Erotic Lives of the Superheroes

by Marco Mancassola

  “I’m afraid I don’t have a very interesting life story to tell,” the detective began. Now it was his turn to keep his eyes on the menu. He looked up and started to summarise: “Born and raised in New Jersey. Italian family. My brother left home to attend university. Our mother died when I was sixteen.” There was a short blackout of the light in his eyes. He waved one hand to attract the attention of the woman who was serving tables, letting her know they were ready to order, and before she arrived he finished his story: “Our father died a few years later. Joined the police when I was twenty-one. A few years in uniform before I was promoted to detective, and I’m afraid that’s pretty much it. Try the fried-chicken salad. I’m glad to be here with you. Save some room for dessert.”

  Mystique crossed her arms on the table, vaguely stunned, staring at the menu as if it were an ancient manuscript. A man had just summarised the most important events of his life and she wasn’t sure what she felt about it. Was she moved? Did she want to know more? Did she feel guilty about being nosy? “I don’t think I’ll be able to try the dessert,” was all she said.

  Dinner went on in an agreeable atmosphere.

  The food that the elderly cook made for them lived up to De Villa’s enthusiasm. They talked as they ate, at an even, cautious pace, avoiding overly demanding topics, sometimes with stretches of silence, like two dignitaries representing foreign countries, speaking through the filter of slow and elaborate translations.

  Mystique took turns observing the man and the scene around them. The little restaurant was packed. Except for her and De Villa, the only non-African-Americans were a white family sitting at the far side of the room. Mystique stared at the family and the two blond children, peaceful-looking as they happily ate their fried chicken. Blond children in Harlem. It wasn’t hard to guess what that meant. Blond children meant safe streets. Blond children meant stability, white families moving in from neighbourhoods to the south, plans for regenerating the neighbourhood, buildings renovated by famous architects, rents doubling or even tripling, old tenants evicted or unable to afford the new rents. Two peaceful, innocent blond children, busy eating their fried chicken.

  “You keep excluding me from your thoughts,” De Villa complained.

  “I’m sorry. I was just thinking about this neighbourhood,” she offered. She wondered whether the police officer would be scandalised to learn that a few days ago she had been a few blocks away, renewing her supply of marijuana. Sabrina… She thought of her old friend and her place with its high ceilings only a few streets over. She was worried that Sabrina, too, was having problems paying her rent. She thought of her and her light-coloured dresses, her kitchen with the mugs stolen from Starbucks, her piping hot tea and her placid ways.

  In the meantime, De Villa had noticed the curious stares that a few other diners were directing at Mystique. “It looks like you’re well known here too.”

  She realised what he was talking about and nodded without enthusiasm. “They’re not really curious about me,” she said. “All they want is to see me transform myself from one moment to the next into who-knows-who. They’re curious about who I might become.”

  “Is that what you think?” The detective seemed unconvinced. “I think that the real target of their interest is you. I mean, you, for who you are.” He set his fork down on his plate and summed up: “Excellent food. I hope you enjoyed it.”

  “Maybe you’re hoping for the chance to see me transform myself too,” Mystique went on, with a sudden urge to provoke him.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Why don’t you tell me,” she smiled. “Who do you want me to turn into? I could go into the toilets and come back out, oh, I don’t know, looking exactly like Scarlett Johansson. Would you like to be eating dinner with Scarlett Johansson?”

  “Don’t joke about it,” he said, furrowing his brow. He seized the edge of the table with both hands and added: “I don’t care about Scarlett Johansson. I just want to sit here with you.”

  Mystique didn’t press the point. She managed to put on another smile and pretended not to notice the heartfelt tone in the man’s voice. She lifted her glass and took a sip, her lips pressing against the transparent rim, while every detail around her seemed to become more vivid: the golden heads of the blond children of Harlem, the melody of the music pouring out of the stereo, the refreshing stream of air from the fans.

  Dinner was over. The cook’s daughter came to take away the empty plates. A little later she came back with two helpings of vanilla cheesecake and said they were on the house. Complimentary, for our famous guest.

