together, just having our souls near each other or something, the more boosted our abilities have gotten. Vaux, now she can just touch someone and see everything in their past, not just the dark stuff, not just the hidden shit. And me, I can do the same only in reverse. Someone touches me, even the slightest contact or in this case not so slight, and I can see a person’s whole future. Every inch.
Even better, for both of us, it happens fast and it happens clean.
Best I can compare it to: like downloading something. I click and it’s here, in my head. Vauxhall clicks and it’s there, ready to be used.
Standing in the parking lot outside Celebrity’s tonight, this drunken ass swimmer throws down his beer can and it goes skittering across the asphalt. Then he stomps out his cigarette and puts his fists up like he’s in a boxing movie.
Vauxhall says, “Dog’s name was Rusty. Super original, right?”
The dude shouts, “Shut up! Come on.”
He motions for me to fight. I say, “Just move over a few feet. You’re not in position.” And he actually moves. When he’s there, I tell him to stop. Then, his fists still pumping in the air between us, I tell him that it would really be a good idea for him not to try and fight me. I say, “This is just going to end up embarrassing for you.”
The dude yells an expletive.
Vauxhall says, to me, “You warned him.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
That’s when the guy makes his move, he throws a punch at me and I move right out of the way. He stumbles forward and that’s exactly the time I knee him in the nose. His nose splits and the blood scribbles all over the asphalt. He falls on his ass right where I expected him to, about six feet to the left of the passenger-side door of my car.
As we’re leaving, I say to Vauxhall, “You should totally bust out that Negative Woman costume again. The two of us, you in the past, me in the future, we’re going to be the next Doom Patrol.”
Vauxhall, her face dials up a mischievous grin. “We defeating evil?”
“Definitely,” I say.
“We helping orphans?”
“Of course.”
And we kiss like the soon-to-be superheroes we are.
What Vauxhall sees, she doesn’t mention.
And what I see I don’t let her know either.
