Daniel Abraham - Inside Straight

“Is there a question I can help you with?” the flunky asked through a practiced smile. She was early twenties, long-faced, and mean about the eye. Normal-looking people who lived in the beauty pits of Hollywood too long seemed to get that feral I’m-not-a-supermodel-but-I-might-kill-one look after a while.

“Oh,” Jonathan said, whipping out his own smile, “it’s just… I’m a journalist. I have this blog, and I don’t quite know what I can and can’t talk about there. If I did get on the show, I couldn’t really afford to take however many months just off. ”

“Of course not,” the flunky said, nodding. “This is just the release for the tryouts. If you’re chosen for the show, there’s a whole other process.”

Which didn’t even sort of answer Jonathan’s question. He smiled wider. They’d just see which of them could nice the other to death.

“That’s great,” he said, shaking his head. “I just had one or two tiny questions about the wording on this one?”

“Sure,” the flunky said. “Anything I can help with. But it is the standard release.” Meaning move it, loser, I’ve got a hundred more like you to get through.

“I’ll make it quick. I really appreciate this,” Jonathan said. Meaning suck it up, jerk, I can stall you all day if I want to.

The flunky’s smile set like concrete. Jonathan killed half an hour niggling at details and posing hypothetical situations. It all came down to the same thing, though: If he wanted in, he’d sign. If he refused…well, the field was full of aces who were there for the express purpose of taking his place. He kept up the tennis match of cheerful falsehoods until the flunky’s smile started to chip at the edges, but in the end, he signed off.

He sidled over to the coffee and donuts just long enough to confirm that he didn’t want anything to do with either, and then a vaguely familiar blond guy with a clipboard rounded them up and led the way across the tarmac and into the entrance of the ballpark. They were divided into ten groups and then each was led to a camera and interview setup, where a small bank of lights was ready to make him and all the others glow for the camera. Of his group, he got to be the lucky bastard who went first.

“Don’t worry about the camera,” the interviewer said. “They just want to see how you come across through the lens. Just pretend it’s not there.”

She was much prettier than the flunky, dressed a little sexy, and willing, it was clear, to flirt a little if that made you say something stupid or embarrassing for the viewing public. Jonathan liked her immediately.

“Right,” Jonathan said. The five-inch black glass eye stared at him. “Just like it’s only you and me.”

“Exactly,” she said. “So. Let’s see. Could you tell me a little bit about why you want to be on American Hero?”

“Well,” he said. “Have you ever heard of Paper Lion?”

A little frown marred the interviewer’s otherwise perfect brow. “Wasn’t that the ace who—”

“It’s a book,” Jonathan said. “By George Plimpton. Old George went into professional football back in the 60s. Wrote a book about it. I want to do something like that. But for one thing, football’s for the football fans. For another thing, it’s been done. And for a third, reality television is for our generation what sports were for our dads. It’s the entertainment that everyone follows.”

“You want to… report on the show?”

“It’s not that weird. A lot of guys get into office so they can have something to write in their memoirs,” Jonathan said. “I want to see what it’s all about. Understand it. Try to make some sense of the whole experience, and sure, write about it.”

“That’s interesting,” the interviewer said, just as if it really had been. Jonathan was just getting warmed up. This was the sound bite fest he’d been practicing for weeks.

“The thing is, all people really see when they see aces is what we can do, you know? What makes us weird. These little tricks we’ve got—flying, or turning into a snake or becoming invisible—they define us. It’s doesn’t matter what we do. It just matters what we are.

“I want to be the journalist and essayist and political commentator who also happens to be an ace. Not the ace who writes. This is the perfect venue for that. Just getting on the show would be a huge step. It gives me the credentials to talk about what being an ace is. And what it isn’t. Does that make sense?”

“It does, actually,” the interviewer said, and now he thought maybe she was just a little bit intrigued by him.

One step closer , he thought. Only about a million to go.

“Okay,” she said. “And Jonathan Hive? Is that right?”

“Tipton-Clarke’s the legal last name. Hive’s a nom de guerre. Or plume. Or whatever.”

“Right. Tipton-Clarke. And what exactly is your ace ability?”

“I turn into bugs.”

American Hero was the height of the reality television craze. Real aces were set up to backbite and scheme and show off for the pleasure of the viewing public. And it was hosted, just for that touch of street cred, by a famous celebrity ace—Peregrine. The prize: a lot of money, a lot of exposure, the chance to be a hero. The whole thing was as fake as caffeine-free diet pop.

And yet…

He’d woken before dawn in his generic little hotel room, surprised by how nervous he felt. He’d eaten breakfast in his room—rubbery eggs and bitter coffee—while he watched the news. Someone tied to Egyptian joker terrorists finally assassinated the Caliph, a Sri Lankan guy with a name no one could pronounce had been named the new UN Secretary-General, and a new diet promised to reduce him three dress sizes. He’d switched channels to an earnest young reporter interviewing a German ace named Lohengrin, who was making a publicity tour of the United States to support a new BMW motorcycle, and then given up. He dropped a quick note to the blog, just to keep his maybe two dozen readers up to speed, and headed out.

The subway ride out to the field had been like going to a job interview. He kept thinking his way through what he was going to do, how to present himself, whether his clothes were going to lie too flat to crawl back into when he had to reform. He’d half-convinced himself that his trial was going to end with him stark naked. He could always pause, of course. Leave a band of unreclaimed bugs just to preserve modesty; like a bright green insect Speedo. Because that wouldn’t be creepy.

Now, actually sitting on the benches the Hollywood people had put out for them and watching the lights and cameras and the milling, he was starting to feel a little less intimidated. He and the other contestants were in four rows of benches just inside the first-base foul line. The three judges—Topper, Digger Downs, and the Harlem Hammer—sat at a raised table more or less on the pitcher’s mound. The invisible mechanisms of television production—sound crew, cameras, make-up chairs, lousy buffet—were kept mostly between home plate and third base. The great expanse of the outfield was set aside for the aces to prove just how telegenic they were.

Which, you could say, varied.

Take, for instance, the poor bastard whose turn it was at present. He had his arms stretched dramatically toward the small, puffy clouds, and had for several seconds, as his determined look edged a little toward desperate.

“What are we waiting for?” Jonathan whispered.

“Big storm,” the guy beside him—a deeply annoying speedster by the name of Joe Twitch—muttered back. “Maybe a tornado.”

“Ah.”

They waited. The alleged ace shouted and curled his fingers into claws, projecting his will out to the wide bowl of sky. The other aces who had made it through the interview were sitting on folding chairs far enough away to be safe if anything did happen. The morning air smelled of gasoline and cut grass. Joe Twitch stood up and sat back down about thirty times in a minute and a half.