A Hundred Thousand Worlds

by Bob Proehl

  “I was thinking about this all day,” says Weinrobe. “And I was thinking, for me, this is a perfect comic book story. Death’s never forever in comics. I wish Levi Loeb was alive to see this day. But his ideas, his work, and his spirit live on. So let’s raise our glasses.” Pints and wineglasses and lowballs rise into the air. Gail notices hers is empty and hastily refills.

  “To a man who was the first and the best. To Levi Loeb.”

  “To Levi Loeb,” echoes the crowd.

  Gail has finished the entire pitcher by herself while Weinrobe was speaking. She attributes her overall dazed feeling to that fact as Ed, Geoff, and Fred approach.

  “So what do you think?” says Ed.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you sooner,” says Geoff. “There were non-disclosure agreements.”

  “Oh,” says Gail, “well, if there were non-disclosure agreements . . .” Geoff looks horrified, which makes Gail feel awful for having said it. “It’s fantastic,” she says, trying to will herself to feel it. “I’m so happy for you guys.” Maybe she’s sold it better than she thought, or maybe they particularly wanted to buy it, but any momentary guilt they might have felt about keeping all this a secret from her is gone.

  “I’m buying drinks,” says Ed, slapping Fred on the back.

  “No, I’ve got them,” says Gail, getting up on shaky legs. The backslapping around the room goes polyrhythmic and the fog of sorrow lifts, dispelled by the news that he is risen. When she reaches the bar, she looks back to see her table’s gone crowded, her friends obscured by a rush of well-wishers, most of whom must feel, somewhere in their guts, the same ember of resentment that glows in hers.

  As I Woke Up One Morning

  Alex wakes up alone in the big bed in the big house, and his first thought is to look for his mom. The awful, pit-of-his-stomach feeling that comes with this thought makes Alex resolve that he will not let that happen again, and because thinking might not be enough, he says it out loud.

  “This will not happen again.”

  The words echo in the room, which is entirely bare. Alex has seen movies and television shows where the children of divorced parents arrive at the new home of whichever parent has been displaced and find waiting for them rooms fully furnished, decorated, and stocked with toys. Now, he knows his dad is not that kind of dad. There was talk the night before about shopping trips for furnishings, for clothes, for toys. The days to come, Alex has been assured, will be a spending spree. But he’s glad his dad didn’t try to choose things for him, extrapolating Alex’s tastes from what he was like at three or choosing a collection of items deemed popular for boys like Alex.

  Looking for both evidence and breakfast, Alex finds his way to the kitchen. It is, of course, bigger than their kitchen, with cupboards that stretch all the way to the high ceilings and leave much of their contents out of Alex’s reach. Even the counters and stovetop are too high for him to make any practical use of unaided. He goes into the living room and finds an ottoman. It looks expensive—all the furniture looks expensive—and probably it shouldn’t go in the kitchen in case something spills. But it is the right height for his needs, so he carries it into the kitchen and sets it in a corner for later.

  He opens the fridge, noting right away that the milk and orange juice are on an upper shelf and will require the ottoman to be grabbed. But directly at eye level is the holy grail of breakfast foods: bacon.

  Alex inspects the package. It is horrible bacon, if there can be such a thing. It is not organic and is almost definitely from a factory farm where the pigs have no room to move or play. His homeschooling group took a field trip to a small pig farm upstate, so Alex knows how much pigs love to play, and how when they have space they’re not gross at all. Those pigs ended up bacon, but at least before that they were happy. This is not that kind of bacon. But as with the ottoman, there are compromises Alex needs to make, so he sets about finding a skillet.

  The important thing, he remembers, is starting with a cold pan, so, pulling the ottoman over to the stove, he lays four strips out onto the skillet before turning on the burner. It’s a gas stove, which he’s seen only at the Idea Man’s house, but he knows you turn it to the place where it makes the click-click-click and leave it there till the blue flame blooms.

  After only a few minutes, the kitchen is filled with the smell of bacon, and over the sizzling Alex hears footsteps from upstairs. His mom always says bacon makes the best alarm clock, and at home the whole apartment would be suffused most Saturdays with its salty tang. Alex is surprised the smell can even reach his father’s room, upstairs on the other side of the house. Powerful thing, bacon.

  In stubble and paunch and a fluffy purple robe, his father stands in the kitchen doorway, rubbing sleep out of his face.

  “You’re cooking bacon?” he asks, which Alex thought was obvious.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You know how to do that?” This sounds like a question related to safety, but Alex chooses not to answer it that way.

  “It’s important to start with a cold skillet,” he says. He wishes he’d asked his mom why this was important; it would be a good thing to know.

  “Huh,” says his father.

  “This is horrible bacon,” Alex says. “It has nitrates and is probably made from sad pigs.”

  His dad picks up the package from the counter. “They look pretty happy,” he says, showing Alex the picture of a smattering of pink pigs in a vast green field.

  “Those pigs aren’t real,” says Alex. “Real ones aren’t pink.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Do you like yours crispy or soggy?”

  “Crispy,” his dad says, sitting down at the small kitchen table. “Almost burned.”

