Tyrannowoman tore into the day with ferocious productivity. Her phone alarm rang at 10:20—the tinny tones of her “Good Feelz” playlist—and by 10:27, she was downstairs and out the door, having only taken the time to throw a clean shirt and a mostly-clean skirt over her uniform (which might have been called “somewhat clean”), taken twenty seconds for a spray of dry shampoo, and spent four minutes total both brushing and flossing her teeth—too dentophobic to skimp. She crossed her neighborhood with determination and with several glances at her watch, and by 10:33, she was on the train; by two-minutes-to-11, she was in her lawyer’s office for the last time; and at 11:15 exactly, the papers were signed, the Ts were dotted, and she was legally, officially, irrefutably divorced. The day was less than an hour old. Across the street from her lawyer’s was a vegan diner she’d been eyeing for a while now, where she had breakfast until 11:50—a protein smoothie and a quinoa salad—half-listening to a podcast, and thinking about how the smart criminals should work in the morning, before superheroes have had their coffee. She texted Ms. Monsoon, who was probably her best friend, even if Ms. Monsoon’s best friend was probably not her. Texting lightheartedly, impersonally, as if today were any ol’ day. So when Meg didn’t text back, she was wounded, but not insulted. —”Meg” was Ms. Monsoon’s civilian name. Tyrannowoman’s was Taylor.

Her workday started out dull. It was almost 1:00 when she snagged a phone-ensorcelled pedestrian out of a cyclist’s path in the nick of time—her first bit of action. But she clenched the pedestrian’s arm so tightly that she actually felt, in her rocklike finger pads, something under his skin snap. The pedestrian howled, startled painfully out of his digital world, with no idea why a superhero was attacking him. (The cyclist, meanwhile, had stopped, spotting Taylor out of the corner of his eye. He intended to ask for a selfie.) Taylor offered the pedestrian a lift to the hospital, but, still bewildered, he only howled more, clutching his arm and backing away. The cyclist tried to get Taylor’s attention, and while Taylor was chastising him, the pedestrian made a run for it, and immediately fwhomped into a skateboarder. 

When Taylor caught a falling construction worker whose harness had failed, and set him safely on the ground, she asked him, “Are you okay?” and he said, “Yes.” Then he squinted, taking a second look at Taylor’s face, and said, “Are you okay?” Which Taylor found strange and annoying and maybe slightly offensive? But only a few minutes later, retrieving a toddler’s flyaway balloon, the toddler was scared of her—he wouldn’t take the string back when Taylor offered it. So she tried to smile. Whatever actually happened on her face didn’t seem to be comforting, though, since the toddler started screaming. His guardian took the string and said, “Thank you!” in a grateful, polite way that also implied, “Go away now,” squatting to attend to the boy.

Taylor tried to be cool. She leapt across buildings without much attention to the world below, taking some time to focus on her breath and relax her expression. As she hurdled the late-lunch crowd at a rooftop bistro, a man shrieked and jumped and spilled some weird-looking French? food all over his baggy dress clothes. He shouted an obscenity after her.

Taylor worked to keep a professional phiz during her talk with police, having followed an alert on her scanner about a potential jumper. Taylor nodded while the officer talked. She clenched her jaw tight, heroic, raised just a bit more than usual. But she wondered if a stern face was leaning into whatever problem she had—looking scarier; worsening things. So she smiled. She thought about her eyebrows and tried to make them relax—she couldn’t quite relax, but she managed to push them very high. However, that probably made her look astonished, she thought; and coupling astonishment with the dumb smile probably made her look like an idiot. So she dropped her eyebrows (serious; intense), but kept the smile (friendly; happy)—the best of both worlds. She imagined what she must look like. The image resembled nothing so much as a supervillain. Why didn’t she go ahead and rub her freaking hands together?!, she thought. Concerned, she determined, was the way to go. She frowned. She again raised her eyebrows. But the officer wasn’t speaking. She seemed to be waiting for Taylor’s reply. Taylor had no idea what the officer had said.

Suddenly, a male superhero wearing a cape landed with a triumphant boom—kneeling—and stood, puffed his chest, and announced, “What’s the situation?” As if all anyone had been doing this whole time were waiting around for him to show. But since the officer just started briefing him—as if he were in charge—Taylor leapt away wordlessly, figuring a potential suicide didn’t need two superheroes anyway.

At 2:30 in the afternoon, a little girl waved and asked for her autograph. When Taylor handed back the book, the girl’s smile—serene, un-self-conscious, maybe even proud—was, Taylor concluded, the best thing that had happened in two or three centuries.

