chapter two
Charlotte stood just inside the bank doors, with her face pressed to the wall and her hands clenched into fists. “Hey, Charlotte!” Ruby called, from her position on the sidewalk. “It’s over! They won! You can come out now!” Charlotte pushed away from the wall and wearily looked out the doors. She carefully made her way to where Ruby stood on the sidewalk.
“Come on, let’s go back to the café and see what’s going on,” Ruby told her.
“No way, Ruby. I’m going home. I’m going home and I’m staying there, and I don’t know that I am coming back to the café, ever,” Charlotte said, shaking her head. “I’m about to walk to the closest subway station, and I’m going to pretend that none of this happened, and I might go sleep for a week or two.”
“Please be careful!” Ruby shouted after her, watching her friend as she walked at a fast pace away from the destruction. Charlotte waved over her shoulder, then disappeared down into a subway stairwell.
Ruby picked her way through the rubble back up the street to the café. She could see the giant green monster, Captain America, and Thor huddled together further down the street, and she tried to stay out of their viewpoint. Ruby didn’t want whatever the green thing was to see her moving down the street and think she was the last remaining alien or something. She flattened herself slightly against the buildings as she passed, trying to stay inconspicuous.
When Ruby made it back to the café, her boss, Jack, was standing in the middle of the destroyed dining room, looking around helplessly. “Ruby!” he said, relieved, as he caught sight of her coming through the door. “You’re alive! But you’re bleeding. And…Charlotte?”
Ruby reached up and touched her head. Sure enough, her fingers came back sticky with blood. It must have been from where the café window blew in on me, she thought, or when the windows were broken in the bank. “Charlotte’s okay, but she’s a little, um, shook up,” Ruby told Jack. “She went ahead and went home for the day. She’s probably going to need a few days off.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Ruby, you should go on home too. There’s nothing left to do today.”
Ruby looked around the restaurant. The people who had used it as their hiding place had all filtered out, cautiously skirting the rubble and heading to safer ground. Overturned tables and broken chairs were strewn about, and glass and silverware littered the floor.
“I will board up these broken window and I will leave too. We will clean another day.” Jack told Ruby.
“I’ll stay and help you board up the windows, then I will go home.” Ruby said. She and Jack found some plywood in the storeroom, left over from boarding up the windows for Superstorm Sandy, and covered the broken glass as best they could. It was lucky that no one had thrown the boards out yet. When they were finished, Ruby walked back to the employee room, dodging random, misplaced dining room furniture, and retrieved her purse, which was still miraculously hidden in place. She pulled out her phone. Twelve missed calls from Katie, and ten text messages, all more frantic than the last. Ruby read the most recent message as she was walking out the door.
Please text me Ruby. Please don’t be dead.
Ruby quickly sent her a reply.
I’m alive. I’m on my way home now. I’ll tell you the story then, okay?
Carefully Ruby moved through the mess on the ground on her way down the sidewalk. After an afternoon like this one, she was definitely staying above ground, so she ignored the subway entrance that was breathing hot air into an already warm day. A horde of reporters were standing outside the ground level of Stark Tower, and Ruby tried to avoid them by crossing the street, but she wasn’t fast enough. One reporter ran up to her, tugging his cameraman along, and confronted her in the middle of the street. Ruby wasn’t worried about traffic; other than the reporters, there was no one else around. The reporter shoved his microphone in Ruby’s face, rapidly firing questions and asking her opinion of the battle. Did she think that it only happened because of the presence of superheroes in New York?
Finally, exasperated, Ruby cut him off with an answer. “What? That this is somehow their fault? Captain America saved my life. Wherever he is, wherever any of them are, I just…I would want to say thank you.”
The reporter pulled the microphone from Ruby’s face. Apparently, that was not the sound bite he wanted for the story he had already written in his head. Fine with Ruby. She just wanted to go home anyway. Quickly she walked the rest of the way across the street and down the block, turning the corner from the destruction. It felt like someone was watching her, so she glanced over her shoulder. No one was there. She let out a quick breath before noticing a man sitting on the sidewalk a few storefronts ahead of her. His hair was black, down to his shoulders, and he was propped up against a doorframe. He was dressed too nicely to be homeless, though he did have a defeated look about him. He turned his face toward Ruby just a fraction, and she saw that he had something across his mouth, almost like a dog muzzle. Ruby tried to act natural as she crossed the street again. From the other side of the road, she did her best to ignore the man, but it was like his presence called out to her, and it was impossible not to look over. He was sitting in the doorway of a shwarma restaurant that had gotten minimal damage in the battle and looked open for business. Ruby could see shadows of people sitting inside, but she couldn’t make out anything specific from where she was standing. She looked at the man again, and this time he caught her glance, staring at her with pale blue, ice cold eyes. She broke eye contact and hurried down the block, but his look haunted her all the way to her apartment.
***
“RUBY! Oh my God, Ruby. I don’t think that you could possibly imagine how incredibly worried I’ve been. Your face, oh, God, Ruby. What happened to you?”
Katie was practically hanging out of their apartment door when the elevator doors opened on Ruby's floor. Ruby dragged herself down the hall and into the apartment, shutting the door before Boo, her cat, could escape. Generally he was pretty good about staying inside the apartment, but sometimes he couldn't resist the lure of freedom, and this was not the day to chase him down the hall and lock him back inside.
Ruby ignored Katie's questions, instead looking at Katie's all-black, skin-baring outfit. "Gotta work tonight, Katie?"
