by D. S. Ryelle
~*~
It was a rainy day; which left Peter all the more surprised when a rock came sailing through his window.
Peter struggled to open the door and hurry out onto the balcony, but by the time he got outside, the miscreant was gone. Shaking his head, Peter scampered back inside and began attaching a plastic bag across the hole. Yet another thing the landlord would have to fix—preferably before the door, with which besieged Peter on a daily basis. He grabbed a ragged towel from his vanity and nearly tripped on the rock on his way over to wipe the floor. Startled, he picked it up.
“Sedimentary,” he announced to no one in particular. “No…” He squinted. “A curious form of igneous.”
Peter frowned and held the rock at arm’s length. When he picked it up, he had failed to notice that it was inscribed with a green glyph in a language the likes of which he’d never seen. Peter’s mind drifted lazily about until it settled on his landlord’s daughter, Ursula.
“That’s crazy. Why would she know?”
But he didn’t have time to reason before he found himself heading toward the door. With a sigh, Peter yanked it open and limped across the hall.
“Peter!” Ursula lit up as she opened her door, then quickly deflated. “The brownies won’t be ready for another ten minutes.”
“What? Oh…that’s not what I’m here for.” He glanced over her shoulder. “Is your father around?”
“He went to get groceries. But I can tell him you stopped by!”
“No. I want to talk to you. Uninterrupted.”
Peter stepped inside the apartment, causing Ursula to blush. She motioned to a rickety chair and they sat down. He eyed her for a moment, then sprang for the door.
“I should go. You dad will probably be back any minute.”
“No!” Ursula tugged on Peter’s arm. “He just left. Stay. Please?”
Peter looked at her for a moment before folding into the chair and silently handing her the rock.
“Oh…wow…where’d you get this?”
“Someone threw it at my window an hour or so ago.” Peter leaned forward. “Do you know what it is?”
“It’s a rock. I mean…” Ursula paused in an effort to collect her thoughts. “It’s not a…a…what do you call it?”
“A glyph?”
“Right. It’s not a glyph.” She fingered the rock lovingly. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“I’m sorry I bothered you,” Peter said after a moment. He reached for the rock and Ursula snatched it away.”
“I wasn’t done yet!”
Barely mollified, Peter returned to the rickety chair yet again.
“I was about to say that it looks like Old Russian.”
“You know Old Russian?”
Ursula flushed and dipped her head; she saved from having to answer a moment later by the sound of the oven timer.
“It reminds me of something I saw in a book, once,” she said when the brownies were safely cooling. “I learned a little Old Russian when I decided I wanted to read some of the older fairytales.
“The brownies should be cool enough to eat in about fifteen minutes.”
Peter tried to avoid scowling. This girl certainly had a gift for changing the subject.
“Can you remember what it was that you might have read?”
Ursula examined the rock for quite a while before answering. “I think it might mean ‘demon’.”
“Oho! What have we here?”
Peter’s landlord burst through the door and the young man flew to his feet.
“Nothing, Mr. Ditkovitch! I was just leaving!”
Peter was halfway to his apartment before Ursula called out about the brownies. He pretended not to hear as he flung himself into his apartment and quickly flipped his lock.
I wonder what the chances are that that actually means “goblin”?
~*~
Late in the evening of the following day, Ophelia came home to a nearly empty mansion. Eduardo had a shoot that did not wrap until 2:30 in the morning and Ophelia had dismissed the kitchen staff after breakfast, knowing that she had a meeting that night. Bernard would be the only one left, likely enjoying the day’s edition of the New York Times in the parlor. Or so she thought.
“Your brother is sulking in the guest room, Miss Ophelia.” Bernard announced as he took her things with his usual aplomb.
“My brother is not permitted in this house without an invitation,” she reminded him.
“He said that he had a date. When he found out that Ms. Marcy had the day off, Master Harry used monetary persuasion to encourage me to pick up a few extra items he needed to cook dinner.”
“He has his own flat,” Ophelia replied. “What is wrong with entertaining there?”
“I am afraid that I do not know, Miss. When I inquired, Master Harry simply handed me an extra twenty dollars and insisted that I ‘keep the change’.”
Ophelia glanced over at her bodyguard, but David did not appear to have an opinion. She looked at her butler.
“Was my brother’s cooking so horrible that the young lady left halfway through?” she inquired. “Or perhaps he is sulking because she had the intelligence not to show up.”
“I do not know, Miss Ophelia,” Bernard repeated. “When I returned with the groceries, Master Harry bade my disappearance. I have only been out of my room for a quarter of an hour.”
Ophelia nodded. “You may return to your paper. I will deal with my brother.”
David started to hold her back, but she plunged past him.
“It is Athair’s voice,” Ophelia said. “He is probably in the library mirror again.”
Her bodyguard frowned and gestured for her to wait, but Ophelia was already slipping inside.
“Ophelia! So good of you to join us!” Norman’s voice was grating, as if from decades of disuse.
