There’s a long pause, during which she’s sure Paul has gone away, possibly to call the police. Then she hears the door buzz and yanks it open. She’s winded by the time she manages to climb up to Paul’s apartment.
He doesn’t hug or kiss her or even shake her hand; he motions for her to come inside. “You want anything to drink?” he asks.
“Some water if it’s not too much trouble.”
He nods towards the living room. She sits demurely on the sofa with her hands on her stomach. Paul must notice the slight bulge of her midsection as he asks, “Are you—?”
“Three months,” she says.
“Who is it?”
“His name is Erek. He’s a sculptor.” She holds up her left hand, which has a gold ring topped with a pearl on one finger. “We’re getting married next month.”
“That’s great,” he says.
“I’d have mailed you an invitation but it’s in Pacifica.”
“Oh, I see.” He sits down on a chair to face her. He stares patiently at her, waiting for her to get to the point.
She gulps down most of the water before she says, “I wanted to ask if you would be my baby’s godfather.”
“Shouldn’t it have a Pacifican godfather?”
“They don’t really go in for that sort of thing. I want someone on land who could care for him or her if something happens to me and Erek.”
“I saw what Roboto did to you on TV. That was pretty nasty stuff.”
She nods and wipes at tears. “It was terrible.” That’s an understatement. She had been seconds away from dying when Roboto put her in that tank, like she was a circus freak. She had felt like a circus freak to see herself with a fish tail and scales. When Roboto referred to her as Sea Hag, he’d probably been on to something.
Elise had come close to death before, but never that close. It had given her a new outlook on life. She didn’t want to spend any more time waiting and playing games. The second she could get away, she swam back to Erek’s workshop, where she found him chipping away at some coral.
“I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long,” she said.
He ran a hand through her hair and said, “Your devotion to the surface dwellers is admirable.” He pulled her close for an embrace, any problems forgotten. Soon they went back to his bedroom for some blissful make-up sex, during which Elise was certain she had gotten pregnant with Erek’s child.
As they floated beside each other, she said, “We should get married.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.” She took his hand and smiled. “I made the mistake before of not having the courage to marry someone I loved. I’m not going to do it again.”
He nodded and said, “I would be honored to marry you.”
Elise relates some of this story to Paul. She finishes by saying, “I’m sorry I never had the guts to do right by you. We should have gotten married and to hell with what anyone in Pacifica or on the surface thought about it. Can you ever forgive me?”
At last Paul’s resolve breaks down and he wraps her in a hug. “Of course I can. I should have been more understanding when this happened to you. Just because you were a woman didn’t mean I should have kicked you out. Maybe we could have made it work.”
“Probably not,” she says. She puts a hand to his cheek. “You like men and you always will. So do I. It’s just how things are. But can we at least be friends? Starla and Allison are nice, but there are some things I can’t really talk to them about, you know? And Robin is still a jackass about most things. I really need someone up here I can talk to.”
“Of course, sweetie. I’ve missed you. There are other guys, but it’s not the same. They don’t know me like you do.”
“Erek is going to be gone all night looking for coral. You think I could stay here tonight? Or we could go to the atoll. I can call Manny to give you a ride.”
“Here is fine,” he says with a grin.
She pats his arm and then heaves herself up to her feet. So far her body isn’t too sore, but in six months she’ll be big as a house and probably one big ache. “You want to go down to Whole Foods and get some mushrooms? It’s been a while since I made ragout for anyone.”
“Sounds divine,” he says. He takes her hand to help her down the stairs, already protective of his godchild.
***
Apex Girl lands on the hood of the getaway car. The driver foolishly tries to throw her off, as if she couldn’t just land on it again. Since that didn’t work, he sticks a gun out to shoot at her. She bats the gun away before he can get a shot off. “I’d suggest you pull over and stop the vehicle,” she shouts at him.
“Fuck you, cunt!”
“You asked for it,” she says. She brings both hands down on the hood to shatter the engine block. The engine goes dead. Starla hops off the car. She’s tempted to let it coast along until it runs into something, but an innocent person might get hurt, so she scoops it up by the rear bumper to bring it to a stop.
By the time she drops the car onto the pavement, the driver is shaking with fear. She tears off the door and then rips him from the vehicle. “You shouldn’t talk to a lady like that,” she says before she hits him just hard enough to knock him out.
There’s applause from some of the bystanders. Starla nods to them and then says, “Safe and courteous drivers are better drivers.” Then she takes off into the air.
She’s back in her office at the Star a few seconds before Kate knocks on the door. “You been exercising in here?” she asks.
“What?”
“You’re all flushed.”
“Oh. Right. I was just doing some stretches,” Starla says. She does a few in her chair for demonstrative purposes. “This chair gets to be a little uncomfortable after a while.”
“Well, I hate to pile on, but here’s my feature on the G20 summit. Larry wants it by three.”
“No problem.”
“Hey, I heard there’s this new club opening on Longview. Thought maybe we could check it out.”
“Actually I have plans tonight,” Starla says.
“Really? Who’s the lucky guy?”
