by Bob Proehl
“I didn’t know you worked at Heston,” says Gail. She wishes Geoff were here, except that later she’ll get to tell Geoff about this and he’ll be achingly jealous. Still, he would be able to cite any comic Loeb had ever worked on.
“Before I went to Timely,” he says. “Before I paired up with Brewster. It was hack work. All of it was hack work back then, but the Heston stuff, ach.” He turns his head away from the table as if he’s been served some entrée that disgusts him. “No spark, you know?”
Gail thinks about Iota and Ominus engaging in dry contract negotiations, debating dental plans and sabbaticals. “Yeah, I know.”
“National was the same way,” he says. “All brains and no heart. Except at Heston there were no brains, either.”
“So you left Heston for Timely?” she asks.
“No, I was working both,” says Loeb. “When we came up with the Astounding Family, I was still drawing Krazy Kritters and Friday Night’s for Heartbreak at Heston.” Gail has never heard of either title. She is aware that there were whole genres of comics that got swept away in the second wave of superheroes, the wave Loeb was mostly responsible for. She imagines an alternate comics industry in which talking-animal comics are ubiquitous. “Once Astounding was a hit,” says Loeb, “Brew convinced me to hitch my cart to Timely. Told me we’d make millions.” He shakes his head. “He was half right.”
“So why are you here?” asks Gail, somewhat gingerly.
“My son’s picking me up,” Loeb says. He glances around the bar to make sure his son isn’t already here. “He doesn’t get off shift till late. Figured I’d have a drink, but this stuff burns my guts.” He tilts the whiskey glass backward, then forward.
“No, I mean why are you at the convention?” says Gail.
“Well, they’re paying me, for one,” says Loeb, chuckling that low lung rumble. “I don’t know. Burying the hatchet, I guess? Better than being buried with it. Fifty years. It’s a long time to be angry.” At this he takes a sip of his drink and, if his face is any indication, regrets it instantly. “And they’re putting my name back on the books,” he adds. “Phil Weinrobe, he’s a good enough guy. He’s trying to do right by me. More than Brew ever did.”
“Is it enough?” asks Gail. He looks so broken, she can’t imagine anything would be enough. She wants to sign over her paychecks to him and bake him a cake.
“No,” he says flatly. “If I ever see Brewster Brewer again, I’ll—” He stops, and Gail watches the anger slip away from him. “I’ll probably buy him a drink,” he admits. “He’s the last of us left alive. Jersey killed himself in seventy-eight; Eisler and Dysart, they were at National, but we used to drink together at Bemelmans when we were flush. They both went with cancer twenty years ago. Stanchek was an asshole, but he died broke and half blind in some shitty home. He created the Flag Bearer. Brew didn’t have a thing to do with it, even if he took all the credit. Poor Stanchek.”
Again, she thinks how Geoff would know all these names, but she also thinks about her own position. She’s paid by the issue, no long-term contract. She makes rent, but she’s not saving anything, and the freelancers’ union charges multiple limbs for minimal health insurance. Fifty years on and she’s not sure anything’s gotten better but the page rates.
“It’s great, though,” he says, “to see what it all looks like now. It’s another planet, isn’t it? Kids in their costumes and all. Good for them.”
“It is, you know,” she says. “The capes and the spandex and all. They protect you. They make you believe you can be better.”
He nods and muses on this. “Me,” he says, “I’m tired and I don’t believe in superheroes anymore.” He and Gail sit quietly for a minute. “You got the time?” Loeb asks.
She checks her phone. “Nine thirty.”
“Bries is late,” he says with a sense of inevitability. “We named him after Brewer. Did you know that was Brew’s real name? Bries Borowitz. His secret identity. He wanted me to change my name, too. Something less Jewy, he said. Something alliterative and goyim. Bries, my Bries, was ten when they kicked me out of Timely. I’m ashamed to admit, I took it out on him for years. We’re only now speaking again. So it’s okay he’s late, I guess.”
