Dead Things (11 page)

“No way,” Van maintains. “Not with all that gallivanting around. Let’s be honest, he can play the ‘exclusive interview with Superman’ angle only so long before it gets tired, or people figure out Peter Parker is actually Superman.”

“It’s Clark Kent,” Burt amends, peevishly. “Clark Kent is Superman’s alter ego.”

But Ian is talking over him. “It would be better if he worked for a television station.” To Van he says, “What if he had an interview show?”

Van agrees. “With cousins dating their pets and that stuff. That’s perfect. You know, I bet women would gobble that eye candy up, especially the 24- to 35-year-old bracket.”

“So would the gay demographic,” Dr. Heston quips.

“He’s not gay,” Burt sniffs to himself. He is outside the conversation. It has taken on a life of its own, and it carries on around him.

“It’s a private affair if he’s doing it on the company’s dime,” Ian scoffs. “Anyway, half the time he’s saving his chick from some danger of her own making.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dr. Heston says, “Barbara is always getting into trouble.”

Burt’s jaw clenches. Lois Lane. Not Barbara.

“At best,” Ian argues, “Superman is unethical. At worst, his behavior borders on the illegal. Think of the advertisers and readers he’s defrauding. How much of every paper sold is going to fund that?”

More importantly, Wright realizes she, too, may soon find herself in an uncomfortable position. Soon the question will be posed to her: just what do you miss?

Yet there is a tug at her subconscious. It says that “nothing” is not entirely accurate. She does miss something. She recognizes the void. But returning home will not fill it. It is a hole that can’t be filled with food, sex, alcohol, or money—although she has tried them in countless combinations. Her loss is something greater, intangible, but precious still.

Burt looks exhausted. So is Wright. “Okay, everyone, lights out. Time to extinguish the fire.”

Van protests. He didn’t get a turn to talk about what he misses. “Too bad. Lights out,” Wright repeats stiffly.

Good
, Ian thinks. Ian misses something deeper too, but it’s something he’s been missing since he was little. Tonight he will dream about his father again as he does nearly every night.

Chapter Ten: History Derailed

It is a brisk November morning, eighteen years earlier. Peter Sumner blows into his hands. His breath lingers before him, specter-like, dancing about his fingers. He stamps his feet, looks toward the end of the Addison elevated platform. No train yet.

His morning routine: shower, kiss his wife and young son goodbye, and board the train. The Chicago Transit Authority picks him up less than a block from Wrigley Field. From there it submerges underground, and deposits him in the Jackson subway station, steps from his office.

The CTA is universally maligned. Riders complain that it is dirty, inconvenient, and, as a rule, late. But, with gas prices and parking taxes soaring, there is little choice for thousands but to take it.

The CTA is a monopoly. It has no competition. As such, commuters aren’t really customers. They are hostages, and their relationship with their captors is love/hate. It’s textbook Stockholm Syndrome.

Peter can relate to the CTA, though. He has been an attorney for the city for ten years, the Department of Revenue, no less. The only thing people can stomach less than a lawyer is a lawyer enforcing parking and tax codes. In terms of public sentiment, hatred towards Peter’s department easily surpasses the CTA, Hillary Clinton, and French émigrés combined.

There are stereotypes that befall most professions. Usually, those stereotypes can be summarized by a single question. For cops: “Have you ever shot anyone?” The question is as loaded as a cop’s revolver. It assumes not only that the use of force may be required, but also that there is a propensity toward it. For Peter, the question he is asked dozens of times from people as disparate as drunken Cubs fans to dignitaries: “Can you get me out of my parking tickets?”

The question offends Peter because it supposes that there is still corruption in Chicago, and that, as a public employee, he is inclined to partake in it. Also, it just plain lacks originality.

Peter does not believe Chicago government is a broken system managed by dysfunctional people. He works with too many bright people with innovative ideas and a genuine love for the city to ever think that. But he cannot deny that there are rotten apples. Even if they have not spoiled the bunch, the rotten apples seem to be the ones that residents consistently eat with distaste.

Peter wants to change perceptions, so he lobbies to do so and gets carte blanche. It isn’t hard. With scandal after scandal tracking across the covers of the papers like a sports ticker each day, the Mayor needs a win.

“This is how we’ve always done it.” This last offered by Tommy Rails, a procurement manager. Rails is a rotten apple, lacking the skills to properly supervise and the intelligence to realize those skills are nonexistent.

But Peter is up for the challenge. Ninety-six percent of all problems result from breakdowns in processes. Peter studies processes like a boy with a magnifying glass, transforming them, filling in gaps, removing redundancies, and establishing best practices.

But four percent of problems are people, people like Rails. More and more, Peter’s magnifying glass sweeps over Rails and his cronies. It draws them into relief. Soon it will bring light, and with that, heat. Peter will fry them like the bugs they are.

But not today. Rails staged a protest, calling in sick. It is a coordinated strike. Nearly twenty percent of the staff called in as well. The absences trouble Peter. Several supervisors participate in Rails’ blue flu, including a few of Peter’s acolytes.

Besides, Rails’ story isn’t even plausible. After all, who stays home because of a bite, especially one from his teenage daughter?

Right there, Peter decides on his next crusade: combating chronic absenteeism.