  “See? They recognised you,” De Villa pointed out.

  “It looks good,” Mystique mused. The slice of cake in front of her appeared massive and emanated a fresh, creamy aroma. The very quintessence of perfect cheesecake.

  “Come on!” De Villa encouraged her. “Rose’s vanilla cheesecake is renowned. I told you to save room for dessert.”

  “I can’t eat sweets. Of course, I also can’t let such a lovely gift go to waste. That means you’ll have to eat my slice as well.”

  “That won’t be a hardship for me. But you don’t know what you’re missing,” said De Villa as he gulped down a spoonful. He savoured that cool delight, shook his head, and smiled: “I remember when I came to see you in the studio cafeteria. You were eating a miserable salad and you said something about being on a diet. You got mad when I asked if that was all you were having for lunch.”

  “I remember,” she breathed, with the impression of uncovering a long-ago memory.

  “I also remember that you had a hard time speaking,” De Villa went on in amusement, swallowing another spoonful. “You were doing your best not to laugh. Your colleagues were making fun of me, acting out ridiculous sketches behind my back.”

  Mystique’s eyes widened. “You mean that you noticed? My God. You must have thought we were a gang of idiots.”

  He shook his head again. The creamy cheesecake had made his lips shiny. “I thought it was funny,” he said, and started to laugh.

  The man’s gentle laughter. His lips, smeared with that moist, sugary trace of cheesecake… “True,” she admitted uneasily. “It was a pretty funny scene.”

  In the meantime, the restaurant was starting to empty out. The white family had finished their meal, leaving behind on the table a still life of dirty plates, half-full glasses of Coke, and chicken bones. An air of languid exhaustion now reigned over the room. The exhaustion of satiated bodies, of meals consumed. Mystique sank back in her chair, weary after the long day, remembering the impulse she’d experienced a couple of hours ago, in the light of sunset at the river’s edge. The impulse to brush her fingers across that man’s face. That man, with his sensitive and inflamed eyes, with his manner, so gentle and yet, constantly, so tenacious and in some way distant.

  Before they left, the cook and her daughter came to have their picture taken with her. The elderly Rose slid out from behind the counter and sat down beside her, while her daughter sat on the other side of Mystique. The detective took the camera and set up the shot. Mystique smiled into the camera, with her bluish skin, sitting between two black women, mother and daughter, two generations of authentic Harlemites. She went on smiling as she waited for the click of the shutter, unsure of exactly who she was smiling at, whether it was the camera or the detective, or the people who would look in the years to come at a framed photograph hanging on a restaurant wall.

  *

  The following morning she woke up pretty late. The alarm clock on the bedside table informed her that it was almost eight o’clock, and daylight filled the window, urgent, like the glare from some off-white bonfire. Mystique blinked. It was Sunday, no need to get up right away, though lazing around in bed was hardly her style. She rolled over with a faint dizziness. Her lips were dry. Even though she hadn’t worked the day before, her limbs were numb.

  She rolled over again and stared, bedazzled, at the ceiling, while her memories of the previous e
vening reassembled in her mind. The gallery opening. The sunset over the river. The encounter with the detective’s brother, the reporter Bruce De Villa, his eyes inhabited, it seemed, by some mysterious knowledge. And then the restaurant in Harlem. The creamy smell of a vanilla cheesecake. Her picture taken with the two women in the restaurant…

  The night out came to an end when the detective took her home. Once they pulled up they sat in the car, and there was an endless moment when they looked at each other in the low light of the street, each of them doubtful about the other’s intentions. He had turned off the engine and then started it again, uncertain, only to turn it off again. They sat there. They sat in silence and swallowed, both of them, as if in a coded dialogue between their two throats. Mystique gave a short embarrassed laugh. She thanked him for dinner, and as she opened the car door the dome light snapped on, making the detective flinch. She got out of the car without another word and walked into her apartment, where she leaned back against the door and breathed deeply, roughly, until she heard Dennis De Villa’s car start up again and move away.

