Vignette #3

12 August/22 August 2011 – The Right Person for the Job

Author's note: this vignette is a crossover with another Marvel property. So be it.


Nick Fury was there in the hallway, pacing, when Tony Stark opened the door and came out of the other room. "Well?"

Tony made a face. "Let's go sit down someplace."

"I don't need you stalling …"

"I didn't say 'stall,' Nick, I said 'sit.' Totally different verb."

Nick shrugged, and together they walked down the hall to the workout room, where Tony landed on a weight bench, rested his elbows on his knees and sighed heavily.

Nick cocked his head to one side. "You sure you're all right?"

"Nothing a full night's sleep won't fix. The evening before I have a 4 a.m. flight out here from California, that's the evening Jamey gets colic." He shook his head and smiled wearily. "Should've named her Murphy."

"You could've let Pepper handle it. And why don't you have a nanny? You can afford it."

"I did let Pepper handle it – after I left. And we had to cashier the nanny two days ago when we caught her stealing; we're still waiting on the agency for a new one."

Nick nodded. "My sympathies. But I didn't bring you all the way to Washington to hear about your parenting crises. What's your verdict on Rogers? Can you help?"

Tony took a moment before answering. "My verdict is that he's handling this about as well as anyone could be expected to. You basically transport a guy from 67 years ago, to where everyone he ever knew is either gone or close, to a completely different culture, and then screw up the transition just enough to send him running for the streets – no offense …"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Nick replied irritably.

"… anyway, the guy's mind is going to get messed up a little. It's to his credit that he's not far more messed-up than he is. Given enough information and coaching, he'll be able to function at what passes for normal in 2011 without much problem. Certainly he'll be able to function as part of the Avengers."

"And can you give him the information and the coaching?"

Another deep breath. "Sorry, no."

Nick waited.

Tony did the same.

Nick blinked first. "That sounded like a refusal, Tony."

"In the literal sense, I suppose it is. Mostly, it's a recognition of my own limitations."

Nick almost laughed. "So you admit you have limitations!"

"Ha ha. Two problems with asking me to do what you want. One is that I don't have the time. You want Rogers brought up to speed by, say, the end of this year, you're going to need someone to spend several hours a day with him, almost every day, filling him in on what he needs to know, helping him set up the mental furniture. I've got a multi-billion-dollar business to run, I've got other projects I need to keep up with, and now I've got a wife, and a daughter with colic. I can't be camped out here in a bunker in Alexandria for the next several months walking this poor guy through the '50s."

Nick nodded, then asked, "and the other problem?"

"The other problem is that even if I did have the time to do the job, I'm not the person you'd want doing the job."

Nick motioned for him to go on.

"Look, you and I had our whole lives to pick up all the cultural markers, all the mores, all the reference points that we make sense of the world with. We got to deal with them one day at a time. But he doesn't have any of it. It's not just the obvious historical stuff – I could give him a high-school level rundown of major events from Omaha Beach to the present in a few hours, off the top of my head. But if he has to go out and live in that world we and our parents created, that poor kid is shafted! 'Cause U.S. History and World History are the least of his problems. It's the culture that he'll have to cope with – and he's two-thirds of a century behind."

"The culture?"

"Nick, think it through. Forget the Internet - he didn't have television where he was from! He didn't have LP records, he didn't have microwave ovens, he didn't have transistors or the polio vaccine or the NBA or the space program or … or rock & roll! When he last checked in, Glenn Miller was at the top of the charts – you throw Jay-Z and Kanye doing "H.A.M." at him and he's got no perspective to grasp it! How will he handle watching, um, Black Swan, when his most recent moviegoing experience was something like Going My Way? Does he even know the Dodgers aren't in Brooklyn anymore?"

Nick suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Yeah, we, uh … had to brief him on that. It's the only way we could keep him from running out to Ebbets Field to catch a game."

"Now that is a fan. But more than anything else, that's the gap you'll have to fill in if you want to keep him from losing his mind. And for that, you need a pop culture expert – not just someone who knows the basic history, but someone who knows the details, and how they fit together, and what were the consequences. And who knows them backward and forward. You need a specialist, a guru in that. And Nick … that's not my specialty. Engineering, I can do. Science, I can do. Weapons, I'd rather not, but I can do. The Billboard charts or the Academy Awards … no, you need someone better than me."

"A pop culture guru …" Nick was surprised, but giving it some thought.

"Someone who knows the music, the films, the shows, the fads, the trends, and knows how to present it. Someone who's diplomatic enough to deal with somebody in full-on man-out-of-time mode." Tony snapped his fingers as another though occurred to him. "And female. The guru should be female."

"Okaaaay … and why is that?"

"Easy. What are the two biggest changes in American culture over the last seven decades? Not counting technological ones?"

"Race relations is one, obviously …"

"Obviously – but I get the sense he has a pretty good handle on that. He has no problem with taking orders from you. And if I recall, wasn't his team the first integrated unit in the U.S. Army?"

Now Nick was smiling and nodding. "That's what Poppa told me."

"So I … wait, what do you mean, Poppa told you?"

"My maternal grandfather. Gabe Jones – he was on Rogers' team."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "I did not know that."

"Listening to Poppa's stories was where I came up with the idea for the Avengers Initiative. And incidentally, there was a Japanese kid from Fresno on his team, too. But yeah, I agree – he shouldn't have much problem with the racial climate."

"Just wean him off using the term 'Negro' and yeah, he's good. It's the other change that'll be tough, and that's gender equality. I saw how he reacted when that nurse talked to him several minutes ago – he was shell-shocked. He's entered a world where Donna Reed lost the culture war and Rosie the Riveter won it, where women not only can achieve anything a man can that doesn't involve heavy lifting or running a ten-second 100-meter dash, they expect to, and will get in your face if you try to deny them the opportunity. And according to you, he's probably never even had a steady girlfriend. How does he grasp Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State? For that matter, how does he deal with a very attractive – and very deadly – young lady on the same squad as him?"

