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Victor Papiavek was a supervillain, or working on it. After the death of his father he had erased his medical, high-school and college files and moved from his small town to Gradient City, which had greater scope for super-villlainy. He had joined a large and respected temp agency and, through careful hacking of their database, had taken a series of lowly but strategically useful day jobs clerking for the police services, the department of public works, the head offices of several major corporations and the administrative sector of a biotech research facility. He could have simply hacked into their databases, of course, but there were some things you could only find out on the ground, like when people took their coffee breaks, or whose complaints were listened to and whose were ignored.
He had cultivated acquaintances among the more stable members of the underworld, and while concealing the true extent of his abilities, had acquired something of a reputation as the go-to guy for technical advice; It was vital to make sure of one's bread and butter before setting up the giant laser and nanobot armies, and a consulting role lessened the time he actually had to spend socializing with gangsters, who were very boring people, really. The point of being a supervillain, Victor often thought, was that shadowy semi-legendary figures were not required to join in games of poker and let the host win.
It was for this reason he planned his persona carefully - also, it was important to not write yourself into a corner by committing only themed crimes; sooner or later all the jewelry stores with bird-related names, for example, would beef up their security, change title, or pressure the city to tear down the abandoned aviary. If you had maintained your anonymity you could change your persona if it staled, but Victor thought this would feel like suicide. Better to forsee and avoid problems.
He had toyed for a while with thoughts of a costume, but had to admit that masks and capes simply made him look like an out-of-season Hallowe'en partygoer. He was not muscular enough to be intimidating, thin enough to be spooky, or fat enough to be suavely grotesque, and it was important to make a memorable first impression - El Hazard, over in Sapphire, had spent years pulling off one successful attack after another, but the mainstream medias still described him as "pimply." Really, the best costume, the most supervillainous, was to simply never be seen at all, and Victor was very good at not being seen.
Victor's reasons for becoming a supervillain were as follows:
1. He actually did have powers; enough to be socially awkward, not enough for world-saving.
2. He had thought it over carefully and there was nothing heroic he could see himself doing that wasn't already being done better by the real police, fire department, etc. Supervillainy would probably get him into less trouble.
3. If you became a superhero, you had to fight everyone and everything bad you came across; as a supervillain, you were not conversely required to attack all good - you might decide you were feeling merciful that day.
Victor had few tangible permanent possessions, and he moved frequently, from well-appointed hotel rooms to abandoned industrial sites to standard low-rent apartments. It was important to be used to living under every sort of condition. He also had his safe house, which had grown from practical escape plan to hobby to the only real home he had, even though he didn't actually live there.
The house was a masterpiece of self-effacement, a stuccoed bungalow in Crawford Hill, a suburban neighbourhood that was, in its way, as remote as the Arctic. Victor had chosen the area after a careful study of its demographics - ninety percent of the residents, and certainly all those with a view of the house, were young professional couples who commuted to work on weekdays, commuted to play on weekdays, and had not yet borne children and discovered the area's distressing lack of parks, playgrounds or grade schools. There were no seniors, because nothing was in walking distance. He'd used his public-works temp position to check electrical usage in the neighbourhood - he didn't want to find out too late that someone else had seen the place's potential and set up a hydroponic marijuana farm in their basement, or something. In the end he'd spent a surprisingly enjoyable series of weekday mornings picking locks and checking out his potential neighbours; no one had anything worse than embarrassing tastes in pornography, and he'd picked up some ideas for furnishings.
The following month the account he'd set up under the name of Josh McLaren (another one for the Evil Overlord Manual - “I am a villain, not a best-selling author. If I use a pseudonym, it will be something boring and plausible, not a cute piece of wordplay on my villain name,”) made the first automatic rent payment, and he'd quietly moved in some tables and chairs, lamps with timers, a bed and a number of shiny new media players. The gadgets were for security -If anyone ever did break in, well, he’d stocked the living room with a late-model DVD player and a flat-screen, and left an iPod lying casually on the sofa. Any burglar with a lick of sense would take those, and the contents of the equally shiny and obvious liquor cabinet, and leave, blessing their good luck, before they could notice the actual unlived-in state of the place. Victor scorned booby-trapped hideouts as more trouble than they were worth - apart from the inconvenience of having to set, disarm, and reset the traps all the time, there was the unpleaseantness of cleaning up, and moreover the local police were likely to start poking around when neighbourhood pets or kids went missing. The devices Victor began building into his house were all, or nearly all, to automate the place. In addition to the timed lamps, there were small robots that dusted the floors and countertops, strictly consumer-level stuff, nothing beyond the reach of a moderately well-off gadget freak. A program on a remote website made random calls to and from the telephone. He’d even filled the closets with laundered thrift store clothing (his alter-ego wore faded 36” jeans and crewneck shirts) and the walls with family photos compiled from a variety of sources. From 7am to 7pm on weekdays, the streets and yards were deserted, except for the landscaping company who did some of the lawns, including his. In the evenings, everyone stayed in and watched tv or websurfed. No one ever noticed the lack of goings-on at 63 Kirkland Street. When he was working late on a project, explaining to some thugs why they were going to have to wait to all make their move at the same time, or crouching on a garage rooftop, waiting for the janitorial shift to leave, he liked to think of his house cosily ticking over: the refrigerator humming to itself; the lamps turning on and off; the survival kits for assorted occasions stashed behind the false wall in the “unfinished” basement, where all of the important stuff, including the good liquor, was hidden; and the cool smell rising from the grass in the dark outside.
