Super (Book 2): Super Duper Read online

  Super Duper

  by

  Princess Jones

  Copyright © 2015 by Princess Jones All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Blackbelle Books

  204-17 Hillside Ave

  Suite 343

  New York, New York 11423 www.blackbellebooks.com

  Chapter 1

  “Hey, hey, hey!” It wasn’t even nine AM and I was already in a confrontation with middle school kids on the way to school. Which would be one thing if I were a middle school kid myself. But at 30, this was a problem.

  I had been on my way to the corner bodega to get a breakfast sandwich. Normally, I’m not even up this early. I’d been busy chasing down vandals last night on my Super shift and I hadn’t gotten home until late. I was exhausted. But I’d had a dream that I was eating the best breakfast in the world—a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on a roll. I woke up with a rumbling stomach that got me out of bed early and out into the cool autumn morning.

  As I pushed the door open to the little corner store, the bells attached to it jingled in my ear. Inside, it was a tiny convenience store with a deli counter and grill along one side of the store. Next to that was the counter, where a college kid with close cropped hair, an NYU sweatshirt, and non-ironic glasses was ringing up someone’s coffee. His dad owned the place but it was Rafi working the counter most of the time. He called out to me. “Hey Audrey. What’s up?”

  “Nothing much. Can I get a bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll? And this?” I held up a bottle of apple juice.

  “That’ll be three fifty.” I paid him and he slid over to the

  adjoining deli workspace to start putting the ingredients of my

  sandwich on the grill. I browsed the shelves aimlessly while I waited

  for my sandwich.

  The bell jingled a few more times as more people trickled in on

  their way to work or school. Rounding the corner of the candy aisle,

  I was thinking maybe I should grab some Skittles for later. I stopped

  short when I saw three kids in school uniforms congregating over the candy. They whispered together for a split second and finally, one of them put a couple of candy bars in his jacket

  pocket and the kids made their way out of the store. As a hungry woman waiting on her sandwich on a

  Monday morning, I could look the other way from a minor

  shoplifting incident. As a Super sworn to uphold justice and

  order, I couldn’t ignore it. Unfortunately, I was both. I followed them out of the store. “Hey!” I yelled to

  them on the sidewalk. “Come back here!” The kids stopped

  walking but none of them came back to the store. Maybe they

  realized that I had no authority at all. Even though I was

  thirty years old, I wasn’t exactly a grownup.

  I have never been the most talented Super. My power

  is nothing more than the ability to take a licking and keep

  on ticking. I have been shot, stabbed, and set on fire. And I

  survived it all with little more than a few gross memories and

  some bad hair days. But kids? Kids scared the shit out me. Finally, the one with the stolen candy in his pocket

  spoke up. “What do you want, Lady?”

  Since they wouldn’t come to me, I stalked over to

  them. “I want you to take that candy back and pay for it. You

  know stealing is wrong, right?” They still didn’t say anything.

  Instead they looked at each other, at their shoes, anywhere

  but me. I held up my apple juice and pointed at the one I saw

  pocket the candy. “Take it back right now. If you don’t, I’ll

  pour this on you and make it look like you wet your pants.” “You can’t do that!”

  “Oh yeah? It’s the right color and everything.” I shook

  the juice up ominously. He scowled at the other two kids and

  reluctantly walked back into the store.

  Left alone with other two delinquents, I didn’t know

  what to say. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school or on

  the way there or something?” I tried to remember my own

  school experience but maybe I blocked those memories out. I

  couldn’t remember much.

  Just then my right front pocket started buzzing. I held

  up one finger to the kids and fished out my cell phone from

  my pocket. “Hold on. I have to take this.”

  “Hello?” I said into the phone. I was greeted by a stream

  of Vietnamese with a few English swear words peppered in,

  which were the only things I understood. “Hello?” I said

  again. “Who is this? I can’t understand you.”

  The person on the other end of the phone sighed

  exasperatedly. Then in broken English she said “This Mrs.

  Pham. Audrey come now. Toilet no work. Emergency.” I hung up the phone and groaned. Mrs. Pham lived in

  2B in the building I worked as the live-in building manager.

  She had four rambunctious kids and things in her apartment

  were broken a lot. It looked like I was gonna need the plunger

  today.

  I turned back to the kids. “Err, go to school. Be nice to

  each other. No bullying. Drink water. Don’t talk to strangers.”

  They stared at me. Maybe they were realizing how ironic it

  was that I was telling them not to talk to strangers and I was

  a stranger myself.

  “Um, I gotta go.” I turned and started walking down

  Lefferts Avenue toward my building. I’d have to go back for

  my sandwich later.

  * * * * *

  Surprisingly, there are quite a few similarities between a crime fighting Super and a superintendent of a building. Both are called “super” for short. Both have people hoping they’ll show up in the middle of the night when they are alone and need help. Both are usually thankless jobs. Only one of them gets paid, though.