  She should really get out of bed. It was too late to go for a run, but she could do a little yoga indoors and make a cup of tea, and rehearse for the next episode of the show. She remained lying there, continuing to feel that weird dizziness. She guessed she hadn’t been ready, last night, to invite Dennis De Villa upstairs. She wondered when she ever would be. It might not be long. In fact, she was pretty sure it would happen soon.

  She twisted on the bed, feeling herself sweat and shiver, instinctively reaching up to touch her forehead. She didn’t think she had a fever. The cotton sheet weighed heavily on her. She kicked it away and then pulled it back and just lay watching the curtains bellying in the warm breeze coming through the window.

  She remembered that many years ago, when she was a girl first experimenting with her superpowers, every attempt to transform herself made her fall, straight afterwards, into a furious and debilitating fever. How old could she have been? Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Before going off to college, before discovering politics, before everything happened. She tried to take on the body of a girlfriend, or the body of a boy she liked or a teacher who fascinated her, and the next morning she’d wake up with her skin on fire. It had happened many times. When she was sixteen or seventeen, every attempt to use her powers inevitably ended with cool washcloths on her forehead, mercury thermometers, and Tylenol tablets.

  There was almost no traffic noise coming from outside. It was Sunday and the city must have emptied out, in a mass migration towards Long Island or who knows where else. The city, too, had its fever, an intimate fever that possessed the bodies, driving them to flee or to cluster in the parks. She got up and sat on the edge of the bed. She decided that she was not a bit sick after all. No fever. She was no longer a girl, and what’s more, she hadn’t used her superpowers last night. All she’d done last night was go to dinner with a man. A man who was too young, too much of a cop, with eyes that were too red, a man with an Italian surname, with some strange family history in his past, a man who seemed to have no reason to become part of her life, and yet was doing so.

  She clutched at the cotton sheet. Sitting on the side of her bed, she felt like she was teetering on the edge of a shining cliff. When she was a girl, her superpowers stirred some kind of fire inside her, an arcane and destructive and redeeming fire. It had taken time to learn to master that flame, to stop being burned by it. She’d learned to do it, though. She’d mastered it. Now, will I be able to master what I feel in the morning air, after going out to dinner with that man?

  *

  It was Monday, about noon, the hour when the sun rises to its zenith, the time of day when the skyscrapers merge with their shadows. The vertical shafts of sunlight poured down, striking the roofs and penetrating into the soil. Underground, the subway tunnels were scalding corridors, and passengers waiting for their trains dripped sweat, as they stood on the platforms, before leaping with a shiver into the chilly carriages.

  The air was steaming in Astoria, too. A fluid heat was pooling in the streets, held in by the fronts of the buildings, while a police or fire department helicopter flew over the area, as if trying to cast a protective shadow over the apartment buildings. From the windows of the television studios, people looked out at the cityscape, immersed in the harsh, brutal light.

  In the show’s production office, Chad had been gasping at his desk all morning, despite the fact that the air conditioning was doing its best, complaining that he felt oppressed by the sheer thought of the heat outside. He had constructed an oversized fan with a sheet of cardboard and had been waving it in front of his face for at least two hours now. None of the others seemed very active either. Horace was typing at his computer’s keyboard with the unmistakable air of someone who had been rewriting the same sentence for hours, while Susie didn’t seem to have anything better to do than constantly offer everyone iced tea from a baby-blue thermos.

  Mystique could sense how weary they were from the pressure they’d been under lately. She was tired herself, and the idea of transforming once again, by now, stirred nothing inside her but a sense of grim exhaustion. Still, she couldn’t quit. None of them could. Tomorrow night, they’d be on air again, and they all knew how important that broadcast would be.

  She was about to administer a scolding to her colleagues when, around noon, the news hit the studio.

  The trial for Batman’s murder was over. After months and months of hearings, the verdict had come in without warning, in the stunned heat of what was almost summer. In the aftermath of the death of Franklin Richards, the Batman case had been shoved out of the spotlight and the trial had slid halfway out of the public’s memory, in contrast to the media hysteria that had churned around it at the beginning. The public liked to focus on one murder at a time. That was why the verdict came as such a surprise, shaking up the day’s sleepy news reports.

