by Diane Duane
Head high, she went in.
* * *
IT was a good reading. She had always been able to memorize quickly, even at school, and her work on Secret Hospital honed that talent to a fine skill, especially since lines changed even as they filmed episodes. Several times they had even broadcast live, with several of the staff writers scribbling hectically away on the sidelines to cover up mistakes made by actors, or by another writer who had somehow slipped out of continuity. At such times, you had better be able to plaster the words onto your brain while four thirty-second commercials were airing. To actually have lines that weren’t going to be changed was something of a luxury.
So MJ stood up in front of them confidently enough. The older woman producer, Rinalda, was there; the younger woman, the AP; the young male AP; and a suit, a handsome enough man with gray hair and a weary look. Executive producer, MJ thought. At least, that seemed most likely. Her resume, duplicated, was on the table in front of them. They had her still, and they were looking at MJ speculatively.
“Please, sit down,” the woman AP said, and there followed the usual two or three minutes of pleasant chatter about what she’d been doing recently (“job-hunting”), had she had any other work since Secret Hospital (“no”), her schedule for the next year—it was hard to throw caution to the winds and say, “Empty,” but she did it.
“There’s a little more modeling work coming free this year,” the young female AP said thoughtfully.
MJ simply sat back and said, “I like this better.”
Then they asked her to read. MJ went into the ten-page excerpt they had given her without pausing for more than a breath or two—delivered the first few lines of it sitting, as the social worker in the script might have. Then she got up and began to work with the lines moving-pacing a little, playing to Rinalda as if she were the other character in the scene. She let herself fall into feeling like Maureen as best she could: that passion and compassion, clear-eyed, a little humorous, a little edged when it needed to be, letting the anger come out at the hopelessness, the hunger. Hopelessness—that was accessible right now. MJ couldn’t get her mind off what she had seen on the TV in there, even while she was in the middle of the part. Maybe that was all right. It gave the reading a bit more edge than it had had at home, when she was comfortable and unworried.
She didn’t usually look at the rest of her audience while she was reading, but once she stole a glance and saw the rest of them looking at her with much more lively and intent expressions than they’d had when she’d first come in. The young female AP was smiling slightly as she scribbled something on her legal pad. The smile was not a nasty or bored one; it was genuinely pleased. That was more than MJ often saw during a reading—too many producers prided themselves on being poker-faced—and it encouraged her, oddly.
As usual, when she finished, no one told her whether they thought she’d done well or badly. Rinalda simply paged through a script in front of her, curled the pages back at one spot, and said to MJ, “Would you read this?”
MJ took the script, swallowing. Her character’s parts had been highlighted in pink. That was a courtesy on the producer’s part—some liked to make it harder by just letting you cold-read the part as best you could and seeing whether nerves would trick you into reading someone else’s lines under pressure. “Both parts,” MJ said, “or just the one?”
“Both, please.”
The dialogue, as she instantly saw from scanning just the first page, was between her social worker and a young, inexperienced doctor who obviously thought very well of himself—the tone of his dialogue was pompous, the vocabulary unnecessarily complex. MJ thought she could see where this was going. She read the social worker’s dialogue as patient, at first, then a little annoyed. The doctor was using heavy medical vocabulary, and MJ rocked forward on her feet a little as the social worker explained to him that he didn’t need to use long words to intimidate her, and that if shorter ones like “caring” and “commitment” were beyond him, he should practice them a little until he got familiar with them. It got to be a noisy piece as it continued for page after page—and MJ began to wonder how much they had stuck her with—as the two characters began shouting at one another. MJ felt she had some shouting in her at the moment, so that came out well too, her uneasiness inside translating itself most effectively into annoyance at the idiot doctor—at any establishment that hindered her pursuit of what really mattered.
She took the reading straight through to the act break. They didn’t stop her. And when she was done, the man with the silver hair was nodding. “We have a few more to go through,” he said to MJ, speaking directly to her for the first time. “Will you wait?”
“Of course,” MJ said. And then added, on the spur of the moment, “I might need to step out briefly—”
“We won’t be too long, I don’t think,” said Rinalda, looking at her. MJ tried to read the expression, trying to work out whether it was one that said, Go ahead, step out, it’s okay, or I’d stay where I was, if I were you. Impossible to tell; she simply didn’t know the woman well enough.
MJ smiled, nodded, stepped out into the front room again.
She sat down where she had been. One of the other auditioners, a short-haired blond woman, looked over at MJ and smiled a little. “Tough in there, huh?” she said.
MJ nodded. “Tough bunch…”
After a few minutes, the AP came out of the audition room and began to step around to some of the women in the reception area, one after another, having a few quiet words with each, smiling, shaking them by the hand. The message was clear: they weren’t being considered for the part. MJ waited.
The AP did not come to her.
In a few minutes the room had cleared a little more. There were about six actresses left now, and MJ. They all looked at each other, and at her, with the polite expressions that MJ knew perfectly well concealed a desperate desire that everybody else in the room should be sent home except them. MJ was wearing the same expression herself, she knew. She tried to get rid of it, on general principles, and wasn’t sure how well she was doing.
