It's Superman! A Novel

by Tom De Haven

  Strolling back into the main hall, Clark finds a cushioned bench. For a while he watches people, mostly families with small children. Some of the children are dressed for Halloween. None of the adults are.

  He finds himself thinking about Diana Dewey. He can recall everything about her, but what he especially recalls is her croaky voice. It was adorable. She was adorable. He misses her, wants to see her again. But now he is suddenly thinking about Lois Lane. He’s never met anyone like her before. Ever. In his whole life!

  But now he’s thinking of Diana again: making him soup and tea, applying sticking plaster to the only cut he’s ever had …

  Diana.

  Only twenty years old and already Clark is like one of those no-good, two-timing rambler types that Plato Beatty used to sing about. He’s like Blackjack David! He’s disgusted.

  Yes, but still he wants to see Lois Lane again. Soon.

  To clear his mind of both hankerings and reprimands, he licks the point of his pencil, selects a postal card with a picture of a clipper ship on the front side, and begins composing a note on the back to his father. Hi! How are you? I am fine.

  He pauses, glancing up to further gather his thoughts. That’s when he notices a series of portraits in heavy gilt frames on the wall across the lobby. With a narrowing of his eyes and the smallest mental oomph, he can read the identification plates affixed below the oil paintings. It’s a gallery of the English governors of New York.

  Clark licks his pencil point again and turns his attention back to the postal card.

  But almost immediately he glances back up again. Running his gaze down the line of portraits, left to right, he stops to focus on the portrait of Sir Danvers Osborne, Baronet, appointed 10 October 1753.

  Like the rest of his fellow royal governors, Sir Danvers looks haughty and mildly cross.

  The problem is—and Clark hopes this doesn’t mean he is inordinately finicky—but the problem is the picture frame: it’s crooked. Not terribly crooked, just out of alignment with the others along the wall.

  Clark wants to go over there and—adjust it.

  Which would probably set off bells and end up in his being ejected.

  Well, if it doesn’t bother the guards, if it doesn’t bother the curators, it shouldn’t bother him. And it really is none of his business. Crossing one leg over the other, he returns his full attention to the postal card. The weather is good but getting chilly. The buildings are—

  The Invisible Man finally appears. “You ready to go?”

  By now it is late afternoon. The temperature has fallen sharply and there’s a nippy wind. But that doesn’t bother Clark, and Willi has his trench coat. They decide to walk for a while, turning south at Fifth Avenue and heading back downtown.

  “So I guess you enjoyed that show,” says Clark.

  Willi says, “Yeah.”

  “What were your favorite pictures?”

  Willi shrugs.

  “Mine were the up-close bridge ones, just the girders? And that newsstand with the million magazines.”

  “Yeah, they were good.”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine, you seem … I don’t know. You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. God.” Willi stops to light a cigarette, cupping his hands but still going through four matches.

  “Hey, you know,” says Clark. “I was thinking. If you have to smoke, you should consider switching to a brand that gives you coupons. We could save them up for something—like a bridge table or something.”

  Willi lifts his dark glasses and shoots Clark a dirty look through his eyeholes.

  Without any conscious thought or decision they enter Central Park at Ninety-ninth Street onto a footpath that winds past baseball fields and running tracks.

  “What’re you thinking about?”

  “Nothing,” says Willi.

  “You’re all mopey again.”

  “I’m not mopey.” He picks at the cotton strip below his bottom lips and irritably tugs it down. “Why do you always have to talk all the time?”

  “I don’t.”

  “So don’t.”

  “Fine, I won’t.”

  “Great.”

  Ten seconds later Clark says, “Hey, come here,” and pinches hold of one of Willi’s coat sleeves, pulling him off the path onto a graveled running track. “Just stand here.” He releases Willi’s sleeve and stands beside him, two feet apart. “Race you.”

  “I don’t want to—”

  “I won. You lost.”

  “What?”

