by Steve Pagano

Chapter Two

“There is evidence that every fifty years or so, gradual accumulation of soil and debris along the Roaring Brook eventually causes so great an amount of water to become backed up that the earth underneath it suddenly gives away, and a great rock slide ensues, ripping out a great swath as it tears down the side of the mountain, carving a great scar in its wake. This was evidenced no more clearly than one day in July of 1963, when six inches of rain were dumped on the west faces of Giant in a mere half hour, triggering an avalanche of trees, mud and rock that gouged out a path two hundred yards wide and thirty feet deep, which buried Route 73 to a depth of twenty feet. Amazingly enough, no lives were lost....”

– Jim Goodwin, “The Forty-Six Peaks”, Of the Summits, of the Forests

***

The day off yesterday had done her well, and had allowed her to rise well before the dawn to prepare for the trip. Victoria washed and dressed quickly, and filled her pack with the necessary supplies, the whole routine now driven more by habit than by thought. She bolted down a quick breakfast of fruit and oatmeal, and at the last minute she threw a pair of running tights into her pack, just in case. With that she turned off the lights and went out into the darkling morning.

At once she was glad to have remembered her tights, for the air was thick with a bracing cold fog, and a barely detectable breeze cut through to the skin. Victoria could feel her flesh tighten as she shuffled down the stairs. Like everywhere else in the small town of Keene, New York, Van Dorn’s Hardware (over which she lived) was shut tight and fast asleep. Victoria’s footsteps seemed loud and harsh as she scuffed across the parking lot to her car.

The road was empty as usual, and the mist swirled and stirred before her as she traveled south on Route 73, fog lights on, slowed by necessity to 25 mph. The widely spaced buildings were barely visible through the fog; the majority of them were reminiscent of the late nineteenth century, when the Adirondack Park was at its peak in popularity, the tourist trade booming like it never would again. She could make out porch lights off in the trees on each side of the road, interrupted intermittently by the swish of her windshield wipers. Victoria had always liked fog, but on this early morning she was less than pleased with it. It blotted out the myriad stars that swept across the predawn sky, vastly blacker here among the great hills, far away from the cities and their sky-polluting lights; and it hid from her the hulking forms of the great beasts themselves, the High Peaks. Soon she would be passing through the even smaller town of Keene Valley and its plethora of bed-and-breakfasts, and up on the left, to the east of the road, could be seen the monstrous form of the Giant himself, looming three and a half thousand feet above the valley. Victoria longed to see him, upon whose dome she would soon tread.

St. Hubert’s, a hamlet named for the patron saint of lost travelers, soon passed by almost unnoticed in the shrouded mists, and immediately upon the left was the drive leading to the trailhead at Roaring Brook Falls. In daylight and in clearer conditions, the Falls themselves could be seen, plunging in a graceful arc off the sides of Giant into the Bouquet River seventy feet below. But even now one could hear it from the road, and Victoria rolled down her window to catch its roar. At once she was met with an icy and wet blast of air. “Whoa!” She quickly put the window back up, and shuddered. “I wonder how much my nose’ll run in this?”

She slowed to a crawl a mile later, peering out into the mists. On the right a small, unpaved parking area passed, and on the left she spotted the trailhead marker: a brown sign, two feet high and three wide with hand-painted yellow writing, suspended from a pole at an apparently unremarkable spot in the woods off to the side of the road. Victoria stopped, backed up and pulled into the parking area.

First things came first, and so she took up her boots, fetched her running tights, and shifted from the driver’s seat into the passenger’s. There she shed her outer shorts, donned her tights, and put the shorts back on. Then off came the cotton socks, to be replaced by the sock liners with woolens over them. Then on with the boots – Victoria had to open the door of the car to get room enough to lace and tighten them properly. Finally, she located the headlamp and put it on, then grabbed her daypack, jogged across the road and vanished into the woods.