Amanda was getting off the bus, trying not to knock anyone over, when she noticed the wallet. Though not technically freaks, few in Amanda’s family were average-sized, and decades ago, some of her more enterprising aunts and uncles had taken gigs with the smaller circuses unable to hire real giants, fat ladies and midgets. Aunt Lizzie, who was healthy as a horse but looked like a broom handle, had made a living for years off different sleazy tabloids by dressing up as different celebrities ostensibly at death’s door or detoxing. In the late ‘eighties Amanda’s sisters, who resembled each other except for a difference of ninety pounds or so, had successfully scammed several diet companies by sending in “before” and “after” pictures, then, after the photos had run in advertisements, blackmailing them with the truth. The diet companies had eventually wised up and now demanded documentation, signed and dated by a doctor, and a face-to-face audition from anyone applying to be a poster girl for shrinking, and Maisie and Drew had lapsed into bitterness and Bailey’s and now both weighed the same. Lizzie was trying to get them a gig as blimped-out Olsen twins.
Amanda belonged to another of the family phenotypes, and had spent much of her life feeling that she was in everyone’s way. Now as she was struggling to dodge the other commuters, a brown leather wallet lay forlornly on an empty concrete bench, and she was almost positive it had been dropped by the slight, non-descript man walking away with a rapid step down the street towards the centre of town. When she had disentamgled herself from the crowd, he was nowhere to be seen, which puzzled her a little - he’d been moving quickly, but not quickly enough to be out of sight in so short a time.
Examining the wallet, she found it held $22.63, two credit cards, a driver’s license, ID and several business cards. The owner was evidently named Victor K. Papiavek, but there were several conflicting addresses and the phone numbers were disconnected or reached overfull voice-mail boxes. Two of the business cards, however, were for a restaurant called Murray’s – they appeared to have been retained for the notes scribbled on their backs and while one had worn edges the other was brand new. Deducing that Papiavek was a regular customer, and that the restaurant might be a more stable locale, Amanda went to see if the staff could tell her which address was correct.
Murray’s proved to be a large, generic family restaurant – Amanda had half-feared, half-hoped for an old-school dive with a cigar-chomping bartender - but the waitresses recognized Papiavek’s name, though he usually paid cash. He was a regular, but they didn’t know where he lived. He’d just been there for breakfast this morning, so he probably wouldn’t be by again that day, but they could give him her number when he did return, if she were willing to leave it. Amanda hesitated (despite, or because of her size, she’d been raised to be very cautious) then wrote down her work number and went on her way.
Although Victor had not been really inconvenienced by the loss of one of his wallets, it irked him that it was the one with his oldest and realest identity. He’d been a fool to take it out at all, but when he’d first arrived in Gradient City, he’d been careless enough to let a waitress at Murray’s get a glimpse of his driver’s license; he couldn’t switch names on them; and the place made a great omelette. Reminding himself that people lost and reclaimed wallets all the time and acting too nervous in everyday situations would make him as conspicuous as if he were wearing El Hazard’s infamous “firespray” costume, Victor set out to retrace his path. Having tried the bus stop, the park, the military-surplus store where he’d been browsing for haz-mat suits, he arrived at Murray’s with the certainty that it must be there or stolen, and was told that a “huge” woman had come by with it and left her number. Pleased his wallet was safe, irritated it wasn’t actually at the restaurant, and curious as to what the staff of an urban diner would consider huge, Victor made the call. After a trip through the usual phone maze, he was answered by a pleasant contralto.
“Public Works, Records Department.”
“Hi, this is Victor Papiavek, I believe you have my wallet?” He tried to sound smooth but unhurried.
