He was sliding into her. Just don’t think about it. Give up all control. If he’d thought about it, every slightest nuance of thought could influence the dimensions of his member. Instead, Reed wanted to be real, natural inside of her. No thoughts, no fears. Not even the absurd terror that seized him sometimes, the fear that he might expand too much inside the other’s body. It won’t happen. You won’t kill her. Don’t think about it. In his rubbery body, the sensations spread out like regular waves.
Reed went on moving, her legs wrapped around his waist, her face contorted as if on the verge of dissolving. They stopped and remained poised. Reed felt a new wave of lucidity rising inside him. It rose from his legs, flowed towards his face, and out of his eyes. He saw everything. He saw into Elaine’s wide-open mouth. He saw the foam sliding down her tongue, and her throat vibrate as she screamed Reed’s name. He wished he could vanish into that scream. He wished he could melt into her. Instead, they found themselves side by side, panting, trying to laugh and cough, to find something to say, and to flee the sensation that everything, by now, was consummated.
*
Later, around sunrise, he took her home. They caught a cab because at that time of the morning, Reed didn’t have access to a car. The taxi hurtled down the almost empty streets, in the hour just before the new day. They were embracing without speaking. Reed didn’t like the idea of having to be apart from her, but in just a few hours Elaine had a flight to Houston and she needed to pack her bags and prepare for the trip.
He stroked her hair. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his chest, through his shirt. When the taxi stopped at an intersection, Reed felt someone watching him. He turned his head and met the gazes of two street-sweepers, a woman at the wheel of a street-cleaning truck and her co-worker, a man standing next to the truck, both looking into the taxi with enchanted expressions on their faces. Then both of them waved at him, with a gesture that resembled a benediction. Reed waved back. The taxi shot across the intersection. Reed decided that he and Elaine must be emanating the unmistakable magnetic glow of a couple who had just made love for the first time. “The world knows about us,” he whispered into a sleeping Elaine’s ear. “We’re as dazzling as the dawn of a new day.”
Elaine startled awake as they drove deeper into Brooklyn. She looked around as if she’d slept for hours and gave Reed a fleeting kiss. The taxi came to a halt. They were there. Before letting her get out, Reed nuzzled the back of her neck again. “See you in a few days,” he said. When Elaine swung the car door open, a bracing gust of cool air poured into the cab.
He watched her go inside.
The light was rising, as hard as a silver shield. It continued its rise as the taxi drove back towards Manhattan, and the East River ran silently towards the ocean, and the skyscrapers drank in the glow of the day. Reed saw Manhattan coming towards him. He saw the buildings getting brighter and brighter. He saw the city gleam all at once as the sun rose, and he felt dazzled and grateful.
For many years, that city had struck him as alien. For many years, he had considered it a memory of itself, a faded copy, as though day by day the buildings and façades had been replaced by stage backdrops, behind which was nothing but empty space. For many years, in his own city, he had felt intolerably alone.
Now, as the taxi left the big bridge behind and surged uptown towards Little Italy, and the city came to life as if just awakened from an enchantment… As weariness enveloped his body, and the seat seemed to swallow him up… As the city buses began cruising up and down the streets again, majestic like small-scale arks, with their cargoes of men and women of every race… He could sense that he loved it still. That city. That living system of buses, taxis, street-sweepers at work, attentive secretaries, cosy restaurants, that crystal-like city that caught the light, a factory-city that produced impressions, an immense mechanism in the service of desire. New York, the definitive distillate of western romanticism. Reed was certain of this, for an instant, before he dropped into slumber. Before dreaming that he was elastic again, like he was long ago, that he could stretch out over the entire city, the city of arks, the city of rainbows, of bridges that cut the light, the hard-working city, the place where everything had no other purpose—and he was sure of it now—than to fall in love in a pure and eternal way.
*
Autumn came to New York. It emerged with signs that at first were imperceptible, a progressive dimming of the sunlight, uneasy gusts of breeze, and then with starkly cool evenings. Astonishment wreathed the city. Wasn’t the planet supposed to be warming? Wasn’t the climate supposed to be growing more tropical? And yet people were swathed in layers of clothing. Women were no longer walking around bare-armed, the colours of Central Park were fading, and in the late afternoons light dropped away earlier and earlier.
Every day, Reed worked late into the evening, and when Annabel left he remained in the office, writing a last email or doing a final edit on one of his lectures, waiting for it to be time to call Elaine. He tried to pay no attention to sunsets, which stirred an inexplicable feeling of anxiety in him. Those cruel autumn sunsets.
He hadn’t managed to take Elaine to Europe that summer. He’d dreamed of taking her with him to London and Brussels, where he had to attend a couple of international conferences. He’d dreamed of taking her out to dinner in the West End, showing her the Thames from Waterloo Bridge, boarding a small aeroplane, arcing out over the English Channel, and together watching as Europe took form, like an ancient promise, before their eyes. But Elaine had other plans. She’d been commuting all summer between New York and Houston to complete a training course. She was trying to make it into an important programme, and it was now or never, she’d told Reed: she couldn’t afford to skip a single day. In the end, Reed cancelled his trip to Europe and spent the summer in Manhattan, seeing Elaine at weekends.