Of all sports, mountain climbing is perhaps the least well understood by those not involved in it. While indeed there is ample opportunity to set to up near-vertical surfaces with rope and pitons and pickaxe, a vast number of peaks, including a great many in the Rockies and Himalayas, can be attained via rugged trails, using nothing more than a good pair of boots, and a map, compass, and guidebook. Here the true obstacles are heat and fatigue, swamps and streams, boulder fields with rocks ranging from pebbles to house-sized monstrosities, sheer cliffs, dense undergrowth, and rock slides, the so-called “sidewalks to the sky”. Also, true threats (and perhaps the most dangerous of all) are the volatile weather systems about the mountains. Temperatures can soar or plunge at alarming rates; enormously powerful storm systems can develop at a moment’s notice on what had seemed a clear day; in the valleys it can be 75 degrees and drizzling, while two thousand feet higher it is 30 degrees and snowing. And it is all the worse if one is in the northeastern United States. Indeed, what one experiences at an elevation of fourteen thousand feet in the Rockies (or even the Alps or Himalayas) can easily occur at just four thousand feet in the Adirondacks; and Mount Washington in the nearby White Mountains in New Hampshire is perhaps the windiest place on Earth.

There are forty-six “High Peaks” in the northeastern Adirondacks, each of them at one time believed to be four thousand feet or greater in elevation; each peak can be reached be one or more trails or paths with no more than a twenty degree overall gradient. Some, like gentle Cascade, can be conquered by the greenest of hikers on an afternoon jaunt. Others, like Redfield or Emmons, are so far from any roads as to demand an overnight stay in a lean-to to complete the mission, with only the very strongest and most experienced of hikers being able to knock them off in a single day. Victoria had long since completed her circuit of all forty-six, and remembered each individual peak as if it had been her only one. There was Colden and the spectacular traverse of Avalanche Pass; the treacherous maze of false paths on Street and Nye; the steep ascent of and unparalleled views from Haystack; snow in August atop Santanoni; and the nearly disastrous bout with heat exhaustion on Hough. But of all the mountains, the Giant of the Valley was dearest to her, for it had been her first Peak, which she had first climbed some fifteen years ago at age six. There had been countless ascents since then by a slew of different routes: by the Roaring Brook Trail, the Ridge Trail, up the frighteningly steep Eagle Slide, or the long way, from Elizabethtown all the way over the entire Rocky Peak Ridge. Each ascent brought something new and wonderful to experience, and the old man never failed to thrill her. The Giant epitomized to Victoria all that she loved about the High Peaks: he evoked within her vast waves of awe, reverence, wonder, joy, peace, and beauty, and each time she reached his 4615-foot-high summit bolt, she was overwhelmed with a sense of pride and accomplishment. It was not uncommon for her to cry as she sat on his open-domed summit, gazing across the other 45 Peaks spread about her, beckoning from across the Keene Valley.

But for all her climbs and experiences, there was one thing that Victoria had never done: she had never been atop a summit to greet the sunrise.

Even in the misty blackness, the trail was familiar to her. After some bobbing and weaving among the trees, the trail began to climb gently at first, but then with little warning it turned left and began to scale a steep face in a series of switchbacks. Victoria spotted the turn-off without fail, but off ahead, maybe fifty feet or so into the fog, was a small trickle of a waterfall, and she could simply not pass it up. Victoria’s maple-colored hair had a natural wave to it, and she could feel the curls tightening from the moisture in the air. She was breathing more heavily now, and her breath was smoking; the cold pulled at her face and the mists collected upon her nose and cheeks, to mix with the sweat that would surely come. She was warmed up fully now, and her quadriceps burned gently and pleasantly – not the deep ache that always met her on the first hikes of the year, tearing at her legs and sapping her strength, but rather the even warmth one experiences when one’s body is used to the effort, and is happily basking in the exercise. Soon she would be able to shed her tights – but not yet. It was still too cold.

The headlamp cut through the fog, which was thinning now as she put on elevation, and soon the light shone upon a small rock face. A few drops of water dripped feebly over its edge, to collect in the small pool that was the beginning of the drainage stream. In springtime, as the vast snows melted off the Peaks, there would be a beautiful cascade tumbling down the face; but now, in late summer, the beginning of color season, there was precious little to this brook, especially as it had not rained for days.

