It's Superman! A Novel

by Tom De Haven

  Herman, she prays. Help me!

  She closes her eyes.

  She opens them and looks at the mechanical … thing, that steely robot standing motionless on the tabletop. It seems to her now anything but benign. It’s something nasty, something dangerous. Something wicked. As nasty and dangerous and wicked as …

  She mumbles something.

  “I didn’t hear you, Ceil.”

  Her eyes move to his face. “I said … call it the Lexbot.”

  For a long time Lex remains crouched beside her, his hand painfully squeezing her shoulder.

  Then he chuckles, his hand falls away, and he stands up.

  “The Lexbot,” he says. “The Lexbot. Lexbot.”

  Ceil is weeping, openly sobbing.

  “The Lexbot. Did you hear that, gentlemen? It’s the Lexbot, the marvel of 1937!”

  Ceil’s shoulders move helplessly up and down.

  “Very good,” she hears him say, then watches him type L-E-X-B-O-T on a cramped keyboard attached to a small die-cut device. He yanks down hard on a side lever, and out shoots a small lozenge of metal. He holds it up between his thumb and forefinger. “Lexbot.” Then tossing down the metal tag as though it were a nickel for a newspaper, he says, “Thank you, Ceil. Mrs. O’Shea will show you out when you’ve composed yourself.”

  Ten minutes later, as that horrid white-haired Irisher leads her from the office, Ceil glances through the oneway mirror and there is Luthor—not Mister Luthor, Luthor—gesturing expansively at the head of the conference table while the moneymen all write checks and the two robots, the two Lexbots, replenish their cocktails.

  3

  In addition to the torn sheets wrapped around his head, Willi’s disguise—his Halloween costume—includes dark glasses, leather gloves, and a black trench coat. Everyone they pass on the street or ride with on the IRT local identifies him immediately. Hey, look! It’s the Invisible Man! Whenever someone laughs or makes a friendly crack, Willi responds in a lousy British accent, playacting Claude Rains.

  On the subway they see other grown men and women in costume—a black knight, a pilgrim, and a bum with a crushed hat and a wine bottle sticking out of his coat pocket. Oh. No. That is a bum.

  A couple dressed up as Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd swings on straps all the way down the length of the car to invite Willi and Clark to a masquerade party on West End Avenue. Oh come on, please? It’ll be fun! You fellas look great!

  Clark takes delight in how completely emancipated Willi seems to feel. Behind that linen wrapper he is laughing his head off. Why, the crazy nut even walks straight up to a transit cop when they get off the subway at 103rd Street and just for fun asks him if this is the right station for the Museum of the City of New York! “Up those stairs, boyo, and left to Fifth.” The cop grins at Willi’s getup, then tucks his double chin, taking a long scrutiny of Clark, giving an interrogative grunt. “And himself behind yeh? Who’s your caped friend there supposed to be?”

  “The Saucer-Man,” says Willi. “From Saturn.”

  Clark taps the toy ray gun stuck under his belt; if you turn a key on its side it clacks and sparks. He bought it earlier at the candy store on St. Mark’s Place. In that same place he also bought a black celluloid mask identical to the one the Lone Ranger wears. He’s wearing it for two reasons. It matches his belt, his boots, and the background color of his chest appliqué, giving his appearance a unified, even fashion-savvy touch. And it makes him appear like a genuine Halloween reveler. A guy on his way to a party.

  An enormous five-story building faced with red brick and trimmed with white marble, the museum is—according to the free booklet Clark picks up—“the city’s attic,” a palatial depository of dioramas depicting events from the purchase of Manhattan Island to the construction of the Empire State Building, and galleries crammed with historical furniture, portraits, costumes, documents, and memorabilia. But Willi makes it clear that he’s not interested in any of “that old junk.” He is here for only one reason: to see Berenice Abbott’s photographs.

  As they follow arrows to the proper gallery, Clark keeps stopping to admire things—a Dutch sleigh, a tallyho coach, the figurehead from an old clipper ship. He is powerfully affected by it all but couldn’t say why.

