Chapter Eleven

Thong sat on the couch, read for awhile, and then fell asleep in place. I sat at my computer, thought about Sue, and decided to write another Romance Novel called "Lies." The Vulcan called me a woosy because I made the conscious decision not to enter into the minds of other people, but I thought a person's thoughts were private. Besides, everybody in the world had a set of memories based on their lives. Some people endured abuse their whole life, and when they thought about their abuse, they didn't always view the abuser in a negative light. When a Deceiver entered into the mind of a victim of abuse, he absorbed the victim's feelings on the matter. I didn't like that at all. I tried not to enter into a mind unwelcomed, but the number of abused people in Freeland alone was off the charts.

I had already made up my mind that I would be with Sue at the Carnival, but at the same time, I had some reservations. Honestly, after all my training with the Deceivers and the League of Assassins, I didn't know the first thing about protecting my heart. My mind kept playing with the idea that I could redeem my ex-wife, that I could undo what years of corruption did. She admitted that she hurt people, sold drugs, and killed people for stealing her drugs. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that my ex-wife killed people.

I made some Ramen Noodles for Thong with some Kimchi as a side dish. I woke him up off the couch, and he enjoyed the meal. It was truly tasty, and we ate it all the time. It wasn't a traditional Vietnamese treat, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

The Carnival was fast approaching, and all I had to do was sit by Sue while our son ate cotton candy and popcorn. I didn't have to be intimate with her. I think my main issue was I didn't know how to tell Thong that his momma wouldn't be a major part of his life. I took care of him for ten years without her, but at the same time, I knew he desired to be in his momma's life. In a certain way, I felt like I was being too harsh on her. Maybe the reason I had a hard time accepting Sue was that I put her on a pedestal all those years. I accidentally turned her into a princess in my mind.

Thong sat on the opposite end of the table, ate his Ramen while looking at a movie on his tablet computer. I looked at him for a moment and thought about the horrors of drug addiction in the community. Honestly, I didn't consider cannabis as an actual drug like I did with Green Light. I read over a status report on Garfield High and the drug culture, and from what Mister Pierce put in his report, it looked like Green Light had already wiggled its way into the hallways of the school. According to his report, the drug consisted of PCP and crack cocaine, and after one hit, the user was automatically addicted. Unfortunately, I hadn't seen one segment about the drug on the local or national news feed.

With the way the drugs infiltrated Freeland, I believed the cops were involved. In fact, I'm almost sure the cops were involved with putting the drugs on the street. I've asked myself a million times what would happen if guns, drugs, and alcohol weren't flowing freely through the community. We wouldn't need cops if not for all the alcoholism happening in the city. I helped form the committee that investigated Downing Chemical, and I still don't know who dumped all the waste on the fringes of Freeland. I fear that one day none of the water in the area will be viable for consumption. I've studied the national average on cancer rates, and we're like fifteen points over the national average.

I thought about asking my father to intervene in Freeland's problems, but I knew he wouldn't use his resources to help out such a dismal town. Besides, Freeland was the responsibility of the United States, and if drugs, guns, and chemical waste infected the town, then it was because the government wanted drugs, guns, and chemical waste to infect the town. It was really that simple.

It was around ten o'clock in the evening when I put Thong to bed, and he looked at me while I stood next to the door of his room. "I was hoping you still loved momma. I was hoping we'll be a family," he said softly.

I always tried to be honest with my son, but in this case, it was hard. The relationship between Sue and I was brittle like ceramic tiles. "Sue and I won't get back together, son. She's a lot different than the woman I once married."

He pulled the covers over his head and didn't say anything else to me. When I turned out the lights to his room, he said, "Bye" in the cruelest way possible. I didn't know how to react to his terse language. I decided to go back to the living room, watch a little television, and possibly cook some popcorn. It was completely dark outside, but early for the club, and I thought about heading to Metropolis where they had clubs for people above the age of thirty. I didn't enjoy partying with a bunch of people in their twenties because they often liked to start fights. I wanted to be around a more mature crowd, and Metropolis had clubs where older people partied.

I went back to Thong's room, took him to my Jeep, and we drove to Metropolis to my second home. I often stayed in my apartment complex because I enjoyed living in Freeland. When I actually thought about it, I only lived in Freeland because Sue's Bistro was right down the street from my apartment building. I think I need to be honest about that. But at the same time, I planned on doing a little drinking, and I couldn't afford to leave my son by himself for too long. When I walked into my second home, I turned off the alarm, and then placed him in his bed.

"Are we going to stay in Metropolis for now on?" Thong asked with a grimace.

"I'm thinking about it," I said with a smile. "I still love your momma, but we've grown too far apart, son. It's just that simple."

I put on my nice, black suit, some shiny shoes, and walked to an uppity club on the southside of Metropolis. The Star Nightclub was located in a tall, three-story building. When I first purchased my Metropolis home, I visited the place a few times, but I didn't engage any of the women. I sat back, relaxed, and had a few drinks.