Gail thinks about putting a hand on his shoulder, or patting him on the back. Any of the gestures she’s seen her male colleagues do, the ones that say Buck up or Walk it off. Because he’s not of a generation you can hug, unless you’re related to him, and maybe not even then. There is too much space and time between them to connect properly. “You mind if I keep you company?” she asks.
“Sure thing, kid,” says Loeb. “If I nod off, check my pulse.”
Male Bonding
“I cannot believe you fucked Ferret Lass,” says Fred. “In her costume. In her fucking costume! Does that make you a furry or something? Because I have dibs on all sexual deviance in this friendship.”
Brett snuck back into their room early this morning, sheepish and surprised to find Fred already awake. Last night at the bar, Fred said he wanted them on the road by eight. So they could make Chicago at a reasonable hour and rest up for their signing at Quimby’s. Brett dimly remembers this. He can recall a moment before he was talking to Ferret Lass. Staring at her as she talked to Iota and ExSanguina. In a state where he was slightly too drunk to be clever, but sober enough to know he couldn’t be clever. Every so often, Ferret Lass turned and looked at Brett, then looked down at her drink. Finally she said, “I don’t think it’s fair the way that woman was yelling at you.”
Brett shrugged. “She’s looking out for her kid,” he said. Ferret Lass scooted over to discuss, and someone must have turned the volume down on Fred, because Brett doesn’t remember him saying another thing all night.
“The sad thing is,” Fred says, “I don’t even know enough about ferrets to make a proper string of ferret jokes. Do they have scent glands? I feel like I should mention something about her scent glands.”
After Brett left the hotel bar with her last night, this is likely the kind of conversation that ensued among the all-male corps of artists he’d left behind. If he’d watched one of his fellows leave with Ferret Lass, he might even have participated. Something about boys in aggregate leads to a locker room ethic. But he and Fred are not those kinds of guys. Being not that kind of guy is not only a defining aspect of who he is, or how he thinks of himself; it’s also one of the only pieces of leverage he has with women. When he and Debra first got together, she made it clear she’d chosen him because he was “not like most guys she met.” Over time this became not a virtue but a problem. Ferret Lass had picked him out of a crowd at a moment he was more broken than anyone else in the room. More vulnerable. If he ever sees her again, he’ll ask her why that was.
For now he helps Fred pack up the van. He submits to a brand of masculine ribbing that seems like it was written for two other characters. He is too tired to protest. He wonders if he should call Debra. This is the first girl he’s slept with since her. Meaning the only non-Debra sexual partner he’s had in almost three years. It’s not that he can’t think what he’d say; he can’t even determine what his tone would be. Calling to brag? Apologize?
But thinking about it, last night didn’t have anything to do with Debra. It wasn’t revenge or a final severing of ties. Maybe that was the best sign that things with her are over—the fact that Brett could hook up with someone else and it didn’t involve Debra at all.
He loads his sketchbook, with some of the drawings he did of Ferret Lass last night. He remembers something she said as he left this morning. How all the cosplay girls are carpooling to Chicago together. And he realizes he never found out her secret identity.
Ministry of Transportation
In the morning, she has stopped being mad. He knows this because he asks her, “Have you stopped being mad yet?”
“It’s okay, Rabbit,” she says. “I’m not mad at y
ou.”
“Are you still mad at Brett?” he asks. She doesn’t answer, which means yes, she is still mad at Brett. They pack up the things in their hotel room, and Alex helps, looking around to make sure they got everything. He offers to carry her bags, but she says he can just take care of his.
On their way to check out, they pass the ballroom where Heronomicon was held, but now the ballroom is empty. The city it once contained has moved on and will be waiting for them in Chicago, bigger, better. Now that it’s gone, Alex finds it easier to think about the things he liked about it, which mostly is that it had little pockets of quiet where he could read his book and not be in anyone’s way, and that from anywhere in it he could usually spot his mother. He knows this makes it a little bit worse that he didn’t find her before he went off to the bookstore with Brett, but there was something in him that wanted to keep a secret from her. He knows there’s one she’s keeping from him, too; the longer hugs and the seconds where she goes quiet and looks at him are all part of hiding something, and he wants to ask, but instead he tried to build a little secret for himself. Of course it didn’t work. Secrets never work out the way you want them to.
