Mystique moved towards the interior of the car, and from that short additional distance, she did her best to say with bland irony: “I think you’re letting the air conditioning out of the car. I think it’s time for you to shut that door. It’s about time for you to let me go.”
“There’s just one thing I ask: give me a call if any new notes arrive,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I’d like you to call me if anything else that strikes you as strange happens. And I’d like you to call me…” He lowered his voice and looked away: “I’d like you to call me even if nothing at all happens. But I guess that’s also out of the question.”
Mystique wasn’t sure she’d entirely understood. She cautiously adjusted her dark glasses. The detective’s open collar revealed a patch of his powerful chest which contrasted with his tiny childlike ears, ears that looked delicate and almost transparent, backlit as they were. On his face was a doleful expression, as though he wanted to ask forgiveness for what he’d just said. Each of his irises was a defined dark disc, surrounded by a halo of inflamed capillaries, not unlike the black disc of an eclipse. His eyes. His lips. What is he trying to say? Is he confessing an extra-professional interest in me? Is that what this is? Is that what he’s saying? And if that’s what he’s saying, am I possibly falling for it? Chad would laugh his head off, she wound up repeating to herself, holding onto that thought, the familiar thought of Chad, to keep from getting lost in the unknown, contradictory feeling of embarrassment that all of this prompted inside her.
After the detective pushed the door closed, the driver started up and pulled away from the sidewalk. The car sailed over the sun-baked asphalt, past a row of buildings with decrepit façades.
A packed, weary bus was clogging traffic. Mystique was running late on that morning’s appointments. She sat watching as the unfamiliar neighbourhood flowed past, still feeling lost, thinking back to the service she had just attended, the solitary voice of the Hispanic priest, the coffin sprinkled with holy water. The stiff backs of the few people present. The barren walls of the little church. She thought about those details and how they contrasted with the other funeral she’d attended a few weeks ago, the funeral of America’s most beloved son.
She remembered everything about the funeral of Franklin Richards. How could she forget? She remembered the immense weeping crowd, the scent of the hundreds of floral wreaths. That funeral had been a watershed. The entire city had shuddered to a halt. She tried to summon up a picture of herself from a distance, viewed through other eyes, as the detective must have seen her on the day of that funeral: a woman dressed in black, a woman embracing the dead man’s parents, a famous yet solitary woman moving off, silent, through the crowd filling the cathedral.
The sunlight was cutting into her through the window. While the driver conveyed her towards the studio, she draped the scarf over her head again, to protect herself from the sunshine. Or perhaps she was trying to protect herself from that image, the image of herself viewed through the eyes of Dennis De Villa, trying to protect herself from the idea of being glimpsed by that man, touched by his gaze, at once so intimate and so burning.
*
The music started. They lifted their arms and tried out the first steps. One two three, one two three. Gustav, the choreographer, took the pipe out of his mouth and showed them the moves. In the studio, without an audience, they were rehearsing the dance numbers for the upcoming show. The bodies of a dozen dancers were moving sinuously, scantily dressed, eyes focused on Gustav’s directions. Their bare feet on the studio floor. Every move they made was in time with the others, heads moving in unison, respiration synchronised. One two three, one two three.
Mystique-Madonna was among them, in turn following the choreographer, swinging and thrusting her hips. Her lungs gulped air and her heart was racing with thrilling energy. To take on Madonna’s body was always a bizarre sensation. Rehearsing dance steps was bizarre too. With her own body, she’d never known how to dance, but Madonna’s body was another matter… Like a virgin, feels so good inside. The old song pounded away with its Eighties beat.
The young dancers were flinging themselves into the beat, all around her, male and female, with the nonchalant vigour of their youth. Some of these kids hadn’t even been born when this song first came out. Some of them still hadn’t come into the world, and I’d already been thrown into prison. There was an instant’s pause. Then they all dropped, at once, she and the dancers and the choreographer, fourteen bodies grazing the floor, with the weight of their flesh, the lightness of their flesh, describing a dizzying arc and then rising again, still synchronised, in the luminous shafts of the studio spotlights.
