Erotic Lives of the Superheroes

by Marco Mancassola

  Then it was time to leave the restaurant and get back in the car, as the wind swept the city with increasingly powerful gusts. People walked down the street clutching their clothes to their bodies, as if they were afraid they’d be stripped naked in the clear afternoon light. The rustle of the wind and the hum of the traffic amplified each other, creating a sound reminiscent of a distant scream. An indefinable black hole had opened up inside Reed, absorbing all thought, all attention, all sense of reality… He walked back with relief into the familiar shell of his office. He went into the bathroom to splash some water on his face. He looked in the mirror, waiting, observing his own restless eyes, the glittering silver of his hair. What’s going on, Mister Fantastic?

  He went back to his desk. He brushed the keyboard of his computer, checked what emails he’d received while he was out. The message was there, apparently innocuous, blending in with the other messages in the queue, with no special features to call out its nature, its crucial importance. Oh, damn! The answer from Houston. For an instant Reed thought he’d understood, and the idea that the nervous anxiety he’d felt all day might just be the product of a presentiment of that message gave him a short-lived sense of calm. Oh, that’s why. That’s the explanation. But after he read the message nothing changed, and the same anxiety kept slithering through his stomach.

  There was no explanation offered for the delay. Reed imagined that the Johnson Space Center was in full pre-launch chaos. However, his request had finally been accepted. He’d got what he wanted. He could drop in there, a few days before launch, to remind Elaine of his existence. He could do it. He’d been invited. Reed should have been satisfied, yet he felt no enthusiasm. No triumph. Only a sudden weariness which made him close his eyes and lean his head back against the chair, with a sigh. It must be on account of that lunch. That ginger chicken still sitting in my stomach. He felt his thoughts grow heavy, plummeting into a distant elsewhere…

  He found himself in a dimly lit room, where sound spread in a muffled fashion. When he tried to move, he sensed a liquid resistance around him, as if he were at the bottom of a swimming pool. In fact, it looked like the bottom of a swimming pool. Around him there were other people, silent, motionless, and Reed started parading through them, feeling their gazes. There was Annabel and the paparazzo he’d seen a short while before. There was Elaine, and Ben, and the little boy on the beach, and Bernard Dunn, the NASA officials, the psychologist Helen Kippenberg, the astronauts he’d known, and Mrs. Glasseye. There were all the members of the scientific board of advisers with whom he’d eaten lunch, the consultants to the Richards Foundation, its financiers, Raymond Minetta, the doorman from his building, Detective Dennis De Villa, the Ecuadorian driver, and the other drivers he’d had recently. There really were a lot of people. All of them, dressed elegantly, watching him wordlessly, and he was amazed at how many of them there were, how many people he knew. “You’re all here,” he said. Last of all, he found Sue, his wife, who was waiting for him at the far end of the room, as pale as an ice statue.

  Sue shook her head, and her lips barely parted. “Oh Reed,” she said, in a heartbroken voice. “You still don’t understand.” Reed started trembling. “Look around, Reed. We’re not all here. Don’t you see who’s missing?” Reed’s eyes ran over the room, instinctively seeking out Elaine, and he saw her, there, in the midst of the crowd. Elaine was there. Reed turned to look at his wife without understanding. “Reed, don’t you see who’s missing?” Reed concentrated then, feeling something begin to emerge, from a deep place, the seed of something he had always known. It was rising to the surface. It was taking shape. A trace of truth that he could feel inside himself, uncertain at first, then clearer and clearer, hard as a diamond, painful as a blade, oh my God, my God, something unutterable, something so terrifying that it was starting to make him weep, even before he knew what on earth it was. He was about to know what it was. He sensed that he was about to find out. Then there was a sound, small at first, then increasingly insistent…

  Reed shook himself awake. He found himself back in his office, dazed, agitated. The late-afternoon sunlight was slanting in through the window and the phone on his desk was ringing. Reed stared at it, his thoughts still befuddled by his brief sleep. A blade of anguish sliced into his throat. He hoped that the phone would just stop ringing, stop bothering him. After all, he had asked Annabel to hold his calls. After all, he’d just emerged from a weird nightmare. He had the right not to pick up, the right to do nothing. But the phone went on ringing, and he decided to pick up the icy receiver, with a trembling hand. “Hello?” he finally said.

