Impossible Things (Subparheroes), page 3
I let myself in through the gate, hurried to the shelves, and grabbed a stack of bound documents. It turned out they each contained reports and studies carried out by SPAM, and there were hundreds of them. I’d struck the mother lode! It was important to play it cool though, so I carefully reshelved the documents and went in search of my supervisor.
After a minute, I discovered an outdated office and stepped inside. Mail was piled up all around the desk, like a snow drift. When a rustling sound caught my attention, I froze in my tracks and whispered, “Please don’t be a rat.”
Suddenly, an Asian guy popped up from behind the desk with an armload of envelopes. A startled yelp slipped from me, followed immediately by a startled yelp from him.
We both stared at each other for a long moment. He was actually very cute, although it looked like he’d gone to a Halloween shop, picked out a costume labeled “Nerd,” and worn it to work. The outfit consisted of a white button-down shirt, khakis, a bowtie, and an argyle sweater vest. He’d completed the look by slicking down his short hair with way too much gel and adding a pair of glasses with clunky black frames. Well, that was all certainly a choice.
“Hey, sorry to startle you.” I flashed him a smile and got a frown in return.
He dumped the mail onto the desk and informed me, “You were supposed to ring the bell.”
“It didn’t work.”
“It didn’t?”
“Nah, you need a new one. That thing’s busted.”
“Oh.”
I waited for him to say something else. When he didn’t, I pushed ahead with, “Anyway, my name’s Sam Miller. HR sent me down here. Are you Anderson Chen?”
“Yes. Sorry. I didn’t think they’d send someone so quickly.”
I tried out an even bigger smile. “Well, now that I’m here, what would you like me to do?”
He looked around before saying, “I guess we could use a couple of folding tables. There’s a lot of mail to process.”
“I’m on it. Anything else?”
“An office chair? There’s only one.”
“Tables and a chair. Got it.”
“And maybe some large boxes or bins for sorting? That would be helpful.”
“Okay, I’ll go track that stuff down.” I crossed the room and picked up a pen from the cluttered desktop. “I’m writing down my pager number,” I explained, as I scribbled the digits onto the back of an envelope. “If you think of anything else, send me a message.”
“You have a pager?” I lifted up the hem of my Hawaiian shirt to show him the little device clipped to the pocket of my jeans. “How do I send a message to that?”
“You must be new.”
“It’s my first day.”
“Oh shit, and this is where they stuck you? That sucks.”
That seemed to annoy him. “Why does it suck?”
“You know, being stuck down here in this windowless dungeon with old, musty documents and no people, and—”
Oh yeah, he was definitely annoyed. “Please go get the items I asked for, Mr. Miller.”
“Right. I’m on it. Tables, bins, and a chair. I’ll be back with them right after my lunch break.”
He stared at me in disbelief. “You just got here, and you’re already taking a lunch break?”
“I might have just gotten here”—I pointed at the floor—“but I’ve been here since eight a.m.” I waved my hands in circles to indicate the building in general. “Everyone gets an hour off from noon to one, including you. Why don’t you take your break with me? I’ll show you where to find an awesome food truck with cheap, killer burritos.”
The frown was back. “No, thank you. I have far too much work to do, so I won’t be wasting time with an hour-long lunch break.”
“Suit yourself.” As I turned and left the office, I mumbled under my breath, “What a dork.”
I was almost out of earshot when I heard him mutter, “What a slacker.”
CHAPTER 4
ANDY
On Friday night, I was reading in my bedroom when my window slid open. Moira pushed the curtain aside, and as she climbed over the sill, I told her, “You look amazing. Why are you all dressed up?” She wore a black velvet cocktail dress with a full skirt, and her high heels and a little, sparkly clutch were tucked under her arm.
“Qian dragged me to a fancy fundraiser.”
“How was it?”
She flopped onto my bed. “Same as all the others—dull, and the food was tiny and fussy. Dessert was a square inch of cake with a rounded tablespoon of ice cream. I kid you not.”
“If you’re hungry, there’s leftover pasta in the fridge.”
“Thanks, but I insisted on going straight to a drive-through afterwards.”
“Did you send your fiancé home after that?”
Moira sat up and tried to salvage her up-do, which was listing to one side. “No. He and my parents are currently drinking tea and chatting happily in Mandarin, even though they know I can’t keep up. They didn’t even notice I left.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. If she realized I snuck out, my mother would be texting me every thirty seconds.”
I nodded. “That’s true.”
She rearranged the pillows and leaned against the headboard. “You know the worst part of all these hospital fundraisers?”
“The nosy doctors’ spouses, asking when you and Qian are going to get married?”
“Exactly.”
“What did you tell them this time?”
“The same old excuse—we’re both too busy to plan a wedding right now, between his surgical residency and my MBA program. Everyone’s starting to wonder why that degree has taken me almost six years.”
“Out of curiosity, how much longer are you planning to drag out grad school?”