Starla’s face turns warm as she says, “Oh, it’s not a date. Just going out with Billy and some of his friends. You could probably come with us—”
“No, that’s all right,” Kate says. “You guys have fun.”
“Thanks.” Starla should probably savor the look of disappointment on Kate’s face as she’s the one to be stood up, but Starla doesn’t. There’s a part of her that still loves Kate and probably always will, but she realized her biological father was right that it would never work between them.
This realization came after the fight with Roboto. After that brief time when she had been so weak and powerless, she had vowed not to feel that way again. Yet when she thought about it, she realized she’d felt that way often enough when around Kate. Kate had always been like gamma rays to Starla, crippling her and leaving her impotent. She couldn’t go through that anymore.
Her first day back at the Star, Kate hadn’t been around. She was of course in Tokyo to report on the massive cleanup after Roboto’s attack. Starla had been in her office, going over Kate’s latest story, when Billy knocked on the door.
He had a bouquet of daffodils in one hand. “Hi, Miss Marsh. I heard you were back, so I thought I’d bring you something to cheer you up.”
She took the flowers from him and smiled. “That’s so thoughtful of you.” She looked around her office, but there wasn’t anything to use for a vase, so she just set them on the desk until she could find something. She gave him a hug, careful not to crack any of his ribs. “Thank you so much.”
“I wanted to say too I’m sorry about the other night. So are the guys. We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“Oh, no, you didn’t. It was my fault. I’ve been getting out of a bad relationship.”
“That’s too bad.
Say, Dave and Mike and I are going out to a movie tonight. You want to come along?”
“Sure,” Starla said. It seemed the least she could do after Billy brought her such nice flowers.
The movie they went to was a superhero one. Starla cringed as the titles came up. She saw enough real-life superhero action that she didn’t need to see it on the screen. But as the movie went on, she found herself starting to enjoy sitting in the dark with Billy and his friends, stuffing popcorn into her face. It was the most relaxed she’d felt in years.
They went out to a diner afterwards for coffee and pie. She listened to them dissect the movie with a connoisseur’s eye. Billy finally asked her, “What did you think?”
She gulped down her bite of coconut crème pie to buy some time. Finally she smiled and said, “It was really fun.”
“Well of course she’d like it,” Mike said. “Girls don’t know anything about superheroes.”
She smiled broader at that. The conversation carried on with her adding a word or two here and there. Like the movie, it felt good just to be in the simple flow of things without having to worry about anything serious.
Before she knew it, she and Billy and his friends were going out almost nightly. Once they adjusted to the fact she was a girl, they became more comfortable around her. Soon enough she was one of the gang and to her surprise she liked it even more than being a part of the Super Squad.
At five o’clock she gets her coat and then hurries by Kate’s desk, where Kate is working on the carjacking piece that will probably be in Starla’s inbox soon. Starla doesn’t say anything; she just slinks past to the elevator. Once the doors close, she breathes a sigh of relief.
Billy, Mike, and David are already in line at the theater. Billy’s eyes widen at her. “Wow, that costume is amazing,” he says.
She runs her hand over her Apex Girl uniform. “Thanks. I spent all night sewing it.”
Billy and his friends are all dressed up in superhero costumes for the movie premiere tonight. So are most of the people in line. For once Starla doesn’t feel out of place in her uniform. If anything, she feels underdressed.
She smiles to see a couple of little girls dressed up like her. She remembers what Robin said about Dalton’s plan. Maybe that revolution is already happening on a small scale. Maybe in a generation or two there won’t be any more men like Ty Lecau who see women as an object. That’s something to hope for.
“Are you all right?” Billy asks.
“Just super,” she says and they laugh at her bad joke. Then she goes into the theater with her new friends.
***
Allison rubs the bridge of her nose and then takes a sip of cold coffee. She should probably go out to get some fresh—if there’s any fresh. She isn’t sure if anyone else is still around at two in the morning. The janitor, she supposes, but he probably doesn’t put on a pot of coffee for anyone working late.
She studies the blueprints of the weapon on the screen. In three months she hasn’t made much progress in identifying where it came from. Not even Dr. Roboto had any idea about that. He had obtained it third- or fourth-hand from the black market.
Allison’s not going to give up, though. Even if she has to spend the rest of her life on this project, she’s going to find a way to reverse the effects. Not only so she can be a man again to reclaim her family, but so no one can pick up where the Feminazi, Major Dalton, and Dr. Roboto had left off. Never again will someone have to go through what she, her friends, Major Dalton’s soldiers, and that innocent boy who’d come with Robin had endured. That’s Allison’s mission.
She’s been so wrapped up in it that she hasn’t put on her Velocity Gal costume in six weeks. It might seem callous, but she doesn’t have time to deal with purse-snatchers and burglars right now. Nor does she have the time to run over to Paris to pound absinthe with Raul.
The thought of him makes her cheeks warm. She hasn’t seen him since that night at the hotel, but she keeps thinking about it. She wonders what would have happened if he had continued until he came. Would she have come eventually? Would that have changed her? Would she like men now? As a scientist, she knows it isn’t that easy, but then maybe her reluctance to be with a man was only psychological; if she got over that hurdle maybe it would be easier to be with someone else.
