Erotic Lives of the Superheroes

by Marco Mancassola

  Reed shook his head. He stood there, staring at her, afraid that she would vanish once again before his eyes, but what he saw was his own face reflected in Sue’s sunglasses. A tired, vaguely puffy face, the face of a man who hadn’t slept for days out of fear that grief might suffocate him in his sleep. He resisted the impulse to yank off her sunglasses. “That has nothing to do with it,” he moaned.

  She hesitated. She touched her hair, cautiously, as if it were so many delicate filaments, bundles of nerves. “Good luck, Reed,” she said as she got into the car.

  “That has nothing to do with it,” he repeated.

  “Good luck.”

  The car pulled away. Reed considered extending his arms towards the departing car. Grabbing it by the bumpers, preventing it from leaving. The kind of thing he used to be able to do. Maybe I still could. I wonder. I can certainly still stretch my body. I can extend legs and arms, I can still stretch, but I’m not sure what towards.

  When he turned around he encountered the eyes of the people who had remained behind. Pitying, embarrassed glances. Reed met their gaze and stared back, feeling himself wrapped in layers of chilly solitude, until he recognised a face in that crowd. Green eyes. Reddish hair. Reed looked at her, stunned, blinking in the afternoon glare.

  Elaine was coming towards him, walking lightly as if trying not to frighten him. She stopped a few feet from him. They stood without touching. The silence lengthened, increasingly painful, until she decided to speak: “Hell, Reed. I don’t know what to say. Whatever I might say would only sound stupid.”

  “There’s nothing to say,” he found the strength to respond.

  “As soon as you let me know that the ceremony was scheduled for today, I asked for leave and caught a plane from Houston.”

  “Houston,” he echoed, astonished to be reminded of the existence of that place. He looked at Elaine through half-shut eyes, finding it hard to put her face in focus just after seeing Sue.

  She was prettier than he had remembered. Her skin was pure and glowing. Reed felt so deeply moved, he could scarcely bring himself to look at her. I once held you in my arms. We were together, you and I, at a time when it seemed the world was still intact. He opened his mouth and entreated her: “Come with me…”

  Elaine looked at him with a shocked expression. “You’re…” she began, and then, struggling to finish the phrase, “…crying.”

  “I can’t stay here any longer,” Reed implored. “I can’t. Come take a drive with me. Take me home.”

  “My God, Reed,” she said, shaking her head. “I have a plane to catch, I’ve got to get back to Houston.” She went on looking at him, uneasily. “I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

  Reed moved off. Perhaps she’d changed her mind, because at that point she followed him. They walked along together, a few yards apart, until they reached the car. The sun hanging low in the sky caressed their shoulders. They got in the car, in silence. The engine started up smoothly, and the car edged away from the remaining funeral crowd. Reed had left without saying goodbye to Ben and the others. He felt no remorse. All he wanted was to go.

  They rode side by side, looking out of the windows. New York was there, as always, and had resumed its busy life. Taxis cruised up and down, and people entered and exited the doors of the shops, the Greek diners, the fast-food places, the Starbucks, the Barnes & Nobles, the organic food shops, the private members clubs. There was something mechanical about all that movement. People appeared and vanished from Reed’s sight, swallowed up by the mouth of an office building, disappearing into the mystery of a door, like figures in an enormous animated puppet theatre. A grotesque, ancient, illusory puppet theatre, the most glittering one on earth. My city is a cruel theatre. It always has been and I pretended not to know that… When the car came to a halt, they sat motionless, frightened, until Reed asked the driver to leave them alone.

  The driver got out. They remained in the car with its smoked-glass windows, parked by a sidewalk in Manhattan, both of them exhausted, speechless, aware of the distance between them. The man at the bottom of the abyss. The girl about to reach for the stars.

  Reed was terrified by the thought of going upstairs, to his empty apartment, but he knew Elaine would never agree to go up with him. He limited himself to touching her hand. He was thinking of nothing. The sensation was not that of seeing an old lover again, nor was it even the feeling of achieving a long-held wish, even though he had in fact dreamed of a moment like this, for a long time, in what now seemed like another life. Rather, it was the sensation of following a script that had already been written. The heartbreaking screenplay of the animated puppet theatre. Reed half-closed his eyes, dazzled by Elaine’s fair white skin, while the picture of Franklin’s charred corpse surfaced in his head. Sue’s pinched face. Ben’s sunglasses.

