by Bob Proehl
“Me? I’m a fan,” says Red Emma. For a second, Gail wonders which version of her question has been answered. “In our ridiculous Manhattan apartment, I have an entire room devoted to my comics collection.”
“That sounds like a dream come true,” says Gail. She almost mentions that her own comics collection lives in her closet, but it seems like too obvious a setup.
“Ultimately it’s like those kept wives who collect Precious Moments figurines,” says Red Emma. “But, you know, it’s different because it’s mine.”
“So you wouldn’t call it a hobby.”
“Annie calls it my hobby. To piss me off, mostly.”
“And she doesn’t mind that you’re out here, dressed like this?”
“No more than I mind she goes to work every day dressed like Hillary Clinton,” says Red Emma. “We are who we are to each other, and we are who we are to the world. Love one, leave the other the hell alone.”
“And you’re a Red Emma fan.”
She nods and stubs out her cigarette against the wall, flicking the butt deftly into a sewer grate. “When I was in college, my girlfriend at the time got killed. Shot waiting for the G train on her way home. I was not, back then, a person who could process her own anger. Who could own it. The whole thing left me destroyed. I started going to this grief therapy group, which for the most part was awful. But this guy, he brought me the first four issues of Red Emma. And I loved it. It fit right where the empty part of me was, and it propped up my anger inside of me so it was something I could use.”
“I figured all of you were supermodels,” says Gail.
“A couple of them have aspirations. I don’t think anyone’s holding their breath. But when someone offers to pay you to play dress-up? That’s a plum gig. I was going to dress like this anyway.” She adjusts her fedora, which has been slowly rotating like the big hand of a clock. “You should come talk with us,” she says. Gail winces. “I don’t want to break up your incredibly sad little party.”
“I can’t,” Gail says. “My friend is having the worst day you could imagine.”
“It’s her kid, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck. You’re a good friend for helping her out.”
“I should probably get back.”
“All right. But we should get together, once we all get back. Annie worked as a bartender while she was doing her M.B.A. She makes a mean cocktail. And I have the best comic book lending library in the city.”
“I’d like that,” says Gail. She and Red Emma head back into the bar, and Gail thinks about grabbing another drink, then decides she should check if Val or the kid needs anything first. But when she looks over to their table, they’re gone.
Just Call Me Angel of the Morning
There should be a word like waking that means giving up on a long and failed attempt to sleep. That’s what Brett does when he hears the knock on the door. He looks at Valerie at the far edge of the bed. Arms folded across her chest like a mummy. Eyes fluttering like she’s either fighting for sleep or fighting against it. There’s a second knock, and she doesn’t move. So he sits up. Smooths a few new wrinkles out of his clothes. He wonders about the propriety of answering a woman’s hotel door in the morning. But she’s not going to answer it. So.
Gail stands in the hallway. Hands on her hips. Like his mother when he’d come home from high school parties late, drunk.
“You, young man,” she says, “are a scumbag.”
Brett’s addled brain can barely process this accusation. He looks at her blankly. Aware of what a slack-jawed expression he has on his face, but unable to adjust it.
“Get out here,” she says. He steps out into the hall. Gail spins him around so she can step toward the door. She puts her foot in to keep it from shutting. “I thought you were a decent kid,” she says. “For you to take advantage of her in that state—”
“I didn’t,” says Brett. Glad that synapses are beginning to fire. “She took advantage of me. I mean, she didn’t. Look.” He indicates the state of his clothes, but he’s unsure what aspect of them he means. That they’re on? That they’re mostly unwrinkled? Somewhere here is proof of his innocence. It’s clear Gail doesn’t know, either. What can he say? She’d asked him to take her back to her hotel. She hadn’t asked him to come to her hotel. There was a difference there, and he understood it. They’d walked back, and she talked about Alex. How she was glad Brett had met him. How he was a special kid. When they got to the hotel, she asked if he would walk her up to her room. Even when he paced through it in his head, it sounded like he was lying. None of it sounded innocent, but it was. There had been something ghostly about Valerie when she asked. Something not there. “She said she couldn’t be alone,” he says. “But we just lay there in the bed. No touching. We didn’t even talk much. I think she needed someone to be there for her. Literally there.”
Gail softens. Becomes shorter, even. Brett’s not sure he’s convinced himself. He searches his memory for a moment when sex was a possibility. Something he said wrong. A look that was supposed to beckon. Can’t think of anything. “What’s going on with her?” he asks.
“You spent the whole night with her and you didn’t ask what was going on?” says Gail. Brett had wanted to. A few times during the night she started crying. A soft, hitching sound. Like she was trying to keep it to herself. He asked, each time, if she was all right. Each time she said, “I’m fine,” and stopped crying. She pulled in a deep breath and stopped.
“It didn’t seem like she wanted to talk about it,” he says.
“You might not be a bad guy,” says Gail, “but you are most certainly a guy.” Brett can accept this judgment. “And no funny business?”
“No, ma’am,” says Brett.