"Yeah, I need to leave if I am going to make it on time, but Ruby, I couldn't leave without knowing that you were really okay."
Katie worked at a hotel bar in Manhattan, and she was fantastic at what she did. She also interned at some giant, important company doing unimportant things, but that was only a few days a week. Bartending paid the bills and gave her something to do when she wasn't at her company job. Her wardrobe tended to change based on what she was doing, and tonight was definitely a bartending night.
“I’m fine. Really. I made it home in one piece, and I’m not going anywhere else, probably until Jack calls me in for a shift. Question,” Ruby said, changing the subject abruptly. “Whose turn is it to pay the water bill?”
“Yours. I have to run, Ru. I’ll be home late, but I am going to want the full story at some point.” She ran out the door, a whirlwind of black clothes and perfume. Ruby shut and locked the door behind her, sliding the security chain into place. She walked into her bedroom, kicking off her now dust-covered chucks just inside the door. Boo lifted his head from his perch on her bed and, after blinking large yellow eyes at Ruby, stretched out and put his head on her pillow. Ruby ran her hand down his fur, and he gave a couple of half-hearted purrs before closing his eyes and going back to sleep.
Ruby shucked her uniform and threw it in the laundry hamper, then walked to the tiny, shared bathroom. Katie and Ruby took turns paying the water bill each month, and since it was her month, Ruby had no second thoughts about staying in the shower as long as the hot water held out. As soon as the shower was steamy, Ruby slipped behind the curtain and leaned her head against the wall, hot water streaming down her weary body. A delayed reaction, her legs began to shake, so she slid down the wall until she was sitting in the combination tub/shower, the hot water massaging her muscles. She closed her eyes, thinking against her will about everything that had happened that day.
First, it was obvious that she was going to have to change her stance of life on other planets. Hereto, she had been a firm believer in only Earth inhabitants. Clearly after today's battle and the appearance of the beautiful demi-god Thor - whose identity she had previously thought a publicity stunt from the media - she was clearly on the wrong side of the equation. So, aliens. Existing. Okay.
Secondly, it appeared that there were humans with superpowers living among the public. Of course, Ruby remembered when it made the New York One news that Captain America, beloved in World War II times, had been discovered, frozen in ice deep in the heart of the Arctic regions, and again when he woke up in present-day New York. She had heard of his superior strength, and seemingly more-than-human abilities, but she had never really assigned him the "superhero" title before. Because superheroes are in comic books, right?
Of course, there was Tony Stark. If you live in New York, you know Tony Stark. Mostly because of Stark Industries. Tony had inherited the company from his father, Howard Stark, who designed weapons. No one really cared about Tony Stark until he was kidnapped overseas, almost died, and built a rudimentary Iron Man suit to blast his way out of a dark cave, using only scrap metal and his arc reactor - not that Ruby really knew what an arc reactor was, just that the news said that it keeps him alive. Oh, and that a giant version of an arc reactor blew up once and killed some guy in the company. After that, Tony was always in the spotlight. There was some battle involving his Iron Man suit and some other giant metal suits that the government created. He was in the news when he made Pepper Potts, his assistant, the new CEO of Stark Industries, and again when they announced their decision to venture into clean energy. He was everywhere now, and you just got used to him if you lived in New York. Ruby sighed; super smart, super arrogant, super irritating Tony Stark. He wasn't a superhero, he was just a cocky guy who figured out how to make a flying suit of armor.
At this point Ruby realized that she only knew about these "heroes" from what she had heard on television. Jack kept the cafe's only TV on New York One, and since New York liked to claim home to both Stark and Captain America, they ran stories on them all the time. Mostly Ruby tuned it out, but she was at the café a lot, so she'd learned a lot. But only from the news – no other stations or real-life people had ever talked about them personally.
Then, the giant green monster guy. Ruby honestly watched him change from a man into a giant, hulking, screaming mess right in front of her. As the image replayed in her head, she opened her eyes, and her contacts swam in the water stream. Maybe I won't think about the green guy, actually, she thought. There were two more people out there today. A woman with an impossible figure, dressed in what looked like black leather – which could not have been fun to run around in all day – and some guy with a bow and arrow. Just like Legolas in The Lord of the Rings, she thought, with less hair. Or a male Katniss. Ruby couldn't recall many specifics about them other than that.
She stood and found the shampoo. Ruby washed her hair, nudging the temperature of the water up as she lathered. Finally, the hot water turned lukewarm, and she jumped out before she got goose bumps. In her room, Ruby found her favorite pair of pajama pants and an old beat-up t-shirt. She changed quickly and jumped into bed, snuggling Boo as he changed positions. Before clicking the Netflix app on her Xbox, Ruby flipped on New York One.
There was nothing but live coverage and reports from Park Avenue on the screen. An old man in Central Park, playing checkers: "Superheroes in New York? Give me a break!" Captures of little kids battling in the streets with homemade swords and garbage can lid shields. Footage from the attack. And – Ruby sucked in her breath – her own interview from this afternoon: "Captain America saved my life."
She quickly switched on the Xbox and clicked Netflix. The app brought her to the Doctor Who episode she'd been watching when she fell asleep the night before ("Are you still watching?") and she clicked to continue. However, after watching the opening credits, Ruby decided that Doctor Who wasn't what she wanted after all, and turned the episode off. She'd had enough of aliens today, thank you very much. Finally she settled for a glass of tea, a Snow Patrol CD, a Jane Austen novel, and pretending that nothing else had happened that day.
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