Peter’s peers like to say Peter is “in the zone.” The reality: Peter is never outside the metaphoric zone. His mind is a constant hive of activity, and he lives with a constant, pulsating buzz that, despite its deafening silence, drowns out interpersonal stimuli.

Peter is trapped in the zone.

There is an otherness, an apartness that prohibits him from really engaging his fellow man. He lacks the ability to empathize.

That’s not to say Peter doesn’t have feelings. He can feel anger, happiness, and the full range of emotions. He just doesn’t feel them toward
people
.

But he’s a good faker. He’s faked it for nearly thirty years. He’s done everything people would expect, basically everything his father had done before him. He went to college, courted and married his wife, got a job, got a car, got a house. He goes to neighbor’s barbecues, holds Super Bowl parties, laughs at his boss’ horrible jokes. He takes up smoking with his co-workers even though he hates it. Years ago he even considered having an affair. Not because he was attracted to the woman, but because he thought it was the normal thing to do.

In short, Peter Sumner goes through the motions.

At least he used to.

Almost four years ago something changed. His son was born. As soon as Peter held Ian in his arms, looking upon his helpless face, he felt his icy heart break and warmth pass through him in waves. Peter learned what it was to love unconditionally.

The train approaches, gliding on three rails, the electrified third supplying power to the locomotive. Touch the third rail, and you cook. Signs warn of this in English and Spanish, alerting travelers and vagrants alike.

The train pulls into the stop, an automated yet polite voice alerting commuters who may have been confused, that this stop is, indeed, Addison. “This is a Red Line train to the Loop.”

One by one, the passenger cars noisily pass Peter, the rising sun reflecting off the windows. Despite the glare, he can tell that this morning, like most, the train is nearly full.

The train halts, and Peter makes his way to the door of the lead car. Before entering, he notices four or five people lying across seats, forcing fellow passengers to stand. Peter approaches the door, but stops in his tracks. He’s assaulted by a horrible smell clearly emanating from the car.

The homeless, he thinks, wincing.

He threads his way back through the throng, his briefcase angled to open a path before him. He makes his way back to the centerline of the platform, and jogs to the car directly aft. He squeezes on just as the doors slide shut.

“Excuse me,” he says, moving past the passengers blocking the doors. This is Peter’s pet peeve: ignorant passengers who fail to clear the car’s entrance, prohibiting others from coming and going, especially when there’s plenty of room in the center.

Peter starts towards the car’s front. “Pardon me,” he begs again, slipping between businessmen and students. He is awkward with his bag and his heavy jacket, and he breaks a sweat as he approaches the emergency door. Fortunately, the area is clear. Peter leans thankfully against the door, his lower back resting against the horizontal handle.

True to routine, he drops his briefcase to his feet and sinks both into his copy of the Tribune and anonymity.

“Next stop, Belmont,” a disembodied recording announces. “Doors open on the right in the direction of travel.”

Peter loosens his tie, the brown and gray stripes wrinkling. He runs his sleeve across his forehead. Since work began to repair the tracks and replace the train stations on the line, the commute has become even more unbearable.

At Belmont, passengers impede each other’s progress off and on the train.

An elderly woman presses against Peter apologetically, and he looks with disdain at a seated teen who fails to offer his chair. The teen does not make eye contact with her or Peter. He’s withdrawn into the world of his gaming system.

The future of America
, Peter thinks gloomily. The train proceeds.

“I love that I can just, you know, veg out with him, you know?” a young woman brays into a cell phone. “It’s just so nice to not have to say anything. We can just be quiet and not have to think, you know? We don’t even have to talk. Hello? Can you hear me?”

Peter considers telling this twenty-something to use her “inside voice.” But his way is to avoid public attention. So he keeps to himself, knowing that the tunnel, the subway, will soon silence her phone. But not soon enough.

“Hello?” she bellows. “Oh my God, I thought I had lost you!”

“Fullerton,” the mechanized voice announces. “Change for the purple and brown line trains at Fullerton. Doors closing.”

Peter turns to page five, an article about a prison riot in Mississippi orchestrated by some nut job named Ira Ridge. The prisoners have control of a cell block. It’s day three, and negotiations have broken down. The warden and several guards are feared dead…

Then he hears it: something like a muffled scream over the clickity-clack din of the wheels grinding against ancient rails. He surveys the cabin.

No one returns his gaze. They are all like him, eyes down, their heads plugged with ear buds, totally ignorant of each other’s existence. No one stirs.

Perhaps
, Peter thinks,
a squeaky brake-pad
. He starts to read his newspaper again.

Peter whips about and stares out the rectangular window of the emergency exit. About two feet separate his car from the lead. A narrow catwalk guarded by ropes of thick chain forms a causeway. During a crisis, passengers should use the emergency doors to move forward from car to car until able to safely disembark.

The sun’s shimmer on the window bounces his image back. He looks intently for several seconds, trying to identify the source of the noise. A flicker of a shadow skips across the window as the train passes a tree, briefly allowing Peter to peer into the illuminated cabin.

Then, another flicker, silhouettes of a number of people, bodies all seemingly crowding into the rear of the passenger car. They are trying to push past each other toward the exit, toward Peter.