“Oh good,” said the voice, “I was worried about you. It. Er, you without it. Where shall I meet you to return it?”
“Well, I’m at Murray’s now. I could buy you lunch for your honesty.”
“Oh. I work across town. Would – would it be too much trouble if we met for dinner instead? I could be there by five-thirty.”
“Of course.” He had a few more errands to run, but nothing that would take more than a few hours, and the haz-mat suit could wait a day or two. “I’ll be by the window.”
“You’ll – you’ll know me when you see me,” and she hung up, thanking him, although she was the one doing him a favour.
Supervillain names rejected by Victor:
Destroyer names: The Annihilator, the Eradicator, Destroy-o. All faintly risible, and moreover innaccurate. He didn’t want to destroy things, just mess around with them a little.
Academic titles: These fell into the “protesting too much” category. Victor was pretty sure that calling himself “Professor Evil” would just convince everyone he hadn’t finished high school.
The Mover/The Remover: He’d liked these but hadn’t been able to choose between them. He’d spent the better part of a night muttering “Mover, Remover” under his breath until he almost went mad.
Salamander: Tempting, but not enough people would get it; besides there were already enough pyro-villains, and he saw himself as more of a gentleman-burglar type.
Obscurio: Close, but too pseudo-Shakesperian. As noted earlier, Victor didn’t do masks or tights.
The Obscurant: Perfect - not an everyday word, but not unpronounceable. He liked the solidity of the ‘the’ announcing a name. Powerful, but unobtrusive, the way he liked to think he could be.
At four-forty-five The Obscurant was sitting in the booth nearest the kitchen, unobtrusively watching the early dinner crowd flow in, when a woman entered who he knew at once must be the one who had his wallet. The waitress had been laconic in her description. She was average, perhaps even pleasing in her proportions - it was hard to tell through the shapeless, parachute-like outfit - but vast in scale: a rolling landscape at least six-foot-two, probably almost six-four if she weren’t slouching. He rose to his feet and waved her over.
“Victor Papiavek,” he shook her hand , which was easily as large as his, though smoother, and small by comparison to the rest of her - he was already starting to adjust his sense of proportion to her scale - “are you the one I have to thank for returning my wallet?” She looked down at him, hoisted the purse from her shoulder and fished out his property.
“Amanda Doppler. You dropped it at the bus stop, actually. I came here because you had more than one card from this place so I thought you must be a regular.” She was clever, too - he really had to get a grip on himself. Putting away his wallet without opening it (he wouldn’t have been so rude, even if she’d been a scrawny, mustached man named Earl ), he gestured to the booth. Amanda blushed.
“Um, could we get a table?”
“Oh - of course.” Stupid of him. Murray’s little booths - she would never have fit in one of them, not comfortably, anyhow. My god. He transferred his orange juice to a nearby table and pulled out a chair for her. Seated, she was scarcely shorter than an average woman standing. She really should brush her hair back from her face, her thought, as he took a seat across from her.
He wondered if she could fight.
While he’d always enjoyed the sight of tall and well-built women, it had never occurred to Victor that he might be interested in a near-giantess - but he had to admit there was something almost absurdly sexy about an attractive individual fully half again as big as an average person - like he’d caught the universe in an uncharacteristic fit of generosity. It reassured him to see her order the blue plate special - she had seemed vaguely embarrassed by her size, and he’d worried for a moment she might be a dieter when she’d hesitated over the menu, until he looked at the prices and saw she’d picked the second-least expensive of the large entrees - so it was delicacy of feeling, not self-denial or want of appetite: she hadn’t wanted to abuse a stranger’s thanks. Though a supervillain, The Obscurant admired honourable behaviour, and his heart continued to warm to Ms Doppler.
The conversation was awkward and full of inconsquentialities, as the polite conversation of strangers tends to be. Victor, however, seemed to have his wits about him, and Amanda decided she liked him for it. Usually men, when they stood next to her, either became completely tongue-tied (she’d guessed this was because their heads were on a level with her breasts) or extremely nervous (it had taken longer to figure out, but she suspected that these were men who were going bald and were worried about being viewed from above.) She liked his mouse-coloured hair, too and the way the light reflected off his funny rimless glasses. She began to wish he would give her body a deer-in-the-headlamps look; but then, she told herself, it was not as though she was ever likely to see him again. They had met because of an accident, and he was being nice to her out of gratitude, and that was that.
“So, you work for the city, too?” she asked.
“Sometimes. I do a lot of temping - it leaves me free to work on my independent projects.”