  “Reed,” Elaine whispered in a voice cringing with embarrassment. “You’re exhausted. You need to get some rest.”

  He came to with a start. He wanted to ask her to touch him. He wanted to ask her to lay her hands on him, like a healer, even though he understood that no one could heal him. “Do you remember the first time I asked you out to dinner?” he asked. “We were in a car just like this one. It’s been less than a year. Do you remember when I took you home at dawn, after we made love? Again, we were in a car like this one. It seems impossible that it’s been such a short time.”

  Elaine appeared increasingly uncomfortable. She nodded distantly. “You’re exhausted,” she repeated.

  “Time has strange effects when you have a body made of rubber. Time rolls up, stretches out, and contracts. Everyone’s time resembles their body.”

  “My God, Reed.”

  “I suppose there’s no point,” he sighed then, “in asking you not to leave me. I suppose there’s no point in asking you to come away with me, to Europe, for a few weeks.”

  Elaine averted her eyes. “Don’t ask me that,” she said, staring out of the window. “It’s not fair of you to ask me that.”

  “You’re right,” Reed acknowledged, as he observed Elaine’s pale profile. There wasn’t much he could add to that. He didn’t feel surprised, just worn out. After all, it really was such a simple matter: the silence, Elaine’s face turned towards the window, the smell of the leather upholstery. The need Reed felt not to be left alone, and the fact that in just a few moments he would be.

  “I remember when you invited me to dinner, I remember when you took me home at dawn, through the damp city streets. I remember everything, Reed, I was there at your side.” She turned to look at him, abruptly, forcing him to shut both eyes tight, with a moan, as if completely dazzled. “Look at me, Reed. I have a plan, and you’ve always known that. In just five days I’m leaving on a mission. It was insane for me to come here today, during the final operative phase. In a short while I have my flight back to Houston. In a short while, I have to leave, Reed. Don’t ask me for impossible things. I’m not a superhero, I can’t perform the impossible.”

  Reed let out another moan.

  And you have things to do, too,” Elaine said in a patient tone, “something much more important than running away to Europe with me. You need to stay in New York, keep tabs on the investigation into what happened to Franklin. Isn’t that your job now?”

  Reed kept his eyes shut tight. Against his eyelids, the afternoon light was a sharp blade. Reed could sense the dazzling glow of the world, increasing like a raging fire, like the glare from a great desert. “The investigation,” he sighed. “It would be reassuring to clutch at that hope. To go on living in order to make sure justice is done.” His voice broke. “I wonder just what the investigation will tell us. I wonder if the same thing that happened with Batman will happen here. Whether the police will go mad on the case but never identify a mastermind. I wonder what can ever be said, what can ever be discovered that will pay me back for all this, that will shield me from this pain.”

  Elaine didn’t reply. Reed could sense her presence on the seat beside him
. There she was, the girl he could no longer see, lost in the glow beyond his eyelids, the girl with skin as luminous as a ghost, the girl he had once thought he held in his arms, but whom he had only brushed with his fingertips. The mirage-girl, the illusion-girl. The girl whom he had placed at the centre of the world, pointlessly, fatally, just as the world around him was spiralling off-kilter, faster and faster, without him noticing.

  Outside, Manhattan was sliding towards sunset. The rush of the city was softening, and the passersby walked past the car without realising who was in it. In a nearby Starbucks people were reading the news on their laptop computers: FAREWELL TO FRANKLIN RICHARDS. NEW YORK COMES TO A STANDSTILL FOR FRANKLIN. The driver was loitering nearby, vaguely worried, peeking at the car’s impenetrable smoked-glass windows. Then he saw the car door swing open, and Reed Richards crawled out, both eyes closed, as if someone had just sprayed him with salt water. Reed stumbled into him, and the driver held him up. “Are you all right, sir?”