  I’ve always been a Super but recently I’d become the super of a building in Crown Heights through a chance meeting with the owner, Hy. At the time, I’d just been fired from a coffee shop he was frequenting. I guess he liked the way I poured his coffee. Or maybe me crying like a baby in front of the store after getting fired got to him. Either way, he gave me the job.

  Three months later, I still hadn’t been fired. That could be because I was doing a good job or because Hy lived in Miami full-time and I rarely interacted with him. Still, I had to take my successes where I could find them.

  The super job had really changed my life. For the first time in a long time, I had a few dollars in my pocket. Hy didn’t pay me much but with free rent, I suddenly had been able to pay back some of the money I owed to my family and friends. The phone company wasn’t threatening to shut off my service anymore. And I was even buying name brand chips, again. Things were going better for me now than they ever had.

  Walking back to the building, I ran through the things I needed to do that morning. Check the property for any litter. Schedule the quarterly exterminator visit. Sweep up the common areas. Make sure the hallways were clear. All in all, it wasn’t much. I basically just had to keep the building from falling down. On a good day, I hardly did anything. Hopefully this toilet situation would end up being a false alarm and I could go back to doing nothing.

  As the building came into view, I saw Outside Bob sitting in front of th
e front stoop. Technically, Outside Bob was a homeless guy who hung around our building. He was usually wearing a dirty shirt and ripped cargo pants topped with a camo jacket. As I got closer, I could see that his jacket was off and folded in a neat little square next him. And he wasn’t just sitting. He was sitting Indian style with his palms turned upward and his eyes closed.

  I stood quietly and watched him for a moment. “What are you doing, Bob?”

  Without opening his eyes, he raised his hands above his head as if he were pushing the air away. “Yoga. Gotta get my zen on.”

  “Why don’t you go do it in front of your own house and do this?”

  Bob kept his position. “The world is my house, Audrey. I’m at home everywhere.”

  As usual, I thought about calling the cops on Bob. He was technically trespassing. And it was technically my job to keep that from happening. But then I’d have to wait for them to get there and explain the situation. And in the end, I didn’t really want Bob arrested. He’d been around longer than I had and he was harmless.

  I used what I hoped was my authoritative voice. “OK, fine. But keep the sidewalk clear for the tenants.”

  Bob huffed and made a big show of moving over to the grassy part of the front yard. “Happy?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Yes. I’m pretty happy.”

  “Well, I don’t know if you’ll still be happy when you get upstairs. I saw the Pham kids leaving for school in a hurry. Something about wanting to get in early so they could use the bathroom. Sounds like that toilet is acting up again.”

  * * * * *

  Hy’s building was three stories tall. Each floor had three units—a one-bedroom and two two-bedroom units. Included in my meager pay was the rent on a one-bedroom unit on the first floor. It was small but it was also more than I’d ever had on my own. I was just grateful to be out of my parents’ place. Here, no one would make me clean up my room or ask me if I planned to get up and be productive any time soon.

  “Do you plan to get up and be productive any time soon?” I was talking to my roommate, life partner, and pet goldfish, Crash. I crossed the living room and stood in front of his bowl. He was hovering near the pebbles on the bottom, which I took to mean he was sleeping in. “Must be nice to eat without ever working,” I said as I sprinkled off brand fish flakes into the top of his bowl.

  I looked around my little apartment and tried to remember where I left my super tools. They weren’t actually mine. I’d inherited them with the job and the apartment. Although the toolbox was full of stuff, I only recognized the hammer and a couple of other things. I figured I’d get to know the other tools as the opportunity to use them came up. For now, I grabbed the plunger. Hopefully, this will be all that I need today, I thought before I headed upstairs to 2B.

  In the time it took me to get back to the building, get the plunger, and walk up the stairs to the Phams, my phone had rung several more times. I didn’t even look at it. I assumed it was Mrs. Pham calling me to ask me how long it would take for me to get there. By the look on her face when I knocked on the door, I’d assumed right. “Come. Come. Hurry,” she said, waving me into the apartment.

  The Phams’ apartment was one of the two bedroom units and nearly twice as big as mine. It looked like a typical family home—lot of toys and school books strewn around. Even though it was mid-morning, Mrs. Pham was already cooking. And there was some clean laundry piled in the living room, waiting to be folded.

  Mrs. Pham pointed to the bathroom and I went inside. The smell hit me like a fist to the face. I turned back to Mrs. Pham. Um, you couldn’t have sprayed a little air freshener in here, lady? As if reading my mind, she handed me a can of air freshener. “Here. You need this.” Then she closed the door, leaving me in the bathroom alone.

  I opened the toilet and gagged. This is the best job I’ve ever had. This is the best job I’ve ever had, I chanted to myself over and over again in my head. Even as I raised my plunger to get to work, I knew that was true. In the past few years I’d worked at every dead end job in the world. Being a Super was a big commitment—even if you weren’t very good at it—and keeping an alter ego is a necessary evil.

  Today, my necessary evil involved a plunger and a dirty job.