Gustav moved in front of them. There was something miraculous about the grace of his movements. This was a gentleman half a dozen years older than Mystique, with long grey hair, a beard the same colour, and thick-lensed glasses. He wore a light-brown corduroy suit, the same suit he wore in every season, and all taken together he looked like an ageing philosophy professor, the kind of man you’d expect to run into in a library or a lecture hall in an ancient university. That image wasn’t far from the truth. In fact, Gustav was an ageing professor of philosophy, and had retired from teaching a few years earlier to begin a new career as a successful choreographer. He hadn’t changed his look since his teaching days. He showed up at dance rehearsals in his faithful corduroy suit. When the music started, all he did was take off his shoes, take the pipe out of his mouth, and start moving with unexpected agility. He had already made a name for himself with a few Broadway productions and for the past couple of seasons he’d been doing TV work.
Mystique was relieved to let herself fall under the choreographer’s lead. Relieved to have someone show her the gestures to make, the steps to follow, reducing everything to the ironbound, reassuring logic of the rhythm. Relieved to let herself give in to this music, to the energy that poured over her, relieved that she was having a break from her efforts to transform herself into Szepanski.
Gustav shouted something at her. “Your pelvis! Move your pelvis!”
Oh yes. She needed to move her pelvis, move it harder, move it more sensually, move it like a pendulum, from side to side, front to back, move it like a man, move it like a woman, move it like she was black or move it like she was white, move it in the name of humanity at large.
And yet once again, a sense of anxiety stung inside her. She could feel it like a piece of shrapnel. She couldn’t say whether that anxiety was due to her worries about the upcoming episode or to her meeting that morning with Dennis De Villa, at the funeral.
The bodies around her were dancing in chorus. They emitted a scent of light perspiration, like a dew, while their breathing became increasingly synchronised, merging together, one single great respiration that filled the studio, mingling with the song. Can’t you feel my heart beat for the very first time?
Chad came onstage and joined in the dance, dressed just like her but at least twice her size. He too possessed an unexpected agility. They had worked it out that the two of them would remain onstage, dancing side-by-side, two versions of the same character: a mutant with superpowers identical to the original, same body, same skin, same muscle fibre, even the same fingerprints… And an obese transvestite who would look unbelievably funny in comparison. The dance number was reaching its climax. It was all so perfect. Ridiculous, provocative, heartbreaking, perfect! They all spun around at the same time and lifted their arms, vibrating in unison, bodies hot and swaying.
The shrapnel of anxiety inside her. Mystique could feel it growing sharper. In the end, it wasn’t hard to figure out the reason. It wasn’t so much because of the upcoming show or the meeting with De Villa, but rather because of what she’d found, after Rosita Gomez’s funeral, when she got back to her office. There had been something waiting for Mystique when she got back.
She went on dancing. She went on moving with the appearance of an athletic pop star, and following the moves of a choreographer dressed in a corduroy business s
uit, with a brierwood pipe in his hand. She went on moving to the beat of that song that first came out a good twenty years earlier, back in the days when she was locked up in Lexington and Gustav was teaching in some university on the West Coast and most of the people in the studio either had only recently been born or hadn’t been born at all. I am Madonna, I am Mystique. I’m in a television studio rehearsing a dance routine, she reminded herself, as if all this suddenly looked foreign to her. The dancers’ arms cut through the air. Chad’s body shimmied and shook alongside hers.
When she had come into the studio a few hours ago, another note was waiting for her. It was in the usual white envelope, lying on her desk, and the envelope wasn’t even stamped. This time it hadn’t come through the mail. Someone must have left it on her desk while she was at the funeral with Dennis De Villa. Someone had sneaked into her office to leave her this message.
