It took a week and a half to get settled. Between runs to the furniture store to hand-pick everything, and then putting on the air of merely-mortal Bob Reynolds, struggling to lift a leather loveseat into the downstairs den, Bob still found the entire situation amusing.
This is how the other half lives, Sentry, he'd heard the voices say once or twice in those ten days. He laughed, and busied himself elsewhere. Appointing the house to be in his order. Giving the Mustang the car wash it deserved, before October turned into November and it got too cold to do anything.
He allowed himself the meager enjoyment of using his powers to paint the living room and the stairway walls the color of blood. The super-speed and flight made the process go faster, he had to admit. Except that while he was doing it he was moderately concerned as to what people, looking through the windows as they drove or walked past, would think at the sight of a flying man painting the living room walls the color of blood.
The house had stood unfurnished for some time—Bauer the realtor was mum as to just how long—and Bob took to improving it, to making it as he wanted it, with gusto. In his free moments in New York, he'd been a nominal clock repairman. The job had been part-time on a good day, and had given him satisfaction. Had kept him busy. And brought honest income between himself and Lindy—the kind of income he could be proud of. The kind he could work for. The kind that didn't merely come from stock dividends or Lindy's ever-reliable eBay dalliances.
At the end of the first ten days, all of them spent living the Spartan life in the guest bedroom upstairs, the house was ready. Furnished. The power company had started up the utilities again at Bob's haggled price, and he considered it a small victory. During those ten days he slept little, mostly as a matter of course, and found himself doing more work than imagined on the house. He had knocked out a wall in the back room, making the dining room slightly larger, and retiled the master bath upstairs.
It was near midnight, the Friday before Thanksgiving, when he finally washed his hands of home improvement. "Any more work we do," he said to no one as he trotted up the stairs, "and we might just end up rebuilding the damn place." He was pleased with his own ingenuity.
He stopped. He closed his eyes and focused his breathing. Came into himself. Like Dr Worth advised.
There is no we anymore.
Just…Bob.
(Just me)
Damn.
His eyes opened on reflex.
You're still troubled, Sentry.
He started upstairs again, and pulled off his shirt and denims, paint-caked with streaks and spots of red, kicked off his workboots and left them at the top of the stairs. The clothes fell out of his hand and came to rest lazily on the hallway runner: a dark green affair overlaying darker oak-stained flooring.
He clenched his teeth and went into the master bath.
(Why did you come back now?)
You needed the wind taken out of your sails.
He let the shower run for an hour. In that time, the profuse steam had billowed out from behind the cloth curtain and blurred perception.
The steam made its desired effect. The room had become a sauna. At its center, Bob sat, nude, with his legs akimbo. He closed his eyes, and righted his posture. Focused his breathing again.
The air was heavy and damp. Warm. The marble fixtures had absorbed and held the heat.
He felt heavy. The humidity seemed to collect on his skin and gave it a grimy and disgusting texture; all the filth was seeping out. Combined with sweat and accumulated grime on the surface, the ambient water vapor became thin-layered grease. Bob pondered that this was what it was like to take a bath. And then, the small consolation that he could at least sweat and get dirty, like normal people could.
That was worth something.
He felt everything. It was part of the meditation. His sinuses were clear, and every breath was a full one, and his hair lay thick and matted against his skull and forehead.
Beads of sweat formed behind his hairline, under his arms, and trickled slowly, painstakingly, down his face and body under gravity's influence. He felt one form at the back of his neck, and traced its fall down his spine, following perfectly the curve of his vertebrae. When it slowed and dissipated at his lumbar, he arched backwards to alleviate the awkward sensation.
Stupid.
(Focus)
He took an exasperated breath and began again.
His vertebrae popped and his spine and body settled, and signaled the onset of the next step. He had occupied comfortable physical space, and now had to move on to actualization.
It was part of the meditation.
The tiled floor was wet and hot, and did not burn.
His shoulders moved slowly, comfortably, and followed the rise and fall of his respiration. He visualized himself sitting there. Covered in a thin and infective layer of sweat and grime and dead skin. And yet…
You're at rest. Bob.
That's right.
Bob.
That was your name, wasn't it?
(Is my name. Is)
He opened his eyes and stared forward at the closed door and the tall mirror affixed to the back. Through the steam he saw himself in the mirror. His skin began to take on a reddish hue, and he felt hot for once.
Yes. For right now, everything made sense. Everything had been put in order. He felt…right.
He felt the heat. In every part of him, he felt the heat, and welcomed it.
He stared forward, hunched ever so slightly, his gaze fixed on the reflection staring back at him.
Who are you?
He smiled, and the reflection mocked him by doing the same. He wiped a clingy strand of hair from his face, and stood.
"Bob Reynolds."
It came out evenly. Smooth. Assured. "And you're nothing at all."
