by Peter David
“Holy God,” breathed Mary Jane in awe. “I swear, Harry,” and she took his hand in hers. “It’s like you know me better than I know myself! I mean, some of that stuff I hadn’t even really thought of before … but I think you’re right! It’s like you figured it out before I did! You are something else!”
“Aww,” he said modestly.
“No, really! You’re like … like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Joyce Brothers all rolled into one.”
“I’m just here to help,” said Harry.
That was when Mary Jane’s stomach rumbled, rather loudly. Her face colored with embarrassment. “I’m … I’m sorry.”
“You’re hungry.”
She tried to laugh it off. “Yeah. I think the people downstairs probably know I’m hungry after that. Sorry …”
Briskly, Harry clapped his hands and bounced up from the chair. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’m not sure when the heck Peter’ll be home. How about I take you out to dinner. My treat. We can catch up on what each other is up to. Just lemme throw on some clothes.”
But I wanted to talk to Peter . . . to tell him how I feel . . . but Harry’s being so nice, and my stomach is killing me. . . .
“You got it, Mr. Osborn,” said M. J.
Harry winced as he headed into the bedroom to grab some clothes. “Do me a favor; don’t call me that. I hear ‘Mr. Osborn,’ I look over my shoulder for my father.”
The alarm at the jewelry store at Forty-seventh and Seventh was screaming into the night air when the police car pulled up. Officers DeFalco and Owsley jumped out of the car. The two cops couldn’t have been more physically opposite. DeFalco, the senior officer, was heavyset, middle-aged, and Italian, while Owsley was black, in his early thirties, and something of a health nut. Their nightsticks out, they saw the shattered doors at the front of the building. There were no signs of the perpetrators; more than likely they had hightailed it out the back.
Nevertheless they were cautious when they entered the building. But because the alarm was blasting so shrilly, they didn’t hear the muffled noises of grunting and protest until they were already inside the room. Owsley and DeFalco looked around, trying to locate the source. It sounded like someone had been gagged.
Then they looked up.
For a moment they thought that what they were seeing was the staff of the jewelry store, rendered helpless by the crooks. But then they realized that there was a thick bag of loot attached to the two men who were dangling from the ceiling, helplessly wrapped head to toe in …
“What the hell is that?” DeFalco said, prodding it with his stick. The robbers—for that was who they were—shouted in protest over the fact that the cops were in no hurry to get them down. But since the white material was covering their mouths, they couldn’t really make themselves understood.
“Man … looks like … some kind of cocoon …”
“What,” DeFalco said skeptically, his voice thick with disbelief, “you’re telling me that these two jokers were nailed by a giant caterpillar?”
Owsley rubbed some trailing threads between his fingers, noting the adhesion. “Or,” he said with an air of great significance, “a giant spider, man.”
“Great,” snorted DeFalco. “Well, it’s better than last week, when you read about those soldiers getting trashed in New Mexico and said some kind of incredible hulk did it.”
Mary Jane still couldn’t believe it, looking around the restaurant in wonderment. “Sardi’s, Harry? I can’t believe we’re eating at Sardi’s!”
Harry shrugged as if it were no big deal. All around them, framed caricatures of famous actors smiled out from the wall. The place was incredibly busy, and the aromas of the glorious food all around them were so pure and inviting that M. J. literally had to fight to stop her mouth from watering.
“And we walked right in!” she continued, waving the menu around. “It’s usually impossible to get a reservation here! But we just walked in and the maître d’ goes, ‘M’sieur Osborn! Eet ees excellent to zee you again!’” she said, imitating his French accent.
Harry laughed and surveyed the menu. “You might try the roast duck. It’s really good here.”
“My God, the prices …”
He waved dismissively. “My treat, I said. Remember?”
“I know, but …”
“No buts,” he said firmly. “You deserve it. You deserve some happiness.”
Mary Jane leaned back in her chair and smiled sadly. “It’s been a long time since I thought I did. Thank you, Harry.”
