July 30, 1987

Phoenix Talon prepared carefully for his dinner with Candi. He'd even had his suit pressed. He told the taxi to wait and trotted briskly up the stairs to her apartment once she'd buzzed him in. She opened the door, looked past him for a puzzled moment.
    "It is me," he informed her.
    "Oh!" She focused on him. "I should have recognized, with your shoulders and everything. Come on in."
    "Yeah, it's amazing how people just can't see past the mask," he shrugged.
    "It hardly looks like you, honestly, but I don't see why you wear it. You're much cuter without it."
    "Thank you." He looked around the apartment. Cluttered but not messy, a bit cramped. It was immediately, unsettlingly clear that she had a male roommate. There were two bedrooms....
    "Um, do you have a roommate?"
    "Oh, yeah. Let me explain over dinner, I can give you my life story," she smiled.
    "Okay." He wasn't sure what to think about this, but he'd reserve judgement. Soon they arrived at La Vioretta. A solicitous maitre d' settled them at a secluded table and left them with a slim menu and a wine list thicker than many books. Phoenix Talon glanced at the prices and exerted his ninja-trained self-control to keep from reversing course right out of the place. This was all about the image.
    "So, what d'you want to know?" Candi asked. "Last time we ended up talking more about your job, because the giant truck attacked."
    "I'm sorry about that. You can't control it, you really can't. It's like being a doctor, you're always on call. And sometimes your work comes to you," he added with some feeling. "How long have you lived in Boston?"
    "Only a couple months. I was born out in the Midwest, less said the better. I spent a little bit of time, about a year or so, at a culinary school, until I realized that I really didn't want to be a chef, and so I came out to New York to break into acting. I got to New York, September of '86. Then you recall there was this daemonic invasion...." She tilted her head in a sort of shrug.
    "Yeah, I know a few people who got caught in that."
    "Fortunately I was in Queens. Which was fortunate in that it wasn't in Brooklyn, but unfortunate in the fact that it was close enough to Brooklyn that I decided after that, that I really didn't want to live in New York any more. So as soon as I had enough money scraped up, I moved out here. I had connections with an actor referral service, and they arranged for a roommate situation. So I moved in with this guy Travis, he had an apartment that he was looking to split the rent on. He's in repertory theater, he travels a lot through New England, so he's gone for pretty much the rest of the summer. Which is cool, y'know," she added. "He's paying his half of the rent just to be able to use up, to be honest, three quarters of the space, but it was his place originally, so....
    "I've been trying the acting thing, and things were scarce for a little while, so I had to fall back on the modeling thing, and for the modeling thing I had to fall back on the thing on the boat, but everything works out for the best," she finished brightly.
    "I like to think so." He definitely thought she was beautiful when she smiled like that.
    The smile got brighter. "Oh, I have to celebrate, I don't know if I had a chance to tell you that, but congratulate me."
    "Congratulations?"
    "I just landed a part on a soap opera."
    "Salud!" He toasted her.
    "Now, it's not much, but it's a name part," she informed him excitedly.
    "So what's the soap?"
    "The soap's name is Boston Common. They're just starting it in the Boston area. Like I said, small part, name part, AMT's putting it together."
    He managed not to react overtly to the name. "Really. They're doing our TV show, too."
    "Oh, I didn't know you guys were going to be doing a TV show." She looked inquiring.
    "It's in production right now. I'm gonna have to go in on Monday and talk to them about it."
    "So it's actually about you?"
    "It's like a kids' TV show, like GI Joe."
    "Oh, an animated thing?"
    "Yeah. There's gonna be a comic book, too."
    "Well, congratulations, then. It's just as well, they'd never be able to find an actor who could pull you off."
    "I'm sure there's gotta be somebody out there." Nicholas Cage, maybe. They're fuckin' everywhere. What, they saw that she might be my girlfriend, they instantly envelope her in the web? Isn't that expensive? he wondered a bit savagely.
    They ordered. Candi rattled on about the audition and how she'd been worried because she thought she hadn't done very well, but then two days after the Caduceus party they'd given her a callback....
    "That's great. That's really great." It wasn't hard for him to sound interested as she talked; it was hard not to growl. There might be a natural explanation for this, but he wasn't betting on it. Their dinner arrived, which was excellent.
    "I have an Italian mama, and I know I should say that this isn't as good as hers, but to be honest it's about ten times better," John confessed.
    "I'll never tell your mom you said that," she promised. "So who does the cooking out at the base?"
    "Usually Dawn." How to explain her? "She's, uh... she's one of our affiliate team members. She doesn't go into combat, but she helps us along at the base."
    "Okay. Can I try one of those shrimp?"
    "Sure." Anything to change the subject. "She has matter generation powers, so when she makes breakfast, she makes breakfast. She's really great. I'll have to introduce you to her."
    "I look forward to meeting her. And how are things going with the kids?"
    "Good, good. Most of 'em have got jobs now, their training is going along very well." He tried to emphasize the "working with disadvantaged youth" angle, as opposed to the "teaching former gang members better ways to beat people up."
    The table was cleared. "Would you be interested in dessert, sir?"
    "Sure. You want some?"
    "Oh, no," she demurred.
    He ordered something he thought she might like. He'd been trying his damnedest to be romantic the whole evening, and it seemed to be working, although he hadn't had a chance to ask Dawn about the kind of things chicks liked.

Fenway Park, one of Boston's most beloved landmarks, site of that night's home game against the Mariners (who, as Phoenix Talon had remarked a few weeks back, weren't going to go anywhere that year). The Sox were up by seven at the bottom of the sixth inning. The pitcher wound up for a fastball—
    A hideous cracking sound echoed over the field as the back wall known locally as the Green Monster exploded under the impact of another ball. The intruding sphere hit the surprised batter's bat and shattered it into flinders, threw the catcher into the umpire and both of them into the cage. The crowd gasped as a figure dressed in a Yankees uniform emerged onto the field, bat in hand.
    "Now that I have your attention, be warned!" he shouted. "If you thought it was true before, you now know that Boston is under the curse of the Bambino! I am the Babe, and this city is MINE!"

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