  “Me, too,” says Alex. “Mom likes hers soggy, but she crispifies some for me.” He flips the bacon with the spatula and watches with quiet horror as spittles of grease jump from the pan and hit the ottoman, spreading into dime-sized stains on the fabric. He wishes they’d landed on the tops of his bare feet instead. Not yet knowing the rules of this house, it seems as if burns on his feet are less likely to be noticed than stains on the furniture.

  “So I was thinking,” says his dad, “that maybe today we could go shopping. Get stuff for your room and all. There’s a mall about a half hour away.”

  “Don’t you have to go to the convention?” Alex asks. He needs to talk to Brett as soon as he can. A little part of Alex wants to explore the house further. He’s only seen the downstairs and his room, and if the house were otherwise vacant, he could possibly collect more evidence.

  “Not till the panel with your mom and me tomorrow,” says his dad.

  “I think we should go to the ocean,” says Alex as he lifts charred pieces of bacon out of the bath of sizzling grease. “I feel like I’ve come all this way and I’m not done going west yet. I feel like I should go as far as I can.”

  The Sellout

  The official announcement is at the Timely panel in the morning, but everyone knows already. The big comics websites go into a twenty-four-hour news cycle around the conventions, and NerdFeast.com ran the story late last night. PanelAddict.com, always a little more respectful of information embargoes, held it until after it was announced officially, but the story was ready to drop as soon as Phil Weinrobe said the words “The Astounding Family is back at Timely” and the crowd in Hall H, who’d queued up overnight to hear it from Weinrobe’s mouth, sleeping on the concrete like unwashed piles of superhero laundry, went nuts.

  But Brett wasn’t in Hall H, and he didn’t read it online. His friends and colleagues, none of them could wait to tell him, the moment he got to Artist Alley this morning. They were buzzing to give him the bad news. It’s a sign of where he is in the pecking order, high up enough that people place a value on ruining his day.

  Fred approaches. Brett wonders whether his first words will be a shitty attempt
to apologize or a shitty attempt to explain.

  “I think that once I’m in,” he says, “I can bring you in. Like, they let me in through the front door, then I come open up the back door for you.”

  Brett’s never actually punched anyone, though he’s sketched a hundred punches. He could consider it research.

  “It developed organically,” says Fred. Gestures toward the room where the panel was held. “I was out for a beer with them, and they were talking about this project. And Phil said it needed a man-on-the-street angle, so I threw out some ideas and he liked them. He said, ‘Why don’t you write it for us?’”

  An apology is not coming. Fred has already justified his actions to himself. The only option is to point out some of the flaws in Fred’s story.

  “The whole time you’re out for beers with the publisher of Timely Comics,” says Brett, “it didn’t occur to you to call me?” Nitpicking about character motivation is pretty standard for comics fans. Most of them understand that smart characters sometimes have to make stupid decisions. For the sake of a good story. It’s called picking up the idiot ball. But Fred hasn’t made a mistake. The idiot ball is in Brett’s hands. Fred’s clearly given this betrayal a lot of thought. He answers without a pause.

  “You know what, it didn’t. After you blew off all of Chicago to stay in your room and fuck Ferret Lass? And after you’ve spent more time collaborating with some kid than with me on the book we’re supposed to be finishing? And after you’ve been generally a whiny little asshole lately about who does the work and who gets the credit? No, I did not feel necessarily inclined to invite you along.”

  “Nor did you feel inclined to tell me about it all week.”

  “We were sworn to secrecy,” says Fred.

  “Did you pinkie-swear? Cross your heart and hope to die?”

  “It’s called a non-disclosure agreement, asshole,” says Fred. “Look, this is a good thing for us.”

  “It’s a good thing for you, Fred. Just you.” Brett thinks this would be an excellent line to walk away on. He takes a step to go past Fred, but then stops. “What about the meeting with Black Sheep tomorrow? Are you even showing up?”

  “About that,” says Fred, looking at his shoes. “They want me at a story summit tomorrow. Me and Geoff and Ed and the whole editorial staff. They rented us a cabin in Big Sur where Kerouac used to go.”

  “You hate the Beats!” says Brett. This seems like a valid point of protest.

  “It’s not like we’ve got the pages,” says Fred. “We were going in there to beg for another extension.”

  Brett is proud of himself that he saw this coming. He brought his portfolio with him. Silently, aware of every second of the pause he is creating, he reaches in and pulls out a stack of twelve pages. Pencils finished. Awaiting the letters. Waiting for the script. He hands them to Fred, who flips through them, frantic.

  “When did you do this?” he says.

  “Finished the other night,” says Brett. “I’ve been cleaning them up.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  This is a good question. It was going to be a surprise would be a bad answer. But it’s the true one. Sometime soon, later today probably. Brett was going to whip these out. He’d imagined them spending the evening working on the script. Beers in the hotel room. Bottle of whiskey for when it was done. All these plans made, and none of them shared. No one likes surprises, ultimately.

  “It was going to be a surprise,” Brett says.

  Fred goes through the pages again. Slower now. “These are good. This is . . . I couldn’t have come up with a better ending.”

  “You couldn’t have come up with an ending,” says Brett.

