Her body had begun vibrating. Not really trembling, but vibrating. She knew she could no longer ignore the matter: did Batman’s death have anything to do with her? Should she finally consider the possibility that she was the next intended victim? And what the hell could she do if she was? Take on the body of one of Mara Jones’ lawyers and go to visit her in prison, in an attempt to get some information out of her?
She doubted whether she’d be capable of undertaking such a mission. Showing up in a maximum security prison disguised as a lawyer: the kind of exploit she would once have pulled off without a second thought. But now? Now I think the most I could do is put together a TV show. That is, if my colleagues decide to lift a finger.
When Susie walked over to ask if she wanted yet another glass of her iced tea, she felt the corrosive taste of fury gathering in her throat. It happened unexpectedly. It was impossible to control herself. She pretended to accept the glass of tea and then slowly and deliberately tipped it over, pouring the contents onto the floor. “Would you do me the favour of sparing me your damned tea?” she hissed. “Would you do me the favour of sitting down at your desk and getting back to work? Would you all please lend me a hand in putting this show together, since that’s what you’re paid to do?”
A chill of amazement descended over the room. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioning.
Even though it hadn’t been Mystique’s intention, most of the tea had splattered onto Susie’s shoes. First the girl gaped at her wet shoes and at the floor, long splatters of iced jasmine tea on the ceramic tiles, then she turned red and lowered her head and walked back to her desk in tears.
Mystique’s rage abandoned her like a mischievous spirit. She stared wide-eyed at what she had done. She beat a hasty retreat to her office, where she rested her head in her hands, feeling the veins throb in her temples. I can’t believe it. What’s going on? What on earth was I thinking, why would I humiliate that poor girl?
A few minutes later, Chad came in and sat down across from her. “Ahem… I have the impression that you’ve gravely hurt the soul of one of your colleagues. To say nothing of having ruined her shoes.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll buy her a new pair of shoes of course.”
“You don’t have to tell me you’re sorry. You have to tell her.” Chad heaved a sigh. “If there’s anything you could tell me, it might be what the hell’s come over you.”
Mystique brushed a lock of hair out of her face. “The broadcast, Chad. We have talked and talked about how important this broadcast is going to be, remember? Horace hasn’t revised the one-liners yet, Susie was supposed to give me the details on the dress rehearsals an hour ago, and you told me you were going to head downstairs to the studio to talk with the director about the dance shots.”
Chad knit his fingers together, both hands in his lap, a dubious expression on his chubby face. “Are you sure the problem is about that? You sure it’s not something else?”
She took a deep breath. She held the air in for a few moments before exhaling with painful slowness. “I’m sure,” she lied. “You spent the whole morning wasting time.”
Chad dropped his usual cheerful expression, scowling at her. “That’s not fair and you know it. You know this is the way we work. We pretend to be goofing around, we act like idiots, and we say all kinds of stupid things. There’s nothing new about that, is there? It’s what we do to keep from getting overtaken by panic before a challenging broadcast, and it’s the way we manage to come up with the brilliant concepts that you usually like so much. We’re as worried about the show as you are. And you know it. I still can’t figure out what’s come over you.” He stood up with the gravitas of an indignant monarch, turned to leave the room, then came back and tried with a gentler tone: “Are you sure it wasn’t the news reports on that trial? Mystique, level with me. Do you have some reason to be concerned?”
She denied it. Denying was simple. Denying was reassuring.
But once she was left alone in her office, she couldn’t go on doing it indefinitely. All of a sudden, everything appeared clear to her, almost natural. So long, my Mystique. Whoever arranged Batman’s death has sentenced me to death too.
She got to her feet, making the legs of her chair screech across the floor. She wandered around the room, thinking back to the first time that Dennis De Villa had waited for her in that same office, sitting across from that same desk, to warn her about the danger that threatened her. She thought back to the first time they shook hands. She thought back to the way she’d tried to bring their conversation to an abrupt end, to the irritation she’d felt at the sight of his small, enchanting smile, the enigmatic manner of a poker player in the way the detective had looked at her.
“Dennis De Villa,” she uttered under her breath, brushing her fingers over the chair where he’d been sitting not two weeks ago. “Dennis De Villa,” she repeated, running her fingers over the surface of the table. “Dennis De Villa,” “Dennis De Villa,” “Dennis De Villa,” she went on saying under her breath, touching the keyboard of her computer and the desk lamp and the other objects in the office, as if she were rechristening them, overwhelmed by the intense, ambiguous resonance that the name was assuming inside her.
*
That evening, she turned herself into Chad and went to Harlem to see Sabrina. She didn’t need to buy any more grass, but she found another reason to drop by. Mystique-Chad rang at the green door, waited, and when the woman came to the door she handed her a small gift wrapped in a paper bag.
“For me? What is it?” Sabrina asked. As usual she was wearing a white dress and her feet were bare on the floor of the doorway.
“For your collection.”
Sabrina pulled the object out of the bag and chuckled. It was of course a Starbucks mug. “How considerate, young man. Come on in. Let’s put this mug right to use.”