  Reed opened his eyes, slowly, looking at the man who was holding him up, at first failing to recognise the man. Then it dawned on him. A driver. A stocky man in his early fifties, one of the hundreds of chauffeurs who had driven him in his lifetime, one of the men who had transported him, for years, back and forth against the backdrop of this ambiguous city. He managed to muster a smile. “Yes, I’m fine. Please take the lady to the airport.”

  *

  After the funeral, Reed found his place empty. He walked through the conference room, past Annabel’s office, and reached his own private suite of rooms. Everything was immersed in a profound motionlessness. The sofa where Ben had sat sobbing for hours still bore the imprint of his heavy body. In the kitchen, the scent of the thousand or so teas brewed in the past several days by Annabel still hung in the air. Empty mugs. Dirty glasses.

  Everyone had assured him that when he got home that night he would be wrecked, and he’d just collapse into sleep. Luckily, that’s how grief works. The minute your head hits the pillow, sleep will save you. In fact, he was weary, inconceivably weary, and his body felt like a distant abstract entity, as if drained of blood. But his consciousness wouldn’t give up. The long day refused to come to an end. And so they dragged themselves—he and his body—through the silent rooms. The rooms where Franklin grew up. The rooms where his son had lived, breathed, and sensed the world. The rooms Elaine had passed through, where the two had never met, where now they never would.

  He undressed furiously, hurled himself into the shower so that the splash of water would overwhelm the silence. The water enveloped his body, tepid at first, then hotter. Reed turned up the temperature. Hotter still. When the water had become scalding, he opened his mouth wide, soundlessly, and stumbled out of the shower, dripping wet, trembling, his skin burning, his muscles sagging… He fell to the ground. His rubbery body was deforming, stretching out like a streamer of drool, and he went on crawling, naked, through the emptiness of those rooms.

  Szepanski walked in the next morning on him, still awake, sitting naked on the edge of the bed. “My God, Reed,” the doctor said, as he prepared an injection. “You haven’t pulled another one of your foolish pranks, have you?” He inspected him visually, looking for suspicious deformations. “I told you to call me any time of the day or night.”

  Reed barely moved. “What could you have done?” he asked in a harsh tone.

  Szepanski stepped back in surprise, but immediately regained his confident air. “I suppose I know what you mean. A superhero helps others, but no one can help him, is that what you’re saying? Now I’ll tell you what Doctor Szepanski can do.” The morning light glided down his polished skin. “I can give you a nice injection of diazepam. I can make you sleep like an angel. If you don’t get some sleep, you know what’ll happen. The brain needs regular doses of dream activity. If you deny your brain that dream activity, it’ll start dreaming when you’re awake, and pretty soon you won’t know the difference between dreaming and waking.”

  Reed saw the doctor coming towards him with a syringe. He wondered what a man who spends most of his time having his face redone would know about reality. “I’m not sure if I want to sleep,” he said.

  “Come on, Reed,” and a crease of disappointment appeared on Szepanski’s face. “You know that I want to help you, but I can’t stay here all morning. I have a lunch meeting with my publisher.”

  Reed didn’t know what he was talking about. Maybe Szepanski had written a book, perhaps a book about cosmetic surgery. Oh well, he thought. People go to lunch with their publisher. People have their faces redone in time for summer. People go online to find out if there have been other attacks, other murders in the world of the superheroes. People waste themselves on thousands of wishes and desires, people fall in love with a thousand will o’ the wisps, people have children and then watch them die. People are trapped on this planet. People really do lots of different things.

  He felt the needle pierce his skin. He had time to lie down and realise that Szepanski was observing his naked body, with an indiscreet gaze, before spreading a blanket over him.

  *

  He was in the panoramic sauna of the George Hotel. He knew right away that it was a dream, this sauna no longer exists. This sauna was destroyed by a bomb. And yet everything seemed so alive: the bodies of the other men in the half-light, the intense heat, the scent of the wooden benches. He felt sweat slide down his back, as slowly as a tear. He thought back on what Szepanski had told him, and decided that the doctor had lied to him. It’s not reality that starts to resemble a dream. It’s dreams that become more solid than reality.

