Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory

by Raphael Bob-Waksberg

  “Sam!” Joelle said in that way you say someone’s name that you haven’t said in a while.

  And Sam shook his head. “No. Don’t come near me. It is not okay. You get drunk with your friends, and then you come home…”

  Joelle looked at the rest of us. “Guys, do you think maybe we could have a minute?”

  “Nobody leave,” Sam said. “I don’t want to be alone with you ever again. Not after what you did.”

  “What I did? Sam…”

  “You know what you did. Or is forgetting another one of your superpowers?”

  “I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you want me to say it? Don’t make me say it.”

  “…Can we talk about this?”

  “Do you want me to say what you did, in front of all your friends? I probably should. I probably should go straight to the media, tell the whole world. Is that what you want? You really want me to say what you did?”

  Joelle swallowed hard. “No. I—I know it. I know what I did.”

  Sam’s face fell, as if hearing Joelle admit the thing out loud suddenly made it a different kind of true.

  Then Joelle started to say something, but Sam cut her off. “I want you to stay away from me. Do you understand? You need to stay as far away from me as you can get. Don’t call me. Don’t call my friends. Do you understand? This? Is over.”

  He took off his wedding ring. He was shaking.

  “Sam…”

  “Tell me you understand.”

  “I…understand.”

  “Then there is nothing else to say.”

  And he left. There was a long pause, before Clay said, “Aaaawwkwaaaaard,” and we all kind of said, “Shut up, Clay.”

  We watched Joelle stumble toward the kitchenette, grab a handle of gin out from under the sink and start chugging it.

  “Joelle, is that really a good—”

  “Not now, Iris. I can’t take another one of your fucking speeches right now. I just need…I need to get away for a little while, get some air.” She weaved toward the window.

  “Joelle, I really don’t think you should be alone right now.”

  “No, I just need some air, that’s all. I need some air.”

  And we all watched her drop out the window and then a second later shoot straight up past it into the sky.

  Iris grabbed a gin of her own from behind a couch cushion, but Lizzy said, “Let her go. She just needs to blow off some steam. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  And I said, “Yeah. She’ll be fine.”

  Well, she died.

  There were conflicting reports about what happened, exactly. She went on a tear through all the bars in Berkeley, and after she died a thousand drunkards came out of the woodwork claiming to be the last person who saw Joelle alive. Some said she was depressed, rambling; others that she was jubilant, euphoric, buying shots for the whole bar, tossing bottles into the air and blasting them with her fire-laser eyes. We do know how she spent her last moments, though; the autopsy confirmed it: she flew straight up into the night sky, as far as she could go, as far away from everything as she could get, and then when the air got too thin to breathe she passed out and gravity dragged her tumbling back down to Earth.

  * * *

  —

  You’d think that might have been some kind of come-to-Jesus moment for the rest of us, Joelle dying, but we were all drinking at her funeral, passing miniature bottles of schnapps behind the pews.

  So now the Parents’ Council for Appropriate Responsible Behavior or Whatever was suddenly up our butts, because like we weren’t good role models for kids because we were drinking all the time, but it was just like, dude, we’re not trying to be good role models, we’re just trying to keep the streets safe. And my parents were calling every week, like, “Are you as drunk as they say you are on the news?” And I always had to convince them, “No, Mom, you know they just make stuff up to get a good story.”

  And meanwhile there were all these new superheroes getting all the good write-ups, like A-Man and the Silver Bullets and Captain Boo from the Planet Goo—younger guys who would do even crazier shit than we did—and I guess people started to think of the Up-and-Comers as being kind of old hat. Mutt and I were in bed, watching some dumb late-night show (“Don’t you think it’s about time they changed their name to the Down-and-Outers?”), when Mutt said, “We need to shift the narrative here. Give the press something positive they can focus on.”

  “Like what?”

  “What if we got married?”

  We were a mile above Chinatown, fighting the mayor’s evil android hordes, when I casually brought up that Mutt had asked me to marry him. Everybody was really happy for me, except for Lizzy.

  “No. You can’t marry Mutt. That’s crazy.”

  “Stranger things have happened,” I said, as I tore the metallic heart out of a nearby flying goon with my mystical-bead-based superstrength. “Besides, you’re the one who told me to go out with him in the first place.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t marry him. I mean, Mutt’s a great guy, but he’s not the guy you marry.”

  And Clay said, “Hey, do you guys think the mayor’s really gone evil this time, or is this just another one of his clones?”

  But Lizzy, all high and mighty on her spooky hexagons, would not be distracted. “You don’t love him, Porkchop. I’m telling you, this isn’t what you want.”

  “What is your deal? Why can’t you ever just be happy for me?” I asked while I held one of the androids in a headlock and kicked another one in the face. “Why do you always have to know, like, a better way for me to live my life?”

  And Iris said, “Guys, can we focus?”

  And Lizzy said, “Porkchop, I’m just trying to—”

  “I don’t know why you fucking call me Porkchop all the time. It’s not my name, and it isn’t cute.”