“Just until June. All the work’s been done for a while now, and my advisor knows I’m stalling. It sucks, though. As long as I’m still in school, my parents are only sort of pressuring me to get married. Once I graduate, it’ll be the only thing they talk about.” She perked up and asked, “Hey, do you think I should go for a PhD?”
“No, because you don’t actually want one, and you’re already going to be paying off student loans until you’re eighty.”
Moira looked disappointed. “Good point.”
I asked, as gently as I could, “Have you considered going ahead and setting the date, M? Because I know you love Qian, and he adores you.”
“I’m not ready.” She’d been saying that for years. It made sense at first, but by now it was clear there was more to it than that. Moira changed the subject abruptly. “But this isn’t why I came to see you. I wanted to find out how your first week of work went.”
“Okay, I guess. I started off feeling totally overwhelmed, but now I’m thinking maybe I can actually do this. I called April today and told her I plan to stick it out—for now. All SPAM employees start with a probationary period, and when that’s up I’ll decide if this is what I want long-term.”
“Have you caught up with the backlog?”
“I’ve barely made a dent, but at least it’s semi-organized now. It’ll probably take a couple of months to work my way through everything that needs to be catalogued, labeled, and shelved.”
“Is the doofus with a man bun still helping you?”
The thought of Sam Miller made me frown. “Yes. I’m having him go through every shelf looking for stuff that’s misfiled. The archives are pretty big, so it’ll take a while.”
“Are you doing that just to torture him?”
“I’m doing it because the jerk who had this job before me would just stick things anywhere, totally out of order. I don’t have time to go through everything and move it all to the right place.”
“Do you trust your coworker not to screw it up?”
“I guess I have to. It’s too much work for one person. He’s so frustrating, though. God forbid he’d miss a single minute of his break time, or stay even a second past five p.m.”
At the sound of a muffled beep, Moira wrestled her phone out of the tiny clutch, read the text message, and wedged it back in again. “The jig is up. My mom noticed I snuck out.” She got up and tucked the shoes back under her arm. “You’re lucky she texted when she did, because I was just about to lecture you for sitting at home on a Friday night.”
“Everyone was busy. Mom and Julie are having dinner with friends, and you had plans with Qian.”
“It wouldn’t kill you to try an app and get out there and date a little.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That’s not my style.”
“Aren’t you lonely?”
“No.”
“You know what we should do? We should go to a gay bar—”
“No, thanks.”
“—tomorrow night. Let’s check out that new place in the Castro.”
“You have plans with your fiancé tomorrow night.”
“He can come, too.”
Her phone beeped again, and I said, “You’d better go, before your mom blows a gasket.”
“I’m going, but this is happening. We’ll pick you up after dinner. Wear something sexy.”
“Like what?”
“Anything but a sweater vest. Or a sport coat. No tweed across the board. No bow ties, either. In fact, your entire work wardrobe is off limits.” She gathered her full skirt into her arms and called, as she climbed over the windowsill, “I love you, Anderson Chen!”
“I love you too, Moira Liu.”
After she left, I tried to lose myself in the pages of the book I’d been reading. My mind kept wandering though, so I set it aside, wrapped myself in a blanket, and climbed out onto the fire escape.
I liked it out here, even though it was chilly for late May, and the view was abysmal. Below me was a narrow alley lined with dumpsters, and across from my window was the beige stucco wall of the building next door. I stared at that wall for a while as I replayed my conversation with Moira.
She’d asked if I was lonely, and I’d denied it. Of course I was, but I didn’t want to admit it to her. All that would accomplish was making my best friend worry about me. Then she’d try to help by sending me on blind dates and signing me up for dating apps.
We’d been down that road before, and it never went well. None of this did. I’d been playing the dating game for more than a decade, and the result was always the same. What was the point in hoping and trying, when I already knew how it would turn out?
I was lost in thought when movement down below caught my eye. A cat ran into the alley, followed by a second, and a third. Shit! Had I just set off my power?
I scrambled through the open window and slammed it behind me. There was a light under my door from the hallway, and it started to flicker as every cat in the apartment gathered. They began meowing, and a little white paw reached through the gap under the door and felt around.
When the doorknob began to turn, I shouted, “Really?” Since when did they know how to open doors? I hurried to the door and locked it. Then I climbed into bed and pulled a pillow over my head, as the cacophony inside and outside grew louder and more insistent.
Of course I was single. Who the hell would want this?
Moira kept hounding me all the next day, so that night I finally relented and went to San Francisco’s newest gay night club with her. As promised, she dragged her fiancé along, too.
If I had to describe Qian Zhang in one word, it would be polite. Every time someone asked him to dance—which was often, because he was an exceptionally good-looking guy—he replied with, “Thank you. I’m flattered, but I must decline.”
After a while, he turned to me and yelled over the pulsating dance music, “I apologize for being a distraction, Andy. Should I redirect the men to you when they ask me to dance?”
“No! God no.” That was the last thing I needed, my best friend’s straight fiancé’s hand-me-downs.
