Mystique was left alone. She pushed her face against the sofa cushion. She got up and fell back and realised that every breath caused her pain. She undressed and took on the first body in the show’s schedule and felt the thrill of going onstage as the voice in the hallway announced five minutes to show time. A sort of blackout swept over her and a moment later someone was dragging her out of the dressing room just as the first notes of the theme music echoed throughout the studio. Arnold Schwarzenegger covered the last few yards with trembling steps. As soon as he hit the stage the applause from the audience thundered over him, making him stagger. A blast of unbearable light. Arnold lifted his arms, pumped his biceps, and spoke his first line, setting off an immediate burst of laughter. Chad and the extras spun around him like the gearing of a huge merry-go-round and the audience went on laughing and the lines poured from his lips with miraculous fluency.
There was a commercial break and a sort of blackout again. Mystique found herself in the bathroom, sobbing like a rank beginner in her first production, but she immediately regained control and took on a new body. The show started up again at the most frantic pace it had ever put on. Mystique went from one character to another in something approaching a trance state, whispering her lines to the audience as if they were words of love and dancing and singing with an ultimate and magnificent grace. The spotlights blazed above the stage like flaming meteors. Madonna whirled across the set, surrounded by the bodies of the dancers, a phantasmagoria of lithe gleaming bodies, then she danced a duet with Chad and right in the middle of the routine they looked each other in the eyes and both felt a shiver of heartbreaking perfection run through them.
The last routine came as a complete surprise. The character who appeared onstage wasn’t Doctor Szepanski but someone even more shocking. The man who walked onto the stage, striking the audience dumb in amazement was… Namor! The Prince of Atlantis, the showman with the gills, the man who at that very moment was hosting the rival show on another network, the man who was trying to overtake Mystique in terms of ratings. With an audacious inspiration, she had transformed herself into her own adversary.
After its initial astonishment, the audience went wild. Dressed in his distinctive green briefs, Namor crooned an old Frank Sinatra favourite. Behind him, dancers circled in midair, dangling from invisible wires, dressed as goldfish and pretending to swim in an immense aquarium. Chad was dressed as a starfish. Namor ramped up, belting it out now. Goodbye, said so easily, goodbye, said so quietly, goodbye goodbye goodbye, and both the studio audience and the millions of home viewers in front of their TVs were moved to tears by the words of the song, while still laughing at the funny faces that Namor made. No one thought that this would be the last broadcast of the show. It was only later that, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, many viewers remembered this scene and saw in it, to their distress, all its sad and ultimate beauty.
Finally, she resumed her normal shape. She emerged to accept the applause at the end of the episode, and someone tossed her a bouquet. The cameras drew in closer. The audience was on its feet, clapping. She picked up the flowers, acknowledged the applause, and then, with an effort to keep her voice steady, told everyone to tune in again for the next show, though she inwardly doubted that she would be there for it.
*
Thanks to the amazing energy she had put into the episode, the Celebrity Mystique Show had managed to rise to the challenge of the real Namor’s programme. The duel had ended in a draw. Virtually identical audience shares. Susie had brought the news while she was recovering in her dressing room.
Even though it was important news, Mystique doubted that the fact of not being beaten in the ratings race would be enough to placate Gary. Before her producer had time to show up, she got changed and left her dressing room. She had no interest in undergoing a showdown with the production executives. Absolutely not. Right then and there, she couldn’t put up with anything of the sort. Out in the hallway, the laughter of Chad and all the others, clustered in one of the dressing rooms drinking toasts, echoed loudly: whatever the show’s fate might be, it was worth raising a glass to what had been, without question, the most spectacular broadcast in the history of the programme. Susie had told her they’d be celebrating and urged her to hurry to join them. But instead, Mystique scampered down the hall and slipped into the elevator.
