All My Friends Are Superheroes

by Andrew Kaufman

  Sitting on the grass, looking at his bike, he listened to the city. Loudmotorcycle couldn’t believe how loud it all was. Even at this time of night there were sirens and traffic and a vague industrial hum. Loudmotorcycle started to wonder what he was doing with his life.

  The Perfectionist dumped him. It wasn’t because he never rode his motorcycle any more. It wasn’t because his tattoos suddenly looked stupid. It was his insomnia. Every night, all night, he tossed and turned. Loudmotorcycle tried prescription medications, non-prescription drugs, herbal remedies, soothing music and earplugs – nothing worked. He hasn’t been able to sleep since the day he swerved. Every night he lies in his bed, kept awake by city noise, wishing he’d killed that fucking cat.

  The Perfectionist continues looking out the window. She sees a two-tone beige suitcase hit the conveyer belt. This is the last piece of luggage. There is nothing more to toss. The two men climb into a modified golf cart. The one driving looks exactly like her ex-boyfriend the Spooner.

  Every night it’ll just hit the Spooner but he can’t predict when. Sometimes he’ll be asleep and it’ll wake him up. Other times he’ll still be reading or watching television. Every night the address is different. Sometimes it’s close enough to walk. Some nights he takes the bus. Some nights a cab.

  He can visualize it long before he gets there. If it’s a house or an apartment, or some strange basement room you get to from around the back, the Spooner always knows. He always finds the door unlocked, or at least unlocked to him. He never stumbles, never trips over a chair or a coffee table, as he navigates this unknown space in the dark.

  The Spooner always knows where the bedroom is. Someone sleeping alone in the fetal position always occupies the bed. He gets under the covers. He holds them. They never wake up. They always whisper ‘Thank you’ in their sleep.

  One night the Spooner was drawn to a familiar address. He found the door unlocked, or unlocked to him. He didn’t need his superpower to locate the bedroom. The woman he found sleeping in the fetal position was the Perfectionist. He broke up with her the next day.

  But this is the first time the Perfectionist has thought about the Spooner in a year and a half. She feels the plane taxi to the end of the runway. The engines hum. Her body is pushed back in her chair. She grabs both of her armrests. She reminds herself to take deep breaths. The runway is a grey blur. The front of the plane tips up. A roaring sound comes from the wings. The angle of the plane increases. She looks to the front of the plane and it’s like being at the back of a roller coaster. She grips her armrests tighter. The plane levels out. The seat-belt sign flashes off. The Perfectionist relaxes her grip on the armrests.

  Tom rushes to take his seat belt off. He pushes past the man in the aisle seat. He holds his left hand to his right wrist. He clenches and unclenches his fist as he half-jogs to the back of the plane.

  The washroom on the left is unoccupied. Tom bolts the door behind him. The fluorescent light flickers on. He rolls up his sleeve and looks down at four crescent-moon cuts on his wrist. He turns on the tap and runs cold water over his wrist. The bleeding isn’t bad. A mirror hangs over the stainless steel washbasin and Tom smiles at his reflection. He laughs out loud.

  ‘She touched me,’ he says. ‘She touched me!’

  SEVEN

  THE SUPERHEROES OF TORONTO

  There are 249 superheroes in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. None of them have secret identities. Very few wear costumes. Most of their powers don’t result in material gain. The Amphibian can survive both on land and underwater, but really, what use is that? Who’s going to give him a job for that? He works as a bike courier for a company downtown called Speedy.

  Even the Clock, the only superhero who can travel in time, doesn’t think her power is anything special. She’s quick to point out that everyone can travel in time and everybody’s constantly doing it: a real superpower would be the ability not to travel in time.

  There are no supervillains. Not one of the superheroes believes this. Every superhero considers one of the others a supervillian. The Perfectionist fights with the Projectionist. Businessman and the Union consider each other evil. Even the Amphibian has come to blows with the Linear.

  At parties, the host will inevitably have to listen to some outraged superhero say, ‘I can’t believe you invited so-and-so.’ Or this superhero and that superhero will run into each other on their way to the bathroom and stand there with their fingers pointing, yelling, ‘Evil! Evil!!’