They walked through the high-ceilinged apartment to the kitchen, where Sabrina rinsed the new mug and filled it, along with another from her collection, with a fruit juice she had pulled out of the fridge.
Mystique-Chad accepted the juice, relieved that this time she wasn’t offered tea. She definitely wasn’t in the mood for tea.
The atmosphere was different from the rainy one of her last visit. The smells of early summer hovered in the air. Through the window screens wafted the smells of grilling in neighbouring backyards or on the sidewalks, the smell of meat over hot coals and toasting bread, roasted corn, toasted marshmallows, and blanketing all those smells the acrid smoke of charcoal sprayed with lighter fluid. It was getting dark. Sabrina switched on a light over the kitchen counter and gazed at her guest, smiling, narrowing her long-lashed eyes. “So you’ve come to see me.”
“That’s right.” Mystique-Chad took a sip. The juice was dense and orange-coloured.
“That was nice of you, young man. When I saw you at the door I wondered why you’d come back so soon. I knew you couldn’t need more grass already.” She waved her mug in the air, as though suggesting a toast, and said again, in a courteous yet sceptical tone: “And so you’ve come to see me.”
“Actually,” Mystique-Chad explained at that point, “let’s say that I’ve come to say goodbye.” She could smell the aroma of the fruit juice on her own breath, maybe mango or peach or apricot or perhaps a blend of the three. Her breath. Chad’s breath. An unexpected thought struck her. She realised that if she died, she’d no longer be able to transform herself into Chad or anyone else, an obvious thought that still managed to prompt in her a stab of vivid astonishment.
“What do you mean you’ve come to say goodbye?” she asked. She narrowed her eyes further and a glint of regret flashed across her face. “You won’t be coming back? You’re leaving?”
“No. I don’t know. I just wanted to say goodbye.” She leaned the large body she had taken on against the kitchen wall, avoiding the woman’s gaze and the temptation to tell her the truth. It’s me, can’t you see? It’s me, your old friend. She wished she coul
d reveal who she was. She wished she could say how she felt. She wished she could explain that this might be a real farewell, a final one, and in fact I have a feeling that it is. I have the sensation that the circle is tightening around me. She said nothing and stood there, in Chad’s large body, next to the screened-in window.
They remained motionless, breathing, on either side of the kitchen, face to face, a woman dressed in white and what looked to be a young male, the light breathing of one, the heavy breathing of the other. Noises penetrated from outside. A dog barked in a backyard somewhere. The echo of a car engine coughing in the distance. A bug buzzed insistently against the window screen, determined to get inside the mysterious, forbidden realm of that kitchen.
From a neighbour’s house, the sound of a television reached them in waves. Mystique-Chad listened. She recognised the theme music of a news programme and a rebroadcast of the report she’d seen that day on the verdict in the Batman murder trial. She set down her mug on the kitchen counter. “I think it’s time for me to go.”
Sabrina was even more confused. “Already? This is one of the shortest visits I’ve ever received. Are you sure you feel all right?”
“I feel all right.” After Sabrina had walked Mystique-Chad to the front door, she headed off down the street.
The red-brick buildings stood, one alongside another, with their large windows reflecting the light of evening. The aroma of barbecues still hung around, mixed now with a scent of water-sprinkled dust, the smell of hot asphalt sprayed with water that might come, perhaps, from a fire hydrant on some nearby street.
Mystique-Chad slipped away. She felt upset and yet glad after that visit. Whatever might be about to happen, she was glad she’d said goodbye to her old friend, although in disguise. She turned the corner without looking back.
If she had, she would have seen Sabrina standing in her doorway, just like the other time. She would have seen the woman standing stiffly, hands at her sides, almost to attention, with her short hair and her bare feet.
Sabrina hadn’t understood what was happening. It all struck her as rather strange. She had however understood that the person who was walking away before her eyes had for some reason said farewell to her. The breeze was tossing the hem of her dress. The air was damp and the cloak of evening was settling over the neighbourhood. Sabrina knew well who the person that had just come to see her was; she’d figured it out long ago, from the very first time. For six years, that person had shown up every so often at her place. Now, after the person turned the corner at the far end of the street, Sabrina’s lips whispered a farewell in return. Good luck, girlfriend. Good luck, Mystique.
*
The day of the last show, she left home at dawn and started running, as usual. In the still-empty streets her footfalls and her breathing echoed like the notes of an austere musical march. When she turned onto the trail through the park the birds seemed to fall silent. A couple of squirrels on the grass raised their heads, caught off guard, tails curling in mid-air. The rustling of trees dominated everything. Mystique cut west, returning to the street, moved past the façade of the great and silent cathedral, and continued in the same direction, running past the best known independent book store in the area. She passed a boy skateboarding from the opposite direction. At that hour of the morning! Each of them started at the sight of the other as if they’d just seen an outlandish ghost.
She went on running. On her skin, thousands of microscopic glands were opening, like so many microscopic flowers, emitting transparent tears. She ran a hand over her perspiring face.
In there, inside the houses, up in the apartment buildings, protected by the breath of the air conditioning, people were clinging to their last hour of sleep, before the buzzer of an alarm clock forced them to open their eyes, yet again, to behold the strangest and densest dream of all. The world. The world! Daylight was rising and flooding the streets while a couple of bakeries were already opening their doors for business. Mystique ran along a stretch of Broadway before heading homewards again.