“Like movies, or writing?” Amanda was impressed, but tried not to gush too girlishly.
“Um, more like a sort of performance art.”
“Oh.” That usually stopped people from asking questions. Victor only hoped he hadn’t overplayed his hand. He tried to steer back to the mundane:
“We’ve probably worked in the same department, but I don’t recall seeing you before; and I know I’d remember.”
“I don’t exactly blend into the woodwork,” (aargh, he’d offended her) “Sometimes I think I’d like to.”
“It’s overrated. Trust me.” He smiled and she smiled back. Whew.
“Gym class.” Amanda’s talk had turned to high school horror stories, and Victor while cautious about revealing too many details of his life, groaned in unison with her. It would have aroused her suspicions if he hadn’t - as mentioned before, he did not look particularly athletic, though he was fit enough to climb and sprint across rooftops when he had to; and the sentiment against the tyranny of baggy shorts and T-shirts was quite genuine.
“God, I hated it,” she was evidently on a roll with the topic, “If I ever kill myself it’ll be because of the memory of that stupid balance bar. I must have fallen off it a dozen times, always with the whole class watching. It was like there was some basic law of physics that everyone else knew about and I didn’t. And there were all these chin-ups and push-ups and things you were supposed to be able to do so many of and if you didn’t you were a fat slob who’d go to an early grave. I’d pull and pull and my arms just refused to move. I don’t know if many of the other kids were any good either, but at the time it seemed like they all were. Funny thing is, I may be fooling myself but I don’t think I’m that all that bad, now. I can touch my toes and sit cross-legged and I know I couldn’t do either as a kid; and I always hear everyone else my age complaining about their back or what a long walk it is to the coffee shop.”
“I expect by now you’re one of the fitter people in your graduating class, even just by default. I know I am.” He’d attended his high school reunion some years before – not officially of course: he’d erased his academic records, and no one was likely to remember him from his teenage years anyway. He’d been there in disguise as a waiter, trying not to sneeze from the excess of oregano in the hors d’oeuvres, looking in on his former classmates. It had been appalling. He was not unfamiliar with the idea that people age, and in his circles those who lived long enough to worry about it usually also had battle scars, guilty consciences and in some cases genetic mutation to show for it, but it seemed to Victor his classmates had suffered an altogether more insidious process: they had become the insides of their heads, and the insides of their heads were chillingly dull. The Obscurant silently made a vow never, in any of his evil schemes, to subject someone to twenty years as a small-town real-estate agent married to his or her high school sweetheart, even if it ever fell into his power to do so. By the look of it, it was a fate harder on body and soul than any of the chains or electroshock wheels he’d seen deployed over the years. He’d been quite depressed by the whole incident, and even unleashing the komodo dragons in the school gymnasium later that evening hadn’t given him as much pleasure as it should have.
Afterwards, he’d sat, invisible or as near as made no difference, on the graffiti’d cupola of the bell tower, contemplating the local volunteer fire brigade as they argued with the police and animal control about who had jurisdiction over the situation. The police and fire chiefs had always been rivals, he recalled, since their track and field days or earlier. He wondered if the town authority figures of his childhood had held ancient grudges against each other too, of lost trophies and stolen prom dates. How innocent he’d been, making his smoke bombs and plotting to rob the Girl Guide cookie shipment. Adults had all seemed to him to be on the same side in those days, a comforting belief, even if it hadn’t been his side they were on. Now he felt like a ghost, grateful to be one, and anxious to return to the twilight world where mortal rivalries were white-hot and exultant and death was cheered like the homecoming queen, not whispered about in overstuffed living rooms.
Dinner was finished, and lingered over, until at last the coffees could be nursed no longer and they had to face the question of whether or not they would meet again. Victor took out the slip of paper upon which the waitress had written Amanda’s number.
“This is yours. I could give you mine, if you like, or –“
“Keep it.”
“Then I may see you again?” He paused. His Friday schedule was full up, but: “Saturday? For lunch? Then we’d have the whole afternoon to catch a movie, or walk, or anything you like.” They agreed on a time and place. Amanda smiled at him as she picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder.
“Thank you, this turned out a good day after all.”
“Thank you.” She shook his hand again awkwardly, outside the diner, as if she fancied the idea of hugging him but didn’t want to overstep bounds, and strode off down the sidewalk. Victor turned in the opposite direction and made for his hotel, at a contemplative stroll.
