The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

If I were a super villain who hurt people, what would my super villain power be?” Enzo said.

At first it had been paralyzing rays that shot from her index fingers. Then it had been a third eye that traveled about her body and could shoot paralyzing rays at will. Then a secret sonic vehicle that could shoot paralyzing rays from its headlights.

“I thought you’d already decided,” Joseph said. “Some form of paralyzing rays.”

Enzo tapped her mechanical pencil against her palm. She referred to it as her clickster.

“I’m sick of paralyzing rays.”

“So are we all,” Zap said from behind the bakery cash register. Zap and Joseph were seventeen. Both worked at the bakery, which was airy and full of light, with a pressed-tin ceiling that Joseph sometimes tilted his head far back to admire.

Enzo clicked her clickster and stared malevolently at Zap. Zap ignored her. Enzo was nine and she hated Zap for reasons Joseph did not understand. It was Joseph’s job to keep them apart, to keep Enzo from flailing at Zap and Zap from antagonizing Enzo. This was his destiny, to keep warring factions apart. They were angry bees and he was the beekeeper. Enzo sat at her table against the window with her clickster.

“The superhero is my idea,” Zap said. “I am the one writing the superhero book. Not you.”

“Who’s talking about a stupid superhero?” Enzo said. “I’m talking about a super villain.”

“Some people should come up with their own ideas.”

“Some people are full of ideas but their ideas are all stupid.”

It was time for the beekeeper to blow a puff of smoke. To calm the angry bees and restore peace to the hive.

“Why are you sick of paralyzing rays?” Joseph said.

“Because they only work for a little while. Then their power wears off.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, now you do!” Enzo shouted. It took very little to set her off. “The evil guys are unparalyzed! You’re back to the beginning!”

“Make it permanent then.”

“Permanent?” Enzo held up her clickster and studied it as if it were new to her.

“Yeah. Permanent. Then the evil guys can never unparalyze themselves.”

“Can I do that?”

“You’re the super villain, Enzo. You can do anything you want to do.”

Enzo nodded. Yes. Enzo was the super villain. Enzo could do anything she wanted. Enzo liked that idea. She pointed her clickster at Zap, who was juggling Auntie Apple’s Caramels behind the bakery counter, and extended the lead three clicks.

“Pow,” she whispered.

But he looked up and caught her mid-Pow. Zap had a sixth sense when it came to Enzo.

“What do you think you’re doing with that clickster, Monster Miss?”

Enzo gazed at Zap with narrowed eyes. Joseph could see her shift into victim-of-interrogation mode. She was sitting on a wooden chair in a black room. A spotlight was shining into her eyes and her hands were tied behind her back. She had been without food, water, or sleep for days. Men she couldn’t see were sitting behind a desk she couldn’t see and they might ask her any question they wanted but she, Enzo, would never reveal her secrets.

“I said, what do you think you’re doing with that clickster?”

Zap’s voice was quiet. An outsider to the bakery might think that he was making a simple inquiry, or trying to soothe an upset child. Suddenly Enzo sat up straight.

“Paralyzing you!”

Enzo had now become a courageous sufferer who would gladly die for her bravery. She might reveal her secret power but only on her own terms. The information would not be dragged out of her; she would admit it freely, knowing the consequences.

“All of me?” Zap said. “Or just my head?”

No response. The clickster held steady. Point. Point. Point.

“Pow,” Enzo said.

She swiveled in her seat. Her back was straight and her shoulders high. Her eyes were still narrowed. The battle was joined.

But Zap ignored her. He plucked up another caramel and began juggling, now four at once, oblivious to the fact that Enzo had just paralyzed him.

Joseph was scrubbing the bakery tabletops, rolling from table to table with his sponge and a small bucket of soapy water wedged between his side and the arm of his wheelchair. The sponge was blue and rectangular and fit the palm of his hand. His hand was soapy and slippery. The bakery was becoming visibly cleaner as he worked.

“So Joseph,” Zap said. “I’m thinking of giving up on my superhero book idea.”

As long as Joseph had known him, which had been three months now, ever since Joseph had moved from upstate New York to Minneapolis, Zap had been planning to write the great American graphic novel. Enzo would never admit it, but Joseph knew that it was Zap’s Great American Graphic novel that had given her the jones for a super power of her own.

“Why?” Joseph said.

“Number one, I can’t come up with a superhero.”

Zap began juggling faster, tossing each third caramel higher than the others.

“Number two, I can’t draw worth shit. Number three, I can’t write worth shit. Basically, I got nothing going for me.”

“That’s true,” Enzo whispered.

“You’re good at juggling,” Joseph said.

“A good juggler does not a superhero make.”

“That’s true, too,” Enzo whispered.

“Where is the superhero?” Zap said. “That is my question.”

Enzo laughed, a nasty laugh.

Zap ignored her. Joseph kept scrubbing the tables. They were sticky in the Minneapolis humidity, and they would not be less sticky once he was finished scrubbing, but he kept on scrubbing anyway. Zap plucked up the broom and headed out to sweep the sidewalk. Joseph’s cleaning jag had infected him. Enzo scowled and extended the lead on her clickster. Click. Click. Click.