  There was a long silence. Through the receiver he could hear Annabel’s broken breathing. His skin crawled in a single, violent wave of goosebumps. “Annabel? Annabel, what’s happening?”

  “Reed…” He’d never heard Annabel’s voice so overwrought. “Reed… It’s Mister Grimm on the phone for you…” She seemed to be about to add something, then she gulped back a sudden sob, and brusquely transferred Ben’s call. The phone plunged into abysmal silence. “Ben… Ben, is that you?”

  The first thing he heard was the sobbing. Ben’s rocky voice seemed to have shattered into a thousand pieces, a thousand chaotic sobs that, for some reason, made Reed think of the chirping of some nocturnal songbird. “Ben, what is this, some sort of joke? Ben, do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

  Then Ben took a deep, enormous breath, and in a voice Reed had never heard before, he shouted: “My God, Reed! My God! Reed!…”

  The phone dropped out of Reed’s hand. He leapt to his feet, panting, gripped by a dizziness so powerful that it forced him to lean against the wall. He grabbed his head, telling himself he was still stuck in that dream, in that mysterious dream, in that part of reality where nothing was definitive, where nothing had consequences. But here, in this part of reality, the receiver was still spitting out Ben’s howling voice. Reed staggered across the office, like a drunk, until he reached the door and violently yanked it open, causing a rush of air. Sheets of paper flew off Annabel’s desk. He and she stared at each other, horrified, appalled, each terrorised by the other, and Annabel’s face was streaked with tears.

  The television was on. Reed looked at it, hypnotised, as if he were seeing it for the first time, studying the images of a special edition from ABC News. Footage shot from a helicopter showed a column of smoke rising from a tall building, dark, dense, practically motionless, curving like a giant question mark. Reed looked at the smoke. He looked at the gutted building. He found the scene familiar, he recognised Manhattan. That building. He let out a moan. The saliva dried up in his mouth, and the blood slowed down in his veins, nearly congealing. Everything became infinitely slow. He turned to look out of the window: he saw the same column of smoke down there, beyond the line of buildings across the street. He saw the half-dozen police helicopters, apparently immobile, hanging in mid-air. He saw the direction from which the smoke was streaming, and all of the elements started to slide together, lock into place. All his suspicions. All his fears. He let out another moan, incredulous, while his thoughts began to collapse, hopelessly, into a state of panic.

  He left the office at a dead run, pursued by Annabel’s screams, and hurled himself into the elevator. Downstairs in the lobby, he set off at a run again, shoving past the doorman, who was yelling too and trying to stop him, for some reason, like he wanted to protect him, to spare him the horror of the outside world. In the street the silence was surreal. The only sound was that of the helicopters and the hollow echoes of the sirens. Traffic had stopped, and people were out of their cars, out of the buses, their faces tilted upwards, staring in dismay at the column of smoke. Reed ran. There was nothing else he could do. He ran for blocks and blocks, as in dreamlike slow-motion. He ran breathlessly, with the impulse to scream, cry, vomit, his chest shaking with the slow, deep thumps of his heartbeat. Don’t let it be true. Let it just be a mistake. Don’t let this be reality, and tomorrow let this all be a weird memory, funn
y, almost, just make it not be real, don’t let it happen… A crowd of people was coming towards him, moving away from the area of the explosion. Men and women of all ages, of all races, with expressions of shock, eyes wet with tears, faces, legs, arms, haircuts, expensive suits, cut-price clothes, plans for dinner, cell phones in their pockets, loved ones in their minds, people to call, it happened, it really happened, in our neighbourhood, at the George Hotel, apparently it was a bomb, there have been victims, one of them is… Men and women, bodies, one after another like a dense stream, and Reed pushing against them, labouring, working his way upstream, he alone pushing against the crowd, still shouting, panting, until he got there, exhausted, standing at the foot of the wounded building.