"You mean Natasha."

"I mean Natasha. I mean Maria Hill. I mean Adele Carey, if I can ever convince you to give her a tryout …"

"I still want to give your Pegasus gadgets a few years to make sure they don't wear out on her …"

"… but my point is, having an intelligent, able woman working with him on a daily basis will ease that transition immensely. Especially if she's more patient and understanding than, say, you or I."

Nick chewed his lower lip for a few seconds. "Okay, I see the merits. So who do I need to get?"

Tony smirked. "I've, uh, got someone in mind. If she's interested, of course …"


And that, I guess, is where I come in. Because that afternoon I get this weird phone call ...

"Hello?"

"What was the top- rated TV program from the 1954-55 season?"

"I Love Lucy. What …?"

"Last Beatles song to reach #1 on the Billboard charts?"

"Um, The Long and Winding Road. Look …"

"1968, Roy Scheider wins the Oscar for Best Actor for In the Heat of the Night. Who were the other four nominees?"

"Okay … Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Spencer Tracy – posthumously – and … mmm, not Rex Harrison, not Finney, not Poitier … oh, Warren Beatty! Now, would …"

"In 1963, Betty Friedan put out The Feminine Mystique. Same year, Robert Heinlein …"

"… released Podkayne of Mars, which thanks to Friedan was outdated pretty much the day it hit the streets. Still one of Heinlein's best juveniles, despite that. And would you mind, Tony Stark, telling me why we're playing Trivial Pursuit over the phone with no advance warning?"

"That was a test. You passed, just like I knew you would. And the government has a job for you, if you're interested."

"A job that involves knowing who won Best Actor forty-some years ago?" I was incredulous. Wouldn't you be?

But the answer was yes, among other things, and the money sounded good, and I was getting bored with my current job in Hollywood anyway, and was hoping to move back to the East Coast. (I was raised in Virginia, and I missed it almost every day I was in California. Or in Rhode Island, for that matter.) And Tony thought I might be able to get a book out of it if I played my cards right and the feds didn't decide to hit everything in the near vicinity with a "classified" stamp. So ten days later, here I was, on a four-month sabbatical from my regular gig, parking my rental car in the lot of a nondescript office building within spitting distance of the Pentagon.

However this job went, I had to admit as I smelled the clean air, there was one obvious benefit. It had carried me back to old Virginny …

Tony had only given me two pieces of advice when I accepted the job: "dress conservatively" and "don't put any moves on the guy." The first one made sense – a kid from 1944 wasn't going to be used to seeing a lot of leg or décolletage – so today I dressed in a beige business suit with the lowest hemline I had, along with a white blouse and a string of pearls. June Cleaver Enters the Work Force.

The second one, I initially found insulting; who was Tony Stark, of all people, to lecture someone else on their libido? But once I got Steve Rogers' dossier, I saw his point – they weren't entirely sure he'd ever been kissed. I was going to be teaching entertainment, culture and society to The 90-Year-Old Virgin. Which meant I would have to keep my (admittedly active) hormones in check, so I didn't blow the poor fellow away.

Oh well. I regret that I have but one chastity belt to wear for my country …

I was met in the lobby by a guy in a "Men in Black" suit who was a dead ringer for (of all people) Julia Louis-Dreyfus' husband from The New Adventures of Old Christine. He greeted me by name, introduced himself as Agent Phil Coulson, apologized for Nick Fury (the head honcho, and my direct report) being away on business, and asked if I wanted to meet "the subject." My immediate thought was that somebody had read too much B.F. Skinner, but I let it go and said sure, why not. It'd be nice to meet Rogers informally, before we started the educational heavy lifting the next day. (And heavy lifting in more than one sense – I'd probably bought forty books and a hundred DVDs and CD-ROMs with me, to make sure I had all the bases covered.)

Coulson leads me to the elevator, and we drop three stories before exiting. That's kind of unusual around D.C. – since the metro area is built on a reclaimed swamp, it's not considered safe to build down too far. I asked Agent Coulson about the wisdom of the setup, but he just smiled wryly and replied, "we're part of the Department of Homeland Security, ma'am. Wisdom has nothing to do with it."

I'll never understand Beltway humor.

We walked down a hallway to a door with a window in it, on the other side of which appeared to be a small workout gym. "Shecky" Coulson excused himself, and I pushed the door open and went in …

… oh my.

Lying on a bench, dressed only in a pair of shorts, was what looked like the next stage of human evolution. Tall, beautiful face, wonderfully proportioned, muscles in places most men didn't have places and not an ounce of fat anywhere. Wow. I might just need a chastity belt, at that - one with a combination lock ...

It didn't help matters that he appeared to be bench-pressing about 450 pounds. Or is it still called "bench-pressing" if you're doing it one-handed?

I was pretty sure my face had returned to its normal color and my pupils had un-dilated by the time he replaced the bar and noticed me. "Can I help you, ma'am?"

Keep your cool, girl! "Are you Captain Steve Rogers, United States Army?"

"Yes, ma'am." He threw a towel over his shoulder and walked up to me; I made sure to keep eye contact. "How can I help you?"

"Actually, it's the other way around. I'm your 'cultural acclimation tutor.'" I'll also never understand the Beltway fascination with bloated titles, but hey, when in Rome …

Rogers smiled shyly. He had a nice smile, too ... focus, Po, focus. "You're, uh, here to fill Rip van Winkle in on what happened while he was sleeping?"

"More or less." I smiled back and extended a hand for him to shake. "Christine Everhart, on leave from Vanity Fair …"