The Obscurant tipped up the reinforced parcel on end and carefully climbed up top. He’d gaged the measurements on an earlier visit and made sure the hallways really all did look the same. Now he took out the lightweight camera he’d prepared and duct-taped it to the ceiling, angling it till it was in the same position in this hallway where nothing was happening as the security camera was in the main hallway. He touched the camera a certain way and it faded from visibility. Then he dropped back to the floor, reloaded the parcel/stepping stool on its dolly and continued on his way.
He had cultivated acquaintances among the more stable members of the underworld, and while concealing the true extent of his abilities, had acquired something of a reputation as the go-to guy for technical advice; It was vital to make sure of one's bread and butter before setting up the giant laser and nanobot armies, and a consulting role lessened the time he actually had to spend socializing with gangsters, who were very boring people, really. The point of being a supervillain, Victor often thought, was that shadowy semi-legendary figures were not required to join in games of poker and let the host win.
It was for this reason he planned his persona carefully - also, it was important to not write yourself into a corner by committing only themed crimes; sooner or later all the jewelry stores with bird-related names, for example, would beef up their security, change title, or pressure the city to tear down the abandoned aviary. If you had maintained your anonymity you could change your persona if it staled, but Victor thought this would feel like suicide. Better to forsee and avoid problems.
He had toyed for a while with thoughts of a costume, but had to admit that masks and capes simply made him look like an out-of-season Hallowe'en partygoer. He was not muscular enough to be intimidating, thin enough to be spooky, or fat enough to be suavely grotesque, and it was important to make a memorable first impression - El Hazard, over in Sapphire, had spent years pulling off one successful attack after another, but the mainstream medias still described him as "pimply." Really, the best costume, the most supervillainous, was to simply never be seen at all, and Victor was very good at not being seen.
Victor's reasons for becoming a supervillain were as follows:
1. He actually did have powers; enough to be socially awkward, not enough for world-saving.
2. He had thought it over carefully and there was nothing heroic he could see himself doing that wasn't already being done better by the real police, fire department, etc. Supervillainy would probably get him into less trouble.
3. If you became a superhero, you had to fight everyone and everything bad you came across; as a supervillain, you were not conversely required to attack all good - you might decide you were feeling merciful that day.
Victor had few tangible permanent possessions, and he moved frequently, from well-appointed hotel rooms to abandoned industrial sites to standard low-rent apartments. It was important to be used to living under every sort of condition. He also had his safe house, which had grown from practical escape plan to hobby to the only real home he had, even though he didn't actually live there.
The house was a masterpiece of self-effacement, a stuccoed bungalow in Crawford Hill, a suburban neighbourhood that was, in its way, as remote as the Arctic. Victor had chosen the area after a careful study of its demographics - ninety percent of the residents, and certainly all those with a view of the house, were young professional couples who commuted to work on weekdays, commuted to play on weekdays, and had not yet borne children and discovered the area's distressing lack of parks, playgrounds or grade schools. There were no seniors, because nothing was in walking distance. He'd used his public-works temp position to check electrical usage in the neighbourhood - he didn't want to find out too late that someone else had seen the place's potential and set up a hydroponic marijuana farm in their basement, or something. In the end he'd spent a surprisingly enjoyable series of weekday mornings picking locks and checking out his potential neighbours; no one had anything worse than embarrassing tastes in pornography, and he'd picked up some ideas for furnishings.
The following month the account he'd set up under the name of Josh McLaren (another one for the Evil Overlord Manual - “I am a villain, not a best-selling author. If I use a pseudonym, it will be something boring and plausible, not a cute piece of wordplay on my villain name,”) made the first automatic rent payment, and he'd quietly moved in some tables and chairs, lamps with timers, a bed and a number of shiny new media players. The gadgets were for security -If anyone ever did break in, well, he’d stocked the living room with a late-model DVD player and a flat-screen, and left an iPod lying casually on the sofa. Any burglar with a lick of sense would take those, and the contents of the equally shiny and obvious liquor cabinet, and leave, blessing their good luck, before they could notice the actual unlived-in state of the place. Victor scorned booby-trapped hideouts as more trouble than they were worth - apart from the inconvenience of having to set, disarm, and reset the traps all the time, there was the unpleaseantness of cleaning up, and moreover the local police were likely to start poking around when neighbourhood pets or kids went missing. The devices Victor began building into his house were all, or nearly all, to automate the place. In addition to the timed lamps, there were small robots that dusted the floors and countertops, strictly consumer-level stuff, nothing beyond the reach of a moderately well-off gadget freak. A program on a remote website made random calls to and from the telephone. He’d even filled the closets with laundered thrift store clothing (his alter-ego wore faded 36” jeans and crewneck shirts) and the walls with family photos compiled from a variety of sources. From 7am to 7pm on weekdays, the streets and yards were deserted, except for the landscaping company who did some of the lawns, including his. In the evenings, everyone stayed in and watched tv or websurfed. No one ever noticed the lack of goings-on at 63 Kirkland Street. When he was working late on a project, explaining to some thugs why they were going to have to wait to all make their move at the same time, or crouching on a garage rooftop, waiting for the janitorial shift to leave, he liked to think of his house cosily ticking over: the refrigerator humming to itself; the lamps turning on and off; the survival kits for assorted occasions stashed behind the false wall in the “unfinished” basement, where all of the important stuff, including the good liquor, was hidden; and the cool smell rising from the grass in the dark outside.