  He froze. He stood there looking up at the George Hotel, at the gaping hole on the twenty-ninth floor, the flames that shot out intermittently. Teams of firemen surrounded the building, while swarms of newsmen rushed about, appalled, excited, shouting snatches of news into microphones. Women in tears wandered around in dressing gowns, probably guests of the hotel who had been evacuated, and a half-naked man walked around in a state of shock, like a prophet in the middle of the desert. Reed saw everything. He saw the blood-red paint of the fire trucks, the darting tongues of flame from the hotel. He took it all in at a glance, a broad and detailed glance, a glance that seemed to spread out, for an instant, practically to infinity.

  He took a few hesitant, wavering steps forward, just as it dawned on the first few reporters who he was, and they began clustering around him, as a policeman came towards him, both arms spread out, perhaps to stop him or else to embrace him. Reed collapsed on the policeman. He tried to stretch his arms upwards, towards the gaping hole in the building, towards the murderous flames, but his arms fell among the crowd, two arms a few yards long, two helpless tentacles. The policeman gripped him tight. He was shouting at him to calm down. Reed felt quite calm, actually, calm enough to observe the faces of the journalists packed around him, in an instant of disconcerting silence. Calm enough to hear the voice of one of them, not far away, announcing the news into a microphone: a sad day for New York, a sad day for the world. At about six o’clock this evening, April 11th, an explosive device planted by nameless attackers destroyed the health club of the George Hotel, in the heart of Manhattan, causing numerous injuries and two deaths, one of which appears to have been the young star of our time, Franklin Richards, America’s most beloved son.

  *

  For days, it was the only news covered in the media. The nation was in shock. The day after the attack various national newspapers published the same headline, FRANKLIN IS DEAD, as if they were incapable of using any other words or devising any other phrases. The picture of America’s most beloved son filled every cover and was splashed across every front page. Regular television programming was scrapped. Screens obsessively broadcast the images of the building in flames, rerunning the horrified faces of the eyewitnesses, the heartbreaking arrival of Franklin’s father, the ex-superhero, and his futile attempt to extend his arms towards the burning twenty-ninth floor of the hotel. They broadcast, over and over, the bunches of flowers piled up at the foot of the George Hotel. They broadcast the thousands of young people who took to the streets, on the evening after the attack, singing Franklin’s name in chorus. They broadcast the documentary on Franklin Richards, which had already been shown on the air, promoting it as a world premiere and chalking up record viewing figures. They broadcast interviews with famous ex-superheroes who had known him as a boy, members of Greenpeace with whom he had worked, young starlets with whom he was said to have had relationships. They broadcast the interview with Raymond Minetta, owner of the George Hotel, replaying again and again the part where Minetta burst into tears, with a grimace of pain, repeating in a nasal voice: that boy, that poor boy. They broadcast the statement of the Secretary of State, who appeared on TV immediately after the attack to reassure the nation and declare that the cowardly act of terrorism would not strike fear into the heart of the United States of America. They broadcast interviews with officials of the special investigative teams who were working day and night, it was reported, to find out who was behind this crime. They broadcast the face of Detective Dennis De Villa, his red eyes, emotional and strangely cold at the same time, his regular features, his solemn expression as he answered the journalist’s frenzied questions. The world had a thousand questions. Did they know who had planted the bomb? They still weren’t sure who had masterminded the bombing, though the theory of a clandestine organisation was gaining strength. A deadly group whose aim, it was believed, was the murder of a number of individuals with ties to the old world of the superheroes. Franklin wasn’t a superhero, strictly speaking. Might he have been a chance victim of this attack? For now the police weren’t sure whether the bomb set off on the twenty-ninth floor of the building, while the younger Richards was in the famous panoramic sauna of the George Hotel, was meant to kill him or his father, Reed Richards, who was known to frequent the same health club. Why weren’t the Richardses under security protection? Had there not been indications of an impending attack? The police had explored the idea of giving Reed Richards a security detail, and had contacted him on more than one occasion, but there had never been any confirmation of the need for that measure. As for the younger Richards, implementing a plan for his protection would have been impossible, as he had been overseas until the day before the attack. Was this attack linked in any way with the murder of Batman? There were surely ties with Batman’s murder. Were there likely to be any other murder attempts? Unfortunately the police had no way of ruling out that possibility.