But that wasn’t what was making him uneasy. It wasn’t even the fact, or at least it wasn’t only the fact that Elaine was so ambitious, and that she was dedicated entirely to furthering her career. Nor was it that he saw so little of her, even though he longed for her body every second of every day. The problem was Bernard. It was none other than him. Elaine’s classmate, the one that Reed had at first taken for her boyfriend, and whom Elaine introduced as an old friend. Bernard who travelled with her to Houston. Bernard who sometimes stayed overnight at her apartment, when they had an especially early flight. Bernard with his tall physique. Bernard with his fit appearance.
He was surfing the web in search of information about Bernard, one afternoon, typing his name into various databases he knew about, when Annabel buzzed him on the internal line. As usual, there was something falsely cheerful in her voice. “Reed!” she exclaimed. “That police officer is here. Remember? He called this morning.”
“Of course,” Reed replied mechanically. He felt a burst of annoyance: he had a lot of work to get done by that evening, along with searching for information on Bernard. The police still bothered him sometimes about old legal cases. Almost invariably, it was about criminals he had captured years earlier, when he was an active superhero.
The police officer walked into his office. He was in civilian clothes and wore a rather nice suit. “Detective Dennis De Villa,” he introduced himself.
As they were shaking hands, Reed sensed his usual discomfort, wondering whether the man was forming the predictable set of thoughts in his mind. The hand of Mister Fantastic! It really is rubbery!
Perhaps the man wasn’t thinking anything of the sort. The detective looked serious, almost solemn. Athletic, not too tall. Age: thirty-something. Ever since he’d started dating Elaine, Reed looked at other men with a new focus. He imagined seeing them through her eyes. Were they attractive enough? Could they be serious rivals? More or less serious than Bernard?!
De Villa sat down in front of the desk. He waited for a few seconds, staring at Reed in silence. “Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m here.”
Actually, that wasn’t what Reed was
thinking at all. Darn it, how could he get some dirt on Bernard’s life? He hadn’t found a scrap of information in the confidential archives, and he’d wound up turning to the most ordinary of research tools. On the screen, hidden to the eyes of his visitor, was a Google page with the results of his search. Bernard Dunn. A few dozen pages. Lists of courses he’d taken at college, some old clippings from the sports sections about a basketball team he’d played for. Not much more. The glory of the internet, apparently, still lay in the future as far as this young man was concerned.
“In fact,” Detective De Villa was just saying, “I only need a couple of minutes of your time.”
Reed sighed. He did his best to focus on the conversation. “Let me guess,” he began with a blend of irony and irritation, “this must be about some legal matter. Have you unearthed some old case? Do you need my testimony about something that happened twenty or thirty years ago?”
“Not really,” came the answer. Dennis De Villa stared at him again. A stony silence spread between them. There was a certain intensity to the detective’s gaze. At last he made up his mind: “You must certainly have followed the case of Batman’s murder.”
The man’s voice sounded soft and sort of scratchy. Reed also noticed that his eyes were red, as if he had recently wept, or as if he had been exposed to a harsh light, or who knows what else. Tiny red capillaries, like the mineral veining in marble. “Of course,” Reed nodded, this time in an attentive tone of voice. “A horrible way to die. If I’m not mistaken, the trial will get under way soon.”
De Villa nodded as well. “That’s right,” he said, and let another silence ensue.
The silence extended until the sound of an alert cut through the air, suddenly, making them both start. It had come from his computer. Incoming email. Reed glanced at the screen to see if it was a message from Elaine or something else of importance. It wasn’t. His eyes slid over to the other side of the screen, where the Google window floated with its unsatisfactory results: Bernard. Bernard. Bernard. That name started pulsing in his head again.
He went back to looking at Dennis De Villa with a polite expression on his face, but by now his interest had faded. No more desire to look into that man’s red eyes, no desire to sit there listening to him. He had practically guessed what the other man was driving at and he was merely waiting for the moment when he could get rid of him.
Part of his brain continued the conversation. He listened as De Villa asked whether anything strange had happened, if he’d had the sensation that anyone was following him or spying on him. He heard how the police were afraid that something was going on in the world of the former superheroes, and that new murders might be about to take place. An array of evidence pointed in this direction.
Reed assured the detective: nothing out of the ordinary had happened to him, and he felt quite safe, because he was sure he was not a cause of annoyance to anyone, he was an innocuous citizen by now. Who in the world would want to go to the trouble of conspiring against him, and for what bizarre reason? Reed said this and more, trying to remind De Villa that there was a time when it was the police who came to him for protection, asking him and others like him for help, trying to make the detective understand that the time available was running out, really running out, and that he couldn’t spend any more of his working day with a police officer, even if he was well dressed and pleasing in appearance, and even though his eyes seemed to be marked by some strong emotion. He couldn’t. He needed to think about Bernard. In fact, the other part of his brain was thinking about Bernard.