Victoria smiled. Such moments were the true highlights of the hike, as important to her as the actual reaching of the summit itself. She took a great breath in through her nose. Autumn was in the air, evidenced by the musty smell of dying leaves, and by the hint of snow upon the winds, a deep, icy smell, foreshadowing the winters that began in mid-October, less than a month away. She closed her eyes, savoring the moment. But she had little time to spare, and so she was off again, taking the switchbacks with grand enthusiasm.

A few minutes later the trail wandered out onto a lookout facing west across the Valley. Here Victoria could finally tell that the fog was indeed thinning. Although in the blackness neither Noonmark nor the Wolfjaws could be seen, above her there appeared one or two bright stars in the sky, and the sky itself was beginning to pale ever so slightly… She had to hurry on.

The next hour of hiking saw few highlights. The Giant’s Washbowl was low, luckily; Victoria appreciated being able to cross the outlet as if it were merely part of the trail, for the last time she had come this way the Washbowl had been overflowing, and crossing the outlet had been more of a fording job. The only other instance of note was when the ponderous conifers suddenly gave way to virgin growth of birch and poplars, marking the farthest reaches of the 1905 fire. She had taken the change of trees as a signal to shed her tights.

Soon she passed the false summit and pushed on, out onto the ridge, which would carry her almost all the way to the very summit. She resisted the temptation to stop and look back behind her at the magnificent views. Although the fog was now well below her, it was still a bit too dark to see anything well. She pressed onwards and upwards, and presently she came to a fork in the trail. The left one led straight back into the woods, avoiding a rise in the ridge to cut a hundred yards off the length of the trip. But the right one thrust out onto a great bare slab of rock, going over rather than around this rise, and this was the fork that Victoria opted for. The sky was nearing pink in color now, and was light enough to afford fine views to the south and west. Here finally she indulged herself, sitting down and shutting off the headlamp. At once she lost her breath. The fog still lay malingering in the valley. To the southwest were a thousand smaller peaks, most too small to earn names, and the fog overwhelmed the vast majority of them like a great ocean, leaving only the tips exposed, tiny islands in a vast sea of white. It was eerily cold and silent, and the purple light in the sky intensified the effect. A gentle breeze blew in from the west, and it rolled the fog across and among the small islets. At the far right of her field of vision, to the north of the smaller peaks, Dix and its brethren Hough and Macomb towered out of the mists like vast leviathans.

“Dragons in the mist,” she murmured to herself, and her voice sounded loud and alien, and yet small and overwhelmed. She put away the headlamp and took out her camera. Six minutes later she decided that she had spent enough time and she was off again, plunging back into the forest.

It was just after the Roaring Brook trail came in from the northwest when it happened, and it came so suddenly that Victoria had no chance to respond. A large stone in the path suddenly rolled under her foot, and she spilled to the ground. She felt something smack into her right knee, and at once white pain shot through her.

“Owwwwwwwwww!” she howled, rolling about the ground, clutching her knee. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Stupid!” After a moment, she sat up, and examined the wound in detail. It was enormously tender to the touch, and there was a small scratch across the kneecap. Although it showed no immediate signs of it, it would bruise and swell up. “Dammit,” she grumbled. “I should’ve known it. Kim warned me against solo hiking. Aaah! Damn!” She struggled to her feet, and tested her weight upon the injured leg. It hurt like hell, and Victoria’s face would have amazed a contortionist. But her leg could support her, and after a bit of walking around, the pain began to vanish. She had to keep moving, however, lest it stiffen up on her and possibly leave her stranded. She took just enough time with her first aid kit to clean and iodize the scratch, and then she was off again.

As always, the summit came upon her much more quickly than she expected. By now the sky above her was open and well lit in the dawn light; it was streaked purple and pink with the occasional black smudge of a cloud, and the stars had all but vanished. To the south, west, and north, nearly the entirety of the High Peaks rose to greet her, with only Rocky Peak Ridge to the southeast being hidden from view. But the view due east was blocked, however, by the trees lining that side of the summit ridge, the only vegetation to interrupt the acres of open rock atop the summit. But for these Victoria was prepared. She shed her pack and from it retrieved her camera again, and after taking a panorama of shots from south to west to north, she took out the gardening gloves and donned them. Then, camera dangling from a strap about her neck, she selected a nearby tree and set about climbing it.