“For the love of God, don’t call me ma’am,” she says. Gail turns around and opens the door a crack wider. Peers in. “How is she?”
“She’s lying there,” says Brett. “I don’t think she slept.”
“That’s no good,” says Gail. “How does she look?” This seems like an odd question. Especially since Gail is in her pajamas. Or maybe is the kind of person who goes out in public in clothes that look like pajamas.
“I didn’t check,” says Brett. “But she probably looks like she hasn’t slept.”
Gail sighs deeply. “She’s got a big day today. It’s the tenth-anniversary panel for Anomaly. People are probably already lining up. She can’t look like she came home from a one-night stand.”
“We didn’t—” Brett says.
She cuts him off. “I know. I’m saying, I don’t know that I can be of much help in this area. I’m not a wizard with the makeup, you know?”
“Hold on,” he says. He takes out his phone. Surprised at what he’s about to do. She must be mad at him. She must have seen him leave with Val last night. There’s no way she’ll agree to it.
“Hey, you,” says Ferret Lass. Like she’s happy to hear from him. How wonderful it must be to live in a world where everything is okay all the time. Where everyone is already forgiven.
“Can I ask you a favor?” says Brett.
“Sure, what’s up?”
“How are you with makeup?”
“I’d be insulted,” she says, “but my mother says the best makeup job is one a boy doesn’t notice.” This makes sense to Brett. He’s only ever noticed makeup when it’s egregious. “You thinking of doing drag?” she asks. “You’d look so hot in drag.”
“It’s a friend of mine.”
“Your friend from last night?”
He tries to determine if there’s any malice in the question. Can’t find any. “Yes.”
“She is so nice,” she says. “There’s the thing for her show today, right?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t leave her covered in hickeys, did you?”
“No, she’s�
�”
“Hickeys aren’t your thing, are they? Although I remember a few bite marks.”
“I didn’t—”
“Relax,” she says, laughing. “Your lady friend needs some makeup assistance before the thing for her show.”
“She’s not my lady friend.”
“You can tell me all the sordid details later over a drink. You do realize you’ll owe me a drink for this?”
“I will?”
“Possibly multiple. Depends on how badly you’ve ravished her.”
“I didn’t—”
“There’s an after thing at Harlowe tonight. The girls are all going to be there. They liked you. You want to go?”
Brett has no idea what conversation he’s having. Only that it’s not the one he set out to have. He’s not sure if it’s better or worse.
“Sure,” he says.
“Let me throw some stuff in a bag and I’ll see you in a bit,” she says. He gives her the room number and hangs up. Stares at the phone a minute as if it had crawled into his hand.
“What was all that?” asks Gail.
“We have a crisis,” he says, “so I called a superhero.”
The Last City
Alex is somewhat impressed. His father seems like he knows everybody here. The convention floor is packed with people, but at each of the booths for a movie studio or a television channel, the people who are working stop everything to say hi to his dad. People who are there for the convention ask for autographs or high fives or pictures. He’s sure it’s probably like this for his mom, too, but they never got the chance to just walk around. It makes Alex feel like he’s secondhand famous.
But Alex is here today on a mission, and he has no time for distractions. He’s got to get free of his dad, at least for a little bit.
“Can I wander around a little?” he asks his father.
“Did your mother let you wander around?” his father asks. The use of the past tense bothers Alex. His mother is still alive, can still let him do things, or forbid them. He wonders how long this will go on: his requests met with questions of precedent. It would be an easy system to take advantage of. Did your mother let you ride a motorcycle? Yup. Did your mother let you eat nothing but pizza and ice cream? Sure did!
“I’m allowed,” he says.
“I think you should stay with me,” says his father. “It’s too crowded in here.” His father is shying away from contact with anyone, as if they’re carrying some disease.
This does not fit with Alex’s plans. “I’ve got people I need to talk to,” he says.
“You’ve got people?” says his father. “You’re a big Hollywood player already?”
Alex does not like the tone and does not have time for this. “I’ll see you at the panel thing,” he says, counting on the fact that his father hasn’t developed the clairvoyant Oh no you don’t skills his mom has. He uses his invisibility powers. He uses his superspeed. In seconds he is out of sight of his father. He’s running full bore through the Los Angeles Comic-Con, through its streets and down its alleyways, and for the first time he thinks maybe he will keep running. For the first time, he cannot think of a reason to stop.
He runs down Artist Alley and sees Brett bent over his pages, and Alex thinks of running right by him, but he stops, skidding on his heels in front of Brett’s table, panting, cheeks flushed.
“Are you busy?” he asks.
Brett hesitates before he answers, which makes Alex worry. “I am, a little. What’s up?”
“We have to finish,” says Alex.
Brett sighs, and his face scrunches up into a face he’s never seen Brett make before. It’s a face Alex’s mom makes that means an excuse is coming.
