Mystique nodded distantly. She tugged her bathrobe around her and looked away, incredulous that she had to waste her time worrying about Namor. The much-ballyhooed Prince of Atlantis. The haughty sixty-year-old with pointy ears. The exhibitionist who went around, whatever the season, wearing nothing but a pair of green briefs. The amphibious man had been trying for years to beat her ratings, and it looked like he was on the verge of pulling it off. No doubt he’d be a perfect match for Joseph Szepanski. The experienced doctor might even offer some advice on how to rebuild those sagging pectorals of his. A bitter, uncertain smile flickered across Mystique’s face, a smile that seemed to tremble, like a summer mirage, on the surface of her lips. “What do you think Namor’ll do with the old doctor?” she asked in jest. “Get him to climb into his goldfish bowl with him?”
Gary cocked his head. In contrast with her smile, the curve on his lips looked inflexible. He barely twitched his wrist, without even looking at the watch he wore on it, as if that gesture were enough to inform him of the time. “I don’t want to take any more of your time. I think I’ll leave you now,” he said, rising to his feet. His relaxed voice, his face with its fine-drawn features. The elegant movements of his body, his three-hundred-dollar haircut, the dainty knot on his silk tie, even his fine cotton socks: every detail of his person bespoke something courteous, something inexorable, as well as the eternal ambiguous softness of power. “I think you can guess what’s at stake here,” he hissed amiably. “The network executives are evaluating the future of the show.”
Mystique nodded again. She knew what he was alluding to. The future of the show. Gary was alluding to the coming seasons of the programme, or to be more exact the danger that there wouldn’t be any new seasons. Mystique felt a dusty taste in her mouth, and an impelling need for air. Oxygen, she needed oxygen. Her superpower prompted in her an abnormal need for oxygen. It was like a flame, consuming vast quantities of oxygen.
That was when, with the suddenness of certain dreams, the dream about the car resurfaced in her memory. The dream with the fogged-up windows. The dream in which she was suffocating, unable to open the car door, but not even trying to escape… The sensations of her dreams with Dennis De Villa. The sensations when she first learned about the woman curled up in the freezer. The sensations right now during her conversation with Gary. The variety of sensations she’d accumulated recently seemed to blend and whirl inside her for a few moments, like the snow inside a glass globe.
She was happy to see that Gary was leaving. When the man pulled the door open, a gust of air entered the room. “Oh, by the way,” the producer added. “Whatever happened with that thing? Did you talk to the police? Have you received any other creepy notes?”
“No more notes,” she lied. With the problems that were surfacing, with the network executives evaluating the future of the show, it wasn’t a good idea to complicate things. Nothing on earth would make her bring up the subject of those notes again. “I think it was a false alarm. It was nice of you to worry about it, but there was no need.”
“Excellent,” he said approvingly. “It was best to be prudent. Always best to be prudent,” he said, in a tone of refined sagacity, as he headed off down the hallway.
*
“That son of a bitch!” Chad exclaimed with surprising vehemence. “Him and his exquisite manners. Is that what he really said? The future of the show?”
It was the morning after the broadcast and Chad and Mystique had taken shelter in the studio cafeteria to talk in peace, without fear of being interrupted or overheard. It was an hour before lunch and the cafeteria was deserted, the tables silent, the white chairs neatly poised in readiness. Their voices echoed in the calm of the room. Outside, beyond the plate glass window overlooking the courtyard, the rain drummed down. The rain had started falling that night, driving the temperature down, quenching the fever that had held the city in its thrall, and bringing a momentary sense of ceasefire.
“That’s what he said,” Mystique confirmed. The sound of rain penetrated through the plate glass window. The ceiling lamps were turned off and the only light was the grey, almost metallic reflection of the daylight outside. Seeing the frustration on her colleague’s face, Mystique pointed out: “Let’s not put too much blame on Gary. He’s not the one who decides these things.”
“I know. But he can be influential.”
Each of them drummed their fingers on the white wooden tabletop.
They both knew the rumours that had been circulating for a while now. Rumours that the show, even though it still had a devoted audience, was losing its lead over the rival programming. Rumours about the likelihood that this season would be the last. Rumours about the possible end of the Celebrity Mystique Show. Insinuating, elusive rumours, whisperings in the shadows, the kind of whispering that sooner or later was bound to spring up around every programme. In the constant struggle to hold onto a show’s slot, no one was ever safe.
What Gary had said the night before was one concrete piece of evidence that those rumours might be true. It could happen. The show might be cancelled.
Mystique let her gaze wander to the courtyard outside the glass, which looked even more desolate than usual in the rain. The water dripped through the leaves of half a dozen short trees, soaking a surface of grey paving stones, dribbling towards the scattered storm drains.
They talked more about the show and the importance, now more than ever, of making the next episode spectacular and unforgettable.
They talked about it in grim, almost overanxious tones, but in time their spirits perked up. Soon they were heatedly picking over ideas for the new episode. Oh yes. Chad’s eyes began to gleam again. The frustration of a short while ago seemed to dissolve in him, giving way to a series of ideas that ranged from the visionary to the absurd and camp. “How about this one? In the next episode, Arnold Schwarzenegger comes on bare-chested, striking bodybuilder poses, and then, just before walking off stage, he licks his armpits.”