SO LONG, MY MYSTIQUE
One two three, one two three! The song was coming to an end. They all took a breath, getting ready for the finale. She and Chad and the dancers and the choreographer performed luxuriant arabesques with their arms and tossed their heads back and forth and waved their hair and spun around, moving for the last few seconds. It’s been a long while since I felt so vulnerable, she admitted to herself. Since she had felt in such danger as she felt now, dancing in the delirium of a pop number, at the centre of a perfect and sophisticated choreography.
*
After the dance rehearsal, she took shelter in her dressing room, regained her own appearance, and indulged in a shower. The flow of water descended over her, pouring over her flesh in long rivulets following unstable courses, carving their way into the hollow between her breasts. Water on her hair. Water on her back, on her belly, and on the dark triangle of her crotch. Water down her arms, running to her hands and hurling itself, in a cascade, as if gurgling out of her fingertips.
She raised her face to take the flow of water on her closed eyes. The sensations of Madonna’s body were pouring away. The too-taut muscles, the sensation of the diminutive stature, of the slightly rounded face, the internal flavour of that vigorous body: everything was dissolving. Madonna was dissolving, leaving Mystique in a neutral, almost stunned state, waiting as always to recognise herself. I’m coming back. My skin, my breath, the beat of my heart.
Under the unbroken flow of the shower, she massaged her neck and her aching shoulders. She was weary. The weariness seemed to come and go in her life, in waves, at ever shorter intervals. She grabbed a washcloth, rinsed it, and started running it over her skin, her eyes closed, while the sound of splashing water filled her head, and out of her consciousness that phrase emerged, without warning, like a wreck emerging from the depths of a mighty river. So long, my Mystique.
She ran the washcloth over her bluish arms, scrubbed her elbows and her underarms. That morning someone had left a new note on her desk. A member of that damned group? Mystique remembered the point that Detective De Villa had made during their first meeting, about how the group responsible for the deaths of Batman and Franklin Richards was capable of recruiting anyone. Anyone. So the question arose naturally on its own. Was the person who had entered her office someone who worked at the studio?
For some reason, she decided to rule that out. It was something like an instinct. She had an idea of how an underground group operated. Maybe she was mistaken, but she felt pretty confident that none of the people who worked alongside her possessed the kind of opaque, grim, determined strength that was required to organise attacks, murders, or operations of that kind, to conspire on a serious basis against someone. It took that kind of strength to act consciously in the dark, to slither in the murky behind-the-scenes precincts of reality. No one around me possesses that strength. I would have recognised it.
Madonna was completely gone. The water temperature was starting to drop. She had spent too many minutes under the spray of water. She ought to dry off, smear her skin with aloe gel, get dressed again, continue with her day, make phone calls, confer with the show’s technical staff, and all the other things she was scheduled to do. And yet she lingered under the increasingly cold water, her hair clinging flat to her head and the back of her neck.
However things stood, she wouldn’t say a word about the latest notes. She could rule that out too. The idea of talking again to the police, or even to Dennis De Villa, struck her as useless and embarrassing. She wouldn’t do it. She didn’t want to put the show at risk. She’d always been capable of defending herself, and she felt a strong aversion for the police, plus she lacked confidence in the idea that the police were capable of protecting her. She listed all these reasons to herself. Moreover, there was one more fateful reason. Batman had been murdered and an entire floor of the George Hotel had been blown sky-high: if whoever managed to organise all this has decided to get rid of me too, isn’t it logical to assume that sooner or later they’ll succeed? I doubt there’s anyone who can help me.
She stood under the now-chilly shower, breathing jerkily, paralysed but not entirely intimidated, contemplating that thought within her, that sudden, clear, definitive thought, so unquestionable that it seemed impersonal, not hers, timeless. A thought that seemed to have always been there, like an ancient inscription, carved into the walls of her consciousness. Sooner or later they’ll succeed.
