Actually, Reed knew precisely what the designers had had in mind. He knew that the flattened curve was meant to evoke a certain organ of the human body, and that if you looked down on the structure from the air you would see, on the roof, an enormous green-glass iris. An eye. The space centre was a gigantic eyeball protruding from the ground, scrutinising the sky in eternal astonishment.
Reed went through security at the front entrance. The guards waved him through respectfully. After all, he was still an important man. A venerable figure, a member of the scientific advisory boards of half a dozen institutions, including this space centre. Reed indulged in these thoughts, smiling to himself, knowing well that if he went back, he would hear the guards exchanging very different remarks. Hey, was that…? Yeah, that was him. Franklin Richards’ father.
The temperature inside was pleasantly cool. A few young scholars were loitering in the front lobby. The atmosphere was somewhere between that of a government agency and a small college. The structure was used for training young astronauts, for lectures, and other institutional activities: the kind of place where schoolchildren from New York City came once a year on field trips, where diplomats passing through New York City were brought to listen to reports on the state of American space research.
“Richards!” A voice called his name. He didn’t turn around at once. There was no need. He knew that right now a woman was heading across the lobby straight for him. He knew that the woman was walking with a brisk, almost mannish stride, and that although she was not a member of the armed forces or any other official corps, every aspect of her appearance smacked of some kind of uniform: the elegant attire with its rigid cut, the hair gathered back in a bun, and even the expression, a blend of the seductive and the ironic, that certain women of her type, attractive singles in their fifties, wore almost as a badge or an epaulette. Reed knew all this. Last of all, as he was turning to face her, he knew he was about to plummet into the embarrassment that engulfed him every time he was in the presence of Mrs. Glasseye.
“I thought you’d never get here,” she said. “Reed Richards arrives somewhere a few minutes late. A red-letter event. I’ve already called your office in Manhattan,” she added, smiling a little too warmly, in a tone that implied an unquestioned intimacy.
Reed smiled in turn, vaguely, barely meeting the gaze of the woman standing in front of him.
“You look good,” she continued as she linked arms with him and went on walking at the same brisk pace, dragging him along beside her. “Will you ever tell me your secret?”
Reed made a generic comment about the benefits of saunas. He let himself be led unprotesting down the hardwood-floored corridor.
And so it was that, in front of everyone, he let himself be paraded along, arm-in-arm with Mrs. Glasseye: she who for years had directed the centre with an amiably dictatorial flair. She who—despite a headquarters with a psychedelic appearance, despite the fact that they were working on the margins unoccupied by the major space programmes, and despite the ineptitude of the bigwigs in Washington—had managed to keep the space centre operating at a dignified level of prestige. She who could wear blouses with plunging necklines without undermining her perennial air of a colonel. A woman in her fifties with breasts that still stood to attention and practically saluted. A woman who wasn’t afraid to stare at the zipper of a man’s trousers. A woman who looked everyone in the eye, with a firm gaze, unaware of or indifferent to the awkwardness that she provoked. She who—leaving aside the fact that she was the chief executive officer of a space centre that stood in the middle of New Jersey, with the unlikely shape of an eye gazing into the firmament—owed her nickname to the additional fact that she possessed, thanks to one of those paradoxical tricks that chance seems to favour, one prosthetic eye.
Mrs. Glasseye walked Reed to one of the lecture halls. “It’s an excellent group,” she stated, gesturing towards the interior, without missing the opportunity to unfurl another of her too-warm smiles.
Reed looked into the lecture hall. He could only see the legs of the waiting students, but kept his eyes fixed in that direction, with a feigned air of distraction, studiously avoiding her glance. He couldn’t look her in the eye. He couldn’t and he wouldn’t. Never so much as when he was in the presence of Mrs. Glasseye did he understand the tremendous fact that looking someone in the eye meant exactly that—looking into just one eye. Staring at a single point. A single iris, a single pupil. The point where one gaze meets another can only be singular, and he was terrified he would pick the wrong one.