  The Stress Bunny throws the best parties. The Amphibian took Tom to one of the Stress Bunny’s end-of-summer parties. It was the first superhero party Tom was ever at. He nudged the Amphibian with his shoulder.

  ‘Watch this,’ he said to the Amphibian. ‘Hey ... hey, The!’ Tom called.

  The Scenester looked. The Greenlighter looked. The Phoney, the Verb, the Minimalist – almost everybody in the room looked. Including the Perfectionist.

  The Amphibian didn’t think it was funny but the Perfectionist giggled. She’d never noticed how many of their first names were ‘The.’ She smiled at Tom. She flipped her hair over her shoulder.

  Hypno thought the joke was funny but he didn’t think his girlfriend finding it funny was funny. He hypnotized everybody in the room to forget Tom’s name. He tried to hypnotize Tom into wanting to go home and discovered that he couldn’t – Tom is the only person Hypno has never been able to hypnotize.

  Even though she couldn’t remember his name, the Perfectionist still spent the whole night talking with him.

  ‘What’s your name again?’ she kept asking him.

  ‘It’s Tom,’ Tom kept saying.

  ‘Right. That’s right,’ she’d say. She’d immediately forget it. She forgot Tom’s name eighteen times over the course of the evening.

  THE FROG-KISSER

  The Frog-Kisser was in high school when she first discovered her power. Dating the captain of the football team had left her drained and unfulfilled. That’s when she discovered Brian, the head of the debating club, and her latent powers emerged.

  Blessed with the ability to transform geeks into winners, she is cursed with the reality that once she enables this transformation, the origin of her initial attraction is gone.

  FIFTH BUSINESS

  Fifth Business picks a new subject every three years. His current subject could be you and you wouldn’t even know it. Fifth Business is invisible.

  If you are his subject he’s spent the last three years watching you bathe, dress, cook, fight, caress and have moments of doubt. He’s made notes while watching you watch TV, brush your teeth, burst into tears, get hired, fired and tired.

  He knows everything about you. He knows the one thing that needs to happen so you can fulfill your dreams. He knows the single event that would trigger your downfall. And he’s deciding, right now, which one he’ll make happen.

  THE SEEKER

  The Seeker knows how to get anywhere from any place, even if he’s never been there before. But since this is his superpower and he defines himself through it, the Seeker gets quite upset and fidgety whenever he reaches a destination. He has to immediately turn around and head somewhere else.

  THE PROJECTIONIST

  The Projectionist can make you believe whatever she believes. If she believes interest rates are going to fall, and you have a short conversation with the Projectionist, you will too. If she believes that, no, in fact, you didn’t signal when you turned left, causing the Projectionist to ram her car into the back of yours, so will you.

  Her downfall began when she fell in love with the Inverse. She absolutely, 100% fell in love with the Inverse. She projected all this emotion onto him but the Inverse, being the Inverse, simply reflected the opposite of everything she was sending.

  Strangely, neither the Inverse nor the Projectionist can let go of the relationship.

  THE CHIP

  Chip was born with a chip on her shoulder. It’s an immensely heavy chip, a chip that weighs so much it forc
ed her to develop superhuman strength. But the chip on Chip’s shoulder weighs so much that only her superstrength could remove it, but she can’t use her superstrength until she gets rid of the chip and she can’t get rid of the chip without using her super-strength. She appears no stronger than any regular.

  EIGHT

  THE FIRST NIGHT OF INVISIBILITY

  For three hours and forty-five minutes the Perfectionist stares at clouds. Tom stares at the Perfectionist. Now that she’s fallen asleep, Tom examines the cheese sandwich the airhostess handed him over the Prairies. Just east of the Rockies, Tom unwraps it and takes a bite. The bread tastes like plastic wrap. He sets the sandwich on the corner of his tray.

  The Perfectionist snores (perfectly). Tom knows he could nudge her and the snoring would stop. It’s what he used to do. But since he turned invisible Tom won’t touch the Perfectionist when she’s sleeping. He’s only tried it once, the first night they were married – the night he thought he’d killed her.