Moira took a sip of margarita and yelled, “The problem is that you look too uptight, Andy. That’s why no one’s asking you to dance, and I know you’re not about to make the first move. Why is your polo shirt buttoned up to your chin? What do you think, that showing two inches of man chest would make you seem like a floozy? Also, I’ll never understand why you put a gallon of gel in your hair every time you go out.”
“You know why. It’s because I have a cowlick and it looks stupid.”
“It’s way too much, though. Here, let me wipe some off.”
At that, Moira attacked me with a cocktail napkin while I grumbled, “Quit it,” and tried to duck.
“It’s for your own good!”
We wrestled and slapped each other’s hands away for a few seconds, until Qian wedged himself between us and said, “You two remind me of my niece and nephew.” Since the twins were six, this wasn’t a compliment.
Moira and I scowled and pouted for a minute or two. Then I climbed off my barstool and announced, “I’m getting another bottle of water. Anyone want anything?”
They both declined, so I made my way to the crowded bar, where I was promptly ignored. After ten minutes of trying to get their attention, the bartenders had yet to acknowledge my existence, so I gave up. I didn’t feel like paying their exorbitant prices anyway, so maybe it was for the best.
On my way back to the table, my path was blocked by a group of people who’d gathered around to ooh and ahh at some guy with the power to levitate. Big whoop, like that was useful in any way. I sighed and tried to squeeze past the onlookers, but it was no use. Until this guy stopped showboating, I was stuck.
I was right on the edge of the dance floor, so I turned and watched the crowd. It was a lot more interesting than watching the floating douchebag.
A tall guy dancing alone caught my attention. He was bathed in blue light, and his hair cascaded to his shoulders in loose waves—so sexy. His back was to me, and I ran my gaze down the length of him. A tank top showed off his big arms, and tight jeans hugged his perfect butt.
I kind of resented the part of me that was drawn to big, beefy jocks, like that guy. It made me feel shallow to have my head turned by huge biceps and a nice ass.
That ass was very nice, though. And I loved the way he moved. The fact that he was so uninhibited was also a turn-on, which begged the question—was I attracted to men who were my polar opposite?
While I was mulling that over, the guy slowly turned while swaying to the beat. When I saw his face, I recoiled in horror. All this time I’d been mentally undressing my coworker, Sam Miller!
Fortunately, I was a good fifteen feet away, and he didn’t spot me in the crowd. Since my path was still blocked, I rushed off in the opposite direction and darted out the main exit.
I felt guilty, like I’d violated his privacy, or sexually harassed him, or both. Obviously, that was ridiculous because I’d had no idea who it was when I started ogling him. It still made me feel like I’d done something wrong, though.
I didn’t know what I’d say to him the next time I saw Sam, but one thing was perfectly clear. Work was going to be awkward as hell on Monday.
CHAPTER 5
SAM
When I arrived at SPAM on Monday morning, Anderson was weirder and more awkward than usual. Since I’d assumed he’d already maxed out on both of those things, this was surprising.
I placed a cup and a small paper bag on his desk and attempted small talk. “Did you have a good weekend?”
For some reason, he looked horrified as he stammered, “I… um…”
Since that was apparently all the answer I was getting, I gestured toward the shelves and told him, “I’m going to pick up where I left off on Friday, unless there’s something else you want me to do for you.”
“No! I mean, yes. That’s fine. Do the shelves, not… um…” Good lord. I nodded and started to leave his office, but he called after me, “What, uh, what is this?”
I turned back to him and found he was staring at the coffee and muffin like he’d never seen such a thing before. “I decided to treat myself on the way to work, and I thought you might like something, too.”
Okay, yes, I was trying to get on his good side. I’d barely made a dent in my snoop through the archives. If he didn’t actively dislike me, it would improve my chances of getting to stick around.
After he mumbled a thank you, I left his office and got to work. I was supposed to go shelf-by-shelf, reading through the alpha-numeric codes on all the materials and refiling any that were out of order. Most of the reports were at least an inch thick, but fortunately they all included a one-page synopsis on the first page. I’d read dozens of those summaries the week before, along with parts of some of the studies, and I wasn’t quite sure what to think about them.
SPAM didn’t just work with superheroes and people with powers, they studied them. Mostly, these were demographic studies—collecting data on the most common types of powers, geographic distributions, how often offspring exhibited the same powers as their parents, and so on.
None of that was surprising. As long as there had been individuals with powers, there’d been people who studied them. That was true across all sorts of disciplines, from medicine and genetics to psychology and sociology, and everything in between.
On the surface, it seemed perfectly innocent. If all they were doing was gaining general knowledge, no problem. But was there a bigger picture here, something I was missing?
At one point, I read a line in a report which mentioned SPAM actively recruited people with powers and employed them throughout the agency. I was mulling that over when Anderson appeared in the aisle and asked, “What are you doing?”
He’d caught me red-handed, sitting on the floor with an open report on my lap. “This information’s not off-limits,” I pointed out. “I have the security clearance to read it.”
“I know that, but you’re supposed to be organizing the shelves, not reading on the job.”