The club was painted black and had Star Nightclub written in bold letters on the front of it. The line to get into the club stretched all the way around the building, and people of all calibers paid a lot of money to enter. I stood in the back of the long line for a moment but grew tired of the wait. When I walked up to the bouncer, I deceived his mind by making him think I was a very important person. He waved me into the club like I owned the place.

I walked up to the bar, ordered a few drinks for my table, and took a seat. From the looks of it, I believe the majority of people in the club were between thirty and forty. Every now and again, and often, a lady strolled by my table, smiled, but never sat with me. Honestly, I was tormented because of all the skinny girls, with skinny ideals of beauty, and full of skinny dreams. I hated that every magazine, television show, and media outlet told all the women in the club that skinny was the ideal woman. The Asian girls were too skinny. The black girls were too skinny. The white girls were too skinny. Every girl was too skinny. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning, and I knew I had to get up for the Carnival. I drank my last drink when a frumpy Asian girl walked into the bar. She wore a white dress that traveled past her knees. She wasn't fat or skinny, but a nice in between the two.

She sat with a group of Asian girls on the other side of the room. I saw her from the time she came through the front door, over to the bar, and then sat in a booth across the floor. She had a frumpy, very Asian boxy look that I loved. Her shoulder length, rich black hair was cut in a bowl style, but long in the back. She probably didn't have an opportunity to rest her feet before I interrupted her. As soon as she sat down, I headed straight for her table like she was my favorite person on the planet. When I stood in front of her table, she immediately put up her left hand to stop me where I stood.

"Listen, I'm just here for a few drinks. I know you're into FAGS, but I'm just here to relax," she said, "I'm not here to entertain you."

I almost started laughing, but I didn't. I simply walked out the club, down the street, and over to my house. When she referred to herself as a FAG, that almost made me laugh because that was the name I coined for frumpy Asian girl in my first seven books. In twenty ten, when some of my literature grew in popularity on American soil, the LGBT community attacked me over the word. I received multiple death threats from people screaming, "That's our word." Often, I heard Asian students referring to themselves as FAGs when I taught classes at the community college. Unfortunately, the same word that the Asians loved ended my college teaching career because the LGBT community said I was being insensitive.

I stopped using the word after I wrote my seventh book because I had time to reflect on the issue. At first, I merely thought the LGBT community was picking on me, but after I sat in on a meeting over the word, I understood the pain I caused them. In my last three books, I made sure to scrub any mention of the word out of my literature, but since the books were a phenomenon in Asia, the term spread like the flu.

I remembered going to the Star Nightclub many times just to drink, but never to find a suitable mate, and now that I think about it, I made a stupid move. I'm not sure what I was thinking because my mind wouldn't allow me to fall in love with a girl I met in the club.

The next morning…

I fed Thong some orange juice, bacon, eggs, and toast on the morning of the Carnival, and for some strange reason, he decided to wear his all black, shorts-pants suit. He looked like a Blasian Eddie Munster when he came to the breakfast table. We ate breakfast in our Metropolis home, and then I dressed in a relaxing business suit. We traveled back to the slums, checked on the apartment building, and then walked down the street to the Carnival. It was about nine o'clock in the morning when I came upon a badly damaged car with a body on the side of it. Immediately, I called the police about the situation and sent Thong ahead to the Carnival.

Due to my telepathic powers, I had the ability to enter the mind of a dead person for up to three days after death. I looked at him for a moment, and then when I went into the young man's mind, I saw him put a bullet in the back of a kid's head. I ascertained that his name was Ray Jenkins, but everybody referred to him as Ray Ray. In addition, I saw that he pulled a gun on a kid named, Bay, a metahuman with great powers. It looked like Bay struck the vehicle with his fist, and caused the young man's death. It was a case of self-defense, and when the police arrived on the scene, they quickly cleaned it up and didn't ask me any questions.

Later in the morning…

When I entered the park, it was pretty much-jammed pack with people standing in front of the stage. I approached Sue's booth, and she was explaining to Jennifer Pierce, the youngest daughter of Jefferson Pierce, about being the girl in all my books. I never asked her what she thought about my books, but I could tell she enjoyed telling people she was the girl in all my works. Apparently, the young woman didn't believe my ex-wife, so I confirmed it.

"Yeah. All my books are about her," I said. Of course, she looked somewhat befuddled about it, but beauty was one of those subjective things. My wife was the epitome of the frumpy Asian girl, and I thought she was beautiful, but when I discussed her beauty, it wasn't to demean the beauty of other women.

In my college years, I received a lot of gripes over dating Sue from other Asian women. When I talked about how pretty she was to me, I had more than a few Asian women ask, "Are you high?" One petite Asian girl said, "There are two types of Asians: big head Asians and small head Asians. You're in love with a big head Asian." That offended me because until this very day I looked at Sue, and I don't see her as a big head or a small head Asian, I only see her as the beautiful girl I married, that I loved, and that my father forced to leave me. After Jennifer walked over to the cotton candy machine, I looked at Sue for a moment and laughed.

