Some people call New York, “Gotham City.” Others call it, “Metropolis.”
Most call it, “The Big Apple.”

New York is also the home for all sorts of crazies. They range from
self-appointed mercenary groups to would-be superheroes. A day doesn’t go
by that the news doesn’t report the daring deeds of the Guardian Angels,
Hells Angels, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Dare Devil, Wonder Woman,
Captain America, the Flash, the Green Hornet, the Green Lantern, the
Incredible Hulk, the Six Million Dollar Man, the X-men, The Tomorrow
People, the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles, and way too many others to mention.

Larry stopped at a newsstand just after he got out of work Thursday
night. He didn’t buy it to read, but just to cover his head until he could
reach the subway station in the driving rain. Had he read it, he would
have learned that, due to a power failure at the cryogenics lab where she
was imprisoned inside a block of dry ice, the infamous Inque escaped a few
days ago. Being a shape shifter as a result of a mutagenic experiment,
Inque can change her body to liquid and elude almost any form of capture.
She was last reported being washed down a drain at the Metropolitan Museum
of Natural History yesterday. A skylight in the museum was smashed during
the rainstorm as a result of a super-fight when Batman attempted to
recapture the super villain. She was presumed dead. Larry didn’t buy into
such stories, though. Tales of superheroes and super villains were urban
legends as far as he was concerned — fodder for adventure movies with wild
special effects and Saturday morning animated cartoons.

Fortunately, it was a short walk from the restaurant where he worked as
a short-order cook to the Columbus Circle subway station. Larry tossed the
drenched paper in the trash as soon as he reached the platform. The rain
had been lasting for days, and there were huge puddles all over the
platform. A virtual river flowed north between the rails of the subway
track. He boarded the next northbound “D” train, which he rode up to
Tremont Avenue. From there, it was another short walk in the pouring rain
to where he rented a small room in a boarding house above an adult video
store. He didn’t bother buying another paper this time.

He entered the building and walked up the three flights of stairs to his
room. Leaning against the wall adjacent to the door to his room was a
woman sitting in a puddle of black liquid. She looked kind of cute, and
she was dressed from head to toe in a shiny black vinyl bodysuit.

A New Yorker at heart, Larry stepped over her and put his key in his
lock.

“You’re just going to ignore me, too, huh?”

Larry looked down at her. “This is New York. What did you expect me to
do? If I had said something to you first, or asked if you needed help,
you’d have told me to ‘fuck off,’ right?”

“I’ve told plenty of guys to ‘fuck off,’ but I really need help.
Please!”

Larry shrugged and held out his hand to her. She reached up to take his
hand.

“Oww!” she yelled as he pulled her to her feet.

“Sorry. Uh, what happened to you?”

“You… You don’t know who I am?”

“No,” he answered then gasped when he saw that his hand was covered with
a slick black gooey substance.

“What’s this stuff?”

“It’s me. I’ve been poisoned in a manner of speaking.”

“Okay, come in and I’ll call 911.”

“No!” she screamed.

“No?”

“I mean don’t call 911. Please. I’ll explain.”

He opened the door and let her in.

“Do you have any alcohol?” she asked.

“Well, I have some beer. I can’t afford the hard stuff. You want a
drink?”

“No. Not that kind. I mean rubbing alcohol.”

“Just a sec.” He walked into the bathroom and returned with a plastic
bottle of rubbing alcohol.

She grabbed it from his hand, opened it, lifted it to her mouth, and
swallowed it in one gulp.

“Hey! You can’t drink that! It’ll poison you!”

“Water is poison to me, you idiot! I’m dying of water poisoning. I
need more of _this,”_ she said, holding up the empty bottle of rubbing
alcohol.

It was then that he noticed that she was, in effect, naked. Her black
oily exterior was her bare skin. “What the hell? Who are you? “

“I’m Inque.”

“You’re _ink?”_

“No! My name is Inque.”

“Oh. I’m Larry.”

“Well, Larry, if you help me, you won’t have to live in this shit-hole
room any longer.”

“How can I help you.”

“First, I’m too hydrated. I really need more alcohol _right now._ Then
I need some other stuff too.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Give me a pen and paper and I’ll make a list, okay?”

Larry rooted around and handed her a pen and pad of paper. She wrote a
list on the pad and handed it back to him.

He looked down her list. He expected her to want him to get her dope
and guns and stuff, but most of the stuff was pretty straightforward, if
odd. The list included surgical instruments, kitchenware, and assorted
chemicals. The surgical instruments could be bought from a surgical supply
house. Most of the chemicals could be bought from a printer’s supply shop.
The rest could be had from a chemistry supply shop.

“Well, I can go down to the drug store down the block. But I can’t get
the rest of this stuff until tomorrow.”

“Sure, just _go!_ Now! Get me the _alcohol!”_

Larry went back downstairs. He wondered if she would even be there when
he got back. He didn’t have any money or anything valuable, so he wasn’t
too worried about his room, but she seemed kind of freaky. He walked down
the block to the drugstore, got several shopping bags of rubbing alcohol,
then stopped at _McDonalds_ and picked up some burgers, fries, and Cokes on
the way home.

He almost fainted when he walked back into his room. She had the knob
on the radiator set to maximum, and his electric heater going full blast.
It was close to 90(F in the room.

“Inque, Are you okay?” he asked.

“Did you get the alcohol?”

“Yeah, here. I also picked up some Mickey D’s for us.”

She tore into one bag containing the alcohol and gulped a bottle down,
then another, and then another. It wasn’t long before she had drunk every
bottle.

“Why do you have it so hot in here, Inque?”

“I’m trying to dehydrate myself. I’m feeling a lot better already. But
I’m still suffering from water poisoning and I still need that stuff
tomorrow.”

“You better eat something too, Inque.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

She unwrapped her burger and started nibbling on it.

“Can we turn the heat down? I’ll never be able to sleep in this heat.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said.

Larry then sat in his old threadbare sofa and clicked the TV on. He
flipped channels until he came to _Batman Forever_ that had just started
playing on _TNN._ Cable TV was one of the few luxuries that he could
afford.

“Oh, please!” Inque exclaimed.

“What? You don’t like Batman?”

“Oh right, you still don’t know who I am, do you?”

“You’re, like, some kind of dominatrix dressed like that, aren’t you?
But what’s that got to do with Batman?”

“Forget it! Just turn that damn movie off.”

Larry shrugged, turned off the TV, and put a _Cass Carnaby Five_ CD in
his boom box.

He settled back into his char and gobbled down his burger and fries, and
nearly drank his Coke in one gulp from the heat.

“Here,” she said, handing him her Coke. “This is mostly water. I can’t
drink this.”

After finishing eating, he went into the bathroom and showered and
changed into an old pair of pajamas he had. He usually sleeps nude, but
with a lady guest, well, he couldn’t do that. He turned the heat down,
then opened his sofa into a double bed.

“Uhm, where do you want to sleep, Inque? You can sleep in the chair
over there, or you can share the bed. It’s up to you.”

Inque walked over to the chair and curled up.

Larry gave her a blanket off his bed and then got in and went to sleep.

The next morning, Inque was still sleeping in the chair when Larry woke
and got dressed. He phoned the restaurant to call in sick, then he left
with her list in hand and returned late afternoon after running around
Manhattan to surgical supply stores, print shops, and chemical supply
stores.

She was spread out on the floor in a puddle of black ink when he walked
in.

“Inque! Inque! Wake up!”

She moaned and sat up.

“Thank God you’re still alive! Here, I got your stuff,” he said as he
handed it to her.

She stood and wobbled a bit.