All My Friends Are Superheroes

by Andrew Kaufman

  FOURTEEN

  THE BUTTON FACTORY GALLERY

  Tom watches the Perfectionist sniff. In the washroom he’d realized that smell, like sound, was invisible. He scrubbed the deodorant from his underarms. He ran on the spot as fast as he could for six minutes. He’s still out of breath. Sweat drips from his forehead. There are moisture stains under his arms.

  The Perfectionist leans towards him. She sniffs. He unbuttons the top three buttons of his shirt and holds it open at the collar. The Perfectionist leans closer. Tom flaps his arms like a chicken. She closes her eyes. She breathes in until her lungs are full.

  ‘Who are you fighting?’ Tom asks. A good question, but Tom’s referring to a specific experience they had at the Projectionist’s art show at the Button Factory Gallery.

  Tom and the Perfectionist both received an invitation. He’d assumed she wouldn’t want to go but he was wrong. She wanted to see what the Projectionist called art. The Projectionist is the only superhero ever to receive a Canada Council grant.

  The reception started at seven and Tom and the Perfectionist stepped from their cab at nine. They entered the gallery. It was shoulder to shoulder with superheroes. Everybody was there: the Cartographer, 360, Fifteen-minutesago, the Barometer, even the Scenester.

  Tom and the Perfectionist circulated through the hot room. The Perfectionist was sweating (perfectly). The white walls of the gallery were bare – they couldn’t find any art. The room held nothing but superheroes. At 9:15 they were ready to leave. The Amphibian caught them on their way out the door.

  ‘Fantastic, isn’t it?’ asked the Amphibian. He held a large glass of wine in his hand. Stains on the rim showed it’d been filled several times.

  Tom rolled his eyes. The Perfectionist crossed her arms.

  ‘About as expected,’ she said.

  ‘You didn’t go into the back room, did you?’ the Amphibian asked.

  ‘There’s a back room?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Follow me,’ the Amphibian said. He pushed through the superheroes. Tom and the Perfectionist followed.

  At the far end of the room was a tiny door. The Amphibian got on his hands and knees. He crawled through the door.

  ‘I don’t want to get my pants dirty,’ said Tom.

  ‘I’ve got to see this,’ said the Perfectionist. She crawled through the tiny door. Tom followed her (and looked up her skirt).

  The room on the other side was bigger than the one they’d just left. A mirror covered the far wall completely. It looked like a regular mirror. Tom, the Perfectionist and the Amphibian stood in front of it. Their reflections weren’t distorted in any way.

  Tom rolled his eyes. The Perfectionist crossed her arms. They were both disappointed, a sentiment Tom was about to express when his reflection leapt out of the mirror and started running towards him. The Perfectionist’s reflection jumped out of the mirror and started running towards her. So did the Amphibian’s.

  With his reflection running towards him, Tom didn’t know what to do. He raised his fists. His reflection raised its fists. They sized each other up. They circled around each other.

  Tom found an opening. He jabbed with a right, which his reflection blocked with a left. His reflection threw a right hook, which Tom blocked with his left arm. In his peripheral vision Tom saw the Perfectionist fighting the same fight.

  Tom’s arms began to ache. His knuckles were bleeding. Bruises were forming on his forearms. He couldn’t keep this up much longer, and his reflection showed no signs of tiring.

  ‘What are you guys doing?’ yelled the Amphibian.

  The Amphibian’s voice surprised Tom. Tom hadn’t been this surprised by the Amphibian since the day he’d taken him to see the Salzburg Chamber Orchestra perform Mozart’s Serenades Nos. 3 and 4.

  Tom had wanted the Amphibian to see everything. The Amphibian had never been to a classical music concert before. They were the third and fourth in their seats. A halfhour later the orchestra came out. Some of the musicians played scales. Others simply tuned their instruments. Some played the same three or four bars over and over again. The musicians finished tuning and the house lights dimmed. The conductor walked into view.

  The Amphibian stood up. His clapping was frantic.

  ‘That was fantastic!’ he screamed. The rest of the evening just disappointed him.