“Is there any chance we can finish later?” Brett asks. “I’ve got a meeting in a half hour, and I have to do the dialogue and captions on these.” He holds up the page he’s working on. It shows whatever you’d call a car chase if it happened with spaceships. A space chase? A fleet of spaceships chase one solitary ship from the upper left corner of the page to the lower right.
“I’m not sure I’m going to be here later,” Alex says.
“That sounds dire,” says Brett.
“What’s dire?”
“Desperate,” says Brett. “Bad.”
“I’m trying not to think about it like that,” says Alex.
“Something you want to talk about?” asks Brett. And it is. It’s something Alex has wanted to talk about for a long time, and there’s been no one for him to talk about it with. Not his mom and not the Idea Man, and then who else is there? He wants to tell Brett everything that’s happening, but there’s no time anymore.
“We have to finish,” he says. And maybe it’s the way he says it, but Brett says okay and puts away the stuff he’s been working on and takes out his sketchbook.
“Where’d we leave off?” says Brett. “They’d been swallowed by a giant metal worm.”
“It was a train,” says Alex. “It was always just a train.” He sounds disappointed by this realization, but the story is changing behind him. The Golden City is becoming only Cleveland after all, and the shape-shifting girl was Brett’s girlfriend, whom Alex has never even met, or maybe the girl with the tail. If it weren’t written down and drawn in Brett’s drawings, all of the magic would be draining out of it. Alex has to get the rest of it told while there is still magic in it.
“So where did the train take them?” says Brett.
“To the last city.”
“What’s the last city like?” Brett sits with his pencil held above the page. Whatever Alex says now, whatever city he creates, will become real.
“It’s like New York,” says Alex. “It’s a lot like New York, only it’s still being built. The Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Public Library, everything is still being built. But the Astounding Tower and the Brooklyn Academy of Magical Fundamentals, they’re being built, too.”
His heart has not slowed down since he stopped running; if anything, it’s beating faster. He’s racing again, standing here in one place. On the page, scaffolding forms around the Astounding Tower.
“There are people,” he says, “not like in the Golden City. This city is full of people. And they go to work, but not all the time. They have time to play in the park and ride bikes. In the summer there are pools and fire hydrants that spray out water for kids to play in, like the movies.” And there are the kids, jumping around in the spout of a hydrant, and behind them other kids are on bikes, cruising toward him as if they’re about to jump out of the page.
“It sounds nice,” says Brett.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s nice,” says Alex. “And there are heroes. Not like Captain Wonder or the Ferret, not superheroes. But regular people who are heroes. Only it’s not the same people all the time. They take turns.”
Brett flips to a blank page.
“So what do they do, now that they’re here? The boy and the robot?”
“They walk around,” says Alex, “and everyone knows them. Everyone’s seen them before, but they won’t say anything. They’re all so surprised. They guide the boy and the robot to the center of the city.”
Alex stops, out of breath. He doesn’t want them to be here. He doesn’t want them to come to the center of the last city, but it’s time. It’s time for the boy and the robot to come home.
“Tell me what’s there, Alex,” says Brett.
“There’s a statue,” he says. “Of the boy and the robot, together. It’s not a golden statue, because the people all made it themselves. It’s made of car parts and toasters and bits of aluminum foil and toys that weren’t even broken, but the kids wanted them to be part of the statue even if it meant they could never play with them again. It’s a beautiful statue; it shines like it was gold. It shines better than gold, because every part of it shines differently, all togeth
er.
“And there’s a plaque that explains it all. There was a terrible battle, and the boy and the robot, it was their turn to be heroes. They won the battle and they saved the city. They saved everyone. But to save them all, the boy and the robot had to forget. They had to forget everything, even that they were heroes.
“And at the bottom of the plaque is their names. Both their names.”
Alex is tired and he wishes he were home. He wishes he could curl up in his bed in his room and listen to the city noises with his eyes shut until he fell asleep.
“What are their names, Alex?” says Brett.
“I don’t know,” Alex says. “You can give them names if you want.”
Brett puts his pencil down, and for the first time, Alex looks at this last drawing, the boy and the robot surrounded by all of their friends, looking up at the statue they’ve built for them. “I don’t think I need the story anymore,” says Alex. “I think I only needed it to get me here. I don’t need to know their names. If you do, though, you can give them names. It can be your story from now on.”
Alex opens up his backpack and takes out the rolled-up drawings he’s been carrying around for the past two weeks. They are like maps, and one by one he takes them out of his backpack and lays them on the table in front of Brett.
“But who were they battling against?” Brett asks. “And what happened to the shape-shifting girl? How did the boy know how to fix the robot?”
“Those are all good questions,” says Alex.
Brett grins at him, and Alex knows there’s a part of this that Brett doesn’t understand. Brett grabs him by the shoulders. “When we get back to Brooklyn,” Brett says, “I’m going to come to your house and shake you until you give me the answers.” To prove he’s serious, he shakes Alex back and forth and side to side. Alex lets himself feel all kinds of discombobulated, and when the shaking stops, it takes a second before he can see Brett’s face clearly again. Brett’s face has gone all blurry.