Amanda was getting off the bus, trying not to knock anyone over, when she noticed the wallet. Though not technically freaks, few in Amanda’s family were average-sized, and decades ago, some of her more enterprising aunts and uncles had taken gigs with the smaller circuses unable to hire real giants, fat ladies and midgets. Aunt Lizzie, who was healthy as a horse but looked like a broom handle, had made a living for years off different sleazy tabloids by dressing up as different celebrities ostensibly at death’s door or detoxing. In the late ‘eighties Amanda’s sisters, who resembled each other except for a difference of ninety pounds or so, had successfully scammed several diet companies by sending in “before” and “after” pictures, then, after the photos had run in advertisements, blackmailing them with the truth. The diet companies had eventually wised up and now demanded documentation, signed and dated by a doctor, and a face-to-face audition from anyone applying to be a poster girl for shrinking, and Maisie and Drew had lapsed into bitterness and Bailey’s and now both weighed the same. Lizzie was trying to get them a gig as blimped-out Olsen twins.
Amanda belonged to another of the family phenotypes, and had spent much of her life feeling that she was in everyone’s way. Now as she was struggling to dodge the other commuters, a brown leather wallet lay forlornly on an empty concrete bench, and she was almost positive it had been dropped by the slight, non-descript man walking away with a rapid step down the street towards the centre of town. When she had disentamgled herself from the crowd, he was nowhere to be seen, which puzzled her a little - he’d been moving quickly, but not quickly enough to be out of sight in so short a time.
Examining the wallet, she found it held $22.63, two credit cards, a driver’s license, ID and several business cards. The owner was evidently named Victor K. Papiavek, but there were several conflicting addresses and the phone numbers were disconnected or reached overfull voice-mail boxes. Two of the business cards, however, were for a restaurant called Murray’s – they appeared to have been retained for the notes scribbled on their backs and while one had worn edges the other was brand new. Deducing that Papiavek was a regular customer, and that the restaurant might be a more stable locale, Amanda went to see if the staff could tell her which address was correct.
Murray’s proved to be a large, generic family restaurant – Amanda had half-feared, half-hoped for an old-school dive with a cigar-chomping bartender - but the waitresses recognized Papiavek’s name, though he usually paid cash. He was a regular, but they didn’t know where he lived. He’d just been there for breakfast this morning, so he probably wouldn’t be by again that day, but they could give him her number when he did return, if she were willing to leave it. Amanda hesitated (despite, or because of her size, she’d been raised to be very cautious) then wrote down her work number and went on her way.
Although Victor had not been really inconvenienced by the loss of one of his wallets, it irked him that it was the one with his oldest and realest identity. He’d been a fool to take it out at all, but when he’d first arrived in Gradient City, he’d been careless enough to let a waitress at Murray’s get a glimpse of his driver’s license; he couldn’t switch names on them; and the place made a great omelette. Reminding himself that people lost and reclaimed wallets all the time and acting too nervous in everyday situations would make him as conspicuous as if he were wearing El Hazard’s infamous “firespray” costume, Victor set out to retrace his path. Having tried the bus stop, the park, the military-surplus store where he’d been browsing for haz-mat suits, he arrived at Murray’s with the certainty that it must be there or stolen, and was told that a “huge” woman had come by with it and left her number. Pleased his wallet was safe, irritated it wasn’t actually at the restaurant, and curious as to what the staff of an urban diner would consider huge, Victor made the call. After a trip through the usual phone maze, he was answered by a pleasant contralto.
“Public Works, Records Department.”
“Hi, this is Victor Papiavek, I believe you have my wallet?” He tried to sound smooth but unhurried.
“Oh good,” said the voice, “I was worried about you. It. Er, you without it. Where shall I meet you to return it?”
“Well, I’m at Murray’s now. I could buy you lunch for your honesty.”
“Oh. I work across town. Would – would it be too much trouble if we met for dinner instead? I could be there by five-thirty.”