She threw herself under the spray of the shower, still thinking about those who were waking up in the buildings of the city. All those who were emerging from their tangled sheets, draping freshly laundered clothes over themselves, all those who were having sex to inaugurate the day, all those who were receiving the benediction of a shower over their bodies, like she was now. All those who were preparing themselves to face the hours of the coming day and who perhaps, that evening, exhausted and satisfied or else bitterly disappointed, might sit down in front of their television and watch her show. She thought of all those anonymous and faceless people and felt a stab of undefined love for them.
After her shower she ate breakfast and listened to the news on the radio and then rehearsed a few dance steps for the show, in the kitchen, as though the radio news was some wild song. She stopped and felt a sudden urge to cry and wondered whether she was losing her mind.
She wondered what the people out there wanted from their lives. She wondered what she had ever wanted over the course of her own life. There was a time when she believed that she knew what the world wanted, and the conceit of that knowledge had been the one fundamental mistake of her life.
She went into the bathroom to get ready to go out. She grabbed a brush and stroked her hair as the traffic noise outside grew louder. Whatever might be about to happen in her immediate future, she wasn’t upset. She wasn’t even afraid. A new, overarching, resigned calm had risen in her.
After all, she decided she hadn’t lost her mind. Oh no, no question, she was sane. She smiled hopelessly into the mirror. Everything looked more and more clear to her. She had a concrete and lucid suspicion of who her potential murderer might be.
*
Roughly thirty minutes to go. Mystique was in her dressing room trying to focus. Outside the door she could hear the hustle and bustle of extras and dancers moving around, excitedly waiting for the opening bars of the theme music, as well as Susie’s anxious squeaks as she tried to keep the situation under control. Mystique mentally reviewed the evening’s line-up, mouthed a few of her lines, and finally sprawled on the sofa, devoid of sensation, in the typical void that came each time just before going on air.
Someone knocked at the door.
She sat up, wondering if she really had heard that knock.
At first the door didn’t move. Then it swung open and the unsinkable Chad burst into the room. “Hey!” he announced in excitement. He was flaunting one of his usual flaming stage outfits and his head was covered with large rollers. “Gangway, because the way I’m getting gussied up tonight, all eyes will be on me.”
Mystique blinked and went on feeling uncertain about what she was perceiving. Not because the scene seemed dreamlike, but rather because, on the contrary, it seemed almost too vivid. She observed the details of the room. Her outfits for the show hung ready, arranged in order of appearance on the clothes rack on one wall, and her shoes were aligned in the same order on the floor. “We’re about to go on air again. A new episode of the show,” she mused in astonishment: in a way, such a development suddenly struck her as overwhelming.
Chad didn’t seem to hear her. He touched his rollers and declared, more surreal and giddy than ever: “When I get this stuff out of my hair, I’ll look fantastic. The hairdresser tells me I have just the right hair to be put up in soft ringlets. Like a cherub in a Renaissance painting or something like that.”
Mystique went on blinking. Chad’s face also seemed intensely vivid. She focused on his familiar face and regained, almost inductively, the equally familiar tone that she most often used in conversations with her colleague. “My dear. You and your hairdresser talk about Renaissance paintings?”
“She’s studying art history.”
“Weren’t you supposed to wear a wig for the Madonna sketch?”
“I will. But the rest of the time I’ll have my ringlets!”
From the hallway, they heard Horace shout something, followed by a collective
burst of laughter. Someone else announced that it was just twenty minutes to the opening theme.
“Listen,” Chad said then. “I heard that you apologised to Susie.”
Mystique nodded.
“And I heard something else…” Chad stopped touching his hair and put on a serious expression. “The director told me that you’ve cancelled the Szepanski routine. He says you won’t be doing it this time, either.”
She got up from the sofa. Once again, she looked around at the dressing room, realised she didn’t know which way to turn, and decided to sit back down. “I think that routine is off the line-up for good now,” she said. “I can’t transform myself into that man. I don’t know how to be him. It’s as if that man constituted a boundary that I can’t touch.”
Chad mulled it over and objected: “You know what I think. I think it’s a missed opportunity. But all I can do…” He seemed to mull it over again. His eyes grew gentler and a trusting smile appeared on his lips. “All I can do is accept your decision. In any case, it’ll be a great episode.”
“It will be a great episode,” she agreed. She concealed the instinctive turmoil she felt and cracked a wan smile.
“Did you tell Gary about the change of plans?”
“Gary?…” From the way she uttered the name, it was clear she wasn’t especially worried, at the moment, about their producer’s reaction.
Chad looked startled. He stared at her with a new, concerned interest. But it was late and there was no more time to talk. “I need to go and arrange my soft ringlets. See you on stage,” he breathed as he headed for the door. Before leaving he turned around, joined his chubby hands and somewhat awkwardly said: “Mystique, I have no idea what’s happening to you. But I meant what I said. I accept your decision. I’m with you. I’m still with you.”
Erotic Lives of the Superheroes Page 44