He showered quickly, washing away the sweat and the grime, pulled on a pair of boxers, and made for the bedroom. In the morning he would make breakfast. As he slid into bed and pulled the chain on the bedside lamp, he was already making up the menu. Two strips of bacon. Denver omelet. Maybe even a Belgian Waffle. Orange juice. And a single cup of coffee.
He laid flat and put his hands behind his head. Looked up at the ceiling.
He didn't need to do any of this.
The house was a token, as was the very act of eating. He didn't need to eat anymore. Didn't need to sleep. Didn't even need to be indoors.
He momentarily found himself wondering if the absence of those things in his life had been self-inflicted. If he had willingly denied himself such creature comforts. Faced with the power of a million exploding suns, the change to regularity—to living as the other half did—was something he could accept.
He turned on his side and contented himself with watching the minutes tick by on the clock radio.
At 2:30 am, his eyes fluttered once, for the last time, and then closed.
He woke early the next morning and went to the kitchen to set about a large breakfast spread. It was industrious of him to do it, and even a little unnecessary, but he enjoyed it nonetheless. A small television on the countertop played the news and opening bell stock tickers. Bob was engrossed by the presentation, and worked through his breakfast. Clockwise from the sausage, to the eggs, to the bacon and then back the orange juice at eleven o'clock.
He set to work immediately cleaning dishes, and when that was done, sat back at the table and stared out the bay window toward the front of the house.
The neighbors were Myra and Daniel Walter Healey, an elderly couple that had lived on Mockingbird since time immemorial. Myra was a stocky and jovial woman with a perfectly circular perm who cooked quite well. She saw fit to deliver Bob her own 'potato kaboom' the very first day he'd moved in. It was scalloped potatoes with jalapenos, and it was unappetizing at the very least, but he'd sent her a thank-you card with his own scribbled signature inside—as he had done with Bauer The Nervous Realtor.
So while Myra was hunched over her beloved rose bushes with scrutiny, as if praying to them, the husband, Daniel Walter (Bob daren't call him anything but; Daniel Walter was how he'd introduced himself and commanded Bob to call him the same) was sweeping the driveway and putting more effort into it than he needed by using a cornbroom. He wore a shortsleeve button down, despite the briskness of a 50 degree October day, and it had only three buttons buttoned. He was sweating profusely, and the material stuck to a bloated and utterly red chest—the byproduct, Bob suspected, of poorly treated hypertension. He walked with a slight forward hunch, too, and took small steps as if each was his delicated last--which probably meant he'd had hip surgery in his recent geological past, too.
Bob sat back in the chair and took a drink of coffee.
It all looked so strange to him. The spectacle of quiet life. It was a welcome change, he finally reasoned. To see the day start off not with monster attacks but with honest yard work.
Yes. There was something to the sharp geometry of housing planned along perpendiculars and parallels. The street ended on one side in a cul-de-sac, and to Bob that meant that this was, in a few ways, the end of the line. Where fun and dreams went to die, perhaps. But it didn't seem like a particularly dismal end. The neighbors he had seen and graciously accepted welcoming casseroles from seemed…happy.
He hoped he was happy too.
He polished off the coffee and went upstairs to get dressed.
Later in the afternoon Bob found himself shopping for clothes. He'd left Manhattan with precious little and so decided—needed—to expand the wardrobes. Brooks Brothers seemed to have he was looking for, particularly as winter was on its way. He strolled into the store, still upbeat from a night's sleep and his morning observations, and caught the attention of the first associate he saw: a short blonde wearing a V-neck mauve sweater. He glanced at her name tag and made the act look inconspicuous. Sherry. Her name was Sherry.
He was dressed as if he belonged there, and when he went in had gone straight for the sales desk smiling, purposefully showing as many teeth as he could. When she asked him if there was anything he needed help finding, he thought he heard the voices again.
Of course there is, you stupid little—
"Yes," he said quickly and held up a hundred-dollar bill. "You can help me spend this."
Sherry's eyes, dark brown circles, went to the bill and locked on it. Her lips, colored the same shade of brown, curled into a smile. She set down the pile of markups she was carrying, and started towards Men's Wear. "Follow me."
He cocked his head and fell in line. "Uh, my name's…Bob." He said it as an afterthought, and it came out lazily.
Sherry asked, "So what can I help you with Bob?"
"Well." He purported to look confounded. "I find myself in need of a sizeable enough, uh, winter catalogue. Sweaters, jackets. You know. Things of that nature."
She gave another thin smile. "I do."
Bob left Brooks Brothers with five hundred dollars worth of clothing—boots, another wool jacket and a blood-red scarf to cap it all. Sherry threw in a bowtie for good measure, a green and navy plaid affair, saying it was worth Bob's time to try one out at least once in his life.
Continued