Now more time went by in which nothing happened. The game show edged toward its end. On the last commercial break she watched a trailer for the end-of-the-week episode of the network’s big soap. MJ could hardly bear the banality of the characters’ conflicts and troubles, their petty jealousies and rivalries, considering what was going on in the real world at the moment down at ESU.
But after a moment, even she had to laugh softly under her breath. Doubtless, to the average person in the street, her problems would seem fairly fantastic. “I’m worried,” she imagined herself saying, “because my husband is out chasing a raving lunatic who flies around on a jetglider and throws pumpkin bombs at things, and being chased by another nut case who’s in cahoots with a sentient suit of tailor-made clothing from another planet. And they’re both chasing something which appears to eat fissionables for lunch. Did I mention that it’s from another planet too?” Any sane person would have her carted away to Payne Whitney, or some other similarly therapeutic refuge for the extremely confused. People just have no understanding of the problems of super heroes’ wives, she thought. Maybe I should found a support group.
The trailer flashed on from confrontation to confrontation. MJ looked at her watch. It was pushing five o’clock: the network was about to start its local evening news. Maybe there would be something about whatever was going on at ESU.
After some more commercials, the news came on. MJ watched eagerly, and she tried to get control of her face as the first graphic to go up behind the newsreader was a picture of Hobgoblin.
“Just minutes ago,” the newswoman said, “we received copies of a videotape from the costumed criminal known as Hobgoblin. In the tape, Hobgoblin claims to have planted a nuclear bomb somewhere on the island of Manhattan. He threatens to detonate this bomb unless one billion dollars in cash is paid to him within twelve hours—by five-thirty A.M. local time.”
&n
bsp; Everyone in the place was now staring at that TV, not just MJ, as the station began to play Hobgoblin’s tape.
The tape showed Hobby sitting behind a desk, like a bad parody of a corporate executive about to give a pep talk. “People of New York City,” he said, “such as you are. This being, according to actuarial figures, the richest and most successful city in the United States, I have decided it’s time you plowed some of that wealth back into your local infrastructure. That is to say, me. Using that traditional American trait, good old-fashioned entrepreneurship, in the spirit of free enterprise, I have caused to be built one of the little toys with which the great nations of the world have been cheerfully threatening each other these last fifty years: an atomic bomb. It is rated at one point two kilotons and is more than sufficient to scour Manhattan Island down to its original native granite and basalt. Being that materials for so-called ‘clean’ bombs are increasingly hard to lay hands on these days, it will doubtless make life uncomfortable in the four surrounding boroughs and New Jersey—in fact, probably as far north as Albany and as far south as Baltimore, depending on how the winds blow.
“To demonstrate that I am hot wasting your time,” said Hobby, “and that I can in fact carry through with what I’m proposing, I have, at the time of this tape’s airing, delivered to municipal authorities in New York a sample of the material I have acquired, which has allowed me to construct the tidy little device which at present sits so happily ticking to itself in some snug and secure corner of this great metropolis. Along with the material in question are instructions for how and where the payment is to be made. Any attempt to make the payment spuriously, or to lay a trap for me or any of my associates, will unfortunately result in the device being detonated—as will the failure to make a payment at all. Manhattan, in either case, will be history.”
He folded his hands and grinned a little more widely. “About time, anyway. The architecture’s been getting out of hand. Now, it may be that some of you will agree with me, especially about the architecture, in which case my advice to you is to sit back, do nothing, and wait for the fireball. Those of you who desire to put your affairs in order should feel free to do so.
“However, for those of you who might have breakfast or lunch dates to keep, or who for whatever other reasons desire to continue your wretched mundane little lives in what passes for their normal fashion, I strongly suggest that you call your local city councilmen, your mayor, your borough councils, your Congressional representatives, and anyone else you think may be of any use, and tell them to pay me. Otherwise—” he shrugged “—those of you who have had to deal with city bureaucracy over the years will understand that, as one more person routinely oppressed by it, especially by the doings of what are euphemistically referred to as New York’s Finest, my patience with such bureaucracy is rather limited—just as yours is. Therefore, I hope you’ll understand when I say that no extension of this deadline will be made. The city has twelve and a half hours from the initial broadcast of this tape, which I have embargoed until five P.M. local time. At five thirty this morning, either I am going to go away independently wealthy, or the sun is going to come up in New York. In it. So please, call your representatives in Government… and just say yes.
“Thank you for your attention, and—” another nasty grin “—have a nice day.”
The view on the screen went back to the newsroom staff. One of them said to the female anchor, “June, we have a report from the Fourteenth Precinct downtown, which states that a canister labeled as nuclear material was delivered by courier to the Precinct a few minutes ago, and that it is currently being checked by experts from City University and the New York City branch of the Atomic Energy Commission. We hope to have a reporter down there shortly to bring you news of this development. Meanwhile, the response from Gracie Mansion—”
The room erupted in a hubbub of confused and anxious voices. MJ shut it all out. She couldn’t care less about the mayor’s reaction—or anyone else’s, at the moment. All she could think of was, He went to deal with Hobgoblin. And now here’s Hobby on the news—but no news of him. The hair was standing up all over her. The feeling she was having now was one she had had many times before, and repetition never made it any easier to bear.