“Why are you here, Athair?” she demanded. “More importantly, how did you get in here?”
He smirked. “I may not be able to leave it any longer, but the mirror is still my domain!”
Ophelia raised her hands, as if she were about to direct energy, but her father roared so loudly that she nearly jumped into David’s arms.
“I’ve come to deliver a message to your brother, but there is no reason why you can’t be here,” Norman said imperiously.
But Ophelia did not listen. She stood with her arm around Harry’s shoulder, trying to look for all the world as if she were paying attention, but her father had given variations on this lecture many times before. When she stopped thinking long enough to pay attention, Ophelia gleaned that Harry had been a complete failure in his filial duty, which he had resumed after leaving the hospital. She was tempted to defend her brother; argue that it was difficult to fulfill your obligations when you couldn’t remember having them in the first place, but she knew there was no point. Norman had become increasingly insistent since his death and the only thing to do was to pretend that she had every intention of obeying. Ophelia nudged Harry.
“You are not actually going to comply, are you?”
“I have failed in my duties,” he parroted robotically.
“Harry, stop.” Ophelia put her hands on his shoulders. “Athair is dead because he went for that which is near and dear to Peter Parker’s heart. You would be an amadán to try the same thing!”
Her brother seemed to snap out of whatever was holding him entranced. “What other option do I have? Pete isn’t normal…he can take anything I dole out!”
“What about using your influence to purchase and demolish that rotten building of his?”
“He’d move in with his Aunt May.”
“What if we sat down with Jameson, found a way to oust him from The Daily Bugle?”
“There are other papers in town,” Harry pointed out. “By getting the staff position—no matter how short his tenure—Peter will prove that he is capable of moving up in the world.”
Ophelia made a gesture of defeat. “Peter Parker is your filial duty
, first and foremost. It is not my problem, unless you should die in the attempt.”
Fourteen
Late Spring 2007
Peter climbed the stairs to his apartment, nearly dragging with weariness. There was a place in the back of his mind that suspected that he’d left his best friend seriously injured…yet he couldn’t seem to care. Peter merely longed to barricade himself in his apartment and sleep until it appeared that gravity was no longer conspiring to give his face a meeting with the ground. The fury that had given Harry second-degree burns a few hours before had subsided to a glimmer in Peter’s mind…until he found the note tacked to his door.
Except it wasn’t a note, but an eviction notice. Mr. Ditkovitch had given him thirty days to get out. But upon closer inspection, Peter wasn’t even sure that that was Mr. Ditkovitch’s signature. Flabbergasted, he wheeled around and pounded on his landlord’s door.
“Can I help you?”
“Yeah!” Peter shoved the noticed in Ditkovitch’s face. “What the hell is this?”
“It looks like an eviction notice.”
“I know that!” Peter made a derogatory noise and shredded the paper.
“Just because you tore it up, does not mean you are not evicted.”
“Then un-evict me!”
“I am sorry. I cannot do that.”
Before Peter could react, Ditkovitch reached into his apartment and fumbled around a bit. A moment later, his landlord handed him a stack of papers.
“I am being evicted, too. Bought out.”
Peter’s face fell. He shoved what appeared to be a contract back at Ditkovitch. “Sorry to bother you.”
The young man slouched back to his own apartment. When he finally managed the right number of tugs and pushes to open the door, Peter discovered that the lights wouldn’t turn on. There was a loose sheet stuck in amongst the mail.
Mr. Parker,
A representative of OSI Acquisitions has informed us that you have vacated your apartment. After reaching an agreement with OSI Acquisitions and your previous landlord, Mr. I. Ditkovitch, we have discontinued your service.
If you have any questions, please contact us at (212) 555-0715.
It was signed by the head of the billing department at Empire State Electricity.
Peter sighed and was about to head back to his landlord’s apartment when he was startled by a knock at the door.
“Phone for you!” Ursula called. “It’s Mary Jane!”
He was tempted to mention that he hadn’t heard the phone ring, but thought better of it as he thanked his neighbor and stepped into the hall.
The next several days were the roughest Peter had experienced since the death of Uncle Ben.
He had spoken to everyone in the building at least twice, but they all agreed that Mr. Ditkovitch hadn’t been joking—every last stick of furniture and stitch of clothing had to be out by ten on the morning of June fifteenth. No exceptions. Peter tried to find a different apartment, but everything in his price range had been snatched up—it seemed as if Mr. Ditkovitch’s tenants weren’t the only ones facing eviction.
It had taken Peter five days to get his power restored—between bureaucratic red tape and running out of quarters for the phone, the whole thing had been a nightmare. Only when he agreed to have dinner with Aunt May did Peter realize that he should have called Empire State Electricity from her apartment in the first place. May forbore scolding Peter for his forgetfulness, instead occupying herself with the insistence that he move in with her until something opened up elsewhere in the building.