Every day Enzo was at the bakery, sitting at her table with her clickster. Was nine old enough to walk to a bakery by yourself? Joseph didn’t know. He rested his hands on the tires of his wheelchair and watched her. She was a strange species of bee. A stalky long-legged Midwestern bakery bee, prone to anger and frustration. She turned to him and pointed her clickster. Click.

“Every question I ask you, you have to answer,” she said. “That is the rule.”

“Says who?”

“Says me. Question number one: how did you get hurt?”

“Who says I’m hurt?”

“You’re in a wheelchair.”

“But am I hurt?”

“You’re. In. A. Wheelchair. Of. Course. You’re. Hurt.”

“Hurt means something hurts, right? And nothing hurts. See?”

Poke. Jab. Gouge. Joseph watched his fingers stabbing at his legs. Back and forth. If thighs made music when you poked them, he could use his thighs as a piano and drums. He could travel around the country. He could have his own act, The Wheelchair Boy and His Band. They could perform under striped tents.

Zap was outside now, outside the window behind Enzo’s head, sweeping the sidewalk. Occasionally he would plaster himself against the windows as if propelled by extreme force and mush his face against the pane, eyes bugged and staring in Enzo’s direction. Now he stood with his arms looped around the broom, making face after face at Enzo, who was still unaware of his presence. Joseph kept his eyes on the blue sponge and willed himself not to look at Zap. There was no telling what Enzo might do if she saw Zap making fun of her.

Outside, Zap jerked his head around and then staggered backward on the sidewalk, pretending to be riddled with bullets. An unknown assassin had found him at the bakery, lain in wait until Zap emerged with his broom and began sweeping. Now Zap’s hands were up in the air, but still the bullets kept coming. Zap tumbled gracefully, in slow motion, to the sidewalk.

Now Zap was on his knees. Now his head was bowing forward. Zap was a dying boy and his eyes were closing for the last time.

Joseph knew that if Enzo turned and saw Zap on the sidewalk and believed that her sworn enemy was dead, that something in her would be lost. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he knew it, and he willed himself not to stare at Zap but he stared at Zap.

Enzo saw his gaze and turned her own gaze to the window beyond which lay Zap’s body splayed on the sidewalk. The clickster went flying across the room and then Enzo’s hands were over her eyes and a cry went wailing through the bakery.

Joseph was rolling toward the door. He shoved it open with one hand and shoved his tire with the other and then he was through.

Then he was out on the sidewalk.

His tire ran right over Zap’s hand. Zap’s dead eyes opened.

“Hey!” Zap said.

“Enzo thinks you’re dead,” Joseph said. He maneuvered himself again and ran over Zap’s other hand.

“Lay off,” Zap said. “It was a joke.”

Next to Zap the sidewalk heaved up, jutting up one corner of the pavement. Joseph’s chair rose halfway up the heave and then fell back again. An invisible force field rose around the two warring factions. Joseph shoved himself backward and forward with both hands on the tires.


The heave in the sidewalk was insurmountable. Joseph struggled for purchase on the edge of a cliff, warriors massed behind him and the sea below.

“She thought you were dead,” Joseph said. “She thought you were shot.”

Zap crouched by Joseph’s chair, rubbing his hands. No blood. Their eyes were level and Zap’s eyes were dark.

“Is that what you want to do to her?” Joseph said.

“Were you shot?” Zap said. “Is that why you’re in that chair?”

“She thought you were dead,” Joseph said again.

He could not seem to say what he wanted to say.

“She’s just a little kid,” he said.

And then there was Enzo, standing beside the two of them, taller than the sitting Joseph and the crouching Zap. It had come to pass; something in her had changed. She stood before them, a child filled with poison. The beekeeper had neglected his job.

“I am not a little kid,” the little kid said.

She turned to Zap. “And I don’t care if you are dead.”

She pointed her clickster at him. Click.

“Die,” she said.

She pointed the clickster at Joseph. Click.

“Walk.”

Joseph sat in his chair. Enzo kept on clicking. Click. Click. Click.

“Get up,” she said. “You’re unparalyzed.”

Joseph shook his head.

“Get up! You’re unparalyzed now. Don’t you hear me?”

“News flash, you stupid little kid,” Zap said. “He’s in that chair for good.”

“Shut up,” Enzo said, and pointed the clickster at Zap again. “You’re dead.”

And Joseph reached up and grabbed the clickster from Enzo’s hand and drove its lead into his thigh. He took his hand away and the clickster stayed upright, blood welling through the hole punched through his jeans. “What did I tell you,” Joseph said. “No pain.”

Enzo’s fingers hovered and flickered above the clickster like spiders trying to trap the desperate fly, but the desperate fly was dead. Sometimes things happened that he didn’t think were possible to happen. He looked down from a great height, and the warriors behind him grew closer. They were on their way. They would not be deterred.

Joseph opened his eyes and shook his head at Zap and Enzo, sworn enemies crouching before him in his wheelchair. There were no words. No words gave expression to what he felt inside him, what he felt in his dead legs that had no feeling. The bees had no voice and neither did he.

“This is all we get,” Joseph said. “Can’t either of you see that?”

Enzo and Zap were still and silent and watching him. Joseph felt his own struggle for words as a physical presence among them. It was so hard in this world to say what you meant. He stood at the edge of the cliff with the blue blue water far below. The warriors wanted what they wanted, and what they wanted was Joseph, broken and tumbling through the sky to the boulder that heaved itself from the heaving sea.

Where was the superhero?