That tape could have been made just a few minutes ago, she thought, or days ago. There’s no way to tell. If it was a few minutes—That wasn’t a thought that she much liked. It would imply that Spider-Man had met Hobby this afternoon, and Hobby had gotten away from the encounter—while Spider-Man hadn’t been heard from since. It would imply that Spider-Man couldn’t stop him.
“Ms. Watson-Parker?” MJ turned to see Rinalda standing in the doorway with a somewhat urgent expression on her face, beckoning MJ back into the audition room.
MJ nervously followed her in. The others were all gathering their things into briefcases and portfolio packs. “Ms. Watson-Parker, we’d like to offer you the role.” MJ’s eyes widened. “But with what’s going on here, we’re flying out to LA tonight instead of in the morning. Can you come with us? We have to start shooting tomorrow.”
I got the part, was her first thought. But Peter’s in trouble, was her next one.
She bit her lip. Do you know how many people would kill for a chance to get out of New York right now? But I can’t just leave Peter—he could be hurt or dying or worse, for all I know.
In the end, there really was no choice.
“I’m afraid I can’t leave New York tonight. I’m going to have to turn it down.”
Rinalda stared at her in disbelief, her mouth twitching. Before MJ had the chance to talk herself out of it, she turned and left. She did not look back.
Outside, everyone was still standing around staring at the TV, pointing, arguing—shaking their heads, not believing it, believing it all too well. Not even the receptionist saw MJ head out, take the elevator downstairs, and rush out into the street.
* * *
SHE stood there on the sidewalk and had no idea what to do next. The back of her brain was still shouting recriminations at her, things about making a fool of herself, losing the job, not getting out while the getting was good, being blacklisted in this town, and other nonsense which she listened to briefly and then decided to ignore. She had more important fish to fry.
Peter, she thought, was at ESU. That, at least, gave her a place to start. She hurried down the little side street to a public phone, picked up the receiver, and listened for the dial tone. There wasn’t one. MJ slammed the receiver savagely back into its cradle and went back up to the street, crossing to where she’d seen another one.
Someone was heading for it at the same time she was. MJ practically leapt across the street, got there first, said, “Sorry, emergency!” to the poor guy she pushed in front of, fed the slot money and started dialing. Normally she had trouble remembering the ESU main switchboard number, since when she called Peter there, she usually called the lab direct. But now she remembered it with no trouble.
It was busy. She hung up, dialed again. And did this five more times, while the guy waiting behind her nearly expired with impatience.
“I know, I know,” she said out of the side of her mouth. “Just hang on.” The sixth time she dialed, it rang… and rang, and rang, and rang. After a while it was answered by a harried woman’s voice which said, “ESU—”
“Listen,” she said, “my husband was back in the science building when—Has anyone seen him?”
“Who’s your husband?”
“Peter Parker. He’s a doctoral candidate in Biochem.”
“Just a moment. I’ll inquire.” The woman put her on hold. MJ stood there practically stamping her feet in frustration and fear, while a deranged computer sang “Greensleeves” at her. “I could punch you right through this phone,” she hissed at the hold music, the switchboard, and the composer of “Greensleeves,” some five hundred years distant. The man behind her, intimidated by her tone, took a couple of cautious steps backward.
“Not you,”
MJ said. “Sorry—” The music seemed to go on for weeks. Finally the voice came back, saying, “Peter Parker?”
“Yes!”
“Sorry, no. No one’s seen him.”
“Oh, great,” MJ muttered. “Listen, what was going on there, anyway?”
“It was just on the TV,” said the operator wearily. “Hobgoblin did it.” MJ suspected that she had been saying this to everyone for the last half hour. “He flew in on his little whatsis and stole one of the safes with some radioactive stuff inside it. Then Spider-Man showed up, and they started to fight, and then that other one. Venom, you know, the one with the weird suit? He showed up, and there was some kind of big argument.”
“I bet,” MJ breathed. “But they’re not there now?”
The operator laughed shortly. “Do you think I’d be here if they were? And if I’d known they were coming, I’d have called in sick, I can tell you. No, they’ve all left, I don’t know where for, and good riddance. You should see the science building. It looks like someone crashed a train into it.”
“Did they leave in any particular order?”
The operator laughed again. “You working for the Post society column or something? They’re just gone, ma’am. Don’t ask me who took precedence. Anything else I can help you with? My phone’s lit up like a Christmas tree.”
“No—thank you. Thank you very much.”
MJ hung up and walked away, staring at the sidewalk and thinking. Gone, simply gone. But where would they go?
She walked, trying to put it all together.
They were all there, she thought. They met. They must have talked. She tried to imagine what the conversation would have been about, extrapolating from what Peter had told her last night. Venom wanted whoever was impersonating him, she thought. So Peter said. Hobgoblin wanted the radioactive stuff.
She stopped there. Venom knew about the radioactive waste in the warehouse and the way the creature took it. Suppose he came to ESU because he, too, suspected Hobgoblin would try to take some more radioactive stuff, or because he suspected Hobby of being the impostor?