A great number of the peaks of the mountains in the Adirondacks are ringed by what is aptly called “cripplebrush”. This term collectively describes a number of balsams and firs ranging in height from two to ten feet, all of which have sharkskin needles and wood like steel, and which grow so closely together that the only way to get through it is to bodily force apart adjacent trees and shove one’s way through – often to the detriment of every square inch of exposed skin on one’s body. As the guidebook author Barbara MacMartin said, “Cripplebrush does not cripple hikers. It shreds them.”

Thus the scramble up the nine-foot spruce was anything but pleasant, and Victoria wound up with scrapes and scratches all over her arms and legs. “So much for environmental impact,” she grumbled. “I couldn’t hurt this damned thing if I wanted to. This better be worth it.” And then finally she found a comfortable perch near the top (if indeed a comfortable place was to be found) and gazed east. At once she caught her breath, and nearly for herself weeping. The sun had crept up just over the horizon, and now shone brilliantly over the Green Mountains of Vermont across Lake Champlain, spilling out across the foothills of the High Peaks, which bled deeply of reds, yellows, and oranges: maples, oaks, birches and elms in the full explosion of autumn colors. Numbly, she scrambled for her camera, and proceeded to shoot the rest of the roll. For a moment she was disappointed for the lack of spare film, but at once she was caught up again in the brilliance of the sunrise. The sun was warm upon her face, and he brought to her the faint scent of summer, wreathed with the red and orange smells of the early northern autumns. She sighed deeply, and smiled. “Some things are meant to be seen alone,” she breathed.

There she sat for the greater part of an hour, basking in the sun’s warm glow as he crept up over the horizon, mounting to the sky; but her knee was making it known that it had no intention of holding out much longer, and Victoria was obliged to descend. Still smiling, she put the gloves back into the pack, and then carefully put away the camera. It was then that she looked up at the sky to the west, and gasped. Scant seconds later, lightning danced across the Peaks on the other side of the Valley, and almost immediately an enormous peal of thunder shook the deepest cavities of her breast. A vast storm had gathered over the mountains as she had gazed at the sunrise, and now it was bearing down upon her.

“Sweet Lady,” she said, and she at once sealed up her camera and film in a Zip-loc bag, then threw on her pack, turned, and, as fast as her knee could bear, began a hurried descent. It was certainly not a good idea to be caught anywhere near the summit during the storm.

She soon forgot her pain, and descended the mountain at a virtual plummet. It was just a few minutes before she reached the trail junction, where the Roaring Brook trail branched right and northwest, while the Ridge trail continued straight southwest. Victoria turned right. If it rained, the ridge would prove much more dangerous than the earthen Brook trail, and even though this route promised an extra two miles of walk to backtrack to the car, it was well worth it for reasons of safety.

The droplets began to fall almost as soon as she started down the switchbacks that marked the upper part of the Brook trail, and this sprinkle quickly became a heavy rain, which lingered for a few minutes before becoming a torrential downpour. The sheer pounding force of the water drove like lead weights upon Victoria, and in a matter of seconds she was drenched to the bone. A cold wind came in with the rain, slicing through to the skin, driving the wind-chill down as it blew sheets of water in every direction. Visibility was even less now than it had been in the fog. Victoria now slipped and stumbled down the trail, which was fast becoming more of a stream than a walking venue. More than once did she fall and have to right herself again. The only compensation she got was that the rain washed off any mud almost as soon as she rose to her feet again. Now more than worried, Victoria pushed on faster than ever. The idea of stopping to put on the jacket from her pack crossed her mind, but that notion was quickly discarded. It would provide little if any protection against the rain and wind, and the time she would lose to the process of finding the jacket, rearranging her pack to suit its new set of contents, and then getting the jacket on in the driving gale, could easily cost her in the long run.

Half an hour went by, and still the rain did not let up. Victoria was running out of energy, and her body was fast becoming numb and weak with cold; yet she still had over a mile and a half of descent left before reaching the road. Just now did the trail finally meet its namesake. The Roaring Brook’s call was drowned out by the mad rush of the rainstorm, and its usually clear waters were awash with silt and fallen leaves and branches, and its waters were swollen to more than five times normal. The trail here crossed the brook, but the rock-hop crossing was now fully a ford, and an unstable one at that. Twice Victoria fell, once smacking a numbed elbow on a midstream boulder, once being fully submerged for a few seconds before emerging on the opposite shoreline several yards downstream from where she had intended to leave the stream. She scrabbled up the flooded banks of the brook, and again achieved the trail.