  Following Willi down a long hall he notices a pair of open doors leading into a raked auditorium. Just inside the entrance a sign is still posted for a two o’clock lecture long since over: “From There to Here, From There to Home: The Immigrant Experience.”

  “Would you get a move on?”

  “I’m coming,” says Clark.

  From there to here, from there to home.

  His red cape sailing out in back of him, he puts on a little speed—just a little—and ends up beating Willi to the exhibition gallery.

  “Think you’re funny? Well, you’re not.”

  Clark slings an arm around Willi’s shoulder and together they go inside and look at pictures of the city. Willi’s city. And maybe, Clark thinks, his city too.

  The name of the exhibition is Metropolis.

  4

  It was a mistake to name her joint “Soda’s.” From the night it opened, people have been walking in expecting fountain service, wanting a strawberry milk shake, a chocolate malt. The name, and especially that fancy gold script she’d had painted on the front window—just a bad idea, a mistake. This here is a club, she has been saying for almost a year, telling squares, telling high school sweethearts, telling little kids tapping on the door with two bits apiece squeezed in their sweaty mitts. This here is a jazz music club. They always want to know so why’s it called Soda’s? And some people are downright nasty about it, like it’s her fault they can’t get a large root beer. Why is it called Soda’s? She’ll tell them why: because that’s my name. My name is Soda Wauters.

  She was Edith Wauters before she joined Harry Seltzer’s Carbonated Rhythm Orchestra. It was a joke, of course, but the name stuck. What the heck. She likes it.

  This afternoon in her club—formerly a “billiard hall for Coloreds” on South Orange Avenue in Newark, New Jersey—she sits alone drinking at the bar. Tipping the bottle of Seagram’s Pedigree whenever she notices that her glass has somehow gotten itself empty. Outside, neighborhood children pass by in pairs and bunches dressed up for Halloween. When Soda cabbed over here earlier from her apartment near Five Corners she brought along a twenty-four-count box of candy cigarettes, and for a while, the first hour or so, she got up and dispensed goodies whenever some trick-or-treaters tapped on the door. But even before the candy was depleted she quit answering, no longer trusting her legs. She is a large woman—nearly two hundred pounds—and if she falls she is liable to fall hard.

  The club is closed until tomorrow night, and she just might sit here drinking till then. Who’s going to stop her? This is her joint.

  Last night she had a gang of musicians she knew drop by on their way home to New York from a recording session for RCA Victor in Camden. She was glad to see everybody, and they were all genuinely congratulatory about her club. But almost to a man they asked her, Why so glum, chum? Doc Wershow even joshed her, saying, “You ain’t no blues singer, honey, you just a big ol’ canary, how come you wearin’ that long face?” She told him, she told everybody, she was just tired.

  She’s tired, all right. Of everything.

  It is half past three now as she tips the Seagram’s bottle again, avoiding her eyes in the mirror.

  She’s never going to see him again. It’s been more than a month now, and it’s—he’s not coming back.

  The first time she saw him was in late June, a week-night. He was sitting at a table by himself, and Soda was doing a set with the house band. She was, she recalls, singing “I’ll Get By.” He wasn’t especially good-looking—not the kind of man that girls think of as handsome, she thinks now and smiles—but he had something. And from across the room she could identify that something as decency. He looked about fifty and was dressed in a dark gray tropical worsted suit. Don’
t be no copper, she thought. Please.

  Soda didn’t talk to him that night. Or the next time he came in, either. Or the time after that.

  But the time after that she bought him a drink. And no, he wouldn’t insist on beer if the lady was buying. Seagram’s Pedigree? He invited her to sit down. Told her he loved her voice and how she could put a song across. For the next forty-five minutes they talked about band singers. Helen Ward, Ruth Etting, Annette Hanshaw, Connie Boswell. He knew his stuff, the man knew about popular music, that was for certain, and took delight in all of her stories about musicians she’d known, still knew. She told him about the times she’d had stage fright and the times she’d sung better, in her own humble opinion, than Billie Holiday on her best day. She talked about grilling steaks at a backyard cookout with Lester Young, playing horseshoes with Red Norvo. The man seemed to take delight in hearing anything Soda wanted to talk about, including her two marriages.