As if his living situation wasn’t precarious enough, Peter was nursing the suspicion that his job was on uneven ground. He was used to Jonah Jameson yelling “You’re fired!” at anyone who displeased him, but the words had taken on a new meaning for Peter these days; especially with the other photographers “mysteriously” receiving most of the assignments. Deep down, Peter was afraid that the phone would ring one morning and Robbie Robertson would be on the other end, telling him that he was really fired.
Peter’s review of his problems left him unsettled enough that he got up and began to pace. For the first time in nearly two weeks, his mind drifted back to the Osborns.
“Why would they be the source of my problems?” he wondered aloud.
His conscience reminded him that the name of the company on the eviction letter had been OSI Acquisitions.
“But that could just as easily stand for ‘Outback Steakhouse, Incorporated’!” Peter argued.
Or “Osborn Scientific, Incorporated”, his conscience replied.
“Harry’s sister is busy enough, already!” said Peter. “Why would she buy my apartment building? Even if her husband got bored with modeling and decided to invest in real estate, why wouldn’t he buy something nicer, like Harry’s building?”
Who says it was Ophelia? Harry had no problem stealing Mary Jane from you.
Peter’s heart gave a sickening lurch as he recalled the meeting on the bridge with his former girlfriend…then shifted to a simmering rage when he recalled Harry’s coffee shop confession.
“Why would Mary Jane go back to Harry after dumping him five years ago?” he growled.
His father is dead, Peter’s conscience said flatly. Norman Osborn is no longer around to insult her. Mrs. Osborn passed away before Harry even met her. If her heart has mended and she doesn’t perceive Ophelia as a threat, why not try again?
“That still makes no sense!”
His conscience didn’t press the point.
“Maybe I should have a discussion with Ophelia about the pandering girlfriend thief she calls a brother!”
~*~
An hour later, Peter found himself dismayed as an eighth motorcycle roared past his scooter. Oddly enough, they all seemed to be racing style, once popularly known as “crotch rockets”.
If I didn’t know better, he thought. I would think this is Ho Chi Minh City!
His spider sense tingled and Peter looked around, but it was too late—yet another motorcycle nearly nicked his front fender. He frowned. The ninth motorcycle looked just like the others, yet it purred like a Harley and the rider seemed determined to cause an accident. Just as Peter was growing tired of the impatient revving around him, the light changed. The cars in the outer lanes began to move through the intersection, but the motorcycles stayed resolutely in place. He was ready to find an escape when his spider sense tingled again.
A glance behind him afforded Peter a view of at least half a dozen bikes roaring into the back of the group. Cars and other vehicles zoomed by, heedless of the young man who had begun to look around frantically for a place to merge. But it was too late—the motorcycles in the front of him had begun to move, while those to the sides began to tighten ranks with those in the rear. With a throaty roar from the lead cycle, the pack picked up speed, Peter struggling to keep up on his little scooter. He had little doubt that if he failed to stay in the center, all fifteen or so would instantly flatten him; and a lone rider would be dispatched to circle back and peel him off the pavement.
~*~
Ophelia stayed motionless as the remaining bikes zoomed past the mouth of the alley. When they were clear, she leaned against the wall and sighed.
“Parker is still acting like a civilian,” she muttered. “Those louts need to get their arses into gear!”
A tone sounded in her helmet and Ophelia touched the activation strip near her jaw.
“All accompaniment is off Parker,” said the tinny voice of her lieutenant. “We left him on East Fifty-Ninth near Sutton. All eyes are reporting.”
Ophelia gave a terse reply and terminated the connection. If Parker was content to leave Spider-Man out of this, she could easily see her way into intervening.
~*~
When he was sure no one was watching, Peter stowed his scooter in an alley and began to strip out of his street clothes. His intuition told him that the bikers hadn’t led him almost all the way to the Queensboro Bridge only to vani
sh three minutes later. It would probably be better for Peter to invite Spider-Man to “hang out for a bit” than to immediately jump back on his scooter and head back to his apartment—the trip to Carnegie Hill could wait.
Peter had begun to pull on his hood when something whizzed past his ear. He jumped to the left just in time to avoid the next object.
“Shall we finish this where it all began?” A voice rang from every corner of the corridor, causing him to cover his ears. “I will happily give you a ride to Roosevelt Island!”
Startled, Peter leapt onto a nearby wall and craned his neck. A lithe figure fired yet another arrow as he scuttled aside…if he didn’t know better, he would think he was talking to…
“Ophelia! It doesn’t have to be like this!”
“How would you rather see this end, Parker?”
She put away her bow and a familiar whirring sound filled the air. When the woman cleared the roof, Peter could see that she was riding something that appeared to be a cross between her father’s glider and her brother’s SkyStick.
“I suppose you would rather see me scurry home, my tail between my legs?
“Ah, I know!” Ophelia’s voice took on a mock heartiness. “You would prefer to see me flee for Australia and become…what do you Americans call it? A soccer mom? You want me to give up my duty to my father and to House Osborn, so I can stay ‘barefoot and pregnant’ and fulfil your chauvinistic fantasies?”