She pressed the button for the ground floor. She looked at her reflection in the elevator mirror wide-eyed, almost amazed to remember, after all those transformations, who she was after all. This woman. This face. She adjusted the collar of her blouse and pulled a lipstick out of her bag. Her soft lips under the lipstick. She felt guilty about having left without a word. On the other hand, she felt sure that everyone would just assume they’d see her, like always, the next morning in the production office.
Outside it was a glorious evening. A dry wind blew over the parking lot in waves, like surges of heat from some gigantic invisible fire. The sky was clear, uniform as a mirror, with just an oblong sliver of moon in the far distance, slicing through the blue expanse. Reality pulsated ever more intensely around her. Mystique kept walking through the parking lot until, as she expected, she saw Dennis standing next to his car.
Dennis moved towards her. He displayed his usual composure but he quickened his step over the last few yards separating them and his voice quavered when he spoke. “You’re beautiful,” were his first words.
So was he. His hair was wet, probably evidence that he’d recently showered, and the shaven skin of his chin and cheeks seemed to possess the smooth purity of marble. His fiery eyes shone brighter than ever. They walked together towards his car, wordless, without touching, as if everything had already been agreed upon. Their clothes were tossed by a violent gust of wind. “They say something’s on its way,” he told her. “A new change in the weather.”The car started up and moved away from the studio. Dennis headed west, driving calmly, his strong hands on the steering wheel. His profile stood out against the background of the street.
On the sidewalk, a few kids were walking along, arms spread wide, leaning into the wind as though expecting to fly.
They decided to stop at a diner she knew, a quiet place never too crowded, furnished with a row of old velvet banquettes. A waitress with a gracious smile, dark-skinned and almond-eyed, came to take their orders. Mystique imagined how that young woman’s eyes might see her: the famous television personality, weary after the evening’s show, stopping to grab a bite on her way home, accompanied by someone who looked like a younger lover.
She was hungry now. She couldn’t remember eating anything that day. She decided to order a piece of cheesecake and Dennis didn’t comment, just gave an approving smile. They talked and talked. They talked in increasingly intimate terms, sinking into the old velvet seats, while the waitress on the night shift kept a benevolent eye on them from a distance.
All of a sudden, every obstacle between them had fallen away. She poured out her heart. She told him stories about her life, blending in a mixed bag of funny anecdotes, less-funny anecdotes, and personal regrets. How much she regretted having been too naive when she was young, or perhaps too proud, or maybe both. She told him about the fever, when she was a girl, every time she tried to transform herself into someone else. Her regret about not having had children. She told him about the people who wrote messages asking her to transform herself into a departed loved one, people she couldn’t help because her powers only allowed her to transform herself into those who were still alive. Her regret at having spent so much of her life apart from others. She told him about the Philadelphia drag queen who staged shows in outlying bars, wearing a wig and dying his skin blue; how the drag queen had sent her a video of one of his performances with a note that said: You may be happy to learn, since you’ve transformed yourself into so many other people, that someone is finally trying to transform himself into you. Too bad I don’t have the kind of superpowers that would let me finish the job!
They laughed
together and turned serious again and laughed for no particular reason and almost started crying. They got up to leave. She left an excessive tip on the table. It was late when they got to her place and this time Dennis turned off the engine and there was no uncertainty about it.
*
They both got out of the car and walked into the apartment. Once they were inside, they stopped, facing each other, with the lights still off, each trying to read the other’s face. She slipped into the kitchen and when she pulled open the fridge the cold pale light illuminated, barely, the silhouettes of the furniture in the room. He had followed close behind. In the lunar-like glow, they embraced for the first time and their mouths sought each other, confidently, like they’d always known one another. Dennis’ tongue filled her mouth and she gulped as if trying to swallow it. She pulled away from him, trembling, covered her face with both hands, and wished that everything could remain as it was right then forever, like in a movie still, two people petrified after their first ravenous kiss.