Someone knocks on the door. Allison gets up, figuring it must be the janitor to take out the trash or sweep the floor. “I’m fine,” she says. “You can—”
She stops when she sees it’s Sally at the door. Sally holds a glass dish covered in tinfoil. “I brought you some dinner. I know how you skip meals when you’re busy.”
Allison lifts the tinfoil to see it’s tuna casserole. She’s never much liked casserole, but it’s the thought that counts. “Thank you. How did you get in here?”
“A security guard let me in. I think they’re a little worried about you. The one called you Howard Hughes.”
“I’m not peeing into mason jars or saving my fingernails,” Allison says.
“Not yet.”
They both laugh politely. Allison motions for Sally to step inside. “This place is really…small,” Sally says.
“I know, but I’m getting used to it.”
“Would you mind if I sit down? I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Go ahead.”
Sally pulls up a stool. She looks down at the linoleum. “We never got a chance to talk about what that awful man—robot, whatever—did to you. When I saw you on the TV—”
Sally’s voice trails off. Allison pats her hand. “It’s all right. I’m fine now. I’m even thinner than I was before.”
“It’s just that I thought I would lose you…again. After I’d been such a bitch to you.”
“No, Sally—”
“I was. I should have been glad you came back, even like this, but I was just so angry with you.” She stops to wipe at her eyes. “It hurt so much when they said you were dead that when you came back I didn’t want you to because I knew I could lose you again, forever this time. Does that make any sense?”
“Yes. And I’m sorry I came back. I shouldn’t have done it. I should have stayed away from you both.”
“No. We’re your family. Always. Even if you’re a girl or fat or whatever, you’re always going to be my husband.”
“Sally, we both know I can’t be your husband. Not until I figure out a way to fix what happened.”
“You don’t have to fix anything. I love you, Allison. That’s all that matters.” To prove this, Sally leans forward to kiss Allison. It isn’t a peck on the cheek like when Allison spent the night; it’s a full-blown French kiss with Sally’s tongue in Allison’s throat. When Allison closes her eyes, it feels just the way she remembers, like on their wedding day.
“I think I’m ready to try experimenting again,” Sally whispers into her ear.
“You are?”
Sally answers this by sweeping some papers off Allison’s desk. She helps Allison to lie down on it. They fumble with each other’s zippers and buttons until they’re finally naked. Allison’s face warms as she says, “I don’t really know what to do.”
“It’s all right. I can show you.”
When Allison comes, the feeling is far more powerful than she ever imagined. The rush is almost like the night of the accident that turned her into Velocity Man. It’s like there’s electricity running through her entire body.
After the feeling ebbs, she and Sally lie on the floor of the lab in each other’s arms. Sally brushes sweaty hair back from Allison’s face. “You know, Jenny’s been missing Aunt Ally.”
“She has?” That doesn’t seem likely from what Allison remembers.
“Yes. I think she’d be really happy if we told her Aunt Ally is moving in with us.”
“You’re serious?”
“Would I be here if I weren’t?”
“Good point.” Allis
on looks up at her computer, the diagrams of Roboto’s weapon still on the screen. As much as she wants to move in with Sally and Jenny, she can’t just abandon her work to spend time with them. “I have so much work, though.”
“I’m sure we can work something out. I want to have you close again. Please?”
In the end, Allison can’t resist. This is exactly what she’s wanted since she first woke up as a woman. “You know I can’t say no to you.”
“Great. Now, I think we’d better get dressed before that janitor comes in here.” They laugh and then start to round up their clothes. Once they’re finished, Sally gives Allison a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you at home.”
“I’ll be there.”
***
Robin brushes aside a tress of hair and frowns in the mirror. “I hate it,” she says.
“You look like a very pretty young woman,” Jasper says.
“That’s the problem.”
“Now, Mistress, you know what the therapist says.”
“I know. I shouldn’t act all butch. Accept my new self, blah blah blah.”
Jasper checks his watch. “Your date should be here any minute.”
“God, don’t call it that. We’re just going together—as friends.”
“Yes, of course. As friends.”
Robin frowns into the mirror again. She hasn’t looked so girly since Dr. Roboto dressed her up as “Midnight Cutie.” The light green dress with all its frills and pleats makes her want to barf. The nylons are even worse. And these goddamned heels; whoever invented those had to be a sadistic man.
She’s about to get up when Jasper stops her. He has a flat black velvet box. When he opens it, Robin puts a hand to her mouth in shock. “I can’t wear that,” she says.
“I think your mother would want you to wear them on a night like this.”
“Jasper, please. I don’t want to.”
“Come now, Mistress Robin, just try it on.”
“Fine, but only for a second. Then you can put it back in the vault.”
“Of course.”
Her hair is already pinned up, so it’s easy enough for him to slip the silver necklace on her. The leaf-shaped emeralds along the necklace wink at her in the light. Robin remembers when she was a little boy and had watched Dad give Mom this necklace for Valentine’s Day. “For the most beautiful woman in the world,” he said and then kissed her, which had made Robin turn away.