Incidental Superhero
Part 4
My father used to have this saying. I say ‘used too’ as if he were dead. Of course, he isn’t. In fact he has not measurably changed in what has been, for me, the four years since I last saw him, frozen at the edge of the danger zone, beside my mother, sister, and several cousins, in an involuntarily family reunion, safe from nuclear obliteration.
I used to think the saying was stupid because it set impossible standards and fostered general discontent. Maybe worst of all, I don’t even think my dad believes it. If he does, he certainly doesn’t live by it in his own life, in year 23 of his job in sanitation.
Here’s the saying:
When you find work you love, it doesn’t feel like work at all.
How insipid is that? As if most people have the luxury of searching for that one perfect job – as if we weren’t all too damn busy working the jobs we hate, the ones that allow us to scratch out a life in an unforgiving world.
I used to believe it was a saying of either the immensely entitled or the uniquely singleminded. A saying for trust fund kids and savants, of which my father is neither. Nor am I.
However, I now know that there is another category of person to which the saying applies – the exceedingly lucky. The person who, by the machinations of fate, finds themselves precisely where they need to be, precisely when they need to be there, and with precisely the right company.
Four years ago today someone fired a ballistic nuclear missile at the city of New York. Time froze, as it always does when I’m in danger, and for four years I have been working in that bubble of time to evacuate the city, at first single handedly, and later with the help of the woman I love.
Without a doubt it is the hardest and longest project I have ever worked on in my life. Yet, I can confirm, it does not feel like work.
My body is unrecognizable to me when I catch a glimpse in the mirror, a mountain of practical sinew and muscle, carved under the weight of countless tens of thousands of human beings, lifted and rolled out of their frozen lives toward safety.
Over two years ago I found Sonya in her apartment and somehow managed to bring her into the fold with me, into my time bubble. Since then, with her help, the evacuation has picked up pace substantially. The two of us work like clockwork, using dolly’s and ropes now, taking turns driving the truck. We work well together.
Our R&R is important to us. Sonya can play the violin passingly well, so I had searched everywhere I could think of to find her something special. We went backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall and the Philharmonic and she would practice on stage with their stock instruments, performing one woman shows with me alone in the empty theaters.
One day I was getting groceries and needed to go pretty far afield to find some fresh swiss chard, which Sonya really likes. Ended up on the upper east side and saw a sign for Sotheby’s auction house. Hit me like a ton of bricks. I ran over there, worked my way into the guts of the place, and eventually ended up in the middle of an auction room.
It was filled with well dressed rich people in various states of dissaray, some looking aghast at their phones, others racing for the doors, a number even in the hallways, almost to the exits, which struck me as a bit far afield, although at the time I didn’t think too much of it.
There on the stage, in a glass rectangle, was what I had come for. A crimson finished violin, patina’d with centuries of play, regal and excellent, standing statuesque and perfect over the frozen chaos.
I sifted my way through the crowd until I reached the stage, carefully lifted off the glass box, reached over and gently took the Stradivarious by the stem, lifting it and bringing it close, like a small precious child, marvelling at its remarkable lightness. I bent over and smelled the instrument, taking in the dry odor of must and wood conditioner.
After finding a case I brought it back to the apartment with some fresh swiss chard, fingerling potatoes and two perfect pieces of filet mignon and made Sonya her favorite dinner. She arrived mid-prep, returned from one of her long weekend walks. The elevator to the penthouse suite at the top of 555 Columbus Square opened and there she was, dressed in some new, outlandishly expensive ensemble, a brown dress with leather cutouts in pleasing lines, new shic boots and a gorgeous form fitted tweed overcoat, all no doubt “borrowed” from some of the most outrageously expensive boutiques in the Bowery.
On workdays we put on plain, comfortable clothes, donned out support girdles and got down to business. But slowly Sonya convinced me it was OK to do nice things for ourselves. “Selfcare” is what she called it, and it had made everything so much better.
From our perch on the top of the city we could see everything for miles in every direction. Time had frozen on a perfect, blue skied day, clear as crystal. But as was often the case on weekends, once Sonya walked into the apartment, we had eyes only for each other. At her insistence, I too spent the weekends decked out in the best clothes money could buy. The “night” I gave her the Stradivarius – there is no night of course, we have just developed an acute, if strange, circadian rythm and keep our own calender – but that “night” I was wearing a black Tom Ford suit with Balenciaga dress shoes and a shirt and tie combo from somebody whose name I can’t pronounce. The outfit retailed for about $12,000 and I was pan frying dinner in them wearing an apron that read “Best Husband Ever.”
Sonya walked in as though she owned the place, manifesting another rule of ours, “No more feeling bad!” In the beginning I hesitated to “steal” things or enter places I would never have access to in real life. But as time passed, my views on the issue changed. Once time started up again everything we didn’t drag out of the city was doomed anyway. All I was doing was making extended use of their last few minutes before nuclear annihilation.
So we decided to live the high life, but always in support of the mission. The quality of life changes were a big deal. I injured myself less frequently and things moved much faster when we did work than they used to before.
Things were pretty great. The evacuation line was down to almost 125th street and progressing nicely. We were methodical, taking every block, one by one, and carrying away every resident we could find. Our drop off points shifted as they filled up. The aerial view would have revealed a growing ring of humanity forming a few dozen miles upwind around the city of New York.
But no matter how many people we saved, it never felt like enough. From our penthouse I would often run my gaze over the other boroughs, into the brownstones of Brooklyn and the psuedo suburbia of distant Queens, the expanse of the Bronx. Millions more people, people who we could never hope to evacuate even if Sonya and I worked at it for a lifetime.
But I tried not to think about that sort of thing. Instead I just focused on the work and the play and the strange, unreal, wonderful life we had created for ourselves in the four years that was the twenty minutes since the end of the world had begun.
Better to focus on the good things, the things we were accomplishing and the time we got to spend together. So I made Sonya dinner and we sat down together and ate on million dollar crystal and talked about our days. And when the meal was over I gave her the gift, the ancient, priceless violin and she played it for us both, all smiles as I undressed her assiduously, windows open and sun pouring in, both on top of the world.
Afterwards, laying in bed, holding each other, we both saw it for the first time. Almost imperceptible in the far distance and yet clear enough that we knew to take out the binoculars are look more closely – and there it was. The big bad wolf.
Time, it turned out, had never truly stopped. Perhaps time can never really stop, the determined bastard. Instead it only slowed down to a crawl, so slow it didn’t seem to move at all. And yet, the signs were there, spread out over four years. Those people almost at the exits in Saks should have given it away. Hell, the clocks should have given it away, but to be honest, I stopped looking at the clocks years ago.
But now there could be no doubt. Sonya and I turned to eachother, concern broiling between us, certain now that our bizarre vacation from terrible reality would not last forever, must soon come to an end in fact.
Off in the distance, travelling slow and steady as a flying tortoise, we spied the intercontinental ballistic missile, the Russian flag painted proudly on its side, scorched from the heat of reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, headed straight for us.
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