Erotic Lives of the Superheroes

by Marco Mancassola

  Reed felt a quiver inside. He thought back to the sensation that had come over him just before he passed out, the sensation of something impending. The sensation of an unimaginable, unequalled event, something that would sweep away the world as he knew it. He hurried towards the waiting car and climbed in quickly, like someone with a pack of invisible hunters at his heels.

  The driver pulled away. He slipped into the stream of traffic with a velvety move and, looking into the rear-view mirror, he enquired: “Everything all right, sir?”

  “Fine,” Reed reassured him as the hospital building vanished into the distance behind them.

  “I hope it was nothing serious,” the driver ventured.

  “No, nothing serious,” Reed replied without adding any information. He had no interest in discussing his hospital stay with a chauffeur. He looked out of the window and watched the city stream past. Then he turned back to the driver, sensing a stirring in his memory. That Hispanic accent. That open, slightly tormented face… Reed realised he’d had this driver other times before, and it dawned on him when the last time had been. That day. That fatal day.

  “Your name is Santiago,” he said, plucking the name, to his own surprise, from some hidden recess of his memory.

  “That’s right, sir,” the man said, with a smile.

  Reed thought back to that day months ago. The day when the Ecuadorian driver had transported him to the space centre in New Jersey, where he was scheduled to teach a class, after a sauna at the George Hotel. The day when everything seemed to be the same as it ever was, and the farthest thing from his mind was the possibility of falling in love or becoming a slave to an obsession. He wasn’t thinking about those things. In fact, that day he wasn’t thinking about anything at all. If asked, he would have said that being with someone else wasn’t right for him, not now, not any more. He would have answered that in any case, to the best of his knowledge, being with someone was a good idea if it made you feel good, if each member of the couple reduced the loneliness of the other. He would have said that he couldn’t understand people who remained in unhappy, unsatisfying relationships. That’s what he would have said. He would have provided a logical, unruffled answer, on that bright spring afternoon.

  Yet now, at the immeasurable distance that separated him from that day, Reed could look back on it and see that everything was there from the very outset. The obsession, the frenzy. Everything that would happen later was implicit, from the beginning, all bound up with the strange melancholy of that day. It was all there, like an entire body contained in a gene. Reed had walked into the space centre, laid eyes on Elaine, and from that point forward everything was decided once and for all. In the first glance. In the first shiver.

  If only I were capable, he thought, of seeing in the present what’s waiting for me in the future. The way reality will develop. And yet it’s here, around me, already engraved in the things that surround me on all sides.

  He went on staring at the nape of Santiago’s neck. He continued to try to catch the driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror, as if that man could tell him the secret, reveal the formula for avoiding events that were yet to come. “Your wife,” he finally asked. “I remember that you told me about your wife. Are you still having problems?”

  Santiago’s smile turned off. He shot a suspicious glance at the mirror. “My wife? I talked to you about my wife?”

  “That’s right,” Reed replied. “She was causing you a great deal of suffering. You tried to tell me your story. I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good listener that day.”

  Santiago still seemed baffled. “That’s amazing, sir. Do you really still remember that conversation?” The way he said it sounded almost indignant, as if there were something scandalous about the fact that he, Reed Richards, should remember the marital problems of a chauffeur he’d met many months ago.

  Reed leaned back wearily in the seat. “Yes, I remember,” he said. “But forget about it, I didn’t mean to pry.” He lay there watching the panorama outside, the traffic and the pedestrians, and the prospects of cross streets that opened out, at regular intervals, at every intersection. Down there. In the ambiguous blur that marked the end of each of those streets, it was just possible to make out the edge of the island. The beginning of the watery realm that surrounded it. Reed mused that it had been weeks since he’d taken a stroll along the waterfront or looked out on the ocean. Maybe not since New Year’s Eve. He thought longingly of that night. He longed for the ocean. He longed for an afternoon on the beach, a trip to somewhere far away. He missed Europe, Spain, the coasts of Italy, and every other place he hadn’t visited in years. He found himself missing the whole world, as the car crept slowly through the streets of New York.