  When the other men left the sauna, only one remained behind. He was young, and he was sitting next to him. With a sudden start of awareness, Reed knew who it was. Franklin looked at him with a smile. His sweat-drenched face gleamed in the shadows. They sat there, father and son, looking out at the panorama beyond the plate glass. New York was motionless before their eyes. Reed didn’t know whether he was sweating or crying, on that bench, sitting next to the naked body of his son. When he could no longer resist, he hugged him, tight, feeling his son’s youthful muscles, his hot skin. “You’re here, you’re here with me,” he sighed.

  Franklin smiled awkwardly, and all he said in reply was: “We’re not alone, Dad.”

  Reed perceived another figure in the far corner of the sauna. The mysterious person slithered slowly in the shadows. Reed guessed that it was a woman, and then something stirred in his memories. Everything became clear. Instinctively he took Franklin by the hand and led him towards the woman. The air was a hot gust of breath around them. The sauna was as dark and hot as a mouth. They sat down side by side, close together: Reed, Franklin, and Elaine. Nude, deeply moving, entirely pure. Feeling that he was on the verge of tears, Reed brushed his son’s and Elaine’s lips, and then gently pushed their heads together. Franklin and Elaine looked at each other and laughed. They turned to Reed as if asking final permission, then they kissed. Reed felt something dissolve in his chest, and the tears finally began to flow.

  He knew that it was all about to end. He knew that an explosion was about to blow them away. And yet time lengthened. Reed looked at their bodies, and the faint swimsuit marks on their skin, and the hands of each in the hair of the other. It was all very physical. It was all so real, and an absurd hope rose inside Reed, this isn’t a dream. He’s still alive. This isn’t a dream, the dream was everything else.

  He woke up with a start.

  Even though the clock said that he had been asleep for fourteen hours straight, he felt instantly clear-headed. Exhausted, the same as before. In his memory, the dream lacked the flavour of a dream, rather it seemed like another reality, as detailed as the one he was experiencing right now. He started wandering around the apartment in the night. He wondered if this was what his life would be like from now on. A long day without breaks. Asleep or awake, always immersed in the same torment.

  It wasn’t yet dawn when he went into his office, carefully dresse
d, even though he knew he wouldn’t be working that day. Annabel would only drop in for a few minutes to deal with the mail. The Richards Foundation had suspended all activity for a few days. The following week it would start back up with a meeting of the board which, Reed knew, would propose renaming the foundation after Franklin.

  He sat in the darkness, waiting for his computer to boot up. He began googling his son’s name. He typed it in over and over—maybe the search engine was hiding something from him, maybe it was refusing to tell him the whole truth. It said that half a million people had attended the funeral of Franklin Richards. It said that there had already been two cases of teen suicides, youngsters who had killed themselves with a picture of Franklin in their hands. It said that the offices of the diplomatic corps were concerned, because that young man not only travelled the world to clear up polluted war zones, but he also worked to bolster what remained of the country’s good name. Now that he is dead, who will clean up America’s conscience? It said that, in the comments of widely read blogs, blame was being assigned to him, Reed Richards, that ageing “hero” who proved incapable of protecting his son, and who was probably himself the target of the attack.

  It said a thousand other things, and Reed continued reading until his eyes started to burn. Later, he heard sounds from the adjoining office. Annabel. Reed withdrew into his private suite, determined to avoid any contact with his secretary. He locked himself in the bathroom, letting the water run in the shower, just in case she ventured back there in search of him. He lost himself in the noise of rushing water, like in the roar of distant waves, allowing his thoughts to swirl around the things he’d read online, around the dream he’d had, around the last conversation he’d had with Elaine. When he emerged, all was quiet. Walking cautiously, he went back to the office. On his desk was a stack of letters, and a paper bag with his favourite bagels.

  He sniffed at them. In his previous life, those bagels had been a happy ritual. Now he stood there, contemplating them, as if he were musing about their probable use. He moved on to the mail on his desk. It was almost all letters of condolence, and the first few letters from women who had seen him on TV. My heart ached for you. I know that this may sound stupid, but when I saw you in the midst of that funeral, all I wanted to do was wrap you in my arms. Here’s my phone number if you feel like calling me. The aura of tragedy must have given him some new form of sex appeal. He knew he’d have to expect more letters like that in the coming days. He knew that he’d have to keep his guard up, now more than ever, and protect his own grief, to make sure no one took advantage of it for their own stupid fantasies.