The Tower (6 page)

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Nah,” he answered. “They always hang with their own. Not every day they up and hang with us.” And with that, he started wiping down the main counter.

Not mixing? That figured; why settle for someone who was ordinary? Oriana seemed to have it all: She was beautiful, skilled, looked really great in her costume, and had every other guy on board practically drooling over her. So, the question of why she'd want to hang out with someone who wasn't anything special kept repeating itself in my mind.

* * *

This time, we'd landed in Met City, a very different place from Portland. It was much larger, newer, more high-tech. The city was clean, and in the fading sunlight everything gleamed. No litter, no homeless people I could see, no evidence of crime. I told that to Oriana as we buzzed along the street on her motorcycle.

“You must've led a sheltered life,” she yelled back, over the roar of the engine. “Just trying to keep out of trouble,” I replied.

“I was born of trouble!” she said. “I lost my parents when I was little; they both died of cancer.” This story was different from the comics…but whatever. I told her I'd also lost my mother when I was younger. My eyes started to tear up when I told her that. Oriana looked over her shoulder, caught the look on my face, and then pulled the bike over and killed the engine.

“Death sucks,” she said softly, and squeezed my shoulder gently. Wow; it felt like a jolt of electricity coursing through me. She smiled a bit and said, “Listen, K won't be here; we'll go back to Portland another time. Wanna do something stupid instead?”

“Like what?”

“Get into trouble.”

Oh, what now? Oriana turned around and gunned the motor to life.

“Trouble—what kind of trouble are we talking about?” I asked.

“You'll see,” she said over her shoulder.

I'd heard that before.

* * *

An hour later, we'd been driving downtown and the area had gotten progressively seedier-looking, just like the place in Portland we'd gone to the other night, only worse. And I'd thought that all of Met City was an urban paradise.

We'd parked on the opposite side of an old building, and then walked into a crowded underground parking lot. Going over to an old and unused-looking door, I saw that it had a small keypad. Entering a code, she pressed the button on it. It beeped loudly, then opened up and she led me downstairs to a cellar.

“This used to be a warehouse,” she told me. Now, as we walked into the area, I could see what it had been turned into. “Take a look.”

It was set up for cage matches. She had to be kidding, although I knew she wasn't. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of bills and handed it over to a little man inside a small cage. “He pays off the winning customers,” she whispered in my ear. “Hang on to the cash, Frank,” she told the guy. “I'll be getting it all back later on, anyway.” She then looked at me: “Neat, huh?”

“Neat.” I couldn't tell if she was making fun of me or not, but there was no time. Striding down to where a large, octagon-like cage had been set up in the center of the warehouse, the yells of the spectators, 500 or so, greeted her. Mainly young guys in their twenties; half of them looked like they could eat iron for breakfast and the other half looked as if they could buy all the iron in the world.

I looked around. The area was large with a low ceiling, makeshift seats had been placed around the octagon and most everyone had a bottle of something in their hand; it was a safe bet that it wasn't water. I also saw a couple of young women walking around in bikinis, taking money from the spectators and a few other young women selling beer and hard liquor. The crowd was raucous and restless. They wanted action!

As for me, I felt like I wanted to leave. This was the kind of bad, dangerous atmosphere that I'd seen on TV shows and in movies, only this was for real. I didn't belong here but didn't want to spoil her “fun” and why'd she bring me to this place? I'd rather have gone back and read a book.

The announcer, a short, dumpy guy in his fifties, intoned over a mike, “Welcome back, Oriana!” The crowd responded with hoots, cheers and leers. He continued, “Oriana has graced us with her presence on many an occasion! She's taken on two, three, even four contenders at a time, and always come out on top! Well, if she's up for it, there are
five
top dogs looking for a little payback. What'll it be, Oriana?”

The crowd hushed itself, looking expectantly at her. Silence, and then:

“Bring it on!” she yelled.

The place exploded into cheers.

“O, baby, hunt me!”

“Give it to me, baby!” yelled another.

“Take me in, take me in!” cried a third. I turned red.

She turned to me, “Find a seat; this won't take long.” I found a place near the ring where there wasn't too much smoke, squeezed in along with a couple of other people and she entered the cage. Soon after, five very large men, all with scars, entered the ring and surrounded her. Two carried numchucks, two had iron pipes, the last had a pair of brass knuckles. Nightmares come true.

Someone whacked me hard on the back. I turned around, and a large, fat guy, his face all sweaty and reddened from booze said, “Sorry, man! Gonna be great action.”