  He decided to try talking to the driver again. It seemed important to let the driver know that now he understood more about the grief of love. “Maybe that time I should have told you…” He groped for the right words. “Let’s say… the fact is that often people can be enigmatic,” he declared wisely, in a paternal voice, appearing to offer advice rather than look for understanding, which is what in fact he was doing. “I mean, people give ambiguous signals about what they want from us.”

  “Maybe they don’t want anything at all,” the driver replied, without shedding his suspicious glare. For some reason, the topic seemed to make him anxious.

  “But maybe,” Reed gave it another try, eager to establish a link with the young man, “I mean… Maybe loving someone means loving her in spite of her mystery. Maybe we are too rational, too presumptuous in our idea that we can control everything. Maybe that’s just the way things are meant to be. If you want to love, you have to accept a certain amount of humiliation.”

  “I don’t understand, sir,” Santiago replied, swinging around past a bus that was blocking the road. “I think I’ve already been humiliated enough,” he added, giving him a glance in the mirror that seemed to say that Reed, too, looked like he’d been humiliated enough.

  Reed decided to drop the matter. It wasn’t like him to insist. He sat there, staring out of the window, watching mankind flow past along the Midtown sidewalks, wondering how it was possible to feel so vulnerable, so helpless after a life like the one he’d led. In other people’s eyes, I’m still Reed Richards. A man who has defeated thousands of enemies and withstood thousands of ambushes. A man who is sufficient unto himself. A man who never speaks about feelings. When I try to talk about certain things, I wind up making other people feel awkward.

  At the next intersection, Santiago slowed down, and perhaps with regret, he spoke again. “I appreciate your advice, Mr. Richards. Let’s say… Let’s just say that I don’t need it any more. Not now,” he said, in a mysterious tone.

  Reed nodded, puzzled, wondering what the reason for such secrecy might be.

  “I believe… The time is past for thinking about that kind of thing,” said Santiago, as he pressed down on the accelerator. His Hispanic accent sounded odd and at the same time vibrant. “I mean to say, that time is over, the time of… How should I put this? Romanticism. When we talk so much about romantic matters, we end up talking only about ourselves. About our own personal lives. We talk and talk about our lives as if they were all so important. As if we were all Hollywood movie stars. That time is over, it’s gone now,” he said again, shaking his head, as his face darkened. “Oh, I know that you’re sort of famous. I wasn’t in this country yet, but I know that people like you were important. Sure, superheroes, people capable of shaping the course of destiny with greater strength than anyone else. But you understand…” he focused on a taxi that was trying to pass the car. Then, his voice quivering with some obscure emotion: “These days, people don’t think much of the idea of controlling their own destiny. Ask around. Talk to people. Everyone’s a fatalist now. No one would be surprised to be swept away by a hurricane tomorrow morning, or to see an alien invasion, or who knows what else. It’s just nonsense of course. But it’s destiny. Whatever destiny might mean, nobody even thinks of
mastering it any more. Destiny, you see, is pretty heavy-handed when it comes to dealing with our plans, our unique affairs, with our…what should I call them? With our romantic egos. In the eyes of destiny, we’re all just tiny.”

  Santiago fell silent, breathing heavily. Reed scrutinised the driver’s face in the rear-view mirror, wondering whether he felt well. Maybe I’ve been a little weird recently, but there are people who are doing worse than me. He slumped back, eager for a little silence, regretting the decision to strike up the conversation. I asked for it. I shouldn’t have prodded him. I wanted to talk about the troubles of love, and I’ve been served up a tidy little lecture by my philosopher-chauffeur. He wondered who could have imparted those ideas to the driver and taught him those peculiar expressions. And where did that sinister gleam in his eyes come from? Twelve hours a day driving in city traffic, and that’s what the effect seemed to be. “Wise words,” he said, cutting it short.

  He couldn’t foresee that one day he would think back on this, and realise just how right the driver had been.

