17.
Sienna
I was chewing on the most perfect burger as I walked through Times Square. I hadn’t had a problem flying to Shake Shack, because it wasn’t like the streets were super crowded or well-lit from the precinct to the location on 8th where I got my food, but I figured given the amount of lights and foot traffic, I’d probably get seen flying around Times Square, and I doubted that would give Lieutenant Welch any reassurance. More like ulcers.
I had a shake in my other hand, too, and it was peanut butter perfection. I felt like I was in perfect bliss, the crowds around me nothing more than a minor inconvenience rather than cause for panic and fleeing. I took a bite of my bacon and pepper-covered burger with one hand, then raised the shake to my lips a few seconds later for a dose of happiness.
I bumped into like five people and sent them sprawling, but I maintained my Zen all the way to Starbucks, which seemed like a fair trade. Watch where you’re going, people.
Even better, no one had screamed, “It’s her!” or anything of the sort, probably figuring me for just another tourist. Or maybe they were simply too cool to care if they did recognize me. I had stopped and bought a baseball hat that simply said New York on it, and I had the bill pulled way down, so it’s also possible that my disguise was so perfect that no one looked beyond their obvious disgust at another tourist in their midst.
Ha ha, New York. You’re too cool for your own good. Never change.
I walked past the windows at the Starbucks twice in order to surveil the scene before I went bursting in. I might also have finished up my shake and burger, because walking into a restaurant with another establishment’s food in hand felt too tacky even for carefree me to pull it off. Captain Frost was Captain Obvious here, taking up half the seating area on one side of the coffee shop, his admiring fans a little too close and admiring for my comfort. I judged him silently in the two passes I took while scouting the place, watching him tell animated stories to his little groupies and trying not to throw up my fabulous dinner in disgust at how crassly he was dishonoring our profession. We weren’t rockstars, dammit, and if I slept with my groupies—all three of them—I’m pretty sure there would have been reams of newsprint calling me a slut or something.
I came into the Starbucks keeping my profile low, still hiding behind the bill of my hat as I listened to Frost. “… up in the tree,” he said, snatches of his tale wafting across the restaurant as two girls who looked like they’d get thrown out of any nightclub that served alcohol hung on his words, spellbound, his arms around each of their necks, drawing them close as they drooled in his lap. Frost looked relaxed, confident, and I cringed for the dignity of my putative profession. I mean, I didn’t put on Spandex and soar over the skyline in the grandiose style he’d chosen, but still … I was like the world’s first superhero, and this was just below our dignity, I thought.
Hell, this was below Keith Richards’s dignity.
I drifted closer to the story, getting little bits and pieces. “… and when I got him down, you could just see the gratitude on her face …” Frost said, glowing with pride that looked a little fake—or at least applied with a trowel by a ham-handed idiot. His audience was eating it all up, and mentally I filled in the blanks I’d missed: He’d saved a kitten from a tree, and then slept with the owner, a fading beauty in her thirties who had probably been grateful for the chance to bump uglies with fame.
I thought about voicing all this as a cautionary tale to the floozies who had Frost’s arms draped around them like pythons, but I suppressed the urge. I know a lost cause when I see one, and by the gleam in their eyes, these sisters were not looking for solidarity. They were looking for superhero d—
Uh. You know.
“Oh, hi,” Frost said, directing his attention to me. “Come on in, join the group.” I froze, like I’d been caught peeping at someone’s window, as about thirty heads in this little drum circle turned to look at me. “Don’t be shy.”
“I’ve been called a lot of things,” I said, taking off my hat and raising the flag, “shy … not so much one of them.”
“Whoa!” Captain Frost launched to his feet, disentangling himself from his future conquests with meta speed. I was actually worried he might have injured their necks in the process, but the nasty looks they gave me seemed to say that it was only their pride at being quickly discarded that got hurt. “It’s … you,” he said, giving me a look not unlike that which his cabana girls had just been sending his way.
“I don’t know why people say that. It’s so vague and general, it fits everyone.” I stood there, riffing in the middle of his awed groupies. “No matter who you say, ‘It’s you!’ to, yes, it’s them. But they might not be the them you’re thinking of—”
“You’re Sienna Nealon,” Frost said, breaking the stunned silence of his fan base first.
“See, now that’s more specific,” I said, “and undeniable.”
“You’re like the great-grandmother of all superheroes,” a young guy said in awe.
“I’m twenty-four, not a hundred,” I said, giving him an ireful look that he blinked away from. I was blaming the hat hair for this one. And the baggy jeans. And … whatever else I could. I sighed. “Guess I’m not gonna get mistaken for Hit Girl anytime soon.” I smoothed my hair self-consciously.
“Wow,” Frost said again, coming forward and seizing my hand, pumping it hard while I looked at him warily. “It’s just … such an honor, you know.” He stopped and let go of me. “What are you doing here?”
I kept a straight face. “I’m here to talk to you about the Avengers initiative.”
A goofy smile spread across his lips, his eyes lighting up. “Really?”
“No, not really,” I said, and his face fell. “Can I talk to you privately for a minute?”
He looked around at his mostly female fans, and I noticed a lot of them were torn between adulation and sudden jealousy, which was directed at me in the form of dagger eyes. “Sure,” he said casually, but he puffed up a little as he did.
“Great,” I said, trying to convey by tone that I wasn’t that excited about it. The last thing I needed was his happy harpy groupies to boil over while I was questioning him about his tantrum on Wall Street.
Before we even took two steps, what seemed like fifty cell phones went off in his little trust circle, and I cringed involuntarily at the sudden eruption of volume. Frost did the same, and I could tell he was feeling that one across his meta senses. He reached down into a pouch on his belt and extracted a cell phone. I watched him do it, and he flicked his finger across the screen at lightning speed.
Not as fast as a dark-haired fangirl, though. “Building fire on West 55th between 9th and 10th Aves!” she shouted breathlessly, bouncing to her feet like she was about to light the bat signal on the roof. I watched a few others wilt like she’d just stolen their candy.
Frost puffed up even more than when I’d asked to speak to him privately. “Sorry, ladies,” he said, and then turned to a small knot of guys. “And gentlemen,” he amended, then he seemed to get caught up for a second, his lips moving, as he scanned over a couple of people in leather jackets that defied easy categorization. “And you,” he seemed to settled on, “honored fans.” I caught a raised eyebrow or two, but Captain Frost was already moving on. He favored me with a wide grin. “You want to go be a hero?”
“Sure, why not,” I answered before I had a chance to summon up something appropriately sarcastic.
“Awesome,” Captain Frost said, and he dodged right past me, leaving me slightly flatfooted as he shot out of the Starbucks into Times Square, and I stood there for a moment longer, uneasy not only because of the proximity of his fans, staring at me, but also the thing he’d just said, about being a hero. Shaking it off, I turned and ran out the door, leaving the doubts behind me and shooting off into the sky, following the trail of ice he left behind that led upwards, after the man in the … the …
Wait. Was he wearing yoga pants?