"What?" She asked.

"I was just remembering that time you told me there are two types of Asian girls," I said.

"Yeah. I'm a big head Asian girl," she replied.

"Yeah. I still find that offensive," I said.

Suddenly, a tingle happened in my mind, and then JJ spoke to me. "I'm about to take Peppermint to the hospital after this last song, but I will still be in Freeland for a few more days. Don't worry about talking to your father. I will discuss Moxia with him."

"Okay," I said telepathically. It amazed me that the gothic rocker spoke to me telepathically while singing at the same time, and didn't miss a beat. Right after his friend, Vera, sang, "Like a Virgin," he told Freeland that he loved them, but his fiancee was about to go into labor. On Sue's Asian scale from big and small heads, Peppermint was a small head Asian girl. According to Sue, a medium sized Asian head didn't exist.

I looked around for a moment and saw Thong through the crowd of people. He was wearing his Eddie Munster's uniform and smacking on some cotton candy. "Look at our boy. He's eating way too much candy."

"Let him have his fun, Nick," She said. "You're such a curmudgeon when it comes to him." She kind of laughed for a moment. "He doesn't need so many constraints."

"He's top in his classes at his school," I said with a smile. "I'm an excellent parent."

"Our boy is an A student?" She asked.

"Yep," I said.

I sat in Sue's booth for a moment, listened to the high school rock band play, and they had a nice sound, but they weren't anything like JJ. He played like he actually owned the stage. But the band from Garland High played like they were renting the stage, and the rent payment was late. Sue was so busy selling Malcolm X t-shirts that she didn't have time to talk. Besides, I was too busy using my Thong-dar to think about Sue. Everywhere my son went, my eyes locked on that general area to make sure he was okay. That boy purchased three caramel apples, and I almost hopped up to confront him about it, but he gave one to me and one to his momma. "Thank you, son."

"You're welcome, daddy," he said with a smile. He wandered back into the crowd, and I kind of laughed for a moment. I actually thought he planned on eating three caramel apples. He wasn't a big kid, but when it came to candy, he didn't have any self-control.

I loved caramel apples, and the ones at the carnival tasted great. Something grabbed Sue's attention, and I automatically looked over to make sure Thong was okay, and it was that kid, Bay, with a group of other guys. He looked somewhat distraught as he walked with several rough looking young men. I saw what the young boy could do, and I felt sorry for anybody who tried to roughhouse him. He had the ability to punch through a tank. They appeared to be leaving the park, and about a minute after they meandered down the road, Jennifer left.

"I'll be right back," I said, "Please watch out for our son." I ran across the street, into an alley, and then I leaped into the air and flew over the neighborhood. Rarely, I took flight because I wanted to live my life as a normal, everyday black man, with a normal, everyday black man haircut, with a normal, everyday black man house, and do normal, everyday black man things. If I flew around the city, I wasn't being normal. If I read a person's mind, I wasn't being normal. If I lived as a Deceiver, then I lived apart from the black experience, and that wasn't normal. I landed on top of my apartment complex, peered down at the action on the ground, and I saw the gangster shoot Bay in the chest. The action happened so fast that I didn't have time to react. Jennifer lit up the entire area with an electrical current that came from her fingers, and she did it twice. I felt so badly for Bay until he climbed back to his feet. When I looked at him for a moment, a smidgen of deja vu hit me. I lay on the roof in the supine position and thought through some things. Supergirl, Superman, and Vulcan can actually take a powerful blow, and it not hurt them. But over one hundred and twenty years ago, another super being existed named John Henry. When he stood between man and machine, the Deceivers stepped in and poisoned him. He had several children, but his bloodline went into obscurity through the years. The Deceivers feared that one day his bloodline would compete with their bloodline, and cause a war. So, they used their abilities to kill the man, and if Bay was of that bloodline, it meant the prophecy had a chance of coming true.

I flew back, landed a block away, and then walked over to the park. I was only gone for a few hours, but the police crept into the area in full combat gear. Once I entered the park, I noticed hundreds of cops intermingled with the crowd while wearing their police uniforms. I'm not sure who decided cops roaming the grounds in tactical gear was a good idea, but it wasn't. In fact, it was disrespectful to the entire event. It was shameful that the Freeland government treated black people like animals, especially when everybody was having a good time.

When I sat in Sue's booth, I noticed Thong stood directly behind two Lanterns. It had been a while-some twenty years since I met a Lantern personally. As I was about to enter into the mind of the woman Lantern, JJ flooded me with information about the birth of his child. It caught me completely off guard, but I felt his joy like it was the birth of my own son. When I looked over at Jennifer and Bay, they absconded from the park, and I thought it had to do with the amount of police presence. Thong ran over to me, and asked, "Can I have one hundred dollars?"

I looked at him for a moment, and asked, "What happened to the one hundred I gave you this morning?" He looked at me with his almond-shaped eyes for a moment, and then I looked past him and saw all the little kids eating candy apples. "How can I enjoy a candy apple when so many people around me who can't afford to have one?"