  Just like his friends were disappointing him now.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the Amphibian repeated. His voice was filled with disbelief. It made Tom and the Perfectionist stop. When they stopped, their reflections stopped. All four turned and looked at the Amphibian, who was sitting on the floor across from his reflection. The two Amphibians were sharing the same glass of wine. They both looked annoyed.

  ‘These are friends of yours?’ asked the Amphibian on the right.

  ‘Two of the best I have,’ answered the Amphibian on the left. They rolled their eyes and continued their conversation.

  The airhostess comes around and collects Tom’s headphones. Tom hands them over. He turns towards the Perfectionist, leans in close.

  ‘I know you’re fighting yourself,’ Tom says. ‘I know you want to see me.’ But the Perfectionist keeps staring out the window of the airplane.

  FIFTEEN

  TENSE

  The Perfectionist continues smelling Tom. It’s his post-exercise smell. She looks at her watch. She has thirteen minutes before the plane lands. She needs to talk to the Clock. Putting her tray in the upright position, she settles back in her chair, closes her eyes and falls asleep.

  The Perfectionist’s eyeballs flicker behind her eyelids. Even though she and the Clock both live in Toronto, and it’s not even a ten-dollar cab ride between their houses, they never manage to find the time to get together. So, at least twice a month, the Clock visits the Perfectionist in her dreams.

  They sit in matching yellow mesh lawn chairs. The strapping pinches the Perfectionist’s left thigh. She shifts in her chair, looks over her shoulder and sees the cottage her family rented every summer until she was eighteen. She wiggles dry sand between her toes. It’s 3:30 in the afternoon. She hopes she’s wearing sunscreen and sniffs the air.

  ‘Can you smell that?’ the Perfectionist asks the Clock.

  ‘Smell what?’

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘Only if Tom smells like dead fish,’ answers the Clock.

  ‘I swear I can smell Tom,’ she says, folding her hands in her lap. She looks at her fingers. Her nails are never bitten here.

  ‘What’s it like?’ she asks the Clock.

  ‘What’s what like?’

  ‘Travelling. Being able to travel to the future.’

  ‘It’s nothing like you think,’ the Clock tells her.

  ‘Will you take me?’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘I just want to see it.’

  ‘It’s not like you’re imagining.’

  ‘Take me there,’ the Perfectionist pleads. She puts her hand on the Clock’s arm. ‘I really need to see it.’

  Part of the reason the Perfectionist is so desperate to see the future is that she once got stuck in the present. She had a fling with Terry Cloth, whose superpower is the ability to make every day feel like Sunday. They met on February 11th and spent the next five months in bed. They didn’t have a lot of sex; they moved the TV into the bedroom. They ordered in and had supplies delivered. They started screening their calls and then stopped answering the phone altogether. June went by and neither of them had left the apartment.

  Then one morning, the Perfectionist woke up early. She let Terry Cloth sleep. Puttering around in the bathroom, she stepped on the scale and waited for the needle to stop swinging back and forth. When it did she was so shocked she jumped off the scale, spilling red wine on her white housecoat.

  She’d gained fifteen pounds. All her clothes were too tight and her housecoat was the only article of clothing she felt comfortable in. The washing machine was broken. She pulled on a pair of Terry’s track pants and
a white T-shirt that stretched over her belly. She carried her housecoat down two flights of stairs to the street.

  Outside she sniffed in the fresh air. The sound of traffic was overwhelming. There were so many people. She walked to the laundromat watching the sidewalk.

  The wash cycle was twenty-seven minutes long. The Perfectionist read a newspaper, had a coffee and eaves-dropped on people talking about their jobs. She looked at her watch; it didn’t feel like Sunday any more. It felt like Wednesday. It was Wednesday.

  The Perfectionist knew Wednesdays weren’t as good as Sundays. But it still felt good to have one. She never went back to Terry Cloth.

  Terry Cloth was heartbroken. His superpower so often went unrecognized and he thought he’d found someone who really appreciated him. His life became an endless series of Sunday afternoons, instead of Sunday mornings, until he hooked up with Mr. Breakfast.