  Lizzy stopped shooting spooky hexagons at the androids for a moment and looked at me. “Okay, I’m sorry.” But it wasn’t an I’m-sorry “I’m sorry,” it was an I-can’t-believe-you’re-making-me-say-sorry “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you can’t figure out your own life so you constantly try to control mine.”

  “What the fuck? I’m not trying to control anything! I’m just trying to be a good friend, you dumb asshole, because I think the fucking world of you and I want you to be happy.”

  And I said, “Well, great, thank you for your friendship, you’ve always been a wonderful pillar of support.”

  And then the last of the androids said, “PREPARE FOR DOOM!” before Iris blew it to pieces by teleporting inside of it.

  We dropped down onto the street and waved to the applauding tourists and Chinese shopkeepers, and Lizzy muttered to me, “You know, it actually makes a lot of sense that you’d marry Mutt. Of course you’re going to marry him, because that’s what Mutt wants and you would never in your life make a decision for yourself.”

  “You are way out of line.”

  “Are you just going to keep on stumbling down the path of least resistance all your life? Is that your plan? Jesus Christ, you’ve become a total fucking bore.”

  I shot a photon blast at her, which knocked her back into a fish stand.

  She got up and rolled her eyes. “Oh, real mature.”

  “You’re real mature,” I said.

  “Fine!” she said. “Enjoy your fucking married life with your fucking husband and your fucking house in the fucking suburbs with your fucking white fucking picket fucking fence fucking fucking.”

  She threw her arms up and started walking away, and I shouted at her, “Hey! Excuse me for trying to actually build a life for myself instead of just using this whole superhero thing as an excuse to get drunk and pick up groupies like a fucking bass guit
arist cliché!”

  She turned around and shot a spooky hexagon at me and then I shot a photon blast at her, and there we were in the middle of Chinatown shooting photon blasts and spooky hexagons at each other. And then we were wrestling, grabbing at each other’s throats, throwing each other down Stockton, tearing across the shops and restaurants, through a mess of cheap fans and plastic shoes and Chinese yo-yos. Clay and Iris had to physically separate us, we were so mad.

  On the limo ride to city hall, where we were to be rewarded with another round of medals for our valor, I muttered under my breath, “Look, don’t take it out on me just because you’re still in love with some chick who will never love you back.”

  Lizzy shook her head. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “You really don’t know me at all.”

  * * *

  —

  Then Lizzy and I didn’t talk, for like a long time. Like we’d still be civil with each other at press events, or like when we had to work together to save the president’s daughter or whatever, but we didn’t talk talk.

  So that was a whole thing.

  * * *

  —

  One day we were all not talking to each other in the helisphere kitchenette when Mutt practically dragged Clay in by the ear.

  “Tell ’em,” said Mutt. “Tell everyone what you did.”

  Clay rolled his eyes.

  “Oh boy,” said Iris. “What’d you do this time?”

  “Look, sometimes I get aggressive, okay? Like, first of all, can I just say, it’s not normal, what we do—what we’re expected to do—”

  “Are you going to tell them, or should I?”

  “I’m getting to it, Jesus. So, I’ve spent the last couple years getting myself into this mind-set, you know, pumping myself up, absorbing all this kinetic energy, so I can do what everybody wants me to do…and I have this…aggression.”

  “There’s a video on the internet,” said Mutt, “of Clay absorbing a rum bottle and then smashing his glass fist over a guy’s head for cutting him in line at the grocery store.”

  “Jesus, Clay!”

  “What? Who’s to say he wasn’t being controlled by the Phantom Ventriloquist? I mean, we don’t know, right?”

  “You can’t just go around—” I started to say, but then Mutt cut me off.

  “It’s a Bacardi bottle.”

  “And…?”

  “Clay absorbed a bottle of Bacardi. We have an exclusive endorsement deal with Captain Morgan; do any of you read the contracts you sign?”

  Clay waved him off. “It’s really not a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal. It’s their biggest competitor, and the video is everywhere. What were you thinking?”

  Lizzy raised a finger. “Uh, is anyone else more concerned about what Clay did to the guy at the grocery store than what it’s going to do to our Captain Morgan deal?”

  “It’s not just Captain Morgan,” Mutt sputtered. “You are paid to be brand ambassadors; that is the source of our income. If brands can’t trust you to do that—I mean, this is the reason you exist.”

  Normally this would be the point of the conversation when Iris would say something really smart and make us all realize the right thing to do, but instead she wandered over to the corner of the room where we kept a set of instruments, picked up her guitar, and started strumming.

  She was playing “Not Hardly.” Lizzy picked up her guitar and started playing too. Then Clay got behind the drums and I sat at the piano and the Up-and-Comers were playing together for the first time in what must have been forever. It felt a little eerie playing the song without Joelle there to sing it, especially when Iris and Lizzy jumped in and shouted their backup parts on the chorus, the Oh-I-Dos and Yes-It’s-Trues, but still, there was something incredibly powerful about everyone just shutting up for a second and playing a song together.

  After we finished, we all just stood there in silence, and then Iris said, very simply, “Yeah, I’m gonna go.”

