Temporary Superheroine

by Irene Vartanoff

  Roland had briefed me about them all. Dickie Crandall wasn’t likely to recognize a mystery superhero artist’s style. Gene Raboy published kid comics about child wizards. Old Bernard Shores was a leader in funny animal comics. Jerry was my best bet, since he’d drawn superheroes for so many years. Although I had my doubts. These old guys acted far too happy to have noticed supervillains running amok on the streets of New York recently.

  Stop stalling. I got myself a drink and some food to pick at, to appear sociable. I walked back to Jerry.

  “Mr. Fine—”

  “Call me Jerry, please,” he said graciously. “Are you a comics fan?” Evidently Jerry hadn’t had orientation. He had no clue who I was. Possibly he had no clue what we were all doing here this week. At least he was amiable.

  “I draw a webcomic. Called ‘Average Chloe.’ It’s on the Internet?” I tried to get some recognition going.

  Jerry’s expression said he was attempting to place me, but he’d never heard of my strip. It didn’t matter. As long as he could identify the mystery artist, Jerry could be as ignorant of the new ways of publishing comics and of my little career as he wanted.

  “I put out a new strip each Wednesday.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t get much chance to sit and explore the Internet. Are you affiliated with any of the major syndicates? Maybe I’ve read it.”

  Maybe he thought I drew newspaper cartoon panels and put copies of my work on the web, too. Nope.

  “I’m solo. My webcomic is about the ordinary doings of a young urban woman.” I let him off the hook. “It’s pretty obscure.”

  “You do an autobiographical humor strip?”

  “Basically.”

  “Do you get many hits?” At least he knew about hits.

  “I get a decent number, but…”

  He smiled kindly. “You haven’t quit your day job yet?”

  “Most webcomic artists have to find an alternate means of support,” I said with dignity. “Perhaps I should become a supervillain like those guys who’ve been causing trouble lately here in New York.”

  “Supervillains. Ha,” he said in a voice of scorn. “There are no real supervillains.”

  “A couple of weeks ago, some flying men aimed a giant machine at a building and blew it up,” I replied.

  Jerry waved away the idea. “Never happened. The tabloids take a photo and do some cheap retouching, and call it news.”

  Uh-oh. Jerry didn’t even know it was real.

  “Then why are eyewitnesses saying they saw supervillains?”

  “Too many people watching superhero movies,” he quipped. “Although I shouldn’t say so, since I earn my living promoting those movies,” he continued with a practiced, self-deprecating smile.

  “It was on the net, on a video channel,” I persisted. “I saw—I read about the Third Avenue Bridge online.”

  Jerry was already turning away politely. “If it was on the Internet, it must be true. Excuse me.”

  I had been too pushy, acting like the fans who must pester him constantly. He had his convictions and I wasn’t going to budge them.

  He drifted off toward the window, calling out, “Dickie, how are you?” to the pudgy, very elderly president of the teen comics empire.

  I stood abandoned. I’d had my chance, but I’d blown it. I’d led into my topic the wrong way, talking about myself. Although my segue wasn’t so bad, now Jerry thought I was an argumentative idiot. I should have plunged into the artwork mystery. Artwork would have hooked him. Had I lost my only opportunity to ask him about it?

  I hadn’t brought any of the pages with me tonight. Dumb. I resolved to carry copies with me at all times for the rest of the week.

  Before I could beat myself up any more, someone new entered the party room. Someone a lot younger than the current average age of seventy. Hot. Very tall. Not fairy-tale handsome, in fact the opposite. The scars of extensive teenage acne had pitted his face, giving it a shark-like expression. He exuded the confidence of a born hunter.

  “Ah, Eric, you made it after all. Here’s our contest winner, Chloe Cole.” Maneely was still being the gracious host.

  “Chloe, this is Eric Wood, who runs Fantastic Comics. I’m sure you’re familiar with his meteoric rise, and at such a young age.” Eric was in his thirties. Maneely’s introduction explained some of Eric’s self-confidence, but not all. A man like this, an alpha male in the flesh, gave off something, pheromones maybe, women picked up on. I was a woman.

  Eric Wood was the powerful boss of the ultimate corporate superhero company, Fantastic Comics. He didn’t wear pinstripes or yacht club blazers as the older men did, but, like them, he controlled an empire. As if to prove he was still one of the creative guys, though, he was wearing a black shirt and black jeans. They were unpretentious, but their subtle high quality proclaimed them designer duds. Or maybe it was the haircut, long and careless, but artfully mussed. I knew men who wore the same things and had messy long hair, too. They came off as ordinary. Eric Wood did not. He was also well-muscled and trim. The intelligence in his eyes was the most intriguing part of the package. He looked straight at me as if he saw me. The real me.

  Eric strolled closer to me with all the confident grace of a predator, and took my hand. I didn’t