  The Clock pushes her sunglasses on top of her head. ‘You want to go because of Tom?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then what I’m about to show you will only disappoint you,’ the Clock says.

  ‘I think I know that.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The Clock picks up her lawn chair. She sets it down so her back is to the water. The meshing sags as the Clock sits face-to-face with the Perfectionist. Their knees touch. She holds the Perfectionist’s chin. She tips the Perfectionist’s head down until their foreheads meet.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ the Clock whispers.

  ‘They are closed.’

  ‘Close them.’

  The Perfectionist closes her eyes. The Clock begins to hum. The hum is high-pitched and steady. It drowns out the seagulls and the surf. The Perfectionist can feel it in her chest. It keeps getting louder. It fills her ears. She can’t think about anything else. Then it’s gone. All sound is gone.

  ‘We’re here,’ the Clock says.

  The Perfectionist opens her eyes. She sees nothing. It’s white. All white. There’s no up. There’s no down. No horizon. Nothing. It’s just white.

  ‘Clock, what is this?’ asks the Perfectionist. Her voice is shaky.

  ‘This is the future.’

  ‘This is the future?’ the Perfectionist asks. Her mouth is dry. She forces herself to swallow.

  ‘Why is the future like this?’

  ‘Because it hasn’t happened yet,’ says the Clock.

  The Perfectionist wakes up. She’s on the airplane. She feels the plane’s descent. She flares her nostrils. She breathes, deeply. She can still smell Tom.

  SIXTEEN

  INVISIBILITY

  Tom isn’t considered invisible since his invisibility is isolated to the Perfectionist. But there are invisible superheroes, who can be divided into two groups: those who can switch from visible to invisible at will, and those who are invisible at all times. David Duncan falls into the second group. After five months of Tom’s isolated invisibility, the Amphibian wrote David Duncan’s phone number on a piece of paper. He gave that piece of paper to Tom.

  ‘You should call him,’ the Amphibian urged. They were drinking beer at the Diplomatico on College Street.

  ‘Why?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Because he used to be the Blue Outcast and he’s one of the few invisibles who’ll talk to you.’

  ‘What would I talk to him about?’

  ‘Being invisible.’

  ‘But I’m not invisible.’

  ‘He might have, you know, a perspective. He might have advice for you.’

  Tom took the number. He folded it into his wallet.

  Three days later, just after the Perfectionist stopped smoking, Tom found an airline ticket to Vancouver sitting on the kitchen table. He understood the consequences and became desperate. He called David Duncan. Duncan agreed to meet him at Pauper’s Pub, a fake English pub on Bloor Street.

  David Duncan had come out of the womb invisible. The nurse washed away the blood and afterbirth to find nobody there. As a toddler he’d wiggle out of his diaper. His parents had to wait until he cried from hunger to find him. They almost died of worry. They took the drastic step of painting him blue.

  Using a water-based non-toxic paint, they kept him painted until he was five years old. On his first day of school his parents left the decision with him. He could choose to remain blue or to return to his natural invisible state.

  David went up to the bathroom. He had an hour until the school bus arrived. He filled the sink with water. He washed all the blue away and looked at himself in the mirror. Lifting his toothbrush, he watched it float through the air. It terrified him. He decided to remain blue.

  David attended public school painted blue. He made no friends. He became the Blue Outcast.

  All during high school the Blue Outcast resisted the temptation to sneak into the girls’ changeroom. Not once did he steal into a teacher’s desk. He always paid to see a movie.

  Graduating with average marks, the Blue Outcast got a job at a call centre and a one-bedroom apartment just east of Church Street. He led a solitary life. Every morning he would paint himself blue like other men shave. No one ever suspected he was invisible. They just thought he was weird.

  Then one day, a Wednesday, the Blue Outcast worked late at the call centre. He waited for the 6:04 streetcar. Normally he got the 5:15. This is where he saw her. She was hard to miss. She was orange.

  The Blue Outcast was in line for the front doors of the streetcar. The Orange Exile was exiting through the rear doors. They made brief eye contact, but nothing more.