“I’m afraid I have to ask you something,” said Mrs. Glasseye, crowding in closer and forcing Reed to make an effort not to snap his neck back a yard or two.
“Ask away,” Reed muttered, reluctantly shifting his gaze onto her, onto the thousand details of her ambush-face: a soft and apparently innocuous chin. Lips glistening like a wet street. Skin as firm as an ice rink, along which it was so easy to slide up, up, up to the dizzying curve of her cheekbone, where with fatal centripetal force Reed’s gaze was sucked in, only to be spat back out, with even more fatal centrifugal force, towards the precipice of the edge of one eye. He stopped just in the nick of time. If only I could remember, he keened, which one is the glass eye.
Mrs. Glasseye explained the problem. She explained that she’d encountered snags with next week’s workshops. Tremendous scheduling snags. Changes in the programme. She explained that, even though she had originally made different arrangements with Reed’s secretary, she now needed him to come back next week to finish training that same group. She knew that what she was asking wasn’t easy, but after all it was just one more appointment. She explained all this as she drew closer, inch by inch, until she was on the verge of grazing him with a breast. And since he continued to resist, objecting that it was out of the question, that he was already dramatically overbooked… she started laying insidious traps for him. She now began looking elsewhere, towards abstract points in the distance, so that Reed’s gaze would cautiously venture closer, like curious prey, and when it did she looked straight at him, without warning, ambushing him. Reed managed to dodge a couple of these attacks and finally stood there, staring at the floor, paralysed, arms folded across his chest. That woman knew how to corner a person.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he conceded. He had no intention of accepting her request, but it sounded like an adequate answer. Sufficiently ambiguous. Mrs. Glasseye nodded with satisfaction. She took a step backwards, lifting the siege. Reed was free. Free to say goodbye, free to put an end to that scene, at once so awkward and yet reassuring, the role-playing that was a routine for them by now: bold-woman-with-handicap-terrorises-courteous-gentleman. He was free to go, to all appearances safe, untroubled by any trauma, without having gazed deep into any indistinguishable iris, into any black-hole pupil. Free to make his entrance into the lecture hall, at last, where a group of young astronauts was waiting for a lesson taught by Reed Richards himself: ex-superhero, respected scientist, and consultant to the American space agency. Free to move on through the hours of the day, that day so filled with elusive promises, that day he would long remember.
*
“You will do great things. You’ll discover new planets. You’ll touch comets’ tails. You’ll see the dust of an exploded world glittering all around you. You’ll understand loneliness when you discover satellites without planets, or asteroids that wander through empty space like prophets. You’ll write your names on the sand of a deserted world, where no one will ever be able to read it or erase it. You’ll celebrate Christmas in a distant constellation. You’ll feel time stretching out in the vacuum of space. You’ll experience the twenty-fifth hour, the eighth day, and the fifth season. You’ll do all this,” Reed went on in a dreamlike voice. “Or else,” he resumed after a pause, scrutinising the slightly baffled faces that looked up at him, “you’ll spend your lives accompanying wealthy Russian mafiosi into space—men who will pay millions for an excursion into geostationary orbit, take pictu
res for their friends, and tip you like they’d tip their chauffeur.”
His audience laughed. He’d broken the ice. There were six people in front of him, six young sets of lungs breathing calmly, six pairs of attentive eyes. Five men and a woman. Reed went on talking about the uncertain, intangible boundary between the possibility of performing glorious exploits and the risk of wasting their lives in mediocre occupations. “Glory and mediocrity,” he said, “are like two distinct but contiguous frequencies. There are those who spend their lives hearing echoes from the correct frequency, without ever managing to tune it in. That’s hard. It depends as much on you as on the world that surrounds you. An astronaut’s career is an ambiguous path, where you can only hope that a crushing burden of sacrifice will allow you one day to experience life without gravity…”
The lesson continued. The words flowed. Reed had to talk fast, without pauses, to keep himself from realising how ridiculous the situation was and bursting out laughing. He believed there was something inherently ridiculous about all lessons. Finding himself teaching other people, the focus of a roomful of eyes, breaking up the flow of normal life to take on the role of professor, someone who administers knowledge, someone who sets forth his own understanding with unshakable confidence. All this had always struck him as hopelessly comical. A sort of embarrassing pantomime.