He took a swig from the bottle he was holding and yelled out, “Win me big, O girl!!” He offered me a drink; I declined. Then he looked straight at me and asked, “I saw you walk down with her. Are you together?” I nodded.

“Yeah.” I was surprised that someone would even ask me if I was, like, dating her. It made me feel a little more mature.

A look of respect came over his face. “
Alright
, man! Your lady wins, I win.”

“You bet on her?”

The piggy face looked at me. “Why not? We can't do no fighting up top; the Association don't like it. Down here, it's all cool, anything goes.”

Whoa, quick time out. Oriana was in the Association and why was she doing this? The beefy guy seemed to read my mind. “Don' worry, man, she won't rat anyone out. She does it for the thrills.” He pointed at the ring. “Hey, it's gonna start!”

It had already started. Numchuck #1 made the first move, a quick chop with his weapon. Oriana kicked out at this hand; the weapon flew up in the air and she jumped impossibly high, caught it, then landed and quickly lashed out catching Numchuck #1, Leadpipe #1 and #2 with a roundhouse shot. Down and out. Brass Knuckles came in; a shot to the nether regions left him screaming, and three strikes to Numchuck #2 left him on the ground, gasping for air. Fight over—it had taken less than two minutes.

The dude behind me was whooping and hollering. “Alright O-girl, alright, you won me big!” He slapped me in a friendly way on the shoulder. “You got a real winner, man! Damn glad I met ya!” and with an ear-to-ear grin he went to collect his money.

As for Oriana, she exited the cage and strode towards me, ignoring the crowd. She collected her money and tucked the cash nonchalantly inside a slit in her bodysuit.

“Ready to go?”

Yeah, I'd seen enough. As we were turning, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Leadpipe #2 had woken up and was coming up fast behind her. “Oriana, look out!” I yelled and lunged at him. The pipe came down hard on my left shoulder and I fell, but that had given her enough time to pivot and throw a short, sharp hook to his jaw. Lights out again for him…and I could feel myself going down for the count. Oriana grabbed me around the waist and hauled me outside. The crowd roared again as we made our exit.

Five: I Wasn't Expecting That

Outside, Oriana helped me across the street to a bench and pulled my shirt up to look at my shoulder. It was late now, almost eleven, and it was quieter there. She examined where I'd been hit under the light of the streetlamp. The crowbar had smashed me directly on the front part of the shoulder, near my pecs, although in my case, my chest looked more like an ironing board with nipples.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“Can't tell, just sit there and don't talk,” she answered. Her fingers gently pushed and probed the damaged area; it hurt a lot but I could still move it, nothing broken. She then took a small box from her knife-belt, pulled a tiny patch out and slapped it on my shoulder.

“Analgesic patch,” she said. The pain started to ease almost immediately. “It'll bruise up by morning, but you'll live to get your ass kicked another day.” She smiled at me and it made me feel a bit better just seeing her do that. Then, a sharp jab hit me and she noticed how I winced.

“Hurts?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I answered. “I'm…not much of a fighter.” By the way she was looking at me I knew that
she
knew I couldn't hold my own in a scrap and that made me feel really lame. It also made me wonder why she asked me along in the first place. People were really hard to figure out sometimes.

“Unh,” I grunted. “Was that cage-match the “something stupid” you talked about before?” Pulled my shirt down and tucked it in, managed to sit up straight. I saw that she was staring at me and I felt myself flush and why did I always turn red around her?

A few other people who passed by had no trouble staring at her but she ignored them, her eyes seemed to be focused only on me. One young dude who'd followed us out came over; guess he was trying to hit on her. “Get lost, dirtbag!” she ordered and he didn't just back off, he
ran
off and never looked back.

“I have that effect on people,” she said conversationally as she watched him leave. “And, no,” she shook her head, “me fighting for kicks, that was stupid. As for you, yeah,” she turned her gaze on me on again, “I know you can't fight worth spit. But what you did, it was kind of sweet. Why?” Her look seemed to go right down to my core. I felt my face turn even redder and my eyes shifted towards the pavement.

Okay, confession time; she turned me on, not only by the way she looked but also by her take-no-prisoners attitude as well. It was a new feeling for me but it didn't answer why I'd put myself right in the middle of the action. I'd never done anything remotely brave in my life.

I mumbled, “I don't know; maybe I like you?”

That got me the strangest look and then she said, “I got a schedule to keep. Let's go back.” People were starting to stream out of the underground area and she wanted to avoid being seen, so off we went to find her Hurley. As we were riding along, me sitting behind her, she yelled that it was okay to hold on to her. When I hesitated, she reached back quickly and grabbed my good arm and placed it around her waist. “Don't sweat it!” she yelled at me. “I'm fine.” It beat riding in the side-car.