“You’re welcome. And anything I can do in the future to treat you the way you should be treated … you just tell me. Because you know why? You’re high class, Mary Jane. High class, all the way.”
“That’s …” She almost felt breathless, giddy. “That’s so sweet of you. I don’t know what to say …”
“How about if you say,” Harry leaned forward, taking her hand in his, “that you’ll go out with me tomorrow night?”
And M. J. couldn’t help but think how funny it was, the way things turned out. She’d gone to the apartment to see Peter … happened to run into Harry … and now here they were, at dinner in this gorgeous restaurant, and … and … and she was happy for the first time in ages. Yes, she felt happy with Harry and, even more … she felt safe with him.
“You’re on,” she said.
Mrs. Iola was hurrying home, the fish from the Krause Fish Market safely on ice in her bag, when the assailant stepped away from a lamppost that he’d been leaning against. Her eyes went wide and she took a step back as he pulled out a gun. “Give me the purse.”
Intellectually she knew the thing to do was just hand him the purse. But she was too benumbed with fear. All she could do was stand there, trembling, slowly shaking her head—not in refusal to cooperate but in disbelief that this was happening.
“Now!” he snarled, cocking the hammer of the gun.
It was that noise, that distinctive, terrifying noise, that snapped her from her paralysis, and the purse almost leapt on its own from her hands to his. He snagged it… .
And then he was gone.
Except he had hadn’t run off. He had simply disappeared.
Mrs. Iola blinked, then reached under her glasses to rub her eyes in confusion. She’d thought for a moment that there had been some sort of quick motion in front of her, a flash of blue, a blur of red, just before the mugger had fled the scene, but …
And then she let out a little shriek, startled, because her purse suddenly dropped down from overhead. The mugger, however, was nowhere to be seen. Slowly, her hands shaking, she knelt down, picked up the pocketbook, and only then did she notice a note attached to it.
It read, Courtesy, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
The TV newspeople were having a field day.
Since no one knew anything about him, no experts were required. It was the purest example of the old saying that everyone was entitled to his or her opinion, and this was certainly one of those instances where everyone had an opinion. Even the most low-rent of news operations could cover the story, because all they had to do was send out a camera crew to ask people in the street what they thought, and they were more than happy to spout off for the ten o’clock news.
“This is not a man,” intoned a cabbie, parked at the cab stand outside Penn Station. “My brother saw it building a nest in the Lincoln Center fountain.”
“Have you ever seen his face?” inquired a construction worker at a half-finished office building on Forty-ninth Street. When the TV reporter shook her head, he said, “Neither have I. Wait until his wife figures out he’s running around in tights.”
“Never mind the vigilante thing,” said an irritated police officer outside the precinct house on Twentieth Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. “You see all those webs he leaves all over the city? I’m gonna cite the guy for littering.”
The front page of the Daily Bugle carried a story that was headlined, COSTUMED FIGURE SAVES FIRE VICTIM
S, and above that an even larger headline that screamed, WHO IS SPIDER-MAN?
At that moment, someone else was screaming back.
“He’s a criminal! That’s who he is!”
J. Jonah Jameson stalked his office as if he were ready to start chewing paint off the walls. He was clutching a copy of the bulldog edition of his own newspaper, and he was twisting it between his fists. His office was cluttered and chaotic, and all over the walls were citations of public service, framed front pages of news stories that Jameson had written back in his reporter days, and photos of Jameson with an assortment of world leaders. The office should have been a place that brought him much joy, considering how jammed it was with souvenirs of his accomplishments. Instead it was the place where he tended to vent most of his aggravation. It wasn’t a happy place for him.
Nor was it a particularly happy place at that moment for Robbie Robertson, Jameson’s city editor. Robertson was a middle-aged African American with a head of close-cropped graying hair, an avuncular way of speaking, and a general air of confidence and erudition. And never were his powers of calm and patience tested more than when he was having a meeting with Jameson.