“Of course.” He had a few more errands to run, but nothing that would take more than a few hours, and the haz-mat suit could wait a day or two. “I’ll be by the window.”
“You’ll – you’ll know me when you see me,” and she hung up, thanking him, although she was the one doing him a favour.
Supervillain names rejected by Victor:
Destroyer names: The Annihilator, the Eradicator, Destroy-o. All faintly risible, and moreover innaccurate. He didn’t want to destroy things, just mess around with them a little.
Academic titles: These fell into the “protesting too much” category. Victor was pretty sure that calling himself “Professor Evil” would just convince everyone he hadn’t finished high school.
The Mover/The Remover: He’d liked these but hadn’t been able to choose between them. He’d spent the better part of a night muttering “Mover, Remover” under his breath until he almost went mad.
Salamander: Tempting, but not enough people would get it; besides there were already enough pyro-villains, and he saw himself as more of a gentleman-burglar type.
Obscurio: Close, but too pseudo-Shakesperian. As noted earlier, Victor didn’t do masks or tights.
The Obscurant: Perfect - not an everyday word, but not unpronounceable. He liked the solidity of the ‘the’ announcing a name. Powerful, but unobtrusive, the way he liked to think he could be.
At four-forty-five The Obscurant was sitting in the booth nearest the kitchen, unobtrusively watching the early dinner crowd flow in, when a woman entered who he knew at once must be the one who had his wallet. The waitress had been laconic in her description. She was average, perhaps even pleasing in her proportions - it was hard to tell through the shapeless, parachute-like outfit - but vast in scale: a rolling landscape at least six-foot-two, probably almost six-four if she weren’t slouching. He rose to his feet and waved her over.
“Victor Papiavek,” he shook her hand , which was easily as large as his, though smoother, and small by comparison to the rest of her - he was already starting to adjust his sense of proportion to her scale - “are you the one I have to thank for returning my wallet?” She looked down at him, hoisted the purse from her shoulder and fished out his property.
“Amanda Doppler. You dropped it at the bus stop, actually. I came here because you had more than one card from this place so I thought you must be a regular.” She was clever, too - he really had to get a grip on himself. Putting away his wallet without opening it (he wouldn’t have been so rude, even if she’d been a scrawny, mustached man named Earl ), he gestured to the booth. Amanda blushed.
“Um, could we get a table?”
“Oh - of course.” Stupid of him. Murray’s little booths - she would never have fit in one of them, not comfortably, anyhow. My god. He transferred his orange juice to a nearby table and pulled out a chair for her. Seated, she was scarcely shorter than an average woman standing. She really should brush her hair back from her face, her thought, as he took a seat across from her.
He wondered if she could fight.
While he’d always enjoyed the sight of tall and well-built women, it had never occurred to Victor that he might be interested in a near-giantess - but he had to admit there was something almost absurdly sexy about an attractive individual fully half again as big as an average person - like he’d caught the universe in an uncharacteristic fit of generosity. It reassured him to see her order the blue plate special - she had seemed vaguely embarrassed by her size, and he’d worried for a moment she might be a dieter when she’d hesitated over the menu, until he looked at the prices and saw she’d picked the second-least expensive of the large entrees - so it was delicacy of feeling, not self-denial or want of appetite: she hadn’t wanted to abuse a stranger’s thanks. Though a supervillain, The Obscurant admired honourable behaviour, and his heart continued to warm to Ms Doppler.
The conversation was awkward and full of inconsquentialities, as the polite conversation of strangers tends to be. Victor, however, seemed to have his wits about him, and Amanda decided she liked him for it. Usually men, when they stood next to her, either became completely tongue-tied (she’d guessed this was because their heads were on a level with her breasts) or extremely nervous (it had taken longer to figure out, but she suspected that these were men who were going bald and were worried about being viewed from above.) She liked his mouse-coloured hair, too and the way the light reflected off his funny rimless glasses. She began to wish he would give her body a deer-in-the-headlamps look; but then, she told herself, it was not as though she was ever likely to see him again. They had met because of an accident, and he was being nice to her out of gratitude, and that was that.
“So, you work for the city, too?” she asked.
“Sometimes. I do a lot of temping - it leaves me free to work on my independent projects.”
“Like movies, or writing?” Amanda was impressed, but tried not to gush too girlishly.
“Um, more like a sort of performance art.”
“Oh.” That usually stopped people from asking questions. Victor only hoped he hadn’t overplayed his hand. He tried to steer back to the mundane:
“We’ve probably worked in the same department, but I don’t recall seeing you before; and I know I’d remember.”
