October

“One day?”

“Yes,” the man said. He didn’t even deign to take off his sunglasses. “Twenty-four hours, starting at sunset.”

Luis laughed as he wiped down the counter. The sun filtered at an angle through the windows, glinting off the bottles lined up behind him in his periphery; Melissa was goddamn obsessed with that shit, like aesthetics mattered in a dive like this. The bar wasn’t even technically open yet, but he was usually inclined to be generous, and this guy had looked like he desperately needed a drink and maybe a sandwich before he’d started going on about superpowers.

Luis was starting to regret letting him in.

“What’s so funny?”

Luis shook his head. “Man, you high or something? You expect me to believe that somehow, just like that--” he snapped his fingers-- “bam, I’m the Falcon. Because you said so.”

The guy grinned, a split-second flash of white teeth. He leaned back and raised his hands. “Sober, honest, just stating the facts. Whether you believe it or not, that’s up to you.”

Luis slapped the rag down and eyed him. Dressed in a crisp, gray wool blazer and a white button down, the guy, by all rights, should have looked like he belonged in a high-end law firm. Instead, his sartorial choices just looked strangely incongruous, like he was wearing someone else’s clothes; the sunglasses couldn’t hide the gaunt pallor of his jutting cheekbones, and Luis hadn’t missed the redness of raw skin when he’d raised his hands. His man had busted his knuckles recently, looked like, probably less than a week ago.

When Luis glanced back up at his face, his gaze met only the inscutable black lenses of those glasses. The ghost of a smirk quirked the man’s lips, drawing attention to a white scar that glanced across his chin and the edge of his mouth.

Yeah, he was one shady motherfucker.

“What’s in it for you?”

“I have something you want,” his guy said. “What does it matter?”

Luis crossed his arms. “I never said I was interested.”

That flash of a grin again. Luis’ spine prickled, uncomfortable.“You didn’t need to,” the man said.

They considered each other. Outside, a horn honked at the intersection. Luis shoved his hands in his pockets, his fingers lighting on a round plastic edge. He didn’t want to be the one to look away first, but the guy wasn’t giving one goddamn inch. He was still fucking smiling.

“Melissa’s coming in soon,” Luis finally said. “You’ve gotta go.”

The man shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

***

That night, Luis walked home on autopilot, the dark alleys and towering apartment buildings flashing by in half-remembered blurs. He checked his phone as he turned onto his street, the white light flashing blindingly into his eyes as the lock screen came on.

00:16, it read impassively. Tuesday, September 29.

Pain flared sharp in his lip, and he realized he’d been chewing it. Blood was a metallic tang on the back of his tongue. He looked up, blinking quickly into the night sky like a dark dome around him. He couldn’t afford a plane ticket.

The plastic coin in his pocket weighed barely anything, but it felt like it was boring a hole into his leg. He shoved his hand into his pocket and grasped it, pulling it out to sit in the palm of his hand.

He looked down at it.

Fuck it.

***

“You said I’d be able to fly. How fast?”

***

Luis stared down at the gravestone, jutting up neatly from the dry dirt. Weeds had overrun its base, crabgrass curling with sharp tendrils into the cracks of the aging stone. Someone had left flowers; tulips. She’d always liked roses best.

“Almost missed it this year,” he said. “I was sure I would.”

He glanced around, but there was no one else aside from the moon and the autumn silence. Headstones extended outwards in orderly rows around him, climbing up the hill in the distance in dull gray platoons. The moonlight cast dark, elongated shadows behind them. At his feet, her shadow touched the toes of his boots. In less than a hour, it would recede as the sun began to rise.

“I made a promise to you,” he said haltingly. “An ocean away, God gave me a way to keep it. That must mean something.”

He fingered the coin in his pocket before taking it out again. 6 MONTHS, it said, emblazoned on its plastic surface.

He closed his eyes. “I couldn’t have gotten here without you. You’d say it was all down to me, but-- nobody else pushed me like you did.” He grinned suddenly. “Sober, honest, just stating the facts.”

Luis sidled forward and placed the coin on the top edge of the gravestone, an innocuous little green circle. He didn’t need it anymore.

He turned away. It was the first day of October, and the night sky was beautiful tonight.