“A vigilante!” Jameson continued in his rant. “A public menace! What’s he doing on my front page!”
Before Robertson could reply, an advertising manager named Ted Hoffman, bespectacled and nervous-looking, walked into the office, rapping on the door for a perfunctory knock. Jameson didn’t especially like advertising managers. That was because he didn’t especially like advertisers. He considered them a necessary evil, nothing more . . . and maybe even a good deal less. Hoffman knew that and looked as if he’d rather get a root canal or be sunk headfirst into a vat of warm monkey vomit than have to talk business with Jameson. “Mr. Jameson, we have a page six problem. . . .”
“We have a page one problem! Shut up!”
Hoffman was momentarily taken aback, and Robbie seized the momentary silence—a rare enough event in Jameson’s presence—to say, “He’s news.”
Jumping in, Hoffman said, “They’re a major account, it can’t wait.”
“It’s about to,” Jameson informed him.
Hoffman started to open his mouth, but this time it was Robertson . . . obviously feeling that he was nearing the end of his patience tether . . . who ignored Hoffman and said to Jameson, “He saved six people from burning to death—”
“—in a fire he probably started!” When Jameson saw Robertson’s incredulous expression, he tried to sound friendly, as if it were all a big misunderstanding. As if, once Robertson had come around to Jameson’s rock solid point of view, everything would work out. “Something goes wrong, and this creepy crawler’s there! What’s that tell ya?”
“Jonah, he’s a hero!”
Jameson circled his desk so that they were standing face-to-face and said reasonably, “Then why does he wear a mask? What’s he got to hide?”
Forcing himself into the discussion, Hoffman, said, “We double sold page six. Both Conway and Macy’s bought three quarters of it.”
“We sold out all four printings, Jonah,” said Robbie.
That stopped Jameson cold. He stared at Robertson, trying to digest mentally what he’d just heard.
“Sold … out?”
Robertson smiled in that way he had when he knew resistance from Jameson was about to melt away. “Every … copy,” he said, savoring each syllable.
Immediately Jameson’s discussion at the club with Norman Osborn came to mind. That discussion in which Osborn had told Jameson that if he wanted to get his circulation on the rise again, he needed to put forward a hero to the public. One they could embrace and would desperately want to read about.
But … this masked man? A hero?
Jonah didn’t like it. It went against the grain. Anonymity … it was a sickening notion to an old newsman who had attached his name to stories for decades. Stories that could have gotten the crap kicked out of him. Spider-Man was definitely hiding something, and if someone had something to hide, it was never anything good.
But . . . a hero . . . newspaper circulation . . . copies jumping off the newsstand, sales going up, money flooding back into the coffers. Jonah’s newsman instincts collided head on with his desire to turn his newspaper, his beloved Daily Bugle, back into a profit-making venture.
And then, as if receiving a burst of enlightenment from above, Jonah reached a magnificent compromise. Who did the public adore, become fascinated with, even more than heroes?
Villains. The Dahmers, the Mansons, the Sons of Sam … those types captivated and engaged the attention of the buying public. Jonah Jameson could have the best of both worlds. On the one hand he could present Spider-Man as a heroic individual, at least to start, to get people back into the newspaper-buying habit. At the same time, he could point out to people that there was likely something very sinister, some dark secret, that the wallcrawler was hiding. That would give him a dangerous edge and make him even more interesting.
All of that went through Jameson’s mind in a flash, and then he declared—as if he had just suddenly hit upon the notion that carving bread into slices might be a truly nifty idea—“Spider-Man, page one, tomorrow!” He scowled at the front page and added, “With a decent picture this time!”
Hoffman cleared his throat to catch Jonah’s attention. Casting an annoyed glance in his direction, Jameson snapped, “Move Conway to page seven.”
“There’s a problem with page seven,” began Hoffman.