  He’d watched her step out of her wedding dress like it were a pile of snow. She left it on the floor and climbed directly under the covers. Since the reception she’d sneezed, or hiccuped, or flailed her arms each time he’d touched her. He didn’t want her to do any of that but it was his wedding night and he didn’t want to sleep alone. He waited until she fell asleep and held her from behind. They spooned. He fell asleep holding her.

  Two hours later Tom woke up. The Perfectionist wasn’t breathing. He watched her chest. Seconds passed. Finally she took a breath. Tom wasn’t relieved; the breath was so deep her whole body expanded. Her feet came off the bed, her chest ballooned and her fists curled into balls. Ten seconds passed before her next one.

  Tom picked her up by the shoulders. He shook her. She didn’t wake up. He counted twenty seconds and still no breath.

  ‘Wake up!’ he shouted. ‘Perf – wake up!’ She didn’t wake up.

  Tom jumped off the bed. He ran into the kitchen. He phoned the Amphibian to get Hypno’s number. He bit the inside of his cheek as he dialled. He cursed the day she’d met Hypno with each number he punched.

  The thing is, the Perfectionist really did have the best sex of her life for the three months she dated Hypno. Then one morning, a Wednesday, she came like never before. Her toes curled. Her fingernails dug into his back. His cock was something she never wanted to let out of her, but she realized she didn’t much like the rest of him.

  Hypno held her and fell asleep. She had two hours before her shift at the diner. She delicately lifted Hypno’s hand, showered and changed. She gathered her toothbrush, the clothes she had in the third drawer of his dresser, the few things that hung in his closet, and the miscellaneous CDs and books. All these things fit in three white plastic grocery bags. She didn’t leave a note. She just left.

  When Hypno woke that morning, she was gone. He knew she wasn’t coming back. He was devastated. He couldn’t go to work. He couldn’t eat. His cat disappeared. The only way he survived the experience was by hypnotizing himself. He dangled a watch, stared at the mirror and repeated after himself. The Perfectionist became invisible to him, a spell he broke only to attend her wedding.

  Tom held the receiver close to his ear. He listened to the phone ring three times.

  ‘Hello?’ Hypno answered.

  ‘It’s Tom.’

  ‘So?’ Hypno said.

  ‘Don’t,’ Tom said. ‘I think I’ve killed her.’

  ‘While she was sleeping?’ Hypno asked.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You touched her while she was asleep?’

  ‘I held her.’

  ‘You shouldn’t do that.’

  ‘It’s our wedding night,’ Tom said.

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘She’s still sleeping?’

  ‘You’d better hope so.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Hypno assured. ‘Go back and check on her, and you’ll see. She’s fine.’

  Tom dropped the phone. He ran to the bedroom. The Perfectionist was sleeping (perfectly). Tom watched her to make sure. He sat at the foot of the bed. Ten minutes passed and her breathing was easy and regular.

  Tom got off the bed still watching the Perfectionist. He stepped on her wedding dress, then picked it up, searched around and found a wooden hanger. The dress rustled as he hung it up. It took up almost half the space in the closet. He walked back to the kitchen and saw the phone on the floor. Tom picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’ Tom asked into it.

  ‘She’s fine, right?’ asked Hypno.

  ‘How do I make it stop?’

  ‘It’s pretty simple.’

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘Are you that afraid of her, Tom?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘If you can’t figure this one out, you don’t deserve her. You really don’t,’ Hypno said. He hung up.

  Tom listened to the dial tone. He held the receiver away from his head and looked at it. He threw the phone. The receiver was skidding across the floor as the Perfectionist walked into the kitchen. She stepped over it without looking down, went to the sink and filled a glass with water. She sat at the kitchen table, staring straight ahead.

  ‘See me!’ Tom screamed. He waved his hands in front of her face. He pushed the kitchen table away. The Perfectionist reached down. She took hold of a glass that wasn’t there, raised her arm and drank from her empty hand.