  “What do you mean go? Go where?”

  Iris put down her guitar and put her hands on her hips, indicating she was prepping her body for teleportation. “The iniquity of our world is too systemic to be ameliorated by tackling only the most flagrant of abuses,” she declared. She always loved using big words when she got drunk. “I think there are more effectual ways to spend our time and resources than fistfighting aliens.”

  Her eyes clouded over.

  “But where are you going?”

  “I don’t know…” And then she added, almost as an afterthought, as she evaporated into nothingness, “Maybe I’ll go to grad school.”

  Clay shook his head. “Of course Iris would flake out on us like that. This is bullshit. This whole goddamn thing is a high fucking tower of bullshit.” He absorbed the density of the marble countertop, punched a hole in the wall, and headed out toward the weight room.

  Mutt immediately went into full damage-control mode. “Okay,” he started spinning, “a press release. If Clay won’t apologize, we need to distance ourselves, protect the organization. Talking points—his actions do not represent the, um, the et cetera of the Up-and-Comers, the ideals…”

  I took off my necklace, the source of all my power, and placed it on the counter.

  “I think I’m done,” I said. “I think the Up-and-Comers are done.”

  Mutt shook his head. “Honey, no. You’re a superhero. That’s what you do.”

  “It’s not worth it,” I said.

  “So what am I supposed to do?” Mutt pulled a contract out of his briefcase and pointed to an underlined string of legalese. “If you stop performing ‘consistent acts of public heroism’ we are in breach. Is that what you want? For us to get married and immediately fall into the red? You and me, without jobs, scrambling to stay out of debt, like every other fucking schmo on the planet? Is that the life you want?”

  “No,” I said. “It isn’t.”

  I took off my engagement ring. I tried to crush it between my fingers, but I no longer had the strength. So instead, I just put it down on the counter next to my necklace and left.

  “Wait,” said Mutt. “You can’t just walk away.”

  But as it turned out, I could do all sorts of incredible things.

  Lizzy followed me out of the building.

  “Hey—” she said, and I turned around.

  “You were right. Is that what you want to hear? I never should have gotten engaged to Mutt. You were right. You’re always right. Is that what you want me to say?”

  Lizzy shook her head. “Haven’t you learned by now that I never know what the fuck I’m talking about?”

  I laughed. “You know, you could have told me that three years ago and saved us both a lot of time.”

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “I mean, the hard part’s over, right?”

  And she said, “Yeah. The hard part’s over.”

  * * *

  —

  Well, the next six months were incredibly hard, what with all the lawsuits and countersuits and breaches of contract and all that. I feel like in those six months I probably spent more time in depositions than not in depositions.

  I lost my apartment in the city and moved back to my parents’ house in Tulsa for a little bit—just long enough to get back on my feet. It was nice to get away from things for a second, to spend some time with my family and dry out a little. I did some temp work at my dad’s office and volunteered at the Children’s Theater, playing piano for their various Guys and Dollses and Damn Yankeeses.

  As Lizzy would say, “Time stumbles on, in Time’s dumbass way.”

  There were certain things I missed about the city. I missed the pancakes at Boogaloos and hikes up to Lands End. I missed propelling myself with photon blasts high up above the city to watch the sunset. Someti
mes it felt like if I got myself high enough, the sun would never dip below the horizon, but of course it always did.

  But mostly I missed Lizzy and all our stupid conversations about nothing in diners and how when I was around her, I didn’t just like her—I liked me.

  Lizzy actually came to visit me a couple weeks ago. She was driving across the country, taking her aunt’s car to North Carolina, and she stopped in Tulsa and we got a coffee at Foolish Things. It was good to see Lizzy. Hanging out with her took me back in a weird sort of way, like it made me feel both young and old at the same time. It was really trippy to think there was a time not all that long ago when the most important thing in the world seemed to be stopping Doctor Tormentus from unlocking the cosmic power of the Supremacy Belt. Like, it felt like if we could just do that, then maybe everything would be okay. Like, man, how young were we, right?

  After coffee, Lizzy had a couple hours to kill before her AA meeting, so I brought her back to my parents’ house.

  “Since when do you play this?” she asked, nodding at the guitar in my room.

  I picked it up. “See, you think you know everything about me, but there’s actually a lot you don’t know.”

  Lizzy dropped onto my bed and smiled. “Of course you would keep this a secret. Has anyone ever told you you’re incredible?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Only everybody.”

  “Play me something.”

  I started tuning. “What do you want me to play?”

  “Why don’t you play me something you wrote?”

  “No, I don’t want to do that.”

  “Hey, how come you never wrote any songs for the band? Were you holding out on us?”

  I concentrated on my tuning. “I didn’t need to write songs; everyone else wrote songs.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “I wrote songs, Joelle wrote songs…How come you never brought in any songs?”

  “I don’t know. I just didn’t.”

  “I’ll bet you wrote some good ones; you just never brought them in.”

  “No…”

  Lizzy leaned back against the headboard and closed her eyes. “Play me one of your songs, Lauren…”