Still she plunged on. Suddenly a crack of thunder went off directly overhead, startling her so that she stopped and dropped flat on her behind, terrified. With the thunder came a tremendous flash of lightning, and a short ways in front of her she heard a tree drop over, rasping and creaking loud enough to be heard over the downpour. She scrambled to her feet again, sore, aching, and freezing, and continued on. In a scant few seconds she came across the tree itself, a great hemlock, lying charred and blackened on its side across the very path itself. As she scrambled over its four-foot-thick trunk, she caught a glimpse of the skin on her arms. It was faintly blue. Now terrified that she was about to succumb to hypothermia, Victoria headed down the trail faster than ever. Here the trail was sloped only gently and wove slightly back and forth among the trees, as it had once been used as a horse trail to the upper reaches of the mountain, and so going was easy, and the slips and stumbles came on more rarely. After fifteen more minutes of walking, she was sure that she was now just half a mile from the top of the Falls, and from there another winding quarter mile or so to the road. She began to feel better. But barely a minute later there came to her ears a roaring sound even greater than that of the rain, even larger and more pronounced than the thunder. It was a deep rumbling sound, much like the noise of a vast, angry earthquake, and it was coming from in back of her. Victoria stopped and listened for a moment. Yes, it was getting closer. Then suddenly she realized what the sound indeed represented, and at once panic seized her. She turned and, using every last bit of energy she could muster, fled at top speed down the trail, heedless of anything in her path.

The roaring grew louder and louder, and Victoria ran faster and faster. Her heart was pounding in her mouth, and she nearly wept with fear. She tripped once, and cracked her chin on a root in the trail. Dazed, she clambered to her feet, got her bearings, and began to run again. She was nearing the top of the Roaring Brook Falls when, suddenly, the slide was upon her. A few rocks and a branch struck her back, and then with a rush her feet were swept from beneath her, and she was hurled over the edge of the falls. She screamed as she fell, a piercing wail, pitiful, alone. Then she struck the ground, and lost consciousness.

She awoke, not knowing how much later. Am I dead? she thought. She tried to move, but felt herself pinned. She could see nothing, hear nothing. She noticed with alarm that not only was she not breathing, but she also felt no pressing need to breathe. She suddenly felt overcome by a wave of claustrophobia, and gave a great heave. With an enormous aura of energy about her, not quite feeling what she was doing, she stirred amongst the rock and soil and heaved herself into a standing position, still buried beneath untold tons of earth. Every cell in her body seemed charged with life, and seething with energy. She felt strong, inhumanly strong, and although she could feel the presence of the dirt and rock about her, she felt no pressure from its weight, no pain. Not even her numerous cuts and bruises hurt. It was like going to bed with bronchial pneumonia and a temperature of 106, and waking up the next day in perfect health and in the condition of a triathlete; like freezing near to death on the frozen wastelands and then being suddenly warm and comforted in an Alpine inn; like being handed a cold glass of lemonade after three days in the Mojave with no water. Not knowing what to do, Victoria decided which direction was up, and began to struggled in that direction, mimicking a painstakingly slow swimming motion. The ponderous mass of earth fell past her shoulders as she heaved, and she marveled at how little effort she needed to exert to achieve this. Gradually she made her way upwards.

Then, suddenly, she felt her hand catch open air, and with a final burst of energy she pulled herself free. She was standing atop an enormous heap of trees, stones, and dirt, filling the ditch of the Bouquet River and spilling over Route 73, covering it to a depth of fifteen feet. But the most alarming thing she noticed was her skin -- it was blue!

It was as if all the clothes on her body had vanished, and her skin had become a deep crystalline cobalt blue, carved and faceted like a great jewel; the sunlight reflected off it and sent beams of deep blue all about. At first, she thought the crystal might be some sort of costume or outfit, as she quickly noticed that she was breaking no indecent exposure laws; but when she stroked a faceted forearm with faceted fingers, she experienced tactile sensations, as if touching skin with skin.