Jameson, however, did not want to hear it. “Then move them to page eight and tell ’em we’ll give ’em an extra column inch. Now get out of here!”
Bobbing his head in agreement, and looking extremely relieved to be distancing himself from the whole matter, Hoffman backed out of the door. Robbie Robertson didn’t even watch him go. “Can’t get a picture. I’ve had Eddie Brock on it. Nobody ever gets more than a glimpse of him.”
Jameson was appalled at the apparent ineptitude of his staff. “What is he, shy?”
“Perhaps,” Robertson said, trying to sound reasonable. “Not everyone is out for fame, Jonah.”
That excuse didn’t fly with Jameson at all. Thudding his fist on his desk, he barked, “If we can get a picture of Julia Roberts in a thong, we can certainly get a picture of this nut!” He rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other as he considered the situation. “Put an ad on the front page,” he said finally. “Cash money for a picture of Spider-Man. Doesn’t want to be famous? Then I’ll make him … infamous!”
XV.
THE
MYSTERY GIRL
It was everything Peter could do not to hack violently as he buttoned his shirt while running across the Empire State University campus. He was starting to wonder if he was going to cough up a lung. But he had to be cautious; he was wearing his Spider-Man uniform underneath his clothes, a habit he had taken to in recent days. He certainly didn’t want to be running around the campus with his oxford shirt hanging open and his costume visible.
He tried to button the top button, and this time when the coughing seized hold of him, he couldn’t keep it back. He knew he should consider himself lucky. He had, after all, inhaled a lot of smoke yesterday while rescuing those people. If he’d taken in too much—and it wouldn’t have required a lot—he could have been dealing with a collapsed lung by now. The smart thing would have been to get himself to a hospital to be checked over as soon as he’d gotten those people clear. But he was afraid a barrage of questions would be forthcoming, to which he wouldn’t have answers. In his worst case imaginings, the hospital would call the police, more questions would be posed that he couldn’t answer (such as why he was near the burning building) and in no time he’d be in jail, suspected of arson.
No, better to tough it out.
As a result, his chest was aching from the miserable night’s sleep he’d had. When he’d finally managed to get some shut-eye, it was close to five A.M., and then he slept through his alarm going off.
His only chance of getting to school on time had been to websling over, except on his way he’d wound up helping a would-be suicide who’d climbed out on a ledge. That delayed him even further, and by the time he’d arrived on campus—muscle-weary, still-sharp pains in the chest—he felt like something that’d been scraped off someone’s shoe.
He darted across the campus, getting to the science building just as Dr. Curt Connors emerged. Indeed, if not for a quick warning from his spider sense, he would have gotten slammed in the face with the door. Connors hadn’t seen him coming because he’d been busy shoving the door open with his shoulder. He only had one arm, and in his existing hand he was holding a small cage with an iguana in it.
Connors looked down at Peter. The scientist wasn’t especially short-tempered, never flying off the handle easily. If anything, as the lantern-jawed scientist stared at Peter, he appeared more disappointed than anything else. He was wearing a long, white lab coat, and the empty sleeve was pinned up. “Dr. Connors …” Peter began.
“You’re an hour late, Parker,” Connors said, allowing the door to swing shut behind him. “Class is over. You missed another … session …” He allowed the word to trail off, because he was staring at Peter’s general demeanor. Peter glanced at his reflection in the glass of the door, and quickly realized why. He was disheveled, and part of his hair was still singed from the heat he’d endured in the burning building. Connors looked as if he was about to ask Peter what in the world had been going on in his life, and Peter quickly started formulating responses.
But instead the professor just shook his head. “I’m sorry, Peter, you have a hell of a scientific mind, but you can’t seem to get your priorities straight. You’ve been late six times this semester.”
“Professor, please, let me explain… .”
Connors put the caged iguana on the ground and said with a heavy sigh, “This is a paid internship. Do you know how many freshman applied for it?” He put his hand on Peter’s shoulder, shook his head, then turned and picked up the iguana cage.