Mystique giggled. She wished that was enough to set things right. Some invention just a little more surreal than usual.
“Or maybe Madonna sings a version of an old hit, what, I don’t know… Like a Virgin? Madonna sings her old hit, swinging her hips recklessly, until she’s completely paralysed, and just then I come sashaying onto the stage, dressed as Madonna, squeezed into a lacy corset, demanding to stand in for her. Can’t you just see it?”
This time she laughed heartily.
“Chad versus Madonna. It’ll be a triumph. The audience will go crazy.”
These ideas seemed too grotesque to make it into the line-up, but maybe Chad was right. There was no point in losing heart now. There was always hope as long as there was another episode. Madonna and Schwarzenegger would do their part. Vladimir and Oprah could help pull the load too, and then there would be the Szepanski number. In the next show, they both agreed, they’d absolutely have to include the Szepanski number.
The cafeteria staff had arrived and were prepping the counters for the lunchtime rush. Chad eyed with interest the dishes that were emerging from the kitchen. He wasn’t the kind of young man who stayed down for long.
Mystique shot him a glance, and a bubble of fondness welled up in her chest. That overgrown boy. Chad had been playing her sidekick for six years now. I’ve got to do this for him, too, she thought with a surge of emotion. I have to succeed in doing Szepanski for him, for Horace, for Susie, and for everyone who works on this show.
“What about our friend the detective?” Chad asked point-blank. “How is that amiable hunk?”
Mystique blinked. With his infallible instinct, Chad must have sensed that this was the perfect time to needle her. “You never fail to amaze me,” she replied, playing along with him. “Even knowing your twisted mental processes as well as I do, I can’t for the life of me imagine why you would come up with such a question.”
“Because we’re in the cafeteria,” he said delightedly. “Ha ha! I’ll never forget the look on your face
when he showed up in here.”
“Ha ha,” she laughed back through clenched teeth. “And to think I was just telling myself what a nice young man you are, after all.”
They sat there, joking around in the empty room. Soon crowds of people would arrive, filling up the tables, shifting chairs, carrying trays loaded with food from one end of the dining hall to the other, dispersing the invaluable hint of intimacy that joined them now. The two of them. The hostess of the show and her faithful sidekick.
Outside, the rain pounded down into the courtyard with monotonous zeal. The sky had a pale silver sheen, a surface almost the colour of a mirror, a chilly impasto of clouds and light. “I think that detective has a crush on you.”
“I think your brain is suffering from a sugar slump.”
“Why do you take it the wrong way?” he asked. “He seemed like an interesting guy. Nice body, nice face. If only he didn’t have a couple of raw T-bone steaks for eyes…”
“He suffers from chronic conjunctivitis.”
“You see? You’re defending him now. You care for that man.”
“I’m not defending him. That man is a cop.”
“You say that the police have no reason to worry about you,” Chad reasoned. “But this De Villa guy keeps tagging along after you. That can mean only one thing. He’s got a crush on you!”
“He’s a cop,” she said again.
“You could try and give him a chance. It must be a thousand years since the last time you went out with anyone.”
“Too young. I don’t even know how old he is. Plus, he’s a cop,” Mystique reiterated.
Someone turned the lights on in the dining hall.
That was when a shiver ran through her body. She started drumming her fingers on the wooden table again, thinking about the routines for the upcoming episode. She started thinking about Schwarzenegger again, about Madonna dressed in a lacy corset, about Vladimir Putin and how he’d make the audience howl with laughter.
The Doctor Szepanski routine. The decisive broadcast. Her body continued to vibrate. “Let’s stop talking about the detective. Let’s think about our show.”
*
People had a lot to say about a woman like her. People spread gossip, speculation, and legends about a woman like her. The ordinary, predictable effect of notoriety blended with a subtler element, verging on the morbid, bound up with the specific characteristics of her superpower and with people’s inability to understand, when all was said and done, who she really was.
It wasn’t just the television audience who watched her from home, the spectators who sent in complimentary emails, or those who wrote to complain about the irreverent manner in which she had pilloried some favoured public figure, or who sent in more-or-less explicit questions about her personal life. Is Chad your boyfriend? Is it true that you’re a lesbian? Is it true you once worked in a circus? When you were in prison did you find Jesus?
It wasn’t just them. First and foremost, it was the people in show business, the professionals she ran into at the studio cafeteria, or at the infrequent parties she attended, a world that ought to have been close to her, but that seemed to study her from a faraway distance.
Mystique could imagine how she looked to their eyes. A woman who had been hosting a successful TV show for six years. There was no question that her ability to transform herself into anyone she wanted was the right talent in the right place, and that no superpower had ever been used better on TV. The show had made history. People laughed at the mere sound of the show’s name: Celebrity Mystique Show. Six years of transformations, six years of irreverent comedy and popularity. Of course she was the target of admiration and envy, and people had started to mutter, even before the show started losing ratings, about the possibility of it being cancelled.