“Great Mother…” She gaped at herself. Then: “Oh my God! What the hell is going on? Oh my God! Shit!” And she fled into the trees surrounding the still-flowing Bouquet to the south, just out of the sight of nearby Route 73. There she sat and examined herself. “My God! What’s going on?” She checked her back: nothing. “My God! What am I, the Omega Woman? Oh, Jesus, where’s all my stuff? What if I can’t change back?”

With that utterance, the vast, overwhelming flow of power and energy that had taken possession of her body ebbed away, and the crystalline blue faded to become her own skin again. Her clothes materialized again, and her pack reappeared on her back. Yet, inexplicably, all her wounds had disappeared, and she noticed this at once. What am I, immortal? she wondered. She looked over her clothes, which were badly torn and soiled. She noticed that now she was indeed in violation of a few indecency laws, for her shirt and bra were nearly shredded. She took off her pack, and miraculously found her spare coat intact and in perfect condition, but still dripping wet. This she put on at once. Then she quickly searched for and found her keys, and with that she sighed and raised her eyes to heaven, mouthing “Thank you.”

Victoria sat down again, surveying the situation carefully. She looked at her hands again. Could she will her transformations? She concentrated, willing her newfound powers to return. At once her hands became crystalline, and her entire body quickly followed suit. She shut it off at once, finding the process quite easy. “Wow,” she breathed. She lay back and stared at the sky. “Sweet Jesus. What’s happened to me? What the hell do I do now? What am I supposed to do? What can I actually do with these powers? How do they work?” She paused, and then she repeated a question from before: “am I immortal?”

No answers came. “Well,” she said, picking herself up again. “Immortal or Omega Woman or whatever I am, I still gotta be at work by three.” She looked for her watch, and found it crushed. Indeed, nearly everything breakable in her pack was broken, save her headlamp and her film case, which miraculously escaped harm. “Damn,” she mumbled as she examined the cracked crystal face of her watch. It still read 9:17. She wrapped it back up and stuffed it in her sack, then scrambled back through the trees to the unblocked portion of Route 73 just south of the slide. Then she started heading south along the road, putting the last mile to the car behind her as quickly as possible. She glanced over her shoulder once as she fled the scene. Already a few locals and the state police had arrived at the slide, and were rummaging about the scene. Victoria was glad when the road bent, hiding her from view.

The Kwik-Stop gas station was on Route 73 just over a stone’s throw south of Victoria’s apartment, just outside the town of Keene, under the watchful eye of Porter Mountain. It was a relatively new structure. Out front it had a series of four pumps that dispensed various grades of gasoline, and over them loomed a platform that protected customers from the rain and snow. The building itself was red brick with white trim, and large windows to show off the well-kept mini-mart inside. The entire right side of the store’s interior was taken up by the enormously long counter, which doubled as a checkout and as a snack bar with stools. Here were served omelets, toast, and other various foodstuffs for breakfast, and subs and pizza in the latter stages of the day. Coffee of course was always a big seller. On the far left wall were the doors of the cooler, behind which were a vast array of dairy products, soda, and beer. In the front left of the store was the freezer, and two big gondolas fully laden with fresh groceries stretched diagonally across the open floor.

Outside was a young couple filling up their Volvo, and inside two men in work boots and flannel shirts stumped about the store in search of munchies. Watching all this from behind the counter was the lone store employee. She was about Victoria’s age, but a few inches shorter and several pounds heavier, with a considerable bit of extra baggage on the waist and hips. She had shorter hair than Victoria, which was tightly curled, obviously (and badly) dyed, and in a bob ponytail behind her head. She was chewing a wad of gum. She wore tight jeans, too-loud red shoes, too much makeup, and a uniform smock with a nametag that read “KIM ASST MGR” in barely legible tape labeling.

Kim finished off a perfunctory wipe-off of the counter, and then checked her watch. It was 3:05. She tsked and shook her head. “C’mon, Vic, you’re late.” She spoke under her breath in a singsong voice one assumes when grumbling quietly in public. “I’m not gonna do the dinner rush aloooonnee....”