Armed with this good omen, tearing confidently back into the day, an hour later, she got a bank robbery. In the middle of the afternoon. And no other superheroes had shown up, it was all hers. Maybe that was why she so thoroughly botched the job—maybe she was rushing, trying to finish before competition came by. Whatever the reason, she broke through the roof without thinking, and a huge chunk of rotunda-rubble crushed a desk and three chairs—only by dumb luck not killing someone. Rallying her focus, she ignored the mess and dove for the robbers, incapacitating all three in mere seconds. Except there weren’t only three. She didn’t wonder why the hostages still huddled against the wall. She strolled toward the front door without a care, ready to welcome in the police, and the fourth robber shot her in the left rear deltoid—which, even with impenetrable skin, hurt like hell—and the frustration, guilt, and self-hatred were instantly consumed whole by rage, rage, rage was all that remained, spinning toward the robber. She nearly roared. That much, at least, that small amount, she restrained herself. Nonetheless, the robber would wind up in the hospital for six weeks, and his picking hand (he played classical guitar) would never move quite as fast again. Her retribution done, Taylor turned from the crater she’d put the fourth robber in, crossed the foyer patiently—daring another bad guy to pop up—and opened the front door. In poured the police and paramedics. Ultimately, none of the hostages thanked her. They didn’t even make eye contact.

Taylor bought a nutrition-free hot dog. As rush hour began, she found a perch with a view of multiple main thoroughfares, on the watch for accidents before they happened, but also glancing away for brief moments to check her phone. Although she’d checked regularly all day, so far the only messages had been from her mother. Which she’d ignored. Her mother seemed to be getting irritated, though, because the most recent message was just the word, “Hello?” and a misemployed emoji. Now Taylor wrote back, “I was saving the world, here!” and almost immediately, her mother replied, “Fine. I won’t bother you.” When she checked her phone again, there was nothing.

Taylor migrated to the highway and checked her phone again. Nothing.

She knew that if she checked her phone less often, there’d be more chance that she’d gotten a message. And even if she still saw nothing, she’d only have to see it once. She moved from traffic jam to traffic jam, in one bound carried an old lady across a four-lane street, she lifted a broken-down truck in the middle of the road and placed it in a handicapped parking space, forbidding herself to look again until rush hour was over, at least. And that was why, when Meg texted back, Taylor didn’t know it for another 40 minutes.

Taylor sat down on a fire escape with a view of the river—orange and purple as the sun took a bow. Meg had written, “LOL! For sure”. It took Taylor three minutes to decide what to say.

“How are you? My day kinda sucked,” she wrote.

Immediately, Meg responded, “Who is to blame? Where do I find/punch them? When’s the last time you punched someone? You should punch someone”.

Taylor asked, “Are you on patrol?”

But Meg said, “Homework”. She meant grading, not doing, homework—Meg was in postgraduate school and worked as a TA.

For about 30 seconds, Taylor wondered how to proceed. Meg texted again. “We need to hang out soon!” she said.

“Yeah, we do!” wrote Taylor.

Meg finished things off with a grin and a heart, and Taylor spent nearly a full minute finding the surfer emoji. Then she shut down her phone.

After dark, things were busier. Taylor stopped three convenience store robberies in an hour—a personal record. She didn’t think she’d landed any of the burglars in a hospital, this time…. While she was trying to get a cat out of a tree, a male superhero flew down, floated in between the leaves, and thundered, “What’s the situation?” Taylor said, “Fuck you.” He smiled, very charmingly, and nodded to the nervous cat. Tugging his cape out of some branches—twigs snapping—he said, “Guess everything’s under control,” and flew away.

Even sticking to the smaller neighborhoods, even focusing on the more mundane crimes, Taylor kept running into goddamn superheroes. The worst was when Nebulon spotted her from across several rooftops, in the restaurant district. They’d hooked up two weeks ago. He made a megaphone with his hands and bellowed and waved. And although she made eye contact, she leapt in the opposite direction, as if she hadn’t heard him. And although she was clearly ignoring him, he followed her, hollering her civilian name. “Don’t call me that!” she shouted behind her, without interrupting her retreat. He yell-asked if anything was wrong. He offered to listen to her problems, he said he was a very good listener. He started a sales pitch, listing his listening accomplishments, all the people he’d helped feel better (his references), methodologies he preferred for comforting troubled souls. Taylor was steadily descending into the district, from rooftop to rooftop to fire escape to patio, from patio to telephone pole to telephone pole to the ground—with a thunk, pedestrians gasping; slicing the side of her foot into the sidewalk: carving it. Pivoting. She didn’t even try to stop herself. She didn’t think. She roared.