People gossiped about many other things. About her habits, about her working methods, about the advertising contracts she’d decided she could afford to turn down. About the proverbial perfectionism that led her to work with a skeleton crew, a handful of trusted colleagues over whom, malicious gossips liked to hint, she exerted an iron fist. Maybe she was a control freak. Maybe her perfectionism verged on the pathological. It was also well known that she wanted no make-up artists, that she never used dressers to help in her costume changes. She wouldn’t allow anyone into her dressing room. Before each show, she locked herself in to do breathing exercises. People had a vague idea of how she managed to transform herself, but apparently it required her to be naked, breathe deeply, and concentrate.
People seemed to agree that she had a certain dash of charisma. An unquestionable personality. That woman can make you laugh with one glance, reduce you to ashes with the next.
Then there were the comments on her physical appearance. She was considered a good-looking woman, though perhaps not to everyone’s taste. She had a spectacular figure, given her age, but that bluish skin… The malicious ones said she looked like a corpse. Others thought that the hue of her skin gave her a touch of something exotic and sexy. To say nothing of her superpowers… Damn. What would it be like to go to bed with someone who could turn into anyone, on demand?
Too bad so little was known about her. She never gave interviews. It was said that one of the greatest regrets of Larry King’s life was that he’d never managed to land her as a guest. She was such a private woman. A professional with no time for anything but her work, with an austere lifestyle, no personal secretary, no bodyguard, little if any social life. She almost always failed to show up at events where she was expected. A haughty woman, perhaps a little frigid.
What were people supposed to think about a woman with such a secret life? That she was sexually repressed? That she had unseemly vices, that she dated married men? There had to be secrets. There had to be spicy details. What did she do on Saturday nights? Did she take on the body of a seventeen-year-old girl and engage in wild orgies in a college dorm room somewhere? Did she transform herself into a man, slip on a cock ring, and indulge in gay group sex?
The more the questions descended into idle curiosity, the more time people wasted on coming up with fanciful answers. You could go overboard with questions like this. On the other hand, it was well known how much people loved to go overboard, to intertwine contorted thoughts, and waste time on a thousand pointless suppositions.
Sometimes Mystique noticed this buzz of questions, this background noise that followed in her wake from afar. It was a cold wind that blew at her back, something that involved her name without ever really touching her, without any real contact with her, with her current life or her past. Something that happened in another place. As if someone down there were organising a ridiculous party in her honour while she sat up here, proudly distant, remote, and alone.
*
Rain fell on the red brick buildings of Harlem. Rain sheeted against the windows of the shops along 125th Street, against the doors of churches that let out echoes of gospel music on Sundays, onto school playgrounds where maps of the United States were drawn on the tarmac, every state a different colour. The rain drummed on those drawings, flooding the states and making their colours fade. The rain drummed down on the street. Under the warm deluge, people walked in plastic sandals, carrying umbrellas or wearing ponchos, or else walking unsheltered.
Mystique-Chad was one of the unsheltered ones. She was walking with an unhurried gait, her clothes drenched. The water slightly burned her skin, giving her a sense of fluid purity. She leapt over a puddle with unexpected agility. Chad’s massive body knew how to move gracefully. Harlem always lifted her spirits, even though the neighbourhood, she had to admit, wasn’t what it used to be. She was glad it was safer now. She was glad to be able to walk down the street in the body of a white man without running any particular risk, but still, she had to admit that she missed the days when there were a few more muggers around and fewer fat people, depressed and silent, trudging along the sidewalk.
Not that she had anything against fat people. Of course not. After all, she was wa
lking around in Chad’s body, the lightest, most agile and graceful of fatties. She leapt between puddles, letting out light laughs that were drowned in the noise of the nearly tropical monsoon.
Here was the building. Mystique-Chad walked up the steps and rang the doorbell.
The woman who came to the door was a little over fifty, wearing a simple light-coloured dress and with short hair. Her eyes were fringed by heavy lashes, and they flew open in horror at the sight that greeted them: a fat man without an umbrella, soaking wet, his clothes dripping. “My boy!” Sabrina exclaimed. “Is this any way to wander around the city?”
Inside, the apartment occupied one floor of what had once been a stately home of old-time Harlem. Solid and spacious architecture, high-ceilinged rooms, hardwood floors, and fireplaces that hadn’t been used in the past half-century, at least. Leaving a trail of wet footprints, Mystique-Chad followed the woman through a dimly lit room, clearly used as a sitting room-study-bedroom, into the kitchen overlooking the back. She took the towel Sabrina was offering. “You haven’t been around for a while,” Sabrina said, as she continued to observe the rain-soaked oversized boy sitting across from her. “Is there something I can do for you? Are you looking for something?” she asked as she put on the kettle.
“I think so,” Mystique-Chad whispered. She took a look around the spotless kitchen, the row of mugs lined up on the shelf, the open window with the screen. From a building across the backyard came the bass notes of a hip-hop album. “Lately I’ve been having problems with a sense of… restlessness. I need some help to relax. Something that’ll make me sleep as peacefully as a baby. Something like that excellent grass you gave me last time.”
Erotic Lives of the Superheroes Page 38
