by Bob Proehl
“What would we do?” he asks. He has no idea what he wants the answer to be. What the question is. She shrugs.
“You could draw. I’d keep looking for modeling work. We’d fuck a lot. Same thing we’re doing right now. Or I could move to New York. New York’s the same as L.A., as far as I’m concerned.”
“You’d move to New York to be with me?”
“I’d move to New York to be in New York. If I was moving to New York, it’d be nice to have someone to stay with. And to sleep with. Or, if I stay in L.A., it’d be nice to have someone to share my rent and my bed.” She looks at him as if she’s explained something incredibly simple.
“Is this a West Coast thing?” he asks. “People don’t do this in New York.”
“I’m sure people do this in New York all the time,” she says. He wonders if this is something West Coast people assume. That people in New York are not uptight. But they are. “I’m not asking you to marry me. I’m not even asking you to sign a lease. I’m asking you to come to L.A. for a while, and if you get tired of it, leave. Or if I get tired of you, I’ll ask you to leave. Or maybe we both get tired of fucking each other and we end up roommates.” He gets the impression all of these endpoints are essentially the same to her in terms of desirability.
“It sounds weird.”
“It’s easy,” she says. Draws out both syllables. Makes the word a patch of smooth road. “That’s why it sounds weird. Because you’re used to things being hard, and this is easy. You’re used to things being complicated, and this is not complicated.”
He can think of a hundred problems. Thousand ways for it to go wrong. Screaming scenarios play out in his head. Crying jags. Thrown plates. “It seems complicated.”
“Think about it,” she says. She is there in bed with him. She is this impossible kind of pretty. “Here,” she says. Moves toward him. “I’ll make a convincing argument.”
Career Opportunities
After spending all morning in the recycled air and manufactured sunlight of the convention center, stepping out onto the street is overwhelming. The thick, damp heat of Chicago’s summer is weirdly refreshing, or maybe it’s the body’s natural need for sun. Gail holds her face up to the light for a few seconds before thoughts of skin cancer pop into her head and she shades her eyes with her hands.
From out here, you can see the convention’s effect on the outside world. Robots are waiting for cabs. The lines for the hot dog vendors include angels, aliens, mutants. But even among the general population, clothes are getting tighter and shinier. It occurs to Gail that she might be the only one here without an alter ego; most of the people who pass must have Twitter handles or DJ names or online personas that mask or reveal. Even Val is Bethany Frazer when she’s here. She’s often thought of the con as a throwback to adolescence. But what if it’s a prediction, or a pupal stage? Is it possible the culture of the outside world is becoming more paranormal, or that this subculture being celebrated inside is bubbling up, bleeding through?
“I’m buying,” says Gail as Val reaches for her wallet. The hot dog vendor hands them two, and Gail begins liberally applying mustard to hers. She gently grabs Val’s wrist when Val reaches for the ketchup.
“You want everyone to know you’re a tourist?” says Gail.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” says Val. “My father would have been mortified.”
“You were thinking it was a New York City cart dog and you’d have to smother it so it’d taste like something,” says Gail. “This is one complaint you can file against New York: our street food is for crap.” With glee she tears into her hot dog, wads the bite into the side of her mouth, and asks, “You grow up here?”
“Around here,” says Val. “In Bucktown for a while, then up to Evanston. We had a summer house in Normal; my mom still lives out there.” Gail has never met anyone who would admit to having had a summer house growing up. “You?”
Gail shakes her head, then nods and swallows. “Ames, Iowa. Home of the Iowa State Cyclones. You know what Gertrude Stein said about where she grew up?”
“I don’t, actually.”
“There is no there there,” says Gail, complete with poetic pauses. “True of Gert’s hometown, true of mine. I left when I was seventeen, came to school at U of C. First lesson I learned: mustard only. Chicagoans take their condiments very seriously.” She chomps on the hot dog again and continues with her mouth full. “It ended up being a big advantage, having lived here. Most New York comics writers don’t know the first thing about Chicago. But Center City is the National analog of Chicago, so when I started writing The Speck & Iota, I was able to give it some local color.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” says Val, smiling genuinely for the first time all day. It’s the perfect opposite of how she smiles at the convention: the forced smile draws the memory of happiness out of the body and pushes it into the face; a real smile feeds happiness back into the body, radiating it out from a point.
“National Comics set their books in fictional cities,” says Gail. “Metro City is clearly New York, but they don’t call it New York. Pearl City is San Francisco, complete with the Pearl Gate Bridge, which, for some reason, is bright blue. And Center City, which is where the Speck and Iota are headquartered, is completely and obviously Chicago.”
“Why not use real cities?” Val asks.
“In the beginning I think it was because they wanted OuterMan to have a futuristic city to have adventures in. Metro City is New York, but it’s more like New York in Corbusier’s wet dreams. Highways spiraling through the air, tram cars on a web of invisible wires. Once your main city is fictional, it’s easier to stick with fictional cities, for the sake of consistency. There’s also the fact that comic book cities get blown up a lot. The past couple years, it’s nice not to have to be blowing up New York or Boston or Chicago. I mean, who wants to knock down the Empire State Building now?”