  “I just ran all the way around the track—didn’t you see me?” He laughs and punches Willi in the shoulder playfully. “Wanna race again?”

  “You’re full of it, Kent. You didn’t run around any track—you’re not that fast.”

  “Who says? Watch.”

  Clark is here, then not here, then here again.

  “I took it a little slow that time, so you’d believe me. What do you think?”

  Willi clamps a hand around the lower part of his face, squeezes the wrapping till it gathers. He walks back to the footpath. Keeps going.

  Clark is twenty yards ahead of him, arms folded, the picture of patience.

  Willi goes around him, cuts across the transverse road at Ninety-seventh Street, and strides across South Meadow with the high wall of Croton Reservoir on his left.

  “Willi! Hey! Up here!”

  Willi grudgingly stops.

  “Up here!”

  But while he knows where Clark is, knows that he’s standing (strutting, actually) on top of the reservoir, Willi refuses to lift his eyes. He merely shakes his head and resumes walking.

  Half a minute later, as Willi trudges along beside Children’s Playground, he comes upon Clark seated on a bench with one leg crossed over the other.

  “What’d I do? Did I do something wrong?”

  Willi gives an exasperated sigh and flings himself down on the bench beside Clark. “I’m sorry. All right?”

  “You don’t have to apologize. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I mean what’s wrong now? Did something happen at the museum?”

  “Those pictures were great, weren’t they?”

  “Yeah, sure. So?”

  “That’s what I want to do. That’s what I want to do again. But I can’t. And I won’t ever.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, you’re so sure? How am I supposed to get my life back?”

  Clark says, “I thought that’s what I was for.”

  Willi removes his dark glasses and sticks them in his coat pocket. “You willing to snatch Lex Luthor and threaten to throw him off the Brooklyn Bridge?”

  “Maybe.”

  4

  “I hope you don’t mind me calling you at home, Miss Lane. I called the Daily Planet but you weren’t there, and they wouldn’t give me your exchange. But it’s in the directory, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. Who is this?”

  “Miss Lane, I’d like to speak with you about Lex Luthor. I read your stories in the paper and I think we should talk.”

  “And your name is … ?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s Ceil. Ceil Stickowski? Mrs. Herman Stickowski.”

  “Sticky’s wife?”

  “His widow, Miss Lane. Do you think we might get together?”

  “Could you hold on for just one second? … Of course we can get together, Mrs. Stickowski—tonight?”

  “Would nine o’clock be too late? I know it’s silly, but I have some programs I like to listen to.”

  “Nine o’clock, then. And where would you like to meet?”

  “My house? Would that be all right?”

  “More than all right, Mrs. Stickowski.”

  “Ceil.”

  “Let me just grab something to write with, Ceil, so I can get your address.”

  Mrs. O’Shea presses a finger on the hook and holds i
t down for a count of three, then releases it.

  She doesn’t need to hear any more of the recording: she knows perfectly well where Ceil Stickowski lives.

  Releasing the telephone button once more, she is reconnected with the phone-tap supervisor on duty that evening (the rerouting station has been relocated from the split-level home in Corona, Queens, to a liquor store basement in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn). “Thank you again.”

  “Certainly.”

  “You can erase it now.”

  “Of course.”

  Mrs. O hangs up. For a minute she stands mulling in the living room of Lex Luthor’s apartment (hers, too!) at the Waldorf-Astoria. She picks up the phone again and dials. Lets it ring ten times before hanging up and dialing a different number. “Paulie? Do you have any idea where Mr. Luthor is?”

  “No. Why? Something the matter?”

  She glances at the small clock on the mantel.

  It’s a few minutes past seven.

  “I need you to drive over here now and pick me up.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Paulie. Hang up, get into your car, and drive over here—now. ”

  “Since when did you start giving me orders?”

  “Now, Paulie,” she says and hangs up.