At the same time, he had to admit, he liked teaching. Despite the ridiculous, ceremonious side of it, despite these lessons, and the conferences and the other institutional roles he played, being nothing more than a way to finance his foundation, despite all that: there was something he liked about it. If he let himself go, if he stopped over-thinking, he could hear his own words vibrate in the air, fitting into the surrounding context. He could feel his words fill the room, accepted and recognised, in a way that rarely happened any more. The right lines for the right stage. He could hear his own phrases spill out, one after the other, with that blend of seriousness, humour, cynicism, and sincerity that over the years had become the hallmark not only of his lessons, but of his very existence. After all, he knew that the people sitting before him had a complete technical education. What they were expecting from him, from his reputation and his white hair, was something else. A little experience. A touch of wisdom. Ridiculous, perhaps, the way old professors and supposed wise men always were. And yet needful.
Class was over. Two hours had gone by. Reed said goodbye to the six young astronauts without anyone referring to another lesson next week. He’d joked with a couple of them, one of whom had Russian origins, about the Russian mafiosi that Reed had mentioned. No one had taken offence. They had laughed together. Reed remained in the empty classroom, organising his notes, in the sudden loneliness of a lesson’s end.
“Excuse me?” said a voice.
Reed looked up. The only woman in the group had circled back and was now walking towards him with an enigmatic smile. Reed watched her come closer, surprised, almost afraid, as if he were witnessing the appearance of a ghost. The young woman’s hair glowed in the light from the windows. Her green eyes had a deep, marine transparency, almost incorporeal. Reed had already noticed those eyes during the lesson, as well as her hands, lithe, pale as ice. Hands that were holding…
“I don’t believe it,” Reed commented. He stared at the object the young woman held in her hands, shaking his head in amazement. “I thought it had vanished from general circulation years ago.”
“It may have vanished from book stores,” she said, continuing to smile. “But not from my bookshelf.” With that, she handed the book to him.
Reed took it delicately, like someone handling an ancient artefact, and leafed through a few pages. Then he looked again at the cover, with the title:
REED RICHARDS—A ‘FANTASTIC’ BIOGRAPHY
Under the title was a picture of him in his official costume. The book must have been published at least fifteen years ago, right after his group of superheroes disbanded. An eternity. He couldn’t believe he was holding it in his hands. “When it was published,” he said, turning to look at the young woman, “you must have been a little girl.”
“I was twelve years old,” she replied, sitting on the corner of the table, with an incomprehensible mixture of shyness and nonchalance. Her skin was fair and she had a sprinkling of freckles on her nose; it wasn’t hard to glimpse in that face the young girl whose imagination had been captured, fifteen years ago, by the biography of a superhero. Then she ran a hand though her thick, reddish hair and Reed noticed details of another kind. Her cat-like eyes. Her unquestionably athletic body.
“I guess I’ll have to sign it for you,” he said, looking around for a pen. He patted his pockets. No sign of one. “I know I had one,” he muttered.
Somebody appeared at the door to the lecture hall. It was another member of the astronauts’ group. A tall guy, with a pair of rimless glasses. He adjusted his glasses and stood at the door, discreetly, shooting the young woman an unmistakable glance.
She leapt to her feet. “Here’s what we’ll do,” she suggested. “You keep the book, and you can give it back to me, signed, next week. They told us you’d be teaching another session, right?”
Reed didn’t know what to say. He tried to find the words to explain the situation but he hesitated a little too long.
The young woman had already joined her friend at the door. She squeezed his arm apparently to reassure him, or to emphasise his ownership, I belong to you or something of the sort. That gesture struck Reed, in some inexplicable way, leaving him even more tongue-tied. That hand. That arm. He could almost feel that physical contact on his own skin. That white hand which in reality, he imagined, must be dry and scalding hot. He stood there watching them, him and her, framed by the light streaming through the door. A handsome couple, he thought. There was something logical, natural, and at the same time heartless about the union of two such young and attractive bodies. Or maybe that’s what he thought later, when the image started coming back to him, relentlessly. For the moment he stood there staring at them.