“But you live in New York?” she says.
“Where else is a person going to live?” says Gail. “I miss Chicago, but a girl can’t live on hot dogs alone.” The zeal with which she’s eating gives the lie to her statement.
“You couldn’t live here and write?” asks Val.
“I could,” she says. “I probably should. There’s maybe a half-dozen writers I see regularly in New York. And my company’s editorial office is there, but they never want to see me.” There was probably a time when everyone who worked in comics lived in New York, but now National is the only major publisher whose offices are in Manhattan. If there’s a city where the comics industry lives, it’s this traveling city, the cons, that moves westward every summer like a tent revival show. “What about you?” she asks Val. “You couldn’t live here and act?”
“New York convinces you it’s the place you have to be,” Val says.
“Must be a weird place to raise a kid, though.”
“He adapts,” Val says. “He’s thrived. He’s more of a New Yorker than I’ll ever be.”
“Subway maps in the brain, and lungs that can process exhaust fumes,” says Gail. “Superpowers.” She and Geoff sometimes make lists of the gifts that would make living in New York easier. The power to make yourself visible. Able to leap from Flatbush to the Lower East Side in a single bound.
“You have kids?” Val asks.
“Oh, no,” says Gail. “No, no. I’m a few rungs lower on the ladder of stability than the having-kids one. I have cats. Multiple cats. I am a single New York lesbian with cats. Living the dream.” Val looks a little surprised. “Don’t worry,” Gail says, “this isn’t a come-hither hot dog.”
“You seeing anyone?” says Val.
Gail chuckles. “I spend my days thinking about a woman who can fly faster than the speed of sound and can hear heartbeats a planet away. Dating prospects pale in comparison.”
“Standards too high,” Val says. “
I’m familiar.”
“Being married to Ian Campbell was that great?”
“No,” she says, laughing. “It was awful.”
“People are, it turns out, largely awful,” says Gail. “One more thing that makes dating a challenge.”
“Plus I’ve already got the perfect man in my life.”
“Sometimes I leave my desk after writing all afternoon and I can’t bring myself to talk to anybody,” Gail says. “No one seems as real as the people in my head. It’s isolating. It keeps you apart from people.”
“It keeps you from getting hurt,” says Val.
“Getting hurt’s not so bad,” says Gail. “Builds character or something.”
“Character can fuck itself,” says Val, dabbing mustard from her chin. Gail can tell from the way she says it that she’s not used to swearing. Having a kid, you must get out of practice.
“Yeah, fuck character,” says Gail, trying to encourage her.
“I worry about going back to it full-time,” Val says. “I’m not sure I can start being other people again.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“It feels so selfish,” she says. “All that energy put into making things up.”
“Selfish gets a bad rap,” says Gail. “You could also see it as you’re giving up all that other stuff and all those other people to create something, and that something you create is as much for everybody else as it is for you. It’s kind of self-less when you look at it like that.”
“Is that how you look at it?” says Val.
“No,” says Gail. “I like writing about flying girls in spandex. That and a job I can do in my pajamas.”
Anomaly S06E23
Alex finds Fred and not Brett manning the table in Artist Alley. He’s got his feet up, tipping his chair precariously backwards, face obscured by a copy of Adam Anti & Life During Wartime. The way he’s sitting, the way he’s holding the book, too close to actually read it, all broadcast the message that Fred doesn’t want to talk to anybody, and the message is being received. People glance at Brett’s portfolios or the covers of Lady Stardust, then quietly move away.
Alex comes around the table behind Fred, looking over his shoulder but not at the words so he doesn’t ruin it for himself.
“You like those, too?” he says. He tried to sneak up, but it must not have worked, because Fred isn’t startled at all.
“Nope,” says Fred, snapping the book shut. “I’ve seen the movies. I found this one in Brett’s bag. I thought I’d give it a try. The prose is flat and the story is a warmed-over mix of Arthurian legend and rock opera. But it’s far from charmless. And it reads quickly.”
“You can’t start with the last one,” says Alex defensively. He hasn’t understood most of what Fred said, but he grasps that it’s a negative review. He likes it that Fred doesn’t take the time to make sure Alex gets it. It’s the same lack of respect Fred shows everybody, and in that way it’s kind of respectful.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you yesterday,” Alex says. Fred puts down the book and stares at him a second.
“Thanks, kid,” he says. “That’s very stand-up of you. Here, pull up a chair. You can help me not sell any of Brett’s artwork.” Alex drags a chair over. “So what’s it like having a mother who’s famous?” says Fred.
“She’s not that famous,” Alex says. Famous people belong a little bit to everybody, and his mother belongs just to him.
“Within a certain demographic,” says Fred, “she’s quite famous. Iconic, almost. And we happen to be surrounded by the members of that demographic. I bet everyone here has seen at least a full season of Anomaly. It’s like required watching for a certain generation of geek.”
“Have you?”
“I, for better or worse, have seen them all. Every episode. I can’t tell you why I kept watching after they jumped the shark, but I did. Stockholm syndrome, I guess.”