  5

  It is full dark and cold enough to see your breath when Clark and Willi exit Central Park at Grand Army Plaza. Clark’s eyes flick toward the bronze and gilt equestrian statue of William Tecumseh Sherman, to the Fountain of Abundance, then to the Plaza Hotel. He stares at the heavy traffic moving along Central Park South, at the sign on Bergdorf-Goodman. Nearby are hansom cabs with bonneted horses standing placidly in their traces. Liveried drivers huddle in groups sipping coffee from cardboard cartons, eating soft pretzels slathered with yellow mustard, talking and laughing but spotting each couple that passes—“How’s about a nice romantic Halloween drive through the park? Better than flowers, better than—ach, what were we talkin’ about?”

  Clark gazes at everything. “Bet you wish you had your camera with you now, huh?”

  Willi makes a face. “Close your mouth, you look like a rube.”

  “I am a rube!” He laughs. “And seeing as how I’m wearing a black mask, blue tights, and a red cape, I should worry how I look? And I won’t even mention how you look.” He nudges Willi with his elbow, does it again, again.

  “Cut it out, would you?”

  As they are crossing the street, a gust of wind sweeps under Clark’s cape, balloons it up behind him and into the face of a fat man in a box-plaid swagger coat. It knocks off his hat. Stammering apologies, Clark snatches it from the street before it can roll away, hands it back. The man looks at him, at Willi the Invisible Man, and lumbers on.

  “I’m still not sure about this stupid cape.”

  “Maybe you oughta shorten it.”

  “But I like it long.”

  “Then shut up already.”

  The young, fashionably dressed men and women hurrying up or down the steps of the Plaza remind Clark of that Gatsby novel he read in coal tenders and sidecars moving through New Mexico and Arizona. And he realizes that for the first time all day his and Willi’s costumes are failing to elicit amusement. Even the doorman gives them a contemptuous look.

  In front of the Hotel St. Moritz a woman is climbing out of a long white limousine.

  “Willi! I think that’s Myrna Loy! It’s Myrna Loy.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “I’m not, it’s her.”

  “She doesn’t even look like Myrna Loy.”

  “It was her.”

  “Was not.”

  “Was too.”

  They cross Sixth Avenue and continue west, Clark’s eyes darting, lifting, opening wide, his lips moving as he recites to himself the names of all the skyscraper hotels they pass: the Barbizon, the Hampshire House, the Essex.

  Willi says, “I’m freezing.”

  Clark shrugs and walks over to the curb—better vantage—and checks out the façade of the New York Athletic Club, counting stories: … nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.

  “You don’t feel the cold? At all?”

  “Well, I feel a change in the air. But nah, I never feel cold. Or hot.”

  “You’re lucky, you know it?” Willi crosses his arms and repeatedly slaps his hands against his upper arms. “Must be nice.”

  “What, not feeling the cold? I guess.”

  “I’m talking more … in general. In general it must be nice not having any of our, you know, frailties.”

  “No, hey no. I’m not so different, come on. I’m not.”

  “Do you have to brush your teeth?”

  “I do it.”

  “Yeah, but do you have to? You get cavities?”

  “This is stupid. You think I’m not a human being or something?”

  “Ever get a blister? Wear a pair of shoes that don’t fit and get a blister?”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. That’s being human, getting a blister? What about that bomb? That didn’t hurt?”

  “A normal person would’ve been blown to bits.”

  “I didn’t say I was normal, I said I was human.”

  6

  “Pop. Pop, lookit! Is this amazing or what? Poppy, you looking?”

  No, Paulie Scaffa’s father is not looking: he has dozed off again in what used to be Paulie’s favorite chair till the old man moved in and claimed it. Every night, every blessed night he just plops down there and won’t get up. Okay, it’s close to the radio, he can reach the dials, but Paulie has offered to move the radio, even offered to bring it into his father’s bedroom. Wouldn’t that be nice? He can stay in his room, he won’t have to get up at all except to go to the bathroom. But Mr. Scaffa made a face and muttered under his breath. He is always muttering under his breath, the old—

  Being a good son is the hardest work in the world. What’s harder? Doing the right thing is very, very difficult. Sometimes it disrupts everything, makes your life a living hell. But what can Paulie do? The smelly old guy is his father …

  “Pop, don’t you want to look at this? I think you’ll get a kick out of it.”