  Tom opened a cupboard. He took out a dinner plate. Raising it over his head, Tom let it fall. The plate shattered.

  The Perfectionist didn’t look up.

  Tom dropped another plate. The Perfectionist stared at the wall in front of her. Tom threw a plate into the wall she stared at. The Perfectionist didn’t look up. Tom reached to the back of the cupboard. He stacked all the remaining plates.

  ‘Look at me!’ he screamed. He lifted the stack over his head and his housecoat bunched up under his arms.

  The Perfectionist didn’t look at him.

  Tom dropped the plates. They hit the floor and shattered into countless bits. The Perfectionist got up from the kitchen table and set her imaginary glass in the sink. She stepped on the bits of broken plate and cut her feet to ribbons. She didn’t say a word. She tracked blood all the way to the bedroom.

  Tom discovered that touching her feet made her seasick. The Perfectionist threw up into a bowl as he pulled slivers of china out of her feet. He washed her feet. He bandaged them and slept on the floor.

  In seat F27 the Perfectionist continues snoring. Tom puts his head in his hands. He leans forward, reaches into the pocket of the seat in front of him and pulls the plastic off a pair of headphones. He plugs them in. The last passenger left the volume at nine and opera plays so loud he can hear it with the headphones still on his lap.

  Tom looks at the headphones. He can hear the music, but he can’t see it. ‘If music is invisible, can being invisible be all bad?’ Tom thinks to himself.

  Tom unplugs the headphones. He puts them back into the pocket of the seat in front of him.

  NINE

  SIX HUNDRED CIGARETTES LATER

  One morning exactly five months after their wedding, the Perfectionist woke up even earlier than usual. She walked to her corner store to buy a package of cigarettes but when she got to the counter she hesitated. She asked for three cartons of cigarettes and bought a pink disposable lighter as well. From the corner store she walked to a thrift store where for $3.99 she bought the largest ashtray they had.

  In the same plastic bag she carried the cigarettes, the ashtray and the pink plastic lighter back to the apartment. She upended the plastic bag on the kitchen table, the ashtray wobbling as it hit the tabletop.

  Using a letter opener she unwrapped the three cartons of cigarettes. She took the plastic covering off the twenty-four packages. She took all the cigarettes out of their packages and made a stack of 600 cigarettes.

  The Perfectionist started smoking. Six hundred seemed like
an incredible number of cigarettes to her. She was sure Tom would return before she smoked the last one.

  Twelve days later the 600th cigarette was between her nicotine-stained fingers. The plastic pink lighter was slippery in her hand. Her thumb flicked. She pushed the flame into the tip of the cigarette. She inhaled, didn’t cough, and somebody knocked on her door.

  The Perfectionist exhaled. She set the lit cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. On the way to the door her inner voice said not to open it. ‘He wouldn’t knock,’ it told her. She opened the door anyway.

  The man who stood in front of her was tall. His hair was freshly cut and greying at the temples. His black suit, white shirt and black tie were pressed. His shoes shone. Beside him on the sidewalk was a sample case big enough to hold a vacuum cleaner. He smiled at the Perfectionist.

  The Perfectionist has always hated vacuum salesmen. There’s no reason, no traumatic episode in her past, no exlover or absent father who is one. She just doesn’t like them.

  ‘I don’t want a vacuum,’ the Perfectionist said.

  ‘I’m not selling vacuums,’ he answered. His voice was lyrical, calm and reassuring.

  ‘What are you selling?’ the Perfectionist asked.

  ‘I’m selling love,’ he answered.

  The Perfectionist leaned against the door jamb. The smell of cigarettes came from her hair and her clothes. She backed out of the doorway and he followed her inside.

  In the kitchen he set down his sample case. He tugged up his pant legs as he sat. He crossed his right leg over his left, revealing argyle socks.

  ‘What kind of love are we interested in today?’ he asked.

  ‘What kinds do you have?’

  ‘Well,’ he said. He stood up. ‘I’ve got the love you want, the love you think you want, the love you think you want but don’t when you finally get it ... ’