Undoubtedly Kareem would have approved of Andrew having attended the so-called “historically black college” Nat Turner U. It was there that the frail, awkward genetics student, the victim of a fraternity “prank,” found himself forcibly gene-spliced with the dynamically altered DNA of a bluebottle fly.
After an astounding array of mutations, which saw Park autonomically spin a cocoon and retreat into it for the entirety of a spring break, Andrew had emerged with an enhanced genetic matrix that had imbued the brainy recluse voted “Most likely to Urkel” (whatever that meant) with the proportionate speed, strength, agility, and “flyness” of a fly.
After first gaining his powers, the shy young undergrad who’d never shone anywhere but onstage or on the dean’s list looked for some way to employ his neotalents to help pay the bills of the elderly aunt and uncle who’d raised him. But as his acne dried up, his vision improved, his chest rippled, and his coordination soared, Andrew found himself winning stage roles as a leading man and attracting romantic attention of which he had never dreamed. After a fateful confidence-supercharging, career-advising meeting with Dennis Rodman, “André” began earning more money than he’d ever seen—as an exotic dancer. Although crimefighting as such had never been André’s intention, the post-Götterdämmerung F*O*O*J was recruiting fresh faces for its own face-lift, and as André said in his job interview, “The benefits are good.”
Perhaps beneath the André-bravado and underlying the anti-Kareem rage was the awkwardness of young Andrew, the tiny boy lacking in confidence everywhere but in the theater. This frightened inner-child Andrew likely confused the hyper-verbal, hyper-confident, hyper-aggressive Kareem on a psychemotional level with all those who had ever bullied him—from the children who shoved his face in the urinal until he ate the cake to the “frat boys” who so cruelly spliced his genes.
Yet there was more driving the Brotherfly’s overcompensating humor, erotic aggression, and anger—another deeper node of sadness, pain, and, I suspected, guilt. Ordinarily André would have been far too attention-deficited for me to probe into his deeper psychemotional workings, but as Mr. Savant had followed my instructions to inject the liquid tranquilizers I’d given him into the fruit, André was opening up like a can of soup.
“My uncle,” he said when I inquired about the pain I knew he held in his psychemotional reservoir. “Poor ol Uncle Benteen.”
“What about your uncle, André?”
“ ’s dead,” he slurred sleepily. “My fault.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I’d…y’know…changed… a lot. When I. Went offta school. ’Slot ferimmta handle. Went away a liddle boy. Came backaman. Never toldimmabout my, my, my mutation. Shun. That I wuzza supereero, that I joinda F*O*O*J. N one day, I, I, I didn’know hewuzzome. An I’s getting into it…an he—”
“Getting into what, Andrew?”
His eyes telescoped on me as if I were a million miles away. But as he picked up speed, his hands and wings fluttered with ever-greater agitation, his face and voice rending themselves with ever-greater tragedy.
“…gettin inta my uniform,” he said. “An Uncle Benteen, he juss walks right into my damn bejjroom an sees me there with my armzanlegs half innannouttuvvit…an he grabs his heart, an he, he, he juss drops over! An therewuzzn’t fuckall I couldoabouddit! Dead’s dead. Dead,” he said, cupping his face in his hands, snorting and shuddering and wailing.
There was more, I sensed—something even more painful that André had yet to disclose. But before I could probe further, Mr. Savant appeared next to me.
“Madame,” said the ancient manservant, “Ms. Icegaard is awake and is requesting your presence.”
Stroking André’s hair and straightening out his antennae, I assured him I’d be back as soon as I could. I hurried off for what in all likelihood would be Hnossi’s final session.
When Good-bye Is the Only Time to Say “I Love You”
Does Hnossi know, Festus, how you’ve felt about her all these years?”
He fixed his furious eyes back on me, already enraged that Hnossi had insisted on my presence during his last remaining hours with her. After he refused to acknowledge my question with anything other than rage, she spoke for him.
“Ja, Frau Doktor,” she whispered.
By then her skin was almost entirely racked with seeping red craters and brittle white plates. Even her scalp was a tortured moonscape, with what had remained of her hair burned off during her electrical discharges.
Yet when Festus turned to look at her while she struggled to talk, there wasn’t a hint of horror or disgust in his eyes.
Only love and pain.
“Of course…I knew,” she said.
“Was there ever anything between you? Sexually?”
Festus’s back stiffened, but neither of them answered.
Finally Hnossi said, “It vuss 1961. Five munse before I vuss to marry Hector. Unt Festus unt I vere vurking longk hours, heading up ze anti-Treemason task force…unt, vell, zere hadt alvays been ziss…ziss potency betveen us, betveen me unt Festus. Unt vun night after a battle, ve came back to ze Fortress, unt ve’d bose been drinking…”
She sighed so heavily I feared the onslaught of another hacking fit—possibly her final one. But then she resumed.
“I felt so guilty…I couldn’t even look at Festus, unt our friendship…vell, it never vent back to vut it hadt been. Never. Unt me…my self-respect…after all zose centuries uff svearing I vud never be like my own muzzer. But it vuss like a curse. I vuss no better zan zat whore.”
She gnarled her fingers together, gazed toward the ceiling with eyes almost entirely scummed white. “All my talk. About honor! Nussing but vurmvoodt.”
“And so,” I asked as delicately as I could, “you said this was five months before you married Hector. And five months after your wedding…”
“Ja. Inka vuss born.”
“And is she—?”
“She’s Hector’s,” said Hnossi. “Sank Odin for zat. I