He glanced again at the computer screen, restless, eager to plunge back into the world of promise of the search engine. He needed to look for evidence on his enemy. His nefarious adversary. Elaine claimed that Bernard was a homosexual, and there was no reason for him to be jealous. Reed wondered why, then, in his Google searches, Bernard’s name failed to appear with any connections to gay topics. An association, a men’s gym, the directory of gay ex-basketball players or gay astronauts or any other gay concern imaginable. Didn’t gay people band together into association after association? Didn’t they spend half their time signing petitions for gay rights, or filling the world with traces of their existence so that everyone, even the most careless observers, would be sure to know about their proud existence? And yet there was no sign of him. Not a single entry, in the entire sphere of the internet, provided a shred of confirmation that Elaine wasn’t lying, that Bernard was sexually inoffensive, and that he—Reed—was just being paranoid. A jealous lover. There was not a single trace, in that immense electronic realm, in that virtual world teeming with answers, of the information Reed craved.
De Villa was staring at him, from a distance that seemed to be light years away. There was a final pause. Then the detective got to his feet, saying he’d already taken too much of Reed’s time, and asking for the umpteenth time to make sure and call if anything suspicious were to happen. He handed Reed his business card. Reed held it between his fingers, stupefied, like someone unable to remember what a business card was used for, that piece of cardboard with sharp edges. Then he walked him to the door. Now that the detective was leaving, he almost felt a sense of regret. He didn’t feel like being alone. Outside the window, the sun was setting. This time, as they were shaking hands, and as he once again tumbled into the red eyes of the other man, Reed felt the need, for an instant, to know more about that man. He wanted to tell him to take care of himself, to protect his eyes, to look out for the air and the allergies and the many dangers that autumn, inevitably, brought with it.
*
Whenever Reed tried to get information about Bernard, she always managed to make him feel like an idiot. Reed, you amaze me. Bernard is what he is, he doesn’t need to prove anything to you. You should be satisfied with what I tell you. Let’s not talk about it again, understood?
Reed understood. At least for a few days. Then the machinery of obsession began grinding away in his brain again, more relentless than before. He fantasised about asking for help from certain old acquaintances of his. Discreet, professional people, who would bring him a complete report on Bernard Dunn’s life in just a few days: routines, habits, friends, men or women or whatever might happen to fall within his proclivities. It would be so simple. Those old acquaintances of his would tell him the truth. But he immediately felt like a worm, a tremendous feeling of guilt overcame him for being unable to take Elaine at her word. To rely on Elaine’s answers. What an odd sensation. How could he love a person so much and yet be so unsatisfied with her answers?
In fact, he suspected that Bernard was only a part of the problem. Nothing but a single part. The rest of the problem, with Elaine, was how elusive she was capable of being. The indifference with which she had avoided his suggestion of a vacation together, or with which she turned off her phone when she was busy, without worrying that he might try to call her. There was something about her that smacked of a self-contained, unshakable independence. She was certainly not the kind of girl you could control, much less possess. For that matter, why on earth would he ever try to possess her?
But that was exactly what he was trying to do.
The nights she agreed to sleep at his apartment were minor triumphs for Reed. She’s here. In my arms. They would fall asleep, naked, under the sheets, and it was so satisfying to hold her close against his body. In my arms! At the end of those nights, dawn came early and slipped in the window, stretching out between them like a third lover. That was the time to hug each other closer, to begin touching one another, half-asleep. Sex in the morning, what a wonderful luxury. Reed could slide into her with his eyes still shut, without entirely waking up, and open his eyes just as he came, seeing her, underneath him, like a silvery creature in the light of dawn.
Then came the time to get up. Elaine had to leave in a hurry, to run by her apartment before some appointment that morning, or else straight out to the space centre in New Jersey, or worse still, to the airport. Reed had too much self-control and sens
e of efficiency to try to detain her. He didn’t want to make himself pathetic. He settled for trying to impress a flavour upon the rest of her day, attempting to leave an imprint, a sensation in her, something she could carry with her throughout the day.
For instance, breakfast. He would make sumptuous breakfasts for her. He had abandoned his beloved bagels to focus on delicacies, Scottish smoked salmon, French cheeses, organic cereals, exotic fruit, and other choice morsels, the kind of things that you can buy at Dean & DeLuca or other stores with exorbitant prices. After learning that Elaine loved tea, he had spent a fortune to have an exquisite Japanese tea shipped to him. Breakfasts had to be perfect. Every detail had to sparkle. The world needed to look perfect as long as she was with him, so that the hours that followed, the hours without Reed, would seem less rich and less significant to her.
Or else music. The music had to be left in the background, as if by chance, while they were getting dressed or eating breakfast. Jeff Buckley for instance, or any other of those dramatically intense, youthful, romantic singers who were capable of echoing in a person’s head, in a subtle, tormenting manner, for hours and hours. That’s what he wanted. He wanted to be sure he wouldn’t vanish from Elaine’s consciousness! He wanted to echo inside her throughout the day, every instant, to haunt her like a ghost! Before that, he’d never experienced worries of that kind, nor had he ever been frightened at the idea that someone could go through their day without thinking of him. What’s happening to me? What the hell kind of things are these to worry about?!
Erotic Lives of the Superheroes Page 5