While his mother stands at the front desk, talking to the same woman who gave Alex the map the day before, he surveys the crowd, hoping he will see Brett before they leave. The lobby is full of people Brett’s age, who look and dress a lot like him, but none of them are him.
In the backseat, Alex arranges his things for the trip. He wedges a pillow against the door, for leaning, not for sleeping. He brings Adam Anti & Nothing but Flowers out of his backpack and sets it on the seat, then covers it with his notebook. Last night in the hotel room, after he’d shut off the lights, he could feel it calling to him, pulsating the way a star might. There is a gravity between him and the book, but he’ll wait until they’re on the road, not wanting his mother to see it and get upset all over again. Instead he takes out a couple of comics and opens an issue of OuterMan to somewhere in the middle. OuterMan has a car triumphantly hoisted over his head, its passengers staring down at him in amazement.
“How far is it to Chicago?” he asks as his mother straightens mirrors.
“Five hours,” she says. “But we’re going to Babu’s house down in Normal, so that adds a couple hours.”
So seven. Alex figures he reads about a page every two minutes. So thirty pages an hour, times seven. If he starts soon, he should be able to finish half the book by the time they arrive.
His mother starts the car and it lurches, like it’s trying to jump out of itself. It makes a coughing noise and the radio flickers on and off, as if the announcer is stuttering. She tries this a couple of times, and he watches how turning the key, a motion that’s usually carried out by her wrist, becomes a full-body action, leaning her shoulder toward the dashboard like she’s going to push the car to start.
“Stay here, okay, Rabbit?” she says. She reaches under the steering wheel and pulls something that makes the front of the car go ka-chunk. Then she gets out of the car and goes around to the hood. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” screams Alex’s mother. He cannot see her, because she’s opened up the hood, but smoke is pouring from the front of the Honda Civic.
“Piece of shit motherfucker!” she screams. Alex gets out of the backseat and comes around the front of the car to watch. Casual profanity is mildly entertaining for him, but this kind of dedicated and emphatic swearing is a real treat. She is shaking out her hands and blowing on them, because the hood must have been hot when she opened it. After a few more strings of curses, listening to his mom swear stops being fun. Alex wishes he could help.
“Hey, Alex,” someone calls from across the parking lot, and Alex turns to see Brett heading toward them, doing something between running and walking. He looks frumpy, like he’s still in his pajamas. Alex knows that for some grown-ups, their clothes are their pajamas.
“Get away from there!” Brett yells. “What if it hits the gas tank?”
“The gas tank’s in the back,” says Alex calmly. The smoke coming from the engine is starting to taper off, and if there was an emergency, it looks like it’s passed. He’s happy to see Brett again, but he wishes there were still an emergency. Without one, his mom will have nothing to focus on except Brett. Alex waits for the explosion.
“Do you guys need help?” Brett asks, more to Alex than to his mother.
“Not from you,” says his mother. She slams the hood back down. Alex doesn’t know much about cars, but he’s pretty sure that when your car starts smoking, it’s not going anywhere for a while. There is some kind of fluid coming out of the bottom of the car and pooling around his mother’s feet.
“That’s radiator fluid,” says Brett, pointing at the green-black liquid. “It’s . . . better if it’s on the inside.”
“You’re an amateur mechanic now?” his mother asks, stepping out of the puddle. Alex wants there to be a way to make her not so mad.
“I know radiator fluid when I see it,” says Brett. “Something like this happened with my old car. We had to put her down.” He looks sad about this, and for a minute Alex is confused. Then he remembers the movie Old Yeller and how they say they’re gonna have to put Yeller down. It looks like they’re going to have to shoot the Civic.