  The Blue Outcast changed his routine. He took that streetcar, the 504, at 6:04 every day. The Blue Outcast and the Orange Exile noticed each other more and more. They made eye contact for longer periods of time. The Blue Outcast made sure to be at the end of the line for the front doors of the streetcar. The Orange Exile made sure to be first out the back doors. They began waving to each other as they passed on the street. They still hadn’t chatted or exchanged names. That didn’t seem to be the point.

  Six weeks after they’d become aware of each other, a thunderstorm rolled across the city. The rain backed up the storm drains. Lightning struck close to the Blue Outcast’s call centre. It was 7:30. He’d missed the 6:04. He was the only one in the office. The sound boomed through the room. He looked out the window to see if there was any damage.

  At that exact moment, the Orange Exile was looking out the window of her apartment. The call centre and the Orange Exile’s apartment were directly across from each other, on the second floors of three-storey buildings.

  The Blue Outcast looked at the Orange Exile. Lightning cracked again. She put her index finger in her mouth. She pulled it out. It wasn’t orange any more. It was invisible. She held it up for the Blue Outcast to see.

  The Blue Outcast cried. His tears cut streaks of invisibility down his face. He stepped back from the window. He undressed. Naked, he left the call centre. He walked to the ground floor, stepped into the rain and looked across the street where orange feet and orange legs were standing in an orange puddle.

  They stood in the rain. The Blue Outcast looked up at the sky and held out his arms. He let rain fall on his face. He looked down at his hands and didn’t see them. He looked back across the street and couldn’t see the Orange Exile.

  Neither of them has been seen since.

  Tom arrived at the pub ten minutes late. He searched for an empty table. He found one where a glass of beer was drinking itself and sat down.

  ‘I’m Tom,’ said Tom. ‘Thanks for meeting me.’ He held out his hand and David Duncan shook it.

  ‘I don’t know how I can help you,’ David Duncan said.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Tom. Tom didn’t know where to look. He focused on a beer ad where David’s voice seemed to be coming from.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know how to convince my wife that I’m not invisible.’

  ‘But you’re not invisible.’

  ‘I am to her,’ said Tom.
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  ‘Yeah,’ David Duncan said. ‘I was invisible to my wife, too.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘It didn’t work out.’

  The waitress came over. Tom ordered a beer. He slid the ashtray between his hands. They didn’t say anything. David Duncan emptied his glass.

  ‘Sometimes these things happen for a reason,’ David said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We’re not together any more, but if I hadn’t met her, I’d still be blue.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tom.

  ‘Maybe you just weren’t ready for it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tom repeated. The waitress brought his beer. Tom pushed it across the table. He pulled a twenty from his wallet, set it down and walked home.

  SEVENTEEN

  MINIMALIST APARTMENT

  Turbulence bumps the airplane. Tom and the Perfectionist bounce as high as their seatbelts let them. Tom looks at his watch. He has four minutes left. He thinks about the return portion of his ticket. He contemplates going home to the empty rooms he used to share with the Perfectionist.

  In their apartment Tom and the Perfectionist had 105 articles (plus personal hygiene products). Before they moved in together, they had many more. On moving day Tom rented the largest truck U-Haul offered. The Amphibian helped him move.

  ‘You’ve got a lot of stuff,’ said the Amphibian. He carried a box of books. On top of the box of books were a stool and a crate of vinyl LPs.

  ‘I don’t have a lot of stuff,’ Tom answered. He carried a vintage microwave oven and a rice maker.

  ‘You have a lot of stuff,’ the Amphibian repeated. They tried to fit everything from the basement apartment into the truck. It didn’t fit. The truck was full and a quarter of Tom’s possessions remained behind.

  Tom and the Amphibian locked the truck. They drove over to the Perfectionist’s. When they arrived, they had a beer. The Perfectionist looked into the back of the truck. She reorganized. The truck was now half-empty.

  The Amphibian left for ball practice. Tom and the Perfectionist started loading her possessions into the truck.