And maybe it was her imagination; maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. But it seemed like the city stopped. It seemed like there was no traffic after her roar—no beeping, no accelerating, barely a hum of idling. No music was being played (which couldn’t be true—her roar couldn’t have scared away stereos). No chatting, no arguing. There didn’t even seem to be footsteps. A couple had taken cover behind a stairway. Some child somewhere was shrieking. The traffic lights changed, and a sports car went through an intersection. People started to pass on, all coincidentally headed away from her. She couldn’t be sure, but she got the impression that someone was quietly calling the police. Nebulon raised his eyebrows and exhaled theatrically. Putting his hand to his chest, he said, “Jeez!” Taylor fled to the park and he did not follow her.

Hidden in the branches of trees, she spied on passersby, seeking out illicit behavior, invisible. Unbothered. Vaulting between canopies with a harsh rustle, terrifying squirrels and birds. The world was calm and lawful. Then a pinkish-purple energy bubble suddenly ballooned and popped on the other side of the lake. Taylor crossed her fingers.

It was a weapons deal, the energy bubble. No violence, no immediate threats. Just a goon stupidly setting off a product he didn’t understand. The dealer immediately took the weapon back and repacked his bag, ordering the goon to head in one direction while he walked—unhurriedly but without pause—in the other. But the goon didn’t get it. When Taylor reached them, the goon was hounding the dealer, making much too much noise, apparently thinking that with enough nagging, the dealer would change his mind and continue the transaction. Taylor watched the goon say, “What, you scared? You scared of superheroes showing up? HEY, SUPERHEROES! HEY, ANY SUPERHEROES WATCHING?” The dealer shushed him and walked faster, but the goon continued, “Dude, you’re not as big a deal as you think.”

Sevenish seconds later, the dealer was hanging upside-down from a lamppost—the steel tube wrapped around his right ankle—and the goon was screaming and running for the park’s nearest exit. Taylor felt bad letting him go, but she hadn’t actually seen him commit a crime yet. Hopefully she’d freaked him out so badly, though, that he forever renounced his evil ways, and turned his life around.

The weapons dealer, however, was outraged. He had the audacity to yell at her. “You’re letting him go?”

“Yeah, I didn’t actually see him commit a crime,” Taylor said. “You’re the one selling illegal weapons.”

“He was going to commit a crime that’s why he’s buying illegal weapons!”

“Maybe not anymore!” Taylor said.

“… Do you think you scared him so bad he’s gonna turn his whole life around? You think he’s running home to—enroll in dental school now?”

“Don’t act like being a dentist is any better.”

The upside-down criminal said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Nothing. You’re right. It’s not appropriate.” She sighed. “How’s your ankle?”

“It fucking hurts!”

“Sooo I guess you’re not renouncing your evil ways and turning your life around?”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“No, wait, we can totally do this!” said Taylor. She was bouncing her treebranch. “We can turn your life around! Starting right now!”

“Fuck you—” he said again, but Taylor talked over him.

“You can tell me where you got those weapons! You can do good right now—make the world a better place, and we’ll get you started on the path toward being an upstanding citizen!”

“I want my lawyer,” he said.

“No no, listen! Listen. Those weapons. Can’t be out on the street. Those weapons are too dangerous. There are children! On the street. And dogs! Those weapons put all the dogs in danger! But you can save dogs! You can, right now, become the hero!”

“I want,” said the criminal, “my,” he said, “lawyer.”

At this point, Taylor, who was neither a megastar nor an unknown, had been superhero-ing for nearly two decades. And she had been punched—in that time—a lot. By super-strong supervillains, no less. She’d been shot at, exploded, blasted into space, bow-and-arrowed, sent back in time. And no one was nice. The villains obviously hated her, but even the heroes needed twice as much evidence of her competence as of a man’s—and the press were always a little more interested in somebody else. All of it, she shrugged off as part of the job. She never seemed phased—not only her physical skin was bulletproof. Even at sad, puppies-in-the-holocaust movies, she wasn’t a crier. So why was she crying now?

“What the hell?” said the weapons dealer.

Taylor said, “So what do you think? How many of the criminals I’ve caught over the years have renounced their evil ways and turned their lives around?”

“How many,” he said, annoyed.

“No, I’m asking.”

“Oh. What?”

“Am I doing anything? I am 36 years old! Has any of it mattered?”

For a few moments, he thought it over, and said, “I don’t give a shit about your life!”

“You’re a bad guy, what do you think: would there actually be less crime if I had been a social worker?”