  “Now you,” she said, meaning now you tell me something. “Wait, though. You’re not a policeman, right? Tell me you’re not?”

  “That wouldn’t be good?”

  “That wouldn’t be good.”

  “And why is that?”

  She smiled, ran a finger around in circles on some bar spill. “My daddy was a copper.”

  “Sounds like a song.”

  “It wasn’t no song, honey. So. You ain’t, are you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Now we’re cooking,” she said.

  “Are we? I’d like to think so.”

  “I’d like to think so, too.”

  By that time, they were sitting together on the daybed in Soda’s private office at the rear of the club.

  “So what do you do, honey?”

  But with a small sad smile he shook his head again. “Can you wait on that one?”

  “You on the lam?”

  “No, I can swear to you that I’m not on the lam.”

  “Married?”

  “No.”

  She kissed him.

  “You’re the funniest guy I ever met.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You a musician?”

  He hesitated for a second, then said, “No.”

  She kissed him again, and that time he kissed her back. He returned a week later and sat at his regular table and drank his usual beer and a half. When she’d finished both of her sets and the crowd thinned out she sent over a bottle of straight bourbon.

  He stayed till the club shut down at two, then helped her upend chairs on the tables. He sat behind the drums and picked up two brushes and accompanied her while she sang “What Kind o’ Man Is You?”

  He stayed the night.

  Soda fell in love and he didn’t. Or maybe he did, she couldn’t tell.

  But he was always decent to her, oh my God was he decent to her.

  He was the nicest and the tenderest man she ever had met.

  Told her his first name but not his last. “In time,” he said. “All in good time.”

  But time had run out and her sweet lovin’ daddy was gone. Said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” then never came back …

  The rim of the shot glass is touching Soda’s bottom lip and there it stops.

  Jesus, Mary, and Saint Joseph.

  The package. That fat envelope with the red flap string he left with Soda the last time they were together. Saying, “Honey”—by that time he was calling her that—“Honey, could you do me a big favor and keep this in your safe?”

  As soon as she is sober enough to walk back to her office and her fool head is clear enough to remember the safe combination, Soda is going to take a look at that envelope, and maybe, just maybe, find out Richard’s last name.

  Some other things, too.

  XXII

  The black cube. Clark shows off. Phone tap.

  Scene of the crime. Ciao, Caesar.

  ●

  1

  By the time the gentlemen from the Ford Motor Company, the DuPont Corporation, the Union Banking Corporation, the L. Henry Schroder Banking Company, and the investment firm of Brown Brothers/Harriman leave the conference room late this Sunday afternoon, all of them are tipsy and swaying and utterly convinced that Lex Luthor’s robots, God blesh ’em, make the world’s most perfect martinis. The men have become enchanted by the machines as well as by their profit potential. Television. Feh! Lexbots are next!

  In combination they pledged a total of twelve million dollars for the construction and outfitting of three Lexbot factories.

  “Congratulations,” says Mrs. O.

  Still seated at the head of the conference table, Lex is turning a small black socketed cube around and around with the fingers of his right hand. “Thank you.” He sets the cube down in front of him and picks up a remote-control device. When he presses a sequence of buttons, one of the two luxury Lexbots in the room steps away from the wall and glides to the table. “And tomorrow,” he says, “I’m expecting to do equally well. Even better.”

  In the morning Lex is scheduled to meet with executives from the August Thyssen Bank, the Dresdner Bank, German General Electric, and Braunkohle-Benzin A.G. In the afternoon he is seeing representatives from Fiat, Centro Stile Zagato, and the Pontifical Court.

  During the next several weeks he expects investment capital to roll in with almost ridiculous ease.

  As he realized the day he first saw Caesar Colluzo doodling on a pad in that lecture hall, nobody can resist a robot. Nobody.