  Mystique and the others listened to a report on CNN. The young defendant, Mara Jones, had been found guilty of murder, with the aggravating factors of its savagery and the defendant’s refusal, or inability, to tell the court who was behind the murder. During months of hearings, no information whatever had emerged about other members or possible leaders of the notorious group, the same one that later organised the attack on the George Hotel. The group that still, as the news report put it, threatens the historic members of the community of former superheroes.

  The report went on with more details. Apparently, when the verdict was read the defendant’s father had suffered a heart attack. While the courtroom was in an uproar as medical assistance was given to her father, the young Ms. Jones had maintained an otherworldly calm, impassive before the television cameras that filmed her expressionless lips, the solemn void in her grey eyes. Even though she must now expect a sentence of life imprisonment without parole, her face betrayed no feelings.

  That scene gave shivers to Mystique, reminiscent of her sensations during her own trial, more than twenty years ago. She couldn’t remember exactly what she’d felt when the verdict had been read. But she doubted that she’d kept the same inhuman calm as Mara Jones.

  On the screen, the last image of the CNN report showed the guilty woman as she was led away by her guards: pale, androgynous, beautiful, telegenic, remorseless, unshaken, an enigmatic killer, a young sphinx. A perfect representative of the modern-day conspiracy industry. You could have studied that girl until the end of time without being able to figure out why she had allowed someone, whoever it was, to talk her into doing what she had done: was it out of gullibility, boredom, fanaticism, or just a clear-eyed belief, a conviction that an ageing superhero deserved to be murdered, whatever the price, to the point of literally ripping his bowels apart.

  Meanwhile, Horace and Chad had started firing off idiotic jokes. The whole Mara Jones story was too rich a vein for them, and they were determined to get out of it every double-entendre and ironic wrinkle they could. “Such a cute young woman,” Horace jested,
with an allusive wink.

  “So cute.”

  “I wonder if she’ll be able to keep her hands to herself when she’s in prison,” Horace added with a snort.

  “I heard they’re going to make her wear a baseball glove 24-7,” Chad snorted in turn. He went on fanning himself with his sheet of cardboard. “Otherwise, who can say what she’ll get her hands into.”

  “Guys. You’re really not funny,” Mystique admonished them.

  Susie didn’t get the jokes. “A baseball glove? What does that mean?” she chirped in an annoying manner. Then she turned to Mystique: “Do you want some iced tea?”

  “I don’t want any iced tea,” she snapped, a growing wave of annoyance sweeping through her. “I want you all to get back to work. Tomorrow night we’re on air.”

  She turned off the television as the news report moved to a series of interviews with acquaintances of Mara Jones, for the most part fellow university students and professors, asking for their comments on the verdict. The silence once the TV was turned off caused a lurching hole in Mystique’s stomach. She realised that she felt sad about Mara Jones. She felt sad about the fact that she was a young woman, that she would spend her life in prison, that her former friends were giving stupid interviews to CNN. She felt sad even though Mara Jones was a murderer.

  “Hey!” Chad objected. “You could have left it on, you know. We wanted to watch.”

  She felt sad because Mara Jones was moving off the stage, because she would be locked up forever in the twilit, gloomy interior of a prison, and that would do nothing to cast any light or bring any understanding to the outside world. What good was any of this? The trial was over and nothing had been solved. Whoever persuaded the girl to commit murder remained out of the picture, unseen, sufficiently elusive to avoid involvement, still anonymous, someone who remained on the loose, free to get rid of the next victim. Chad and the others kept wasting time. Mystique shot a grim glare at her colleagues, drunk on iced tea and trading jokes about Mara Jones’ hands, jokes that Susie either failed to understand or pretended not to get. She stood watching them, disconcerted and distant, almost having difficulty recognising them and remembering what those people had to do with her life.