Chicago Wildlife - 24. Fast Track to Disaster

Fast Track to Disaster

You know, it takes less than an hour to get from Chicago to Arlington Heights, especially if you’re using I-90. Sometimes, though, I wish it takes longer. Continental drift can only do so much for you.

Mom and Daddy better appreciate this. It’s not every Christmas that Platinum Gold Zirconics brings out their precious Eyes of the World jewels for show and tell, and just when I had the whole heist planned out, those two call and announce a family Christmas get-together for the same night. It’s really inconsiderate when you think about it. What about my wants and needs? Oh well, can’t ruin my “sparkling clean” image I built up for them.

As I drive towards their house, I think of what lies and excuses I’ll have to use this time. ‘Oh, I’m just too busy with work to date right now.’ ‘I don’t need any money, Daddy. I make just enough at my job to make ends meat.’ ‘I have no idea what caused that blackout a few months ago!’ ‘Yes, Mom, that Fox- er, Blue Fox guy is quite the catch. No, I don’t think you should dump Daddy to the curbside if he comes a-knockin’.’ Wait, that would make Foxy my stepdad. No, no…ew! And yet Pornhub makes it seem so common…

I eventually make it to my destination, 123 Fake Street, Springfield, Illinois, and only mildly late at that! I take deep breaths in, mentally preparing myself for the arduous task ahead.

‘Showtime.’

I walk up to the front door and ring the bell. Hmm, that’s something I haven’t had to do in a while. Normally, I’d just break in. The door opens and oh look, there’s Mom and Daddy. They look overjoyed to see me, but what can I say? I’d be overjoyed to see me, too.

“Ohhh, Robin! You came!” Mom gushes.

I allow her to shower me with hugs and kisses.

“You invited me and I said I would come. Don’t act all surprised. You’re not old enough yet to be getting dementia,” I reply.

She frowns at that, but I can see Daddy grin.

“Oh, you know I’ll live forever!”

“That’s going to make the dementia even worse.”

At that, Daddy can’t hold it in anymore and starts laughing. Mom, for her part, doesn’t seem to appreciate being ganged up on.

“You drive all the way out here just to insult your own mother like that?” she says.

“’Tis the season, I guess,” I say, putting a little bit more meekness into my tone. That should calm her down a little.

“Get in here,” Daddy says. “You’re letting in all the cold!”

It’s a nice save. And it is cold out. I weasel my way in as Mom goes back to the kitchen to continue preparing for dinner.

“So how have you been, son?” Daddy says, slapping a hand on my shoulder.

The shoulder, by the way, that that asshole, Light Devil, managed to score a lucky hit on just a few days ago. How am I supposed to predict his random patrol patterns? I try my best not to wince at the pain in front of Daddy, but he still manages to catch a glimpse of it.

“You hurt yourself or something, son?” he asks.

Ah, so the lying game begins early, I see.

“Ah, well, you know, just fighting the good fight against supervillains and the like,” I say.

Daddy laughs it off and decides not to pursue it any further. We walk through the hallway and into the kitchen.

“Hey, Robin.”

            …

Oh.

            …

Her.

            …

Shit.

“Hey, Sis,” I say with a smile beaming. “Nobody told me that you were going to find the time to make it this year.”

Not accusatory at all.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Mom says. “Dawn managed to get the time off from the precinct at the last minute!”

“Well, it wouldn’t be Christmas without her,” I say.

“Help me with the potatoes, Dawn,” Mom asks.

“Sure thing, Mom,” Dawn says.

“And us men,” Daddy adds, “need to get back to the game!”

He, of course, means football. Oh what a wonderful thing gender stereotypes are. I join Daddy in the living room, where we spend an hour watching the game. He’s far more into it than I am. Though to be fair, what I do for a living makes running a ball down a few yards, with backup, with a bunch of men in bulky suits used to only short sprints chasing after me, seem like child’s play. Still, I fake the same enthusiasm he has. God, what a bore it was to bone up on my football facts before making the drive over.

Eventually, Mom calls us in for Christmas dinner. Let me paint a picture for you. It’s now dark out, there’s some snow on the ground, the Christmas lights hung outside are turned on. Inside, the house is nice and warm, the old ceiling light bathing the kitchen in a yellow tint, the game still being heard in the room next door, the kitchen table set up for the special occasion: the Christmas cloth over the table, the Christmas candles lit, the Christmas gravy bowl filled. All the food has been set out carefully. There’s barely any free space left on the table. And there’s Mom, in her Christmas cooking apron, underneath of which she wears her good clothes. And Daddy, who by this point in his life doesn’t give two hoots about anything, saddles up to the table in his jeans and a Christmas sweater that everyone knows Mom bought for him and forced him to wear tonight. Normally, I’d find all of this nonthreatening, even relaxing. But this year…

“Amen,” we all say, after Daddy recites the Christmas prayer.

I immediately try to get food on my plate and into my mouth as fast as possible to avoid having to—

“So, Robin…” Mom starts.