“What’s the car, late nineties?” asks Brett. “If it’s the radiator, it’s not even worth it to get it fixed. You’ll put a thousand dollars in and then wait to see what blows out next.”
Alex’s mom is crying, the worst kind of crying. When she’s sobbing, he knows he can hug her and it’ll get a little better, but this is the kind where her face is very still and has tears running down it, and if he goes to her now, she’ll push him away.
“We can take you to Chicago,” Brett says. He turns back toward his van, where his friend is standing there waiting for him. “We’ve got room in the van. It smells like boys a little, but there’s room. And it’s only a day’s drive.”
Alex looks at his mom to see if she has heard this, expecting her to say no, or something worse than no. It’s like the moment in a play where the main actress is about to sing her big number. Everyone else on stage is watching, and the stage lights go dim and the spotlight is on his mom, standing all by herself. Smoke wraps around her like arms.
Secret Origin of the Idea Man
Alex follows his mother up the spiral staircase. He doesn’t need to hold her hand, but he does. He keeps his books tucked under his other arm and lets that hand slide lightly up the railing, which is made of wood so old it no longer feels like wood. It is the color of metal and feels like dried newspaper. Splinters of it try to grab his hand, but they can’t find purchase. Skin is the best thing for keeping the world outside of you.
At the top of the stairs, they come to the Idea Man’s door, a huge slab of dark and polished wood. Alex is a step or two behind his mom, and for a second, as he looks up at her framed by the bulk of the door, she looks small to him. It’s not all right when parents look small—it means something somewhere has come loose. Lately, Alex has seen more and more of these small moments: his mother tiny at the dining room table or sitting shrunken and slouched at the edge of her bed. When he’s asked what’s wrong, the answer is always Nothing, Rabbit, and the moment is over; she is mom-sized again. The way she is now.
“You want to open it?” she says, because she knows he does. Alex turns the brass knob with both hands and lays his shoulder into the door, pushing it with his full weight. There is magic in opening doors, and the heavier the door, the greater the possibilities. It creaks open on ancient hinges, its bottom edge scraping against the floor with the fricative sound of wood against wood. A pale quarter-circle has been traced in the varnish by the door’s slow-swinging path.
In the living room, Louis is already rushing to greet them. Alex likes Louis, but he’s never been sure if Louis likes him. He’s never been sure if Louis likes anything. He seems too busy to have time for
opinions about things. When Louis appeared, Alex thought he might be the Idea Man’s boyfriend. Then he thought he might be the Idea Man’s butler. Alex’s mother finally explained that Louis was a Man Who Ends This, which means he writes things down.
Louis lays his hands gently on Alex’s mother’s shoulders, rises onto his toes, and kisses her on both cheeks.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I was clearing duplicates out of the Book and didn’t hear you come in.”
“It’s fine, Louis,” she says, drawing him into a hug that he responds to by patting her lightly on her shoulder blades. “How is he today?”
Louis rolls his eyes and sighs dramatically. Alex remembers his babu used to do the same thing when they went to visit her in Illinois that time Dedulya was sick. If you roll your eyes and sigh, it means Don’t get me started. When his babu did it, it meant things were bad, because Dedulya was dying. When Louis did it, it meant more like things were the same as they always were.
“Valerie!” There are four doors into the living room, not counting the one they’ve come through, and the Idea Man’s voice could be coming from behind any of them. Alex makes a guess. He has a one-out-of-four chance of being right, which is twenty-five percent.
“Alex!” says the Idea Man, and Alex almost changes his mind, convinced for a moment that the voice is coming from the kitchen. But then the Idea Man emerges from where Alex thought he would. He is, as usual, half dressed, wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt for a band Alex has never heard of, and one sock. His hair, ghost white as long as Alex can remember, springs like an exclamation point from his forehead.
“Like Athena from the head of Zeus,” Alex declared during the months he and D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths had been inseparable. He’d gone on to describe how the sprout of hair must be bursting from the Idea Man’s head in super slow motion and how one morning it would escape into the kitchen to help Louis make breakfast.