Free The Ultimate X-Men by Unknown Author Page A

looked too much like a tourist. I sure don’t look like no New Yorker! I felt my heart beating faster and I started to get a stitch in my side. But there was no way I was gonna let that kid get away with my wallet.
    Just my luck, the kid turned down a side alley. An empty side alley, mind you. So I figured, what the heck, and took off. I mean, really took off.
    Lord, do I ever love flying. I so rarely get the chance to really take off, to really soar. I feel such a rush from using my powers. I guess regular folks find it scary that there’s someone like me around, who can fly like I do. But if I could give them the power for a day, I would, just so they could experience the pure joy that goes with it. Sometimes I feel sorry for them, ’cause they don’t get to shoot through the air like me. Speeding through the air, seeing clouds and rooftops whipping past—I tell you, it’s true freedom, if only for a moment. But not that day. At that time, I just wanted to teach this guy a lesson—Cannonball-style—for picking my dang pocket.
    Using my Cannonball powers, I caught up with him in
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    a second, yelling, “Surprise, sucker!” as I grabbed him by the waist of his baggy pants and took off into the air. He began yelling in Spanish and twisting around so much, I thought he might fall right out of those pants. I’d figured it might be fun to put a little scare into him, but he wasn’t scared at all. Also, my arm hurt like crazy. So I made a snap decision and deposited him on the rooftop of the nearest apartment building. I grabbed the wallet out of his hand and took off just as he tried to throw a punch at me. So that’s how he wants to play it? I thought. I blasted back down to the alley and went looking for a phone to call the police. It had occurred to me that they might be interested in a trespasser on the roof of that apartment building. Hell, there were a lot worse things I could’ve done to him.
    I could hear him swearing and yelling to beat the band as I flew down from the roof back into the alleyway. I’m pretty sure I looked around to make sure nobody saw, but I don’t completely recall. I didn’t really care at the time, ’cause, dang, after all that’d happened already, I didn’t rightly care.
    I came out the other side of the alley onto a street I didn’t recognize. I thought I’d walked down most every street in this area, but didn’t recall this one. I walked into the first storefront I found. The words coffee a-go-go were stenciled on the storefront window in a cut-paper style that reminded me of movie posters from the 1950s. I could sense coffee and conversation before I even opened the door. But there wasn’t much that could have prepared me for what I saw when I walked in.
    Across from the front door lay a small stage that barely held five empty stools and a microphone stand. Next to it
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    hung a sign that said free verse poetry readings Fridays at 9. Why would they need so many people onstage for a poetry reading, I wondered?
    Then I took a look around the place. Colorful Guatemalan weavings, which I recognized from my art history courses, hung from the walls next to wild canvasses that looked like something Jackson Pollock painted in a bad mood. People of all ages sat at the tables, mostly wearing berets, porkpie hats, or black turtlenecks. Above them hung strangely colorful mobiles composed of geometric shapes. Many of the men had goatees and the women had long, straight hair. Boy, did I feel uncomfortable in my slacks and plaid shirt. I’ll tell you, it felt like I’d walked straight into Greenwich Village in the 1950s. From the little I’d remembered from movies and old magazines, I seemed to have walked into a picture-perfect slice of beatnik culture. A woman kept yelling for someone named “Chester” until I turned around and realized that she meant me.
    The lady who had finally caught my attention was older—forty or so, it was difficult to tell. She wore a