  But it wasn’t working. I was putting all the elbow grease I had into it but not making any progress. If I couldn’t get it fixed, I’d have to call a plumber. Even with my little experience I knew that plumbers were always expensive. I hadn’t had any reason to call Hy for extra repairs yet and I didn’t want to anytime soon.

  I let the fear of possibly losing my job push me forward. I leaned into it, pushing the plunger down and yanking it with one triumphant pull that knocked me off of my feet and onto my butt. The combination of a suction and swirling sound made me scramble to my knees to peer into the bowl. The filthy water was draining from the bowl.

  “YES!” I shouted and fist pumped into the air. I opened the bathroom door and called out to Mrs. Pham “OK, you have your toilet back now.”

  She appeared in the doorway with a smile. “Thank you!”

  We both heard the gurgling at the same time. It came from deep under the floor and rumbled up through the toilet. Still on my knees, I peered into the bowl again. Nothing. I turned back to Mrs. Pham. “I think— “

  I was interrupted by a geyser of gross smelling sewage erupting the bowl, spraying on everything in the bathroom, including me. Mrs. Pham, standing in the doorway safely out of the splash zone, put her hands to her mouth in horror. I couldn’t see myself but just looking at her face told me that it was bad—really bad.

  “I think. . .” I looked down at the muck all over myself and struggled to finish my original sentence. “I think. . . I think I need to call a plumber.”

  Chapter 2

  “Audrey Hart?” I headed back down to my apartment after cleaning up Mrs. Pham’s bathroom and making her promise not to go back in there until I could get a plumber to look at it. I told her to use the toilet down in the janitor’s room in the basement until then. My stomach did a few flips at the thought of dealing with a big plumbing problem. And the smell from a toilet exploding on me wasn’t helping, either.

  As I reached for the doorknob of my apartment, I heard a voice behind me. I turned around, fully aware that I smelled like an out of order restroom in Penn Station. “No solicitors.”

  It was a woman. She stood there with her hands in the pockets of her black trench coat. Her dark hair was pulled back into a severe bun. Blood red lipstick covered her slight frown. Combined with her stern black glasses and her pale skin, she gave off the air of the Angel of Death in a sensible pair of loafers. She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “Listen, I’m the super here. I know you don’t live here. And we don’t allow solicitation. So just leave before I have you arrested for trespassing.”

  The woman produced a business card out of nowhere and took a few steps toward me. “I’m not selling anything.” She handed me the card. “I’m Auditor Fine. I’m conducting your Super audit.”

  My mind flashed back to the notice I’d gotten three months earlier in a panic. Being a Super isn’t just about justice and order. It’s about paperwork, too. The Super Council runs the whole shebang. As a Super, you have to swear an oath, keep your license in good standing, and pay your dues on time. It’s a lot of responsibility.

  And I’m not exactly the responsible type.

  Things got away from me. I got behind on my dues. And then I got really behind on my dues. I stopped opening my mail from the Super Council. And then three months ago, I’d gotten a certified letter from the Council that said that due to poor performance and lack of response to other inquiries, I was going to get audited. I’d prompted folded the notice up at small as possible, stuffed it under my bed, and tried not to think too much about it.

  Now I was looking at this woman, wondering if she would fit under my bed.

  As if reading my mind, Miss Fine said “Yeah, it didn’t go away.” />
  “I, uh, um— “I started.

  “Save it,” she cut me off. “I’ve read your file. I know all about you, Audrey. I know you’re good at excuses but they won’t work with me. And I won’t be ignored.”

  I audibly gulped. “Uhh— “

  Miss Fine ignored me and continued on. “Here’s how this is gonna work: I’m going to audit your Super work. You’re going to cooperate. At the end of my audit, I’m going to make a recommendation to the Council about what they should do with you.” She pointed the card I was holding in my hand. “Tomorrow morning at eight, you need to be at that address.”

  I stared at the card. “Um, OK, but— “

  “No buts. If you’re not there, we’ll go straight to the punishment phase of this process. Best case scenario? Losing your license. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you did some time over this. Is that what you want?”

  “No.” It was the first full sentence I’d spoken since Miss Fine had walked into my life.

  “Good. Then I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early.” She turned to go but stopped short and turned back to me. “And clean yourself up, will ya?” And with that, Miss Fine left.

  Standing alone in the hallway, I looked at the card she left and then back down at my stained clothing. Shhhhiiiiiiitttttt.

  Chapter 3

  When Miss Fine left, I went straight inside my apartment, stripped, and got into the shower. At the moment the plumbing problems seem to only be affecting the Phams. Which was good for me because I did my best thinking in the shower. My best thinking was telling me that I was fucked.

  Being a Super isn’t a job. Jobs come with paychecks and vacation days. I was born a Super. My parents were Supers. I developed powers around puberty and headed off to Super school. Then I graduated, took my Super oath, got my district assignment, and headed off to make the world a safer place to live each day.

  But I don’t remember a time I actually decided to be a Super. I just kinda did it. It was all I knew. And now, it looked like I might actually have to stop doing it. I didn’t know how I felt about that.