“Be a social worker!” he said. “What do I have to do with it?”

“No, I can’t be a social worker, I’m 36!” she said. “How old are you? When did you become a criminal?”

He got very uncomfortable. “Leave me alone!”

She said, “Because I don’t know if it’s the same for guys, but people only care about the cute girl in her twenties with so many years ahead of her. They’ll help her, they’ll give her an internship. They let her start something. You hit 30 and all of a sudden you’re wrinkly and behind the times and unaware of trends and you’re gonna die soon and you’re not. Worth. The investment.”

The criminal played dead. But Taylor kept talking.

“I didn’t do anything with my twenties,” she said. “I didn’t realize I needed to rush—I thought I still had 40 or 50 years left. But it turns out, that’s your only shot.”

The criminal put his fingers in his ears. “I’m not listening!” She just raised her voice.

“Nobody warned me,” she said. “I feel cheated.”

“Iii can’t heeear youuu!”

Taylor spoke at near-roaring volume, waking every animal in the park, and turning even the heads of the joggers back on the other side of the lake, saying, “Iii’m telling you personal information and youuu can’t do anything about it! La la! La la!”

“Aagh!” said the criminal, who now covered his ears not to annoy her, but to block the pain.

She continued, “Iii genuinely believed in Santa until I was 15 years old! I can’t eat shellfish! Sometimes I hyper-focus on things, and it can be helpful but it can also be a problem, I’ve thought about taking medication for it! My parents named me after a male dog! When I was in ninth grade, I misunderstood my favorite English teacher’s instructions for a project, and when I presented mine, he called me lazy in front of the whole class and I still feel bad about it! Tampons! Ooh!” Wavy spooky fingers.

“I’m not afraid of tampons!”

“I do not believe you.”

She spoke at a human volume. He had let go of his ears, breathing heavy, blood rushing to his groundward head. This time, she could definitely hear someone somewhere out there under the trees calling the police.

“I have a really nice apartment now,” Taylor said. “It’s super nice, possibly too nice. I moved in six weeks ago.” She checked her math in her head. “Yeah, six weeks.”

“If you stop talking,” the criminal said, “and let me rest my goddamn ankle, I’ll tell you where I got the weapons.”

For several seconds, she froze, staring at nothing, undecided.

But in the end, of course she took the deal. The operation was uptown, based out of a ground-story warehouse next to a 24-hour gym, and Taylor wondered whether the motivating pop satellite radio music was loud enough to muffle the gunshots and laser beams as Taylor trounced the villains. By midnight, it was over. She’d given the police four arrests (plus the weapons dealer from the park) and several leads—and 12 tons of confiscated extraterrestrial elements. But she wasn’t tired enough yet.

She went on the prowl for prowlers, but this late in the evening, this early in the week, nothing much happened, as she watched the occasional college kid stagger out of a bar, in case they made a poor decision. She caught one boy peeing on a lamppost.

“It’s a half-hour train ride! To get to campus,” he said. His two friends made grunts of agreement. “I can’t hold it! You want I should pee on the train?” But Taylor said, “You should have used the restroom at that bar I just watched you leave.” He said, “I didn’t think of it!”

She let him go. She fixed a half-fallen “S” on a hairdresser’s sign. If there was litter in the street, she nabbed it. She wondered at this sense that the city was quiet, even though there was never no noise.

Around 1:00, a man pulled over to the side of the road and she helped him change a tire. She saw a homeless guy sleeping in a shop entrance with a dog, and she bought the dog a slice of convenience store pizza, hoping that that was nice, not poisonous. As she was leaving, out of nowhere, the motionless homeless guy barked, “Maybe tomorrow things’ll look brighter!” Taylor said, “Leave me alone!” But the homeless guy muttered, “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Somebody ran a red light, but what did it matter?

A little after 2:00, she changed into her civilian clothes in an alley four blocks from the train station. She got on the train just as the doors were closing.

When she got home, she didn’t check her mailbox, didn’t say hi to the doorman. She took the elevator. And when she reached her apartment, she didn’t turn on any lights. There was enough streetlight coming through the windows to safely maneuver to the bathroom, passing through the bare kitchen with the fancy fireless stove she hadn’t tried yet and a fridge that wasn’t plugged in. In no time, she was crossing the hardwood living room—wide enough almost to dance in, with a pile of still-unopened boxes in the corner, that she tried not to see. The only furniture in the apartment was an old dresser that she’d had since high school and a mattress. She flopped onto the mattress, plugged in her phone, turned off the alarm, and started up her podcast, rewinding a little. She closed her eyes and waited for it to be tomorrow.