Kim was dumping out the remains of a pot of coffee when the door opened and Victoria stumbled in. She wore a short, dark blue cotton skirt and a red-and-blue rugby shirt over it. She looked exhausted. She was wearing no makeup, and her hair was a shambles.

“You’re late!” called Kim. Then: “Lord, girl, what happened to you? You look awful.”

“Thanks.” Victoria quickly shuffled behind the counter. “I had a rough morning.”

“It looks it.” This was met by an icy glare. Kim, as always, didn’t seem to notice. “Where’ve you been, Vic? You’re five minutes late.”

“Sorry. I went on a pre-dawn hike and got caught in the rain. I fell asleep when I got home, and woke up about fifteen minutes ago.” In truth, she had spent the rest of the morning and the early afternoon in a daze, confused about the events of the morning. She had snapped out of it to discover that she still stank of sweat and that work was only a few scant minutes away. She had taken a quick shower, thrown on the first clean clothes she could find, gathered her makeup bag into her purse, then realizing that she had forgotten her underthings, seized a pair of pantyhose and put it in her purse as well, then had run at top speed the 200 yards to work, praying that she was not giving passing drivers a free show.

“Yeah,” said Kim, as Victoria punched the clock. “It supposedly really dumped on Giant. Did you hear about the big rockslide? Buried Route 73 under – they’re still digging now.”

“I heard the slide. I was on Giant.”

Kim caught her breath. “Oh, my God!” she gasped as her eyes went wide. As always, Victoria couldn’t tell if Kim’s shock was true or feigned. “Are you all right?” Kim took Victoria’s arm and looked at her.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She pulled free of her grasp. “I was on the Ridge trail.”

“What?” There was a look of utter incomprehension on the woman’s round face.

Victoria resisted an urge to roll her eyes. “I was on a different side of the mountain.” She turned and headed into the nether regions of the store, behind the counter. “I’ll be right back.”

“Hurry it up. Mr. Ianello is gonna be pissed as it is when he sees you were late. He won’t like it if he finds out that you came in and vanished into the little girls’ room for half an hour.”

“But he won’t find out, will he?” Victoria shut the door to the small employees’ rest room behind her. “Besides,” she called from inside. “I’ll be out in five.”

Actually, she was out in three: her stockings had somehow manifested a plethora of unsightly runs. She had applied only a minimal amount of makeup to her face, more for the sake of being at work than for her own (or others’) sake or need, and some brushwork did an adequate job on her hair. Her look of annoyance became a true scowl as she reached the grocery aisle only to discover that the store was out of all sizes of stockings smaller than C, which was still a size and a half too big for her. Faced with a choice of going bare, or dealing with bagging ankles all night, she took the path of modesty, picked out a pair of size C control-tops, paid for them at the register, and went back to the ladies’ room, face flaming. Thank God there were no men in the store at the moment. Luckily, the clingy control top would help prevent the waistband from dropping practically to her knees, but she still had a night full of shifting and shuffling to look forward to. Things did not look good.

As it was every night, the flurry of sub and pizza orders kept the two women busy until just past six, followed by a sharp slowing in business that always led to boredom. As was typical, Victoria soon became sick of the mud that had been tracked about the floor, and tired of Kim’s endless gossiping, and so she retrieved the mop and pail from the storeroom and began to swab the floors.

“Hey, Vic, you ain’t gotta do that,” said Kim. “Jim did that before he left. And Mr. Ianello had him move all the stock and dust all the shelves, too. You’re on cruise control til midnight.”

“Floors still get dirty,” answered Victoria, not bothering to look up. She knew that Kim would be filing her nails or reading the trash tabloids. Victoria often wondered if the phrase “assistant manager” translated into English as “one who gets paid more for doing less”.