*
On Friday a group of five people, taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather, jumped into the waters of the East River and started swimming along the Manhattan coastline. As far as could be determined, the five swimmers were staging an unauthorised preview of the marathon swim that would be held in a few weeks, as every year: twenty-eight miles through the not-always-limpid waters of the East River and the Hudson, an anticlockwise circumnavigation of the most famous island on earth. The five reckless swimmers had plunged into the river several weeks too early, without any support team or rescue boats.
The local news provided a brief report. When one of the five reckless swimmers ran into trouble and was on the verge of drowning, he was dragged to safety by Namor, who showed up providentially just in the nick of time. The well-known television personality, a former superhero and champion swimmer equipped with gills, told the reporters that he’d spotted the swimmers by chance while he was out for a walk along the riverbank. What a lucky coincidence. Namor had heroically plunged into the water, he’d rescued the thrashing swimmer and helped his exhausted fellow swimmers to shore.
Mystique and Chad giggled over the details for at least half an hour. It was obvious that old Namor had paid those five idiots, and that he’d put together the whole thing to get himself featured on the evening news in an attempt to generate some publicity for himself and the next episode of his show. It was such an obviously manufactured media stunt that even the newscasters had a hard time keeping the sarcasm out of their voices. That old exhibitionist with his pointy ears. Him and his pathetic contrivances.
The news report was so ridiculous that it restored a hint of cheerfulness to Mystique’s mood. She forgot the obsessive concerns of the last few days and devoted herself to editing the scripts for the show.
But as the afternoon stretched on, the subtle dread of the oncoming weekend started to envelop her, as it did every week, only amplified by recent unsettling developments. Laughing about old Namor just wasn’t enough. She felt a compelling desire to get out of there. The desire to escape from the enclosed space of the studio grew inside her until she made up her mind, gave some instructions to the production staff, invented an appointment somewhere, and had a taxi summoned. She told the driver to take her into town.
“Into town where?” the driver objected.
“Into town… I don’t know. Take me to Columbus Circle.”
The taxi headed off. It took some time to get to Manhattan through the thick traffic. The taxi driver turned on the radio and let the chit-chat of a radio presenter fill the interior of the cab. News about the late afternoon traffic. Weather reports about the scorcher of a weekend
that was plummeting straight towards the city. And passing mentions of the news of the day, including the adventure of the five swimmers who had plunged into the river that morning, before being luckily rescued by Namor.
The taxi driver shook his head in annoyance. This was one hell of a day. Thermometers skyrocketing and young morons deciding it would be a good idea to swim around the island.
As soon as she got out of the taxi, Mystique scampered into a lobby of the Time Warner Center. She slipped into a restroom she had previously used for this purpose. She didn’t have the right clothes with her to transform herself into Chad. Instead, she undressed and took on the appearance of young Susie, the production assistant on the show, who was just a size smaller than Mystique. She put her clothes back on and emerged into the open air. Free at last! Free to wander the city without being recognised, without running risks, free to blend into the crowd, as she tried once again to calm the nervous flames that burned her from within.
She walked down Broadway, the sun assailing her skin. Susie’s complexion was so delicate. Mystique-Susie crossed the street to reach the shadier side, and continued on past the usual succession of Starbucks, health clubs, restaurants, news stands, flower shops, grocery stores, and questionable electronics outlets. She accelerated her pace to overtake a cluster of chubby women, tourists from some indeterminate European country, whose guide was holding aloft a small plastic umbrella as a sort of banner.
She made her way through the theatre district and the crowds around Times Square, pushing along the sidewalks jammed with bodies, speeding up, almost breaking into a run, while a confused knot of people swirled around her. At one street corner, a man with a guitar was singing a country song, dressed in nothing but a cowboy hat, underpants, and boots. People stopped to take pictures. The famous naked cowboy of Times Square. Mystique-Susie continued south, moving away from the chaos of the tourist zone, moving past other bodies, meeting other gazes. She felt even more agitated, and looked over her shoulder more than once, feeling silly. No one was following her.
Erotic Lives of the Superheroes Page 40
