I, Superhero!! :. Mike McMullen
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ma’am, nice to meet you.”
“You too! So have you boys been having fun?” she asks, greeting her boyfriend, now more Reginald than Geist, with a kiss.
Reginald fills her in on the day’s activities before excusing himself to change for dinner. I offer to help Susan with dinner prep, but she tells me that there’s nothing much left to do, leaving me to hover awkwardly in the kitchen doorway.
“So I have to ask,” I say. “What’s it like dating a superhero?”
“Well…” she says, pressing her lips together thoughtfully, “the first thing is that he’s doing great things. I also have fear when he goes out at night and I don’t think he’s realistic about all the dangers that could be out there. He’s a bit cavalier about that, I think. But I’m proud of him, and I don’t mind time being taken away from us when it’s for a good cause.”
“I’m taking him on patrol later,” Reginald says, who has successfully de-Geisted for dinner.
“What do you have planned?”
“Well, just go to some high-crime neighborhoods, you know, see if there’s anything going on. We saw some gang graffiti while we were driving around that I wanted to paint over. I thought it was a pentagram. That’s the Vice Lords. Do we still have some of the gray paint?”
“It’s in the basement,” she says, as she starts cutting up a tomato for the salad. “What neighborhood was that?”
“It’s over there off Fourteenth Street. You know the—”
“Yeah,” she says. “I’ve seen some tough-looking people that hang out here.”
“Like what do you mean?” Geist asks.
“I think there are gangs there,” she says.
“That’s why there’s gang graffiti.”
“Well, the roller should still be down there with the paint,” she says, returning to her tomato. From all I can tell, this is normal conversation in the Geist household.
Dinner is pleasant, and we discuss decidedly nonsuperheroish things, such as how the general level of public discourse has degenerated over the last couple of decades, and how great the Thin Man movies are. Over the course of the meal, it becomes apparent that I have more in common with the weirdo who runs around in a costume and mask than I do with many of my “normal” friends. I’m not sure how to feel about this.
After dinner I help clean up while Reginald re-Geists. I learn tonight is an auspicious occasion: it’s the debut of his new mask, which just arrived in the mail that day. It’s very Green Hornetish, and sticks directly onto his face with spirit gum. As I watch him affix it in the mirror, I start to get a feeling of anticipation as if something exciting is going to happen. I find myself getting kinda antsy to get going, full of the kinda nervous excitement usually reserved for a first date or the Big Game.
Once Geist is convinced the mask is going to hold, he finishes suiting up (it’s safe to leave the house in full Geist mode, since it’s dark by now), he kisses Susan for luck, and we head out. Little did I know then that getting suited up would be the second most exciting event of the entire night.
8:00 P.M.—PATROL: HIGH-CRIME AREAS
To start off the evening, Geist takes me on a tour of what he refers to as “high-crime neighborhoods,” but all is quiet. Kids play freely in the wide grassy expanses between the uniform housing units, and I wonder if he’s made some mistake. This seems like the safest place in Minnesota, but I have to take his word for it. It’s his city. After a half an hour of cruising around and looking more suspicious than anyone else in sight, we move on. As we drive the town’s main strip, two tricked-out cars pass us in quick succession. The second car is either following or chasing the first, we can’t tell which. Geist decides it’s worth checking out.
“They’re headed toward this new bar in town that’s really popular. It’s kinda early yet. We can follow them and see if anything’s up. Probably not, but you never know.”
We speed up minimally, for obvious reasons not wanting to be pulled over for speeding. Luckily the bar’s only a few blocks away, and when we get there, the cars are nowhere in sight. In fact, for a really popular bar, the parking lot is pretty barren.
“This place is dead,” Geist says.
“Maybe that’s why,” I suggest, pointing to the only person in the entire lot, an old man who’s standing in front of the building and urinating on the porch.
“Heh heh. Yeah, that could drive off business.”
“He’s probably one of the owners,” I say. “Later on he’ll be like, ‘Should I not be standing out there pissing on the front door steps? Is that wrong? Because if I’d known that would be bad for business, I wouldn’t have done it.’”
“Ha! Yeah, probably.”
Deciding to take a pass on reporting the old man for public urination, we head to a city park not far from Reginald’s place of work. En route, an ambulance races past us, lights flashing and sirens blaring.
“You always have to wonder where they’re going,” Geist says. “I know they’re going to get there before I am, they’re going to be better equipped. When the experts are on it, they’re the experts. Sure, I’m curious, but they don’t need me mucking about. It’s like when the bridge collapse happened—we had a big bridge collapse last year, a lot of deaths and injuries—with that, immediately they get experts in there, and they’re telling people not to help. A lot of people died, you know. You don’t…I certainly didn’t want to make light of anything tragic like that, uh, by showing up in a goofy outfit.”
At least he’s self-aware, I think.
“Do you get a lot of odd looks when you’re in your—is it a uniform or a costume?”
“I’m not a snob when it comes to that. A lot of people insist that it’s a uniform, but to me it’s a costume. I do get some odd looks, but you know, I went on patrol in New York City one time, and no one looked twice at me.”
“Heh.”
8:45 P.M.—PATROL: THE PARK
“This is a pretty decent park,” Geist says, as we reach our destination. “Lots of bike trails and everything, but at night there’ve been a lot of assaults. I come here sometimes and walk it just to keep an eye on things.”
As we approach the park, I instinctively make my way toward the nicely lit concrete path that runs along the perimeter of the park. Geist pulls me back.
“It would probably be better to stay out here, more in the dark. I don’t want to scare anybody who’s just out for a walk.”
While that’s a good point, it raises a question in my mind.
“So, have you ever been reported?”
“What’s that?”
“Has anyone ever called you in? Because, you know, here we are, two guys, one in a crazy outfit and mask, prowling around in the dark edges of the walking path. For the second time this evening, we’re the two most suspicious looking people around.”
“Heh. That’s a good point.”
We drift farther into the shadows and make a circuit around the park, seeing nothing but joggers and dog walkers. I’m sure we’re seen by a few of them, too, but the only indication they give is a slight quickening of their strides.
Personally, if I were walking alone in a park at night and saw a strange man in a mask lurking in the darkness, I would have been terrified. But then, maybe that explains how I got to this point in my life in the first place.
9:15 P.M.—PATROL: GRAFFITI ALLEY
After skulking around the park for about half an hour, not accomplishing much more than getting