At 7:30, desperate for something to do to get herself out of earshot of Kim (who had gone on a long discourse about a secret affair that the Inquirer said Kathie Lee was having), she vanished into the beer cooler, ostensibly to clean up the place. In all honesty, the place was neat enough so as to need almost no cleaning at all, and after throwing out a few wrappers and tossing a few sets of plastic six-pack rings into the recycling bin, there was nothing left to do. Victoria began to regret her decision to blow off some time back there, as there was a icy blast of wind which blew out from a fan on the ceiling to bounce off the walls and floor and swirl up her skirt, freezing her thoroughly. Victoria alternated between rubbing her legs together to generate warmth with tugging up her pantyhose, which were merrily bagging about her ankles. How can you tell when an old lady breaks wind? she thought. She wished that it were hot outside, so that the cold would be pleasant rather than numbing. But anything was better than having to listen to Kim’s tirades. After glancing out between the shelves and through the glass doors to make sure that no one was looking, Victoria took the opportunity to hide behind a shelf of closely packed soda bottles and hike up the waistband of her stockings, then pull her skirt back down into place and smooth it over her behind with her hands.

It was then that she noticed that the cute delivery guy from Johnson Distributors had been there that day to drop off the beer kegs, and these were arranged in a haphazard manner on the floor. Victoria was suddenly struck with an idea. She peeked through the doors to make sure that no one was watching, and willed her powers to manifest. At once the feeling of cold was replaced by one of comfortable warmth, and the waves of energy went through her body. She at once set to ordering and sorting the half- and quarter kegs, tossing about the 200-pound units as if they were made of Styrofoam. Victoria’s ego greatly enjoyed the boost, and she hefted one of the kegs as if it were an empty beach cooler, tossing it once end over end in the air before setting it nicely in place. She then dropped her powers, at once feeling the biting cold again, and for her own reference she tried moving the kegs. She could barely budge the small quarter kegs, let alone the halves. “Wow,” she mumbled to herself. “Omega Woman or what?” then she paused, and scratched her head, thinking. “No, not the Omega Woman. Something different. If I am a super-hero of sorts, and not just dead or immortal or something, then I’ve gotta come up with another name. A better name.” With that she stepped out of the cooler.

“Were things all right in there?” called Kim.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, just a bit disorganized. Why?”

“Because I thought I saw something blue flashing around in there. I thought that maybe the milk crates had fallen over on you, but there was no noise.”

“No, I was just…” Victoria looked around, noting that the store was otherwise empty. “I was fixing my damn pantyhose again. I’ve got on a blue bodysuit under this. You must’ve seen that.”

“OooooOOOooo!” Kim was obviously interested. “Where’d ya get it? Did Rob-from-Burlington get it for you?”

“No, Rob did not get it for me.” Victoria scowled. “I bought it for myself last time I was in Syracuse to see my Aunt – I found it at Victoria’s Secret. I had meant to surprise Rob with it.” In truth, she had indeed made such a purchase, but the article was still in the bag unwrapped in her closet.

“Uh-oh,” said Kim, and her tone was one that one’s mother would use when discovering her daughter’s dating problems. “I take it that you and Rob are fighting?”

“Rob and I are through.” A beeping noise came from the register, and Victoria noticed that a couple of hikers had picked up the gas nozzle outside. She hit the button to start the pump. “Last weekend when he was down, he basically said that either I let him sleep with me, or we’re through. I threw him out.”

“Good for you!” But Kim’s face clearly told that it had been a long time since she’d been with a man herself, and that she would have welcomed such advances. Kim was a miserably poor liar.

“Whatever.” To try to end the conversation, Victoria leaned over the counter for a copy of the evening’s Dispatch, and began to read. The headline read “NEW SLIDE ON GIANT: Route 73 buried again”, and off to one side, there was a smaller heading saying “OMEGA MAN APPEARS AGAIN, SAVES CHILD FROM TRAGIC RUNDOWN”. Victoria was struck with an idea.

“Say, Kim, are the schedules out for the weekend?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Kim went back into the office, then came back carrying a few sheets of paper. “You’re on Saturday, off Sunday. Oh, look, it’s 7:55. I’m outta here.”

“Can I get you to switch with me?” She quickly scanned the schedule. “I’ll do your closing shift on Tuesday if you’ll do mine Saturday.”

Kim was putting on her jacket. “Well… I do owe you one for a few weeks ago… well… okay. I guess I can. Why? Does the animal shelter want you to put in extra hours?”

“No, no,” said Victoria, looking at the paper again. “I just haven’t seen my aunt in a couple of months. I’m going down to Syracuse to visit her.”