  *

  Ben got in touch late one afternoon, when a warm breeze was blowing outside and the first signs of another spring were starting to pop out all over. Reed was sitting at his desk. When the phone rang, he picked up the receiver, expecting as usual to hear Annabel’s voice. To his surprise, what he heard instead was a gruff unmistakable voice saying, point-blank: “How the hell are you doing, you old slab of chewing gum?”

  “Benjamin!” Reed exclaimed. He hadn’t heard from him in weeks. His old friend belonged to the category of people who appear and disappear all the time, unpredictably.

  “That angel of a secretary of yours just adores you,” Ben said. “I have no idea why. Poor little thing. I’m pretty sure that if she didn’t waste her time working for you, she wouldn’t be such a scraggy little darling. I had to pester her for ages before she agreed to put the call through direct, without announcing me. She was afraid you’d be mad at her.”

  Reed shook his head, suppressing a smile. “Can I ask why you didn’t want to let her announce the call?”

  “To surprise you, man. To hear the sound of your faggoty little voice, before you had a chance to put on your I am so cool one.” Reed smiled again, imagining his corpulent friend in his usual get-up, T-shirt and fishing trousers, talking on the phone, sitting on his reinforced couch. “Ben, have I ever told you to go to hell?”

  “Plenty of times.”

  The two men chuckled. Reed was happy to get this call. He’d known Benjamin Grimm since college, and he’d been sorry, years ago, when his old friend moved out of the city. “Anyway, if it matters to you,” Ben went on, “yours truly is doing pretty well these days. This old rock isn’t crumbling away, that’s for sure. Every morning I go out on the water, every night I sleep like a baby. What about you?”

  “Don’t ask,” Reed sighed. He stopped to think for a second, and then tried to explain: “I feel like I’m surrounded by lunatics. Everyone I meet talks about the weirdest things. New York is an insane asylum, you can’t trust anyone.”

  “I know what you mean. Why do you think I holed up out here?” Ben paused, and Reed distinctly heard him take a sip of a drink. Suddenly Reed wished he could be with him, in the small fishing village where he lived, looking out at the beach through the picture window in his living room, drinking the first beer of the evening. “It’s that shit,” Ben continued. “They all have brains clogged with cocaine. They’re all up to their necks in debt and paranoia. People aren’t teetering on the brink of insanity any more, they’ve plunged in headfirst and they’re pretending that it’s normal. Listen to this. There’s some guy who keeps writing to me, as a matter of fact I think it’s from New York City, anyway he’s convinced that I can procure some strange superhero drug…”

  “Good God. Are people still deluding themselves with those fantasies?”

  “Sure. There’s still plenty of people who believe all that bullshit about superheroes. So I told him that the formula is simple. I told him that the secret drug of the superheroes is made by grinding up salicylic acid crystals. Then he just needs to find someone who’s willing to take a straw and blow the stuff up his ass.”

  Reed burst out laughing. The elastic walls of his stomach contracted and relaxed rhythmically, almost to his surprise, for the first time in weeks. It was a strange sensation: the enjoyment of real laughter. The pleasure of letting himself go. “I can’t believe you said that,” he chuckled as he caught his breath.

  “Believe it,” Ben replied. His voice had a gruff warmth. His tone was untroubled, and it was in that same tone that, after another pause, he fired off his unexpected question. “So I heard about your little vacation,” he said. “How was that lovely clinic?”

  The laughter died in Reed’s mouth. The taste on his tongue turned sharp, the acid flavour of sudden discomfort. Damn. He thought no one knew about it. He thought it was a dead letter, a forgotten matter, and that he’d never have to talk about it again. “Nice,” he tossed out, pretending indifference. “But how…”

  “Old Ben doesn’t miss a thing. Let’s just say that I have my sources.”