…Talk.

“How has work been treating you over there in the big, scary city?”

“Oh, it’s just fine. I only get mugged at gunpoint three times a day now.”

Dawn rolls her eyes at that one.

“Oh stop that!” Mom says. If she could reach me, she’d slap my hand. “That’s a terrible thing to say!”

“Yeah, it really underemphasizes the astronomically high crime rate in Chicago compared to most other major cities in the country,” Dawn says, dryly.

“Oh honey, can you not talk about work tonight?” Mom replies.

“Sorry, Mom.”

“On more depressing matters, where’s your girlfriend, son?” Dad asks.

Okay, at least this one I am prepared for. He asks it every year.

“I’m working on it,” I whine. “But everybody I work with is already in a relationship. There’s no ‘office relationship’ to be had.”

“You say that every year,” Dawn replies.

No one asked you, Dawn!

“Why don’t you try that new-fangled online dating all the young people are doing nowadays?” Mom asks.

Dawn and I share a brief look. Mom is only in her late fifties, but that was an incredibly old person thing to say.

“I just don’t want to get catfished,” I answer.

“What does that mean?” Daddy asks.

“And how about you, Sis? Why don’t we turn the interrogation towards you for once? I don’t see your date anywhere at the table either.”

“Maybe because I don’t warrant an interrogation. Once they promote me off the field and into a safe, boring office job, then I’ll start looking around.”

“Oh, but wouldn’t it be great if you just brought to Easter some thug you arrested for bank robbery?”

“Robin!” Mom admonishes.

“What? He can still have on that little domino mask, that fashionable beanie that they all wear for some reason, the black and white striped shirt…”

“The burlap sack with the dollar sign plastered on it?” Dawn provides. “Still means I have better tastes than you.”

Daddy laughs.

“Better a crook than no one at all!” he says.

“I can’t believe this!” I say indignantly. “My own family turning against their favorite child. The reason for their being!”

“That’s not true, honey,” Mom offers.

Dawn mouths the words ‘It totally is’ to me. I’d have an easier time storming Chicago Justice headquarters and robbing it blind than withstanding all this flagrant abuse.

The rest of dinner is spent discussing lives, politics, and playfully jabbing each other. And now you know where I got it from. After dinner, as is family tradition, since Mom cooked everything (and Daddy didn’t lift a finger), it was the kids’ job to wash all the dishes. I tried bringing some store-bought cookies over for one holiday and insist that I helped “make dinner,” but apparently that didn’t count. Anyways, Dawn and I are stuck washing any dishes that don’t fit in the dishwasher, which is to say most of them. Not wanting to get pruny, I take the drying duty. Mom is upstairs in the bathroom and Daddy is back in the living room, watching the game.

“They’re getting older too quickly,” Dawn says out of nowhere.

I’m taken back a little by her bluntness.

“Yeah, I heard parents have a tendency to do that once you yourself start getting on with age,” I reply back.

“It’s not like Mom doesn’t know how the internet works,” she continues. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“I’m not having her move in with me,” I say, cutting off where I think she’s going. “I’m not home enough to be able to keep an eye on her.”

“Yeah, I know,” she snaps back before I can suggest a nursing home.

Well, that seems a little accusatory.

“Well excuse me for having a high-demanding job,” I shoot back.

She puts a dish down and turns to me.

“And which job is that?” she asks, noticeably lowering her voice.

Which job? So far as I know, I’ve been telling her that I’ve been working the same job for the past several years. Shoot, I didn’t go and make up a new lie for her just for funsies and forget, did I?

“I only have the one job, same as it always was,” I say in a nice…even…temper!

“Oh? You don’t have a night job as well? Well, I don’t see you keeping it for very long anyway. From what I’ve heard, things keep disappearing around you.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what gets me to freeze in place. How? How could she have known? She wasn’t a PI, or a detective. She was just a beat cop. How many people did she tell? Did her entire precinct know?! Did they contact the Chicago Justice? Warrant out for my arrest and everything? Do I have to abandon Lokitty and never return for my stuff? How could she, this bitch!

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” she whispers now. “Going around, stealing millions of dollars’ worth of valuables. Not to mention all the breaking and entering, impersonation, battery and assault that usually comes with it! Have you completely lost your mind? What happened when you went off to college?”

“What, so you obsess with this Disappearance guy for a little while and think ‘yeah, that’s gotta be the same guy who can’t stand mixing his corn with his peas. You know, if you squint real hard, they kinda have a similar body shape, which is “not fat”’?” I whisper back.

She momentarily gives me this look of smug satisfaction.

“Weird how Disappearance has never given his name out to anyone, and the only people who even know he exists are the police, supes, and the criminal underworld, and yet you know his name, too.”

Well fucking shit. She baited me in my own childhood home.

