasant line. "Just because I'm good at it doesn't mean it has to go on all day, every day. The bastards attacked me in church last Sunday! All right, it wasn't me they were there for, it was that woman in the wheelchair who's married to a multinational executive, but I had to deal with them."
I gave him my best analyst's shouldn't-you-know-better look. "Do you really expect men who would kidnap a crippled woman out of a church service to have any regard for your sensibilities?"
It appeared to divert him briefly, but the irritated cast returned to his flawless features within seconds. "No, of course not, but just how many of them can there be, to keep me leaping and hitting and shooting from dawn to dusk every day of my life? If there are that many of them out there, they've got the good guys outnumbered about ten to one."
Who could possibly know that better than he? I was about to tell him so when the world went dark and my windows exploded inward, showering the office with bits of vinyl and glass. I dove under my desk again as an Aldebaranian death commando, all five eyes gleaming with drug-induced homicidal madness, burst through the opening and sliced open the floor with the white-hot beam of a laser scimitar. There'd be no saving the rug now.
Lance backflipped out of his chair, plucked a Screamie from his web belt and hurled it sidearm into the alien's face. The ultrasonic grenade shot out grippers that seized the murderous pentapod by its face tentacles and beamed a three thousand watt, ninety-three megaHertz signal straight into its brain. The Aldebaranian chittered, dropped its laser and fell, slowly dissociating into its constituent tadpoles.
I peeked around the edge of the desk as Lance set my guest chair back on its legs and moved it away from the crevice in the floor. "That's another thing." He sat and clapped his hands against his thighs. "These clothes! Khaki tunic with epaulets, skin-tight nomex pants with about a million zippered pockets, combat boots and a utility belt, every damned day. There isn't one other outfit in my closet! How would you feel about going to your best friend's funeral in these?"
I nodded. "How many funerals have you had to attend, dressed this way?"
"At last count, thirty-seven."
"Well, at least you're ready for action whenever it erupts."
He smirked dourly. "And does it ever. Even at graveside. Last week, just when I thought it was safe to deliver a stirring eulogy, the widow whipped out an Uzi machine pistol and tried to take me out!"
"Mad with grief?"
"No." He sighed, his superb chest rising and falling once. "She was a sleeper agent for SPYRE. She'd been reconning the High Aerie for months."
"I see."
My office door opened and Maxine, my gorgeous blonde secretary-receptionist, sauntered in with a handful of message slips. I winced. As soon as her gaze brushed over Lance's steely features, the slips fell from her hand. She swerved toward him, ran her fingers lightly over his thick auburn crewcut, then draped an arm around his neck and lowered herself onto his lap. Her huge blue eyes burned into his own as she dangled a high-heeled pump from a silk-encased foot. Somewhere in the distance, a tenor sax crooned a smoky melody.
I could see Lance fighting down the urge to shove her onto the floor. He might have, except for the corpse and the crevice.
I cleared my throat. "Thank you, Maxine, that will be all." She pouted at me, but rose and left us alone, pausing only to run her elegantly manicured nails teasingly along the underside of Lance's jaw. He shook his head as his gaze followed her swaying hips out of the office.
"Women," he said.
"Well," I said, "have you decided what it is you want? We can't get to work on a solution for you before that, you know."
He slid forward in his chair, preparing himself to disclose the greatest of his secrets to me. I leaned forward in turn.
"A leaky roof," he whispered. "A furnace that goes out in the middle of the night. Some unpaid credit card bills. A wife who's at least thirty pounds overweight. And..." He hesitated, and dropped his voice still further. "And a pimple."
I reeled back in shock.
"You can't be serious!"
He nodded grimly, determination radiating from the planes of his noble face.
"Look at this chin." He stuck it out unnecessarily. "Hard as a rock and not a hair on it. Do you have any idea what it's like to know that Gillette couldn't care less that you exist?"
"Lance..." He was being entirely unreasonable, but it was going to be a tough thing to get across to him. "Just what makes you think those things would make you any happier than you are now?"
He reacted as if he'd been struck. "Well, maybe they would and maybe they wouldn't. At least it would be a change. A chance to see how the other half lives."
I forced myself to sit back, steepled my hands against my lips and simulated a few moments of reflection. He watched me with a heart-wringing expression of hope, all the harder to bear because I knew I'd have to disappoint him. Finally I sighed and shook my head.
"I don't think you're being realistic, Lance. You're aimed at the ten-to-seventeen market, the most hero-sensitive segment of the whole illustrated literature industry. If you start showing imperfections and traits of middle age, your readers will cease to care about you. They'll associate you with their parents, and that will be the end of you."
Shock bloomed on his face. "Goddamn it, Doctor --"
"That's another thing," I said. "You display a growing tendency to use profanity for emphasis, which is unacceptable for a character in your segment. Once every four or five episodes, you can smack a fist into a palm and say 'damn it,' but that's all. You can forget about forcing your way out of your category with vulgar language."
He sat there in uncomprehending astonishment for perhaps ten seconds. Then his head swiveled as he surveyed the walls of my office.
"Where are your diplomas, Doctor? Where are your certificates of membership in the New York Therapeutic League and the American Psychiatric Association?"
The game was up. "I'm not --"
He stood and loomed over me. "You're not an analyst," he grated in a voice like the death knell of the world. "You're the enemy." Before I could even try to escape, one huge hand streaked across my desk and took me by the throat --
I shot upright, tearing the bedcovers off Mayva, and gasped in the darkness.
"Phil?" She stirred and murmured sleepily, "What's wrong?"
"Burrito rebellion," I muttered, swung out of bed and started for the bathroom, pausing only to grab some reading material from the bookshelf.
I sat on the throne as my heart rate sank, stared at the cover of the comic book I'd brought, and pondered my peculiar inhumanity toward the fount of my success.
I'd designed Lance Kirkwood to be a young boy's idol, the very model of mature masculine bravery. The cover art depicted him in full battle cry, a storm of lead around him, face set in total resolve and one fist clenched in defiance as he charged at an unseen enemy. Three hundred forty-three episodes, and the formula still sold nine million units each week, or a little more. So what if the old boy didn't like it?
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," I muttered. I flushed the toilet unnecessarily, ran water into the sink for verisimilitude, and plodded back to the bedroom. The light was on. Mayva was sitting up, a book in her hands. She glanced at me and grinned tiredly.
"Everything okay?"
I shrugged. "More or less."
Her eyes flicked to the comic book I held. "I just don't get you. Forty-three years old and an eight-figure net worth, and you read garbage like that to relax."
I smiled. Mayva doesn't know my pseudonym. "Just staying in touch with the common folk." I tossed the comic toward the bookshelves and got back into bed. "If you want to sell them entertainment, every once in a while, you've got to see how the other half lives."
She snorted and turned off the light.
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