Alex thinks about getting out his notebook to write down some of the words Fred is using so he can look them up later, but he’s worried he would look stupid. He’s interested, though, to get to talk to someone who’s seen all of Anomaly.
“So you know how it ends,” he says.
“Mercifully,” says Fred, “like an elderly patient expiring after prolonged illness.”
“But what happens?” says Alex.
Fred puts his chair back on the ground and leans toward Alex. “You want me to spoil the ending?” Alex nods. Fred looks excited about this, and Alex realizes he’s excited, too. He’s always tried to avoid knowing endings, but there’s something about skipping to the last page that feels empowering.
“How much do you know?” Fred asks.
“My mom’s told me a lot of it.”
“You know the big bad is the Leader.”
“Uh-huh,” says Alex. “And no one knows who he is. But he’s from the future.”
“The final season,” Fred says, “they’re throwing out clues left and right. Only they’re not clues, because they all contradict each other. Every week after a new episode, the Internet goes nuts. ‘It’s Frazer!’ ‘No, it’s Campbell!’ It comes down to the last episode, and all the Leader’s evil plans have paid off. He’s finally broken into Anomaly Base, which had always been protected by some kind of time bubble, and it’s chaos. There are Vikings and CGI dinosaurs running around. And he corners Frazer and Campbell. And he takes off his mask.”
Fred mimes the action of removing the mask, drawing his hand up from his chin and over his face. Alex is rapt. All the episodes his mother’s recounted to him, years of bedtime stories, and she’s never told him, never revealed the Leader’s identity. Alex thought it didn’t matter much, but now, about to find out, it matters more than anything.
They’re both leaning forward in their chairs, their faces almost touching.
“Who is it?” Alex asks.
“It’s their kid,” says Fred, leaning back, deflated. “It’s Frazer and Campbell’s kid. Which doesn’t make sense in eleven different ways. He says he came back from the future to split them up, because if they stay together he turns out evil. So if you’re worried about turning out evil, stop being evil. Don’t go back in time to terrorize your baby self and your parents so they get divorced and you turn out not evil.”
Alex is disappointed and confused.
“Then what happens?”
“He zaps back to the future and takes all his Vikings and CGI dinosaurs with him. The show ends with Frazer and Campbell standing in the wrecked Anomaly Base with their jaws hanging open.”
“That’s it?”
“I told you it wasn’t very good,” says Fred. “They would have retconned it the next season. Given the track record at that point, they might have made it worse.”
“What’s retconned?” asks Alex.
“It’s when a lazy writer goes back and changes something that’s already happened,” Fred says. “Like ‘Oh, no, OuterMan’s planet wasn’t totally destroyed and everybody didn’t die like we’ve been telling you for seven decades. There was actually a cruise ship full of people from his home planet who survived, and oh by the way they’re all douchebags.’ It’s a cheap writer’s trick.”
“So it’s fixing mistakes?” says Alex.
“It’s worse than that. There’s a guy who writes for National Comics who does it all the time. It’s like his signature move. He’s the one who took OuterMan and made him—” Fred stops abruptly. He’s watching two men approach the table. One of them is older, not quite grandpa old, and heavy, like a funny cop in a movie. The other one is probably between Fred’s age and Alex’s mom’s age. The heavy one is dressed like a grown-up, with a button-down shirt, the first one Alex has seen at the convention. The other has OuterMan’s logo on his T-shirt, an O stretched vertically, with a circle orbiting it like a hula hoop. “Shut up, kid,” Fred says quietly, although Alex hasn�
��t been talking.
“This is the book I told you about,” says the heavy man. He pages through an issue of Lady Stardust, but not the way other people have. He’s actually reading it. Here and there he points to certain panels. “You ever read this?”
“I never have time to read anything out of universe these days,” says the other man, who keeps looking around nervously. “National has me reading all the scripts to check for continuity errors.”
“They’re sticklers for continuity over there,” says the heavy man. “I respect that. Although I’ve never totally understood it. Who cares if OuterMan’s in space in one book and saving Capital City in another? Five fans.” He holds up five sausage fingers. “Five fans care, and if they didn’t have that to moan about, they’d moan about something else.”
“We like to keep things tidy,” says the other man.
“I get that. I do. But don’t underestimate how much fun it can be to get messy.” As he talks, the heavy man is making lots of physical contact with the other man, slapping him on the shoulder and arm. “Look at this,” he says, pointing at the open comic book. “The pencils aren’t great, but they pop, right? And the story, well, we’ll see if they stick the landing, but as it is, there’s some holes.” Alex notices Fred wincing. “But when I read it,” says the heavy man, “I’m not seeing holes. I’m seeing this thing that’s crackling with ideas.” He smacks the other man on the arm, hard. “What’s the last thing National published that was crackling with ideas? Something you didn’t write.” The other man stammers. “You know what, don’t answer that.” He shuts the book and sets it back down on the pile.
“You work for Black Sheep?” he asks Fred.
“I’m the writer,” says Fred.