  At first the television programmes chose to overlook Reed, disconcerted as they were by the reactions of that dry-eyed father, restrained even in that circumstance, faithful to his reputation as a controlled individual. Except for his dramatic arrival at the scene of the bombing, Reed had avoided the television cameras. He gave no interviews. He wept no tears in public. He had immediately made himself available to the police, offering his help in the investigation, and he had issued a laconic statement in which he declared his determination to do everything within his power, by any and all means possible, to catch his son’s murderers. Strong words. Efficient words. Two days later, Reed assaulted an overly intrusive cameraman, damaging his equipment, and finally everyone understood. Reed Richards’ mask was about to crack. His self-control was on the verge of giving way like a faulty dam. Just wait a little, and his tears would flow, along with the tears of all the others, along with the tears of the entire nation.

  *

  In the first few days, something similar to rage had acted as an anaesthetic, leaving Reed empty of feeling. He was unable to cry. He was unable to respond to the embraces of the people crowding into his home, he couldn’t eat or sleep. Everyone told him to get some rest. How was he supposed to rest? He was too busy thinking about Franklin’s murderers, whoever they turned out to be, that band of fanatics who had toiled away in the shadows, emerged from the shadows, and vanished back into the shadows, while Reed now sat nailed in place beneath a scalding shaft of light, the light of horror, the blinding spotlight of grief.

  He sat there brooding, determined to track them down, one by one, at least find them, at least get a glimpse. He sat there fantasising about wrapping his arms around those murderers. He dreamt of holding them with homicidal strength, like a boa constrictor, squeezing them with his elastic body. He sat there, swearing revenge. He sat there breathing, keeping his eyes wide open, minute by minute, in the strange hallucination that the world around him had become: so absurd, so luminous. He sat there cursing Raymond Minetta, ridiculous man that he was, who had sent Franklin a watch, a goddamned watch, with an invitation to frequent his health club, where he had been vulnerable to the attack… He sat there cursing the police, that flock of nobodies, and that Detective De Villa with his red-streaked eyes, and his fellow detectives who were unable to come up with a shred of evidence. Unable to say where this clandestine band o
f fanatics had come from, who was their mastermind, whether any suspicious individuals had been observed passing through the hotel building. How could he rest, until someone could tell him something, anything at all?

  He sat there nodding at each formulaic expression of condolence. He sat there handling the details of the funeral. He sat there hating everyone around him, all those people dressed in black, capable of doing nothing but looking at him with faces oozing concern. Hating Ben with every fibre, the way he was constantly underfoot consoling him, or being consoled, hating Szepanski and his cosmetically enhanced face, always offering him a calming injection, and more than anyone else, hating Annabel, that anorexic idiot, locked in the bathroom to throw up every few minutes. My God, was it really too much to ask for a competent assistant at a time like this?

  Rage had surged into him like an electric discharge. He responded with hostility to other people’s glances. People treated him in a strange way. They spoke slowly, they blew words at him as if they were trying to make them penetrate into him. Reed, you’re in a state of shock. Reed, Franklin is dead. Of course he was dead. He knew that for himself, he wasn’t a child. He knew the meaning of the word dead. He could feel that word bobbing on the surface of his consciousness, he recognised the sound of it. It was one of the simplest words in the language and he understood what it meant. The last thing he needed was other people’s help. He felt no need to hold their hands. He didn’t like other people’s hands. And he didn’t need their grieving looks. He was allergic to being looked at, by people or by television cameras. That was why he’d assaulted that cameraman, when he loomed up before him two days after the bombing. He’d felt hatred for the cameraman, so he hit him: wasn’t that logical, the most normal thing he could have done? So the first few days went by filled with fury, filled with logic, with actions tied to other actions, as if a back-up engine had started in his brain, and was steadily preserving cause-and-effect relationships.