  Reed sat silently, waiting, like an animal paralysed by imminent danger. He could hear Ben breathing into the receiver. He sensed that his friend was not going to add anything more and it was up to him to provide explanations. “Your sources must also have told you that I was only there for a couple of days,” he said. “It’s not like I meant to keep it a secret. It’s just that nothing really serious happened.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Ben exclaimed, without losing the ironic inflection in his voice. “I heard that when they found you, you were twisted in knots, with your head where your dick ought to be. I knew that was a pretty good description of your true personality normally, but I was starting to get a little worried in spite of myself.”

  Reed smiled again. A smile of gratitude and grief. He began to understand the purpose of that call, and imagined that before long Ben would ask even more uncomfortable questions. He could feel something shifting in his chest, a surge of annoyance and deep-rooted affection, that choked his breath and left him speechless. “Jesus, Ben.”

  “Anyhow,” the other man went on. “When someone’s body is made of the same material as a condom, I can imagine that he’d be sensitive about the subject. He should be careful. Careful about where his dick winds up.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Reed huffed. “Get to the point.”

  But the man on the phone wasn’t ready for that part yet. He seemed determined to encircle Reed slowly, waiting for the right time to get him with his back against the wall. “For instance, I was wondering. Whatever happened to your girlfriends, those girls you used to date? Little darlings with adorable names like Paris, Jenna, Gisele…”

  “They must have moved on to other clients,” Reed replied, trying to think of some wisecrack to toss out. “If you’re interested, I can give you the phone number,” was all he could come up with.

  “Better not. Big as I am, you think I could go out on a date with a little darling? No, what I need is a lady sumo wrestler.” Ben heaved a deep, theatrical sigh, like a comic giving his audience time to take in a joke, and then resumed: “Really, I’m just worried about you. I know how it is at our age. A man needs to let off steam, a man needs the occasional satisfaction.”

  “In fact I consider myself satisfied,” Reed stated, well aware that he was skating close to a defensive whine. “Satisfied with my work.”

  Ben stopped for one of his beer sips. “It’s funny that you say that. Funny,” he repeated, with a hint of sarcasm. “I hear that funny things have been happening to you. They say that you’ve changed, that you’re grumpy. They say you mistreat the people who work with you, that you’ve lost your sense of humour. That you’re not as reliable as you used to be. Not to mention that you wind up in the hospital for mysterious reasons. In short, funny things for a man who says he’s satisfied.”

  Reed start
ed to feel tired. The phone was warm against his ear, and the thought of the work he still had to get through was starting to press against his brain. An email he’d been in the middle of writing beckoned from his computer screen. In fact, a pretty important email. “Good God almighty,” he counter-attacked. “How on earth do you hear all these things from where you live, holed up there on your beach?”

  Ben said nothing, and waited a while before resuming, this time without much irony. Stripped of all jocularity, his voice sounded rockier than ever. “I’ve seen a picture of her, Reed. No question, she’s an attractive young woman. Red hair, hell, and those exquisite freckles on her nose. I can understand that a guy could lose control with someone like that.”

  Reed slumped in his chair. The afternoon light was dying, leaving the office in a growing penumbra. “A picture of her,” he echoed.

  “Don’t put on that voice. You know that word gets around. You know it’s easy to get hold of someone’s picture.” Ben sighed, like someone faced with an unpleasant task, and then said: “I know you, and I know that right now you’re thinking of the best way to put an end to this call, you’re thinking that you have a lot of work to do and so forth. So I’ll get to the point. Reed, if I didn’t know you better, I’d tell you that I’m worried about you.”

  “There’s no reason to be worried,” Reed lied instinctively. “Everything’s fine, everything’s under control.”

  Ben swallowed a large gulp of beer. “Go fuck yourself, Reed. Don’t play-act with me. We’ve been friends for more than forty years, we worked together for twenty-five years, I don’t deserve to have you trying to pull the wool over my eyes.” His voice was so deep now that it made the receiver vibrate in Reed’s hand. “Why don’t you answer this question instead: is she worth it? Sure, she’s cute, but she’s not all that remarkable. You could do better. What do you see in that girl? Don’t you think that whatever it is you see is actually in your mind?”