Her Superhero Lover

She honestly tried to keep up. However, she quickly felt like a toddler stomping around in her mother’s high heels while pretending to be an adult. Every verbal step she took felt awkward and wrong, either too much or not enough. If she didn’t say anything, at least she could pretend that whatever was said didn’t affect her, or she could hide behind a polite smile. It was a flimsy defense, and when they finally sat down for dinner, she was on edge. Their table was shared with four other people, one of whom she recognized, the television reporter Maria Mendoza from Action Five. “Maria, it’s good to see you again,” Grady said, leaning over to whisper in Renee’s ear. “Don’t be jealous, I didn’t arrange this. But I dated Maria for a few weeks back when we were in high school.”

“Okay,” Renee replied, not surprised but also not jealous. It wasn’t like she expected to go her entire time with Grady without meeting at least one ex-girlfriend of his. “It’s nice to meet you, Miss Mendoza. I enjoy watching your work on Action Five.”

“Really? Thanks,” Maria said, giving her the first genuine smile she’d seen all night. “I have to admit, I caught one of your shows last year, it was really good. When I saw that you and Grady were seeing each other, I was surprised, but then again, him and I were an unlikely pair for a while too. Sorry Grady, did I let the cat out of the bag?”

“Hardly Maria,” Grady said with a well worn groan. “I do think though I’m going to get a t-shirt for these events that says Yes, I did date Maria Mendoza for three weeks. It would save a lot of time.”

Maria chuckled and shook her head. She leaned over, closer to Renee, and lowered her voice. “To be honest, I love just getting his goat like that. The unflappable Grady Voelker, taken down by a woman like me. It’s fun.”

“Well, he is cute when he’s turning red,” Renee said back, smiling at Grady. Sitting up, the two women smiled more comfortably than she had all night. “By the way, I’ve really been enjoying your series on The Horseman. How’d you get the story?”

“Honestly? Pissed off my editor,” Maria said. “He wanted to assign me to a muckraking story, but one of the companies involved is my grandfather’s. I couldn’t do that, and I told him to keep his lies to himself. Because of that, he put me on the crank story beat for a month. The Horseman story just dropped into my lap while I was on that desk, and I ran with it. To be honest, that video of him doing his thing really made the story, and took the story from one local interest piece to real news. With it already in my lap, my editor couldn’t pull it from me without a real reason, and he didn’t have it. I’m looking forward to him really eating crow when the SCalies come out in December.”

“SCalies?” Renee asked, puzzled.

Maria nodded, not offended in the least. “Southern California News Media Association Awards. They tried calling them the SCNMAAs, but calling an award something that sounds like a cross between skin and enema just didn’t work. So, SCalies it is. Still a stupid name, but who knows? I may get out of San Diego and into one of the national beats from The Horseman. My agent already got a call from MSNBC.”

“Wow, best of luck,” Renee said. She could see Maria on cable news, she had the looks that the stations wanted. However, she didn’t look the MSNBC type, in her opinion. CNN or FoxNews with their trend towards knockout news anchors was more her guess. “So any guesses as to who The Horseman is?”

“None,” Maria said. “I’ll be honest, I’ve had to edit some of what I’ve put on the air about him as it is. I mean, some of the stories I’ve heard, they say he could fly. If I put that on the air, you know I’d be back covering dog adoptions and other hard hitting news before the show even finished. Until I get video of this guy doing anything other than kicking street gang ass, I’m playing it very conservatively in what I say. But yeah, I’d love to meet him some day. To be able to interview a real life superhero? If he’s half the man some of these stories say he is, he’d make the Olympic decathlon champion look like a first grader playing against the NFL.”

“Perhaps some day you will talk with him,” Grady said, “but I think they want to start the auction.”

The auction turned out to be more fun that Renee had expected. Starting with the lower value items (her session, unfortunately, went third in the auction. On the other hand, she did get five thousand for it), each item was brought up, with the main rules being that nobody could bid on an item they themselves had donated. There was apparently some sort of top donor award up for grabs, and the organizers didn’t want someone to bid themselves into the award.

Grady joined in on some of the bids, never actually winning any but driving up prices on items she knew he had no interest in just to get others to bid more. One time, she leaned over to him as he raised his hand, increasing the bid on a steel and copper sculpture and whispered in his ear. “That is the ugliest damn thing I’ve seen all year. It looks like a dog met a Mack truck while it was hunched over pooping.”

“I know,” Grady said soto voce. “But Sophia doesn’t want to lose to me, and the guy who donated it is actually a decent person. So, I’m going to drive the price up to about seventy five thousand, then drop out.”

His instincts were perfect, as she could see Sophia wince as she raised her hand, agreeing to eighty thousand for the ugly chunk of metal. She turned to congratulate Grady on his adept bidding when suddenly the main doors to the banquet hall exploded in a hail of fire and smoke. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen!” a man bellowed over the surprised cries of the group. He was short, maybe five foot seven, and wore a Guy Fawkes mask with his black military style clothing. With him he carried a pump action shotgun, while the three others with him had submachine guns. “I’d love to say I represent some revolutionary group that is here to alleviate the world of the one percent or something, but the reality is me and my boys are just here for the money. So if you all sit down and shut up, nobody gets hurt.”

Renee couldn’t help but notice that somebody already was hurt, a waitress who was holding her arm and crying out weakly. She looked like she may have been caught by the blast of the door, or perhaps a piece of shrapnel, she wasn’t sure which. “What should we do?”

“Exactly what he says,” Maria replied. She reached for her purse, laying it on the table. “I know about these guys. They’ve taken down quite a few jobs in the area over the past six months. And yes, they’ll use those guns.”

Renee nodded, and laid her hands on the table. The gang went around gathering cash and certain jewels, tossing them all into messenger bags. Things were going well until someone, Renee couldn’t tell who, started arguing with one of the gang members about taking his gold ring. He struggled with the gunman, wrestling over his weapon until a short burst of shots rang out, the hall filling with screams. Renee felt something hit her in the chest, and darkness swallowed her up. The last thing she saw was Grady kneeling over her, his face filled with fear and concern.