  After dropping off Mrs. O’Shea at the Waldorf-Astoria, Paulie drove down to Water Street, like the boss said, but instead of leaving both robots there he left only one, took the other home with him. He figured the old man would enjoy seeing it. When Paulie was eleven his pop bought him an Erector Set, but he couldn’t assemble even the most rudimentary bridge or Ferris wheel, so the old man claimed it for his own and played with it for years.

  “Pop, look!”

  Paulie has some difficulty now recalling the proper sequence of buttons (he’s never used the remote-control device before, just watched Mr. Luthor), and all that he manages to do is start an ominous clicking noise inside the box. The lid won’t open.

  Finally, though, it does.

  But once the metal pole rises up (a lot more slowly than it ought to), he can’t make the Lexbot assemble itself. Which is the best thing about it, in Paulie’s opinion.

  Now he’s jabbing buttons randomly, frustrated that he’s such a klutz, annoyed that his father isn’t responding. Doesn’t he have the common courtesy to wake up and pay some attention to his only son? But why should tonight be any different?

  When a loud crackling sounds from down inside the box, Mr. Scaffa finally opens his eyes.

  “What the hell you doin’? What’s that thing? Why’d you bring that thing inside?”

  Oh, right: now he wakes up. Just in time to see Paulie looking stunato.

  “It’s a robot, Poppy, wait’ll you see.”

  “What’re you tellin’ me, robot? What do you bring that in here for? Where’s Carl? At least he can play canasta.”

  “Hey Pop, look. It opens up and turns into …” Paulie scowls, jabbing more buttons, the palm of his right hand so slick the remote-control housing is sliding all over the place.

  The box, sitting on the living-room rug with its two-foot steel pole
sticking out, begins to vibrate so tremulously that it bounces several inches to the left, then vibrates further, in a half circle.

  “Te spach el cul!” says the old man.

  “Yeah? Same to you, Pop!”

  Mr. Scaffa chops downward with his hand in disgust and dismissal. “Put that away, I want to listen to Edgar Bergen. Barbara Stanwyck’s gonna be on. I like her knockers.”

  “How you supposed to see her knockers on the radio, Pop?”

  “What do you know what I see?”

  The telephone rings. Paulie answers it.

  It’s Mrs. O’Shea, his second-least-favorite person in the world.

  “I need you to drive over here now and pick me up.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Paulie. Hang up, get into your car, and drive over here—now.”

  “Since when did you start giving me orders?”

  “Now, Paulie.”

  She hangs up in his ear.

  “I gotta go back out, Pop.”

  “Good! Put on the radio before you leave.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Paulie looks at the remote control in his hand, at the open box on the floor, at the gleaming metal pole, the unassembled Lexbot. This is positively the last time he’s going to do anything nice for the old bastard, it’s just not worth it.

  He tosses the remote control on the telephone table.

  A moment later Paulie’s father utters a loud cry as the Lexbot, shooting out appendages and subappendages, builds its own bulk, assembling itself at twice the speed it ordinarily does.

  Paulie doesn’t like the sounds it keeps making.

  “Turn it off!” his father shouts.

  “It’s a robot, Pop—see? Isn’t it great? Everybody in the world’s gonna own one.”

  From the robot comes a deep unpropitious hum.

  When the high back of the armchair bursts apart, spewing upholstery batting, the old man flings himself forward as though ejected, and in that way—although he bangs his elbow and sprains an ankle when he hits the floor—Mr. Scaffa saves himself from serious injury. A moment later the entire chair erupts into flames.

  Despite his son’s presence of mind in grabbing a throw rug and beating out the fire, he calls Paulie every insult he can think of in Italian, from a jackass to a condom.