Rodgers's light-brown eyes stared without seeing as he thought once more about his own superhero. Charlie had been a man who cherished life, yet he hadn't hesitated to give it up to save a wounded enemy. What he'd done enobled them all— not just the close-knit members of Striker and the seventy-eight employees of Op-Center, but each and every citizen of the nation Charlie loved. His sacrifice was a testament to the compassion that was a hallmark of that nation.
Rodgers's eyes fogged with tears, and he distracted himself by thumbing through the comic books again.
He had been shocked that comic books were twenty times more expensive than when he was reading them— $2.50 instead of twelve cents. He'd gone out with just a couple of bucks in his pocket and had to charge the damn things. But what bothered him more was that he couldn't tell the comic-book good guys from the bad guys. Superman had long hair and a mean temper, Batman was a borderline psychotic, Robin was no longer clean-cut Dick Grayson but some brat, and a cigarette-smoking sociopath named Wolverine got his jollies ripping people apart with his claws.
If Melissa doesn't approve of SweetTarts, these sure aren't going to go down real easy.
Rodgers dropped the stack of comic books on the floor, beside his slippers. He wouldn't give these to a kid.
Maybe I should wait and buy him a Hardy Boys book, he thought, though he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to see what had become of Frank and Joe. The brothers probably had lip rings, choppers, and attitude. Like Rodgers, their father Fenton was probably prematurely gray and dating a succession of marriage-minded women.
Hell, Rodgers decided. I'll just stop at a toy store and pick up an action figure. That, and maybe a chess set or some kind of educational videotape. Something for the hands and something for the mind.
Rodgers absently rubbed his high-ridged nose, then reached for the remote. He sat up on his pillows, punched on the TV, and surfed through vividly colored vacuous new movies and washed-out vacuous old sitcoms. He finally settled on an old-movie channel that was showing something with Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolfman. Chaney was pleading with a young man in a lab coat to cure him, to relieve his suffering.
"I know how you feel," Rodgers muttered.
Chaney was lucky, though. His pain was usually ended by a silver bullet. In Rodgers's case, as with most survivors of war, crime, or genocide, the suffering diminished but never died. It was especially painful now, in the small hours of the night, when the only distractions were the drone of the TV and the intrusion of headlights from passing cars. As Sir Fulke Greville once noted in an elegy, "Silence augmenteth grief." Rodgers shut off the TV and switched off the light. He bunched his pillows under him and lay on his belly.
He knew he couldn't change the way he felt. But he also knew he couldn't afford to surrender to sorrow. There was a widow and her son to think about, plus the sad task of finding a new commander for Striker, and he had to run Op- Center for the rest of the week that Paul Hood would be in Europe. And today was going to be a low point on the job, what Op-Center's attorney Lowell Coffey II accurately described as "the welcoming of the Fox to the warren." In the night, in that silence, it always seemed like too much to deal with. But then Rodgers thought about the people who didn't live long enough to become oppressed by life's burdens, and those burdens seemed less crushing.
Thinking that he could understand why a middle-aged Batman or anyone else might go a little nuts at times, Rodgers finally floated into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jody's mouth twisted as she entered the trailer and took a look at the prop list.
"Great," she said under her breath. "Just great." The good-natured exasperation which had marked her conversation with Mr. Buba was tinged with genuine concern now. The item she needed was hanging in the tiny bathroom of the prop trailer. Getting to it around the clutter of tables and trunks would require delicate maneuvering. The way her luck was running today, Lankford would print the scene he was shooting after one take and move on to the next before she returned.
Placing the heavy clipboard on a table, Jody started out. Though it would have been faster to crawl under the tables, she was sure that if she did someone would see her.
At graduation, when Professor Ruiz had informed her that she'd gotten this internship, he'd said that Hollywood might try to discourage her ideas, her creativity, and her enthusiasm. But he'd promised that they would heal and return. He'd warned her, however, never to sacrifice her dignity. Once surrendered, that could not be reacquired. So she walked rather than crawled, deftly edging, leaning, and twisting her way through the maze.
According to the prop list, she needed to get a reversible winter uniform which actually had been worn by a sailor on the Tirpitz. It was hanging in the bathroom because the closet was full of vintage firearms. The local authorities had ordered the guns locked up, and the closet was the only cubicle with a key.
Jody sidled the last few feet to the lavatory. There was a heavy trunk and a heavier table beside it, and she could only open the door partway. She managed to squeeze in, though the door shut behind her and she gagged. The camphor smell was overwhelming, worse than it had ever been at her grandmother's apartment in Brooklyn. Breathing through her mouth, she began flipping through the forty-odd garment bags, looking at the tags on each. She wished she could open the window, but a tic-tac-toe design of metal bars had been welded across it to deter thieves. Reaching the latch and lifting the window would be a pain.
She swore silently. Could anything else possibly go wrong? she asked herself. The tags were written in German.
There was a translation sheet on the clipboard and, with another quiet oath and a mounting sense of urgency, she cracked the door and squeezed back out. As she renegotiated the maze, Jody was suddenly aware of voices outside the trailer. They were coming closer.
Never mind the enthusiasm and creativity, Professor Ruiz, she thought. Jody could see her career ending in about twenty seconds.
The temptation to crawl was great, but Jody resisted.
When she was near enough to the clipboard, she leaned over, hooked an index finger through the hole at the top, and pulled it toward her. Desperate, she began to hum, pretending that she was.on the dance floor and moving like she hadn't moved since the freshman orientation dance. And soon she was back inside the lavatory, the door shut, the clipboard on the sink as she frantically compared the clothes tags to the computer printout attached to the scene list.
CHAPTER SIX
Mr. Buba turned as he heard the voices from behind the trailer.
"…I'm one of those people who never has any luck," a woman was saying. Her voice was raspy and she was speaking quickly. "If I go to a store, it's right after a movie star has been there. If I'm at a restaurant, it's the day before a celebrity dines there. In airports, I miss them by minutes." Mr. Buba shook his head. My, how this woman did go on. Poor Werner.
"So here I am," she continued as they came around the corner. "I accidentally find myself on a movie set, just yards away from a star, and you won't even let me see one." Mr. Buba watched as they approached. The woman was standing directly in front of Werner, whose hat was pulled low, his big shoulders hunched forward. She was waving her arms, practically dancing with frustration. Mr. Buba wanted to tell her that seeing a movie star was no big deal. That they were just like other people, if other people were pampered and obnoxious.
Still, he felt sorry for the young woman. Werner was a stickler for rules, but maybe they could bend them so the poor lady could see a movie star.