Curious, I asked her about her background. “My last name is Quinones,” she finally answered. “Dad was born in Mexico and Mom came from LA. I grew up in a Latino neighborhood. When they died, my dad's aunt raised me. You got any problems with that?” Again, there was that challenging tone in her voice.

“I think your accent is cool.”

She didn't answer, and then I asked: “Why the fighting?”

“For practice!” she yelled, “keeps me sharp for all the patrols. And no one on the ship wants to spar with me. I usually kick their asses too much!”

“What about these fight places?”

“Oh, that?” she said, “I just wanna do my own thing and I don't like all the Association rules.”

“What kind of rules?” I asked.

“Dumb-ass rules,” Oriana answered over the sound of the engine. “No fighting unless necessary, no taking gifts from anyone for anything, no taking sides in disputes, no unnecessary violence even if they deserve to have their heads cracked…stuff like that.” She went on to say that these kinds of fight clubs were all over the place. If you wanted action then all you had to do was to look around and ask people that knew.

“What about the money? Do you need it that badly?”

“Nah, I give it to charity. Who needs cash? I've got enough.” She proved her point by stopping briefly at a church and tossing the wad of money through an open window. I wondered how much they all made—again, that was something never discussed in the comics.

Once aboard the Dart, we took off with ten other passengers, me in the co-pilot's seat riding shotgun. Becoming a co-pilot wasn't what I was thinking of most. Actually, there was another question which I'd been meaning to ask as it had been bugging me for the past few days.

“Knower…umm…is he your boyfriend?” I asked in a low voice.
Stupid, stupid and this was just after I told her I liked her!
Still, I was curious to find out if the comics were right about their relationship or not, and equally curious to know if she felt the same way about me…or if she felt anything at all.

Oriana gave me a quick look and then pressed a button to raise the screen. “Just a friend,” she finally said. “He saved my life once. He was a reporter and we were out on patrol. A guy came out of nowhere with a gun. After that, I thought we could be more than friends…” She hesitated a second, then continued. “I tried but he wasn't interested and then he disappeared suddenly, so I owe him that much. You'd search for a friend, too, wouldn't you?”

“I guess so.” I wouldn't know, I never had any friends.

“Sure you would,” she said confidently. “Hell of a confession, ya think?” I had no answer. Then she added, giving me a quick look, “You saved me too. Thanks.”

Uh-huh
. In the stories Quinn had written, his versions had been named Falconia and The Fathom and they were supposedly very much into each other; this reality was a bit different. In the fantasy world, he was an intelligent but psychopathic loner and she was the somewhat psychotic heroine. Her life was a constant search for vengeance, and he was her willing accomplice. This was a whole different experience for me.

The other different experience was being around her. I didn't know a thing about romance and relationships. Watching the older kids in school, the 15 or 16 year-old guys, I mean, walking around with their girlfriends I wondered if it would ever happen, and then I got sick and couldn't be bothered about that. There were more important things, like staying alive.

Now here
I
was, in another universe or dimension. I'd been rescued by some comic-book characters I really didn't have a clue about and was sitting next to a beautiful woman who came from that same comic-book world, and I didn't know what to say or how to say it.

The screen went down, and there was silence by all the rest of the trip back. After we'd landed, we were debriefed by Avenger who seemed to be on duty all the time and when he saw that I'd been injured he pulled us aside and teed off on Oriana. “I allowed him to go with you. He was
your
responsibility. You were supposed to watch him….”

“Hey, it was my fault,” I cut him off. Avenger swiveled his head and looked at me, surprised that I'd opened my mouth. I swallowed hastily and continued. “I mean, I wasn't watching where I was going and, uh, I tripped and, uh, Oriana just helped me out,” I said, hoping my little fib was convincing. “She was there and…” my voice trailed off.

“She was there,” Avenger echoed, plainly disbelieving me.

“Yeah.” Even Oriana had a what's-up-with-the-BS? expression on her face. Like anyone would dare lie to the commander.

Avenger paused a few seconds to consider the whole matter and then decided to let it drop. “Alright, if you're up to working tomorrow….”

“I am, sir,” I interrupted. “I'm sorry about this.”

“Fine,” he replied curtly. “Get some rest; dismissed.”

And with that, he turned on his heel and strode out of the Hangar Bay. Oriana just looked after his retreating back and whispered to me, “First you lie and then you call him ‘Sir'?” She giggled a little. “I call him Captain Iron-Butt,” and she giggled again. She just linked my good arm in hers and walked out with me; the other members of the Hangar Bay crew and passengers stared at us as we strolled out. Didn't seem to bother her and it didn't bother me at all.