  “Anyway,” says Fred. He hands the pages back. “It’s your story. Tell Black Sheep I’ll give up my writer credit for the last issue.” Brett is still glaring at him. “I’ll give up my writer credit for the trade. Put your name all over it. It could be big for you.”

  It’s funny how something Fred was once so upset about now matters so little to him. Maybe it’s because the last week he’s been so close to the work, so invested in the world of Lady Stardust, that Brett is hurt not that he’s being stepped over, but rather that the work they’ve done together, the world they made together, is so easy for Fred to throw away.

  “That’s very big of you,” says Brett.

  “Stop sounding like I’m the asshole here. If you’d gotten an offer, you’d have taken it.”

  “Besides,” says Fred, “this is me getting us a foot in the door. After this project, they’ll want me on something else. And that’s when I say, ‘I want to work with Brett Kazan. We’re a team.’”

  Fred actually holds his hand out for Brett to shake it, and Brett stares at it and laughs. A better liar could have sold it, but Fred misses the mark entirely, and Brett decides that it’s the perfect exit line.

  Talent/Agency

  Val isn’t sure when it happened that cookie-cutter copies of public places began to resonate with one another. Airports are, of course, the worst, forming as they do a massive rhizome that sprouts in the outskirts of various cities but is in fact one huge and singular being. Val hasn’t traveled by plane since she first moved to Los Angeles. But for a long time, she’s found she can’t go into a chain restaurant without the feeling that she’s present in all iterations of the restaurant, and that everything happening in each of them will become apparent to her all of a sudden, a palimpsest over the room she’s physically in at that moment.

  So when Elise wants to meet at a Starbucks, Val is worried. She is aware she’s the millionth person to use the word venti that day. The cardboard cup, new, fresh, feels like it’s been handled by every commuter from here to Portland, Maine, and when they sit down to talk, Val feels wired into a vast network of coffee shops, their conversation quietly broadcast to each of them.

  “You,” says Elise, “look like hell.”

  Elise, who is twenty years older than Val, could easily pass as Val’s younger sister. She is vibrant and golden, where Val feels drained. She’s drinking something that is not coffee, like green tea or maté or chai. Something that you drink when you’re thinking short- and long-term at once. Val is drinking coffee, black, large.

  “It’s a rough day,” says Val.

  “Where is the boy?” asks Elise, looking around with the hungry eyes of an aging aunt. Elise’s two daughters are close to Val’s age, and when Val was still in L.A., Elise took a grandmotherly liking to baby Alex. “I thought you were both coming out here.”

  “He’s with his dad,” says Val.

  “Seriously?” Because the dissolution of Val’s marriage was so closely tied to the collapse of Val’s professional life in L.A., Elise was de facto involved in both. She retains a strong loathing for Andrew. “Something we should talk about?”

  “No,” says Val, “please.”

  Elise waits another beat in case Val wants to change her mind. “All right,” she says. “To business?”

  “Please,” says Val.

  Elise lays both hands on the table. “You need to come to a decision on Perestroika basically before you finish your coffee,” she says. “And a decision on Royal Shakespeare before we walk out of here.”

  Val looks out the window, which is heavily tinted. “I’m not ready to decide on either of those,” she says.

  “Then you are going to lose both,” says Elise. “And losing both will make it harder for me to find you something else after.”

  “What is there locally?” says Val, watching Elise’s sepia-tone reflection to see how she reacts.

  “Locally here?” she says.

  “You knew I was coming,” says Val. “Have you asked around?”

  “I have,” says Elise. Val is waiting for Elise to reach into her overlarge bag and pull out a stack of scripts. That’s how Val pictured this going. But Elise doesn’t
move. “There aren’t parts for you right now,” she says. “There’s one, which I imagine you’ve heard about.”

  “Assume I haven’t,” says Val.

  “Tiger’s Paw is considering an Anomaly movie,” Elise says. “There’s a draft of a script. It’s a smart, low-budget sci-fi piece. And everyone’s waiting on you.”

  “I don’t want to do it,” says Val.

  “Then there’s no work.”

  “Nothing?”

  Elise fidgets. Val knows she should have warned Elise that this conversation was coming, but she didn’t want to say it out loud, back in Cleveland. Now Elise is struggling for a way to tell Val something she should have already known, or at least suspected. “You know when I say ‘people think,’ that doesn’t include me, right?”

  Val closes her eyes. “What do people think?” she says.

  “They think you kidnapped Andrew’s kid and ran off,” says Elise. “It wasn’t a story in Variety or anything, but that’s the widely held opinion.”

  “Why would anyone think that?” says Val.

  “Andrew was here,” Elise says, “and you weren’t. He was moping around looking bereft. He got a lot of sympathy.”

  “I bet he did,” says Val, but it’s been too long, and she no longer has a mental list of the women who might have lined up to offer Andrew their sympathies. But aside from that, even in the face of all the evidence against him, it was difficult to hate Andrew when you were in a room with him. Had she stayed in L.A., seeing him every week to hand Alex back and forth, she would have forgiven him, too.

  “I’m not suggesting he painted you in a poor light,” says Elise. “But the story that went around was you ran off.”

  “So nobody wants me?” Val says.