  Mrs. O watches Lex get up and open a small panel in the back of the machine. He snugly fits the cube inside. Shuts the panel. Then he walks over to the long mirror on the wall, reaches up, and pulls down a blackout shade.

  “If you don’t need me anymore …”

  “Now or entirely?” He stabs in another sequence of buttons on the remote-control device.

  “… I’d like to go home.”

  “You do that, Helen. Have Paulie take you in his car. And tell Caesar I want to have a word with him upstairs.” He glances at his watch. “Ten minutes.”

  “And what about the admen?”

  “Order them more coffee and sandwiches.” He cocks his head at Mrs. O’Shea. “Leave.”

  “Yes, sir. Congratulations again.” She hesitates, then: “Lex, I think we might have a problem with Ceil Stickowski. I didn’t like the way she looked at you when—”

  “Don’t worry about Ceil. Just go.”

  She closes the door firmly behind her.

  Lex presses a red button.

  From the Lexbot comes a low rasping sound that turns into a hum, then a beep, and suddenly the twelve-foot-long table is hurled across the conference room. It smashes against the far wall, blasting cracks through the plaster.

  The door reopens, and Mrs. O sticks her head back into the room. She is pale. She looks at the table, its surface now scorched and blistered. Here and there tiny flames struggle in patches of varnish, then wink out.

  Giving a snort of glee, Lex manipulates the remote-control again. The Lexbot swivels and moves noiselessly back to its carrying case, steps into it, and stands motionless. With yet another poke of Lex’s finger at a button, a gray one this time, it disassembles itself, turning back into a gleaming metal post. The top section of the post slides down, nesting in the section below it. When the top of the post is flush with the ledge of the carrying case, the lid slaps shut with a satisfying click.

  Lex repeats the process for the second robot.

  “Mrs. O? One last thing. Tell Paulie to grab these and carry them down when you’re both heading out. He can drop them off at Water Street.”

  With a curt nod he walks out.

  Mrs. O remains in the doorway, frowning. As she turns finally to leave, the conference table—its four legs as charred and friable as if they’ve spent hours burning in a fireplace—suddenly crashes to the floor.

  2

  “Is this Lois Lane?”

  She doesn’t recognize the caller’s voice. A woman’s. “Yes …”

>   “The reporter?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope you don’t mind me calling you at home, Miss Lane. I called the Daily Planet but you weren’t there, and they wouldn’t give me your exchange. But it’s in the directory, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. Who is this?”

  “Miss Lane, I’d like to speak with you about Lex Luthor. I read your stories in the paper and I think we should talk.”

  “And your name is … ?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s Ceil. Ceil Stickowski? Mrs. Herman Stickowski.”

  “Sticky’s wife?”

  “His widow, Miss Lane. Do you think we might get together?”

  Lois says, “Could you hold on for just one second?” She lays down the receiver and then goes and gently closes the bedroom door, where Ben Jaeger is asleep in his undershirt and skivvies. She returns to the phone and says, “Of course we can get together, Mrs. Stickowski—tonight?”

  3

  While the Invisible Man is making his tenth circuit of the special exhibition gallery, the Saucer-Man from Saturn, who by this time has had his fill of Berenice Abbott’s photographs, drifts back out into the corridor and strolls around the museum by himself. Walking from room to room, floor to floor, cursorily inspecting displays of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century furniture, costumes, theater posters, and the like. George Washington’s boudoir slippers, Alexander Hamilton’s comb and brush. A re-creation of John D. Rockefeller’s bedroom, circa 1880.

  The elastic band on Clark’s black mask is uncomfortably tight. And the mask itself feels constricting, makes his cheeks sweat, and feel slimy, and his eyebrows itch. He doesn’t know how the Lone Ranger puts up with it.

  He goes into the gift shop and purchases a few postal cards. The cashier smiles at his costume. “Shouldn’t that be a Z on your chest?”

  “Pardon me?”

  The cashier points to the red S. “I thought you spelled Zucchini with a Z.”

  “Zucchini?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be one of those Zucchini brothers that get shot out of a cannon?”