The hallways had been darkened to simulate evening and we walked together, her boots clicking softly on the floor. “Let's stop here, I want to look at the stars,” she murmured. For some reason, I couldn't think of anything to say, it seemed like neither of us wanted to spoil the moment. Then Oriana looked at her watch and said softly, “It's almost midnight, time to go.”

I was actually enjoying the peace of the moment but…okay. Taking the elevator down to the fourth floor, the hallways were deserted. All was quiet. When we reached our rooms, she suddenly pulled me over in a steely grip and kissed me.

Whoa! Like a lightning bolt hitting its target, I could barely move. I wasn't expecting that at all! I didn't even know what to do, I just stood there and, well, wow! She let me go, and then pulled me to her again and this time, it was a kiss to end all kisses. And even though she grabbed me by my injured shoulder and it hurt like
hell
, who cared?! Holy
damn
that was quick, what a universe this was! Everything moved so fast and did all the superheroes and super heroines act this way and okay, ouch, OUCH! It was all good.

“That's for saving my ass tonight,” she said. “I know I said it before but I just had to say it again. And you don't have to lie to protect me; I can handle myself. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“See you in the cafeteria tomorrow?” She gave me a smile; the smile itself was almost as good as the kiss.

“Uh, yeah.”

Her door whooshed closed, and I floated inside my room. Suddenly, I didn't feel like such a manlet anymore. I'd had a fight on the surface, ridden on my first motorcycle, helped bust up a mugging, and I'd just gotten a kiss that could have ignited a burnt-out star. My very first; it had finally happened.

I'd read somewhere that life was made up of individual moments, each of them having their own particular meaning, and when all of them were added up they gave shape and focus and a sense of…what was the word…oh, yeah…clarity”…to your whole existence.

That moment, the instant I'd received my first kiss by the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, that was my greatest moment. That was my clarity. I went to bed but didn't sleep for a long time, just kept thinking about what had happened tonight.

* * *

The next morning, I woke up early and went into the shower to look at myself. My left shoulder was black and blue, stiff, and hurt like anything, but I could still move it, and the more I moved it around, the better it felt. That was a good sign, I thought. I'd been lucky, and even luckier that Oriana had been there to save me. She was some fighter. I never saw anyone move that fast, even in the movies.

Looking in the mirror, again I wondered what Oriana saw in me. I'd gained a little weight. Although the food was lousy, it must have agreed with me. My bodyweight was up to maybe 150 pounds now and even though I was still skinny all over, I noticed that I was very lean about the waist and hips and had wide shoulders. That made me look a bit bigger even though I had no muscle. I'd fill out in time. Yeah, I thought, there was some potential there.

* * *

And then reality set in. After that date/first kiss from Oriana I sort of expected things would be different, that I'd somehow, magically, be turned into a super-dude who could do anything, say all the right words, do my job…found out that morning that one thing had nothing to do with anything else. On the cooking end, things were just as bad as before. I was doing my best, but….

“But you're buggering everything up, that's what you're doing!” John yelled at me one day in the corridor. “No one else bitches about what we make, can't you follow a few simple directions? Jesus!”

There was no answer to that, and I felt
really
lame after that bawling out, but in my defense, he was wrong about one thing. The techs, while they hated what I made for the most part, also complained about what the
other
cooks made and they were right. Steaks were either charred to a crisp or underdone, the chicken was over-battered, and the vegetables were only half-cooked. Everything was just dumped on the plates each tech or Ultra brought, food all mixed together. It gave the term mess hall a whole new meaning.

Anyway, after a further five days of screwing up, I asked John if I could handle the eggs. “Just the eggs; I know I can do the job better if you let me focus on them,” I said. I had to try something and this was something I knew I could do well.

He looked at me, and then threw up his hands in disgust. “Fine.”

Ball's in your court, Bill
, so after checking the Net, here's what I went with, egg-wise. I boiled them for two minutes and added another three seconds for good luck. Fried: Sunny side-up and over. Scrambled: I added just a touch of real butter to coat the pan and a pinch of garlic to give the eggs additional flavor. I hated the taste of margarine. Poached: Slid them on a toasted bun and made “The Tower Mac.”

Got all these done in order and one of the techs, Hillary, a pretty blonde who told me she worked in the Database section, asked me how long I'd been cooking.

“Not very long,” I answered truthfully.

“Better than the garbage I ate before,” she commented quietly. “Glad you're here. I hate crappy food.” A few others caught up with me after my shift ended and said the same thing.