“If you want to sign it for me,” she said, “my name is Elaine Ryan.”
Then they were gone, leaving him alone, with his biography in his hands.
*
It was a sleepless night. He woke up a number of times, in the dark, in his chilly bed, each time in the same position, as if the same instant were being replayed over and over again, a fragment snagged in the stream of time.
Something must be wrong. An obstacle that kept him from sleep. A thought that refused to untangle, a secret waiting to be grasped. He lay there motionless, eyes wide open, wondering what it could be. He finally slid into sleep, two hours of golden blackness in which his body was able to relax and, in the safety of slumber, perform its nightly labours. Slowing his respiration. Rebuilding tissues. Eliminating toxins, consolidating sensations. The work that any body performs, on any given night, in any given bed, anywhere in the world. But this time, when Reed reawakened, dazed, to the pale blue dawn, he discovered something different had been going on. His arm. It had stretched across the bedroom. It lay on the floor, a tentacle at least ten feet long, extending towards the door as if trying to call for help. Reed tried to remember if he’d had a bad dream. He went on staring at his arm in the pale light. He practically couldn’t feel it. Too numb. It was almost like an alien limb, a pitiable, dreary strip of flesh.
Then came the pain. As soon as he tried to move his arm, a shock zapped through him, a burning flash that left him breathless. That was when an aching, crystalline clarity surged up inside him, and everything finally made sense: his tormented night, the elusive thought that had kept him awake. Now he understood. That wasn’t a gesture you’d expect from a couple. A woman wouldn’t grab her boyfriend’s arm in such a comradely manner, he whispered to himself in the silence of the dawn, thinking back to the young female astronaut and the male friend who had been waiting for her. Those two aren’t a couple. They’re just friends. He felt certain of it, suddenly, an absurd b
ut convincing certainty. He had no idea why it should even matter. He instantly relaxed. He restored his arm to its normal size and closed his eyes, satisfied, sinking back into slumber.
He thought everything had been resolved. He thought to himself that the sun was rising. He thought to himself that downtown a baker was sliding into the oven the bagel that he’d eat for breakfast, that his secretary was getting out of her bed in Brooklyn to come into the office, and that the new day would be a succession of words, phone calls, emails, coffee breaks, glances out of the window, minutes ticking by, and fleeting distractions. The same as it ever was. In spite of everything, he thought that nothing had changed.
*
Light rose over the city, filtering down the streets and into the shop windows of the bakeries, into the kitchens of the diners that were about to open. Millions of bodies emerged from sleep. Men and women emerged clumsily from their beds, starving, blood sugars plunging, comforted by the prospect of an imminent breakfast. At that hour of the morning, there was something ancestral about hunger, something urgent and universal. Hunger lurked everywhere. Hunger in the apartment houses of Williamsburg, the brownstones of Park Slope, the buildings of Tribeca and in the Barrio and up in Washington Heights. In Central Park, women in nylon running pants were finishing their morning jogs, dreaming of a muffin and a bowl of cereal. In the dozens of NYSC franchises, bulky-armed men were finishing their workouts, hoping they still had time for a plate of lean bacon and a protein shake before heading for the office. Other city-dwellers would start the day with a sandwich. Or a plate of pancakes with maple syrup, fried plantains, a noodle soup, or who knows what else. Breakfast in New York came in a thousand colours, belonged to countless religions. Some preferred a doughnut. Doughnuts and coffee for the guards at the Metropolitan Museum, for the professors at Columbia University, for the bus drivers changing their shift. Doughnuts and coffee for the girls in the nail salons, for the sales assistants in the boutiques of Madison Avenue, for the cashiers in the box offices lining Broadway, and for the art dealers in Chelsea.
Erotic Lives of the Superheroes Page 2