They drank some chilled wine and moved into the bedroom, where she turned on a small lamp. Dennis set down his police handgun on the nightstand by the bed. Then he slowly undressed, as the lamp projected onto the wall the dark and oversize shadow of his movements. Mystique watched him, sitting on the edge of the bed, breathing in silence. Dennis slid off his boxer shorts and stood naked before her. He walked towards her and his cock was straining and moist and Mystique cupped her hands around it. Then she took it in her mouth and he pushed, slowly, until he hit the soft barrier of her throat.
At last, they were both naked. Lying on the bed, side by side, the man with the slightly olive skin and the woman with the bluish complexion. Mystique writhed on the sheets. On the ceiling, where the light of the lamp didn’t reach, the darkness seemed to wrap itself in spirals. Dennis moved down and brushed her with his lips. He ran the tip of his tongue around the edges before sliding in, kissing her vagina as though it was a mouth. He sucked on the small knot of her clitoris, massaging it with his tongue until he felt it pulsate… The body beneath his was changing. The flesh under his tongue seemed to melt and then return, with an altered shape. Dennis lifted his face and contemplated the person into whom Mystique had transformed herself. It was a man’s body. It was his own body. The two Dennis De Villas gazed, reflecting each in the other, throbbing, two naked, identical men, with the same identical cock, identical skin, identical sweat. Dennis came up, bringing his face close to the other’s, his gaze in the other’s eyes, closer and closer, hard lips pressed against hard lips. They clung together like long-lost twins. The sheets smelt fresh and the night awaited silently, on the edge of the window sill, populated by a thousand distant echoes.
Who was still awake out there? The night loomed over the city like a shadow cast by the wing of an immense angel. In the houses, sleepless babies were rocked by sleepless mothers. Men with elusive gazes met in the corners of parks and left used condoms in the bushes. Street-sweepers drove down the streets in their massive vehicles for the city’s hygiene, sweeping away garbage and crumpled newspapers filled with now-obsolete news. Reckless squirrels froze, paralysed in the headlights of an oncoming car, convinced that the sun was already rising. Weary MTA employees drove night trains through underground tunnels, in the bowels of the city, fantasising about being different men, men who could pay their credit card bills, about fleeing elsewhere and finding love, or losing love once and for all. The city regenerated in the darkness and in the neon lights. Night gave the gifts of both anguish and relief. “Mystique,” Dennis called. “Mystique.”
She came back. She resumed her own form. She was once again a woman lying underneath a man’s body. She twisted vigorously while shivers ran across her skin in waves, feeling herself crushed beneath the weight of Dennis’ body. She hugged him close and tried to push him away.
“Mystique,” he kept calling. He immobilised her arms and pushed his face into her hair. He was sliding into her. Their bodies united. His naked flesh inside her naked flesh, that was all, just their breathing, their synchronised motions.
She began to vibrate and arched her hips while he thrust his hips down and for long minutes they were lost in this profound, mechanical, animal, almost choreographic movement.
Outside, the wind was blowing hard. Slow aeroplanes moved blinking across the sky and trees rustled in chorus in the backyards. Was that glow in the eastern sky a timid and early harbinger of dawn? Mystique and Dennis suddenly slowed down and each stared at the constellation of drops on the other’s forehead. Both their hearts were beating in time. “Do you know who I am?” he moaned.
A shudder ran through her and she felt something give in her belly and it dawned on her that it was all just as she had suspected. “I know who you are,” she moaned. “I know who you are.” She’d known it since the day before, when she’d stopped to think things over in her office. Maybe she’d known it before, maybe since their dinner in Harlem, from the circumspect manner he had of talking about himself, she’d known ever since he confessed that he had seen her and desired her at Franklin Richards’ funeral, she’d known it from his enigmatic glances, she’d known it since she had taken on his body and tasted his flavour, so dense and ambiguous and inaccessible. He was the man who would kill her. He was the man who had been sent by the group or perhaps, it occurred to her now, he and the group were one and the same. She opened her mouth wide but was unable to emit anything more than a whisper. “Those notes?”
“I don’t know anything about them.” The sweat on Dennis’ face was dripping onto Mystique’s face in a slow rain. He blew gently on her as if trying to dry her off. “Those notes are just as much of a mystery to me. I think someone has been trying to warn you, or maybe just bid you farewell. Of course, they gave me an excellent excuse to get in touch with you,” he said, with the sound of a tormented confession. His voice broke. “Mystique. Close your eyes,” he implored.
She kept looking at him. Dennis’ features were dazzling in the dim light. She looked at the glare of the lamplight reflecting off his skin and the sweat beading on his forehead.
Dennis understood that she lacked the strength or the desire to fight back. He released the tension of his arms around her. He blew again on the skin of her face. He gave her a sorrowful kiss and repeated: “Close your eyes.”
Mystique didn’t close her eyes. She didn’t know where he’d pulled the plastic bag out from. In an instant it was wrapped around her head and through the transparent plastic Dennis’ face began to blur. The plastic clung to her face and began puffing and sagging with each breath she took. Without her willing it, her body went into a series of spasms. She grabbed her breasts almost hard enough to rip them and went through a handful of final convulsive transformations. Dennis held the edge of the bag tight around her neck. The lack of oxygen forced her body to calm down, the crisis passed and the fire that had always burned ceaselessly in her chest began at last to fade.
The humidity in her breath was fogging up the bag. The light created odd reflections on the folds of the plastic. She felt the intoxicating heat of Dennis’ body. She felt her own body pulsate like a single enormous heart.
It seemed to her that she was dissolving, becoming someone she had never been, someone without a name or a shape, a perfect body devoid of pain, devoid of regrets. He was holding her tight and asking her forgiveness and telling her that it was necessary, and only after a couple of minutes did she realise that she was hearing those words from a distant, unattainable place, where all this had stopped mattering.
Epilogue
Superman
June 2006
According to the newspaper accounts it was the cleaning lady who found the body the next day, lying naked on the bed, with the clear plastic bag still around the head. The limbs were neatly arranged, the legs drawn out straight, the hands folded together, as if the murderer had wished to give that corpse a last semblance of peace. The body with its bluish skin on the white sheet. The white c
urtains quietly swelling in the breeze, a sense of tidiness reigning over the bedroom.
At first, everyone thought it was a sex game gone wrong, a theory that seemed to have been borne out by the coroner’s finding that the murder had taken place immediately following or perhaps even during sexual intercourse. One more seamy death in the world of the ex-superheroes. The newspapers could barely contain their excitement. But apart from the tawdry circumstances, the identity of the famous victim suggested that the case was something more than a simple sexual incident, which drove the detectives to examine a series of other, more wide-ranging hypotheses. One after another, the investigative trails were run down and eliminated.
The murder had nothing to do with the world of show business in which the victim worked, did not involve demented fans or envious television personalities, and seemed in fact to have triggered, in a milieu that was normally so flinty-hearted and merciless, a surge of genuine grief. Show business people along the entire fame gradient talked about the news with tears in their eyes. The victim’s colleagues maintained a grieving silence out of respect for her memory. A week after the murder, the victim’s principal television rival, the arrogant Namor, returned on air in his show and burst into convulsive tears, floating in his giant tank as the fish swam around him, gaping in amazement. Although more than a few questioned the sincerity of those aquatic tears, which by the way led to a rise in his ratings, many others thought his grief seemed authentic. Namor might be an overblown buffoon, no doubt about that, but he was an overblown buffoon capable of profound emotions.
Nor did the murder have to do with the victim’s past history. It had nothing to do with her time in prison nor with her contacts with groups of mutant extremists in the late Seventies, events so deeply buried in the past that they had left no more traces, in the collective memory, than a sand castle in the aftermath of high tide. The victim’s death had nothing to do with these aspects of her life. All that was left then was the darkest hypothesis. The nameless group. The organisation that had already carried out other murders in the world of former superheroes seemed to have struck again.
Erotic Lives of the Superheroes Page 45