“I don’t exactly blend into the woodwork,” (aargh, he’d offended her) “Sometimes I think I’d like to.”
“It’s overrated. Trust me.” He smiled and she smiled back. Whew.
“Gym class.” Amanda’s talk had turned to high school horror stories, and Victor while cautious about revealing too many details of his life, groaned in unison with her. It would have aroused her suspicions if he hadn’t - as mentioned before, he did not look particularly athletic, though he was fit enough to climb and sprint across rooftops when he had to; and the sentiment against the tyranny of baggy shorts and T-shirts was quite genuine.
“God, I hated it,” she was evidently on a roll with the topic, “If I ever kill myself it’ll be because of the memory of that stupid balance bar. I must have fallen off it a dozen times, always with the whole class watching. It was like there was some basic law of physics that everyone else knew about and I didn’t. And there were all these chin-ups and push-ups and things you were supposed to be able to do so many of and if you didn’t you were a fat slob who’d go to an early grave. I’d pull and pull and my arms just refused to move. I don’t know if many of the other kids were any good either, but at the time it seemed like they all were. Funny thing is, I may be fooling myself but I don’t think I’m that all that bad, now. I can touch my toes and sit cross-legged and I know I couldn’t do either as a kid; and I always hear everyone else my age complaining about their back or what a long walk it is to the coffee shop.”
“I expect by now you’re one of the fitter people in your graduating class, even just by default. I know I am.” He’d attended his high school reunion some years before – not officially of course: he’d erased his academic records, and no one was likely to remember him from his teenage years anyway. He’d been there in disguise as a waiter, trying not to sneeze from the excess of oregano in the hors d’oeuvres, looking in on his former classmates. It had been appalling. He was not unfamiliar with the idea that people age, and in his circles those who lived long enough to worry about it usually also had battle scars, guilty consciences and in some cases genetic mutation to show for it, but it seemed to Victor his classmates had suffered an altogether more insidious process: they had become the insides of their heads, and the insides of their heads were chillingly dull. The Obscurant silently made a vow never, in any of his evil schemes, to subject someone to twenty years as a small-town real-estate agent married to his or her high school sweetheart, even if it ever fell into his power to do so. By the look of it, it was a fate harder on body and soul than any of the chains or electroshock wheels he’d seen deployed over the years. He’d been quite depressed by the whole incident, and even unleashing the komodo dragons in the school gymnasium later that evening hadn’t given him as much pleasure as it should have.
Afterwards, he’d sat, invisible or as near as made no difference, on the graffiti’d cupola of the bell tower, contemplating the local volunteer fire brigade as they argued with the police and animal control about who had jurisdiction over the situation. The police and fire chiefs had always been rivals, he recalled, since their track and field days or earlier. He wondered if the town authority figures of his childhood had held ancient grudges against each other too, of lost trophies and stolen prom dates. How innocent he’d been, making his smoke bombs and plotting to rob the Girl Guide cookie shipment. Adults had all seemed to him to be on the same side in those days, a comforting belief, even if it hadn’t been his side they were on. Now he felt like a ghost, grateful to be one, and anxious to return to the twilight world where mortal rivalries were white-hot and exultant and death was cheered like the homecoming queen, not whispered about in overstuffed living rooms.
Dinner was finished, and lingered over, until at last the coffees could be nursed no longer and they had to face the question of whether or not they would meet again. Victor took out the slip of paper upon which the waitress had written Amanda’s number.
“This is yours. I could give you mine, if you like, or –“
“Keep it.”
“Then I may see you again?” He paused. His Friday schedule was full up, but: “Saturday? For lunch? Then we’d have the whole afternoon to catch a movie, or walk, or anything you like.” They agreed on a time and place. Amanda smiled at him as she picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder.
“Thank you, this turned out a good day after all.”
“Thank you.” She shook his hand again awkwardly, outside the diner, as if she fancied the idea of hugging him but didn’t want to overstep bounds, and strode off down the sidewalk. Victor turned in the opposite direction and made for his hotel, at a contemplative stroll.
The Obscurant tipped up the reinforced parcel on end and carefully climbed up top. He’d gaged the measurements on an earlier visit and made sure the hallways really all did look the same. Now he took out the lightweight camera he’d prepared and duct-taped it to the ceiling, angling it till it was in the same position in this hallway where nothing was happening as the security camera was in the main hallway. He touched the camera a certain way and it faded from visibility. Then he dropped back to the floor, reloaded the parcel/stepping stool on its dolly and continued on his way.