“I can’t believe you would do this!” she continues. “Lying not only to Mom and Dad for who knows how long, but lying about being a career criminal! I know you’re not dumb enough to have been manipulated into stealing all those things, so that’s all you. This,” she says, gesturing to my entire body, “was a conscious choice.”

“And don’t even get me started on that whole ‘flirts with everyone, even the guys’ schtick you got going on,” she says, not even letting me get a word in edgewise. “I’m sure Mom and Dad wouldn’t mind you coming out as bi to them, but coming out as a corner street prostitute would get you kicked out of the house. Never mind the whole ‘master thief’ thing. And what I’m more concerned with is, if you’re so willing to lie to them even about who you’re into, what else are you keeping from them? From us? How much of ‘you’ is all an act?”

I feel like I’ve been drying the same plate for five minutes now.

“God, the worst part is that you thought it’d be a good idea to do all this while knowing that your sister is in the police force. It’s like you’re specifically doing this just to discredit me!”

“That’s not true,” I say. ‘I just do it for the thrill and lining my pockets.’

“You need to stop this!” she demands, still in a hiss. “Turn in everything that you stole, and turn yourself in to the police. Maybe I can pull some strings from the inside. If we keep this quiet enough, Mom and Dad won’t ever have to know.”

“I think we both know that that’s not going to happen.”

She looks up to my smirking face. I think I’ve let her vent for long enough.

“What?”

“What? What are you going to do, Sis? Are you going to arrest me? Are you going to out me as international debonair jewel thief, Disappearance, in front of Mom and Daddy? On Christmas Day? Evening? Whatever?”

The look of disbelief in her eyes is too good.

“Clearly, you think this is all some sort of game,” she says, ready to blow. She sets down her dish. “Well, I’m about to show you just how serious things have gotten.”

So training at the policy academy did give her a set of balls. How nice.

“Fine. Go ahead. Tell Mom and Daddy,” I say after her. “You should be able to track them down fairly easily, can’t you?”

She stops and turns back to me. Gotcha.

“That’s what you’re best known for at the precinct, isn’t it? Tracking people down?”

I inch my way closer to her, that pleasant smile never leaving my lips.

“Or is that an ironic echo of a ‘night job’ that I’m hearing?” I whisper.

The poor thing looks like a deer in the headlights. Not a good look for a police officer, if I must say.

“You know, for someone who works in my line of work, you need to have a strong sense of paranoia, a keen awareness of your surroundings. You won’t make it very far if you don’t keep up to date on every two-bit hero or vigilante in this city. And so when I’m trailing this new character calling herself Track around, who seems to be snooping around the bank that I was going to pinch, what do I hear when she responds to a CPD walkie-talkie? Why, it’s Officer Dawn Steele, in the flesh! Behind a scary-looking Halloween costume and mask, of course, but still.”

There’s a little bit of defiance starting to show up in her eyes. D’aww, she thinks I’m here to fight. That’s so sweet.

“So go ahead and tell Mom and Daddy about big bad Robin being a meanie. Just think of how they’ll react when they also find out that their by-the-books daughter is actually a rather violent vigilante. What, was the law not doing it for ya? Were you not getting the results you wanted? Don’t tell me you were under the ‘arrests per month’ quota? Ooh, our parents would be so devastated to hear that the law just simply does not work in the big Windy City. And if the police can’t keep the law and order somewhere like there, then where can they keep it?”

What are her eyes saying now? More fear? A little bit of surprise at how well I’m describing her inner turmoil? Really? But we’re siblings!

“Mom and Daddy might banish me from the house, but make no mistake, you’re coming with. And as you said, they’re getting old. Who would take care of them once their health really starts to fail and neither of their children are there to support them? I don’t know where I’ll be. Probably stealing some priceless painting at the Louvre. But you? You’ll be in jail, because I’m pretty sure vigilantism, especially when done by a badge-holder, is still illegal here.”

“And of course,” I continue, having way too much fun with this, “if you’re arrested, that means you being a vigilante would be open knowledge to just about everyone. Every small-time crook or mob boss whom you put away as Track would know your real name and, more importantly, who your parents are and where they live.”

“You would threaten our parents’ lives just to continue stealing?!” she asks, incredulously.

“No, you would, by opening your yap and saying anything to them! I’m just trying to extend the olive branch here. It’s up to you whether you choose to burn it or not.”

I just thought that one up. Sometimes my quipping skills scare even me.

“So, what’s it going to be?” I ask.

She stares intently at me.

“Are you two done in there?” hollers Mom, coming down the stairs.

“Yeah, the game’s almost over!” yells Daddy, no doubt not even taking his eyes off the screen.

I continue to lock eyes with her and gosh golly gee, that silly grin just would not leave my face!

She looks no less angry when she says “We’re almost done!” back to Mom.

She sets down the last dish and storms out of the kitchen. I dry it gently, as only a kind and caring individual would do, before rejoining my loving family whom I would never endanger in any way on this lovely Christmas night.

Do not fuck with me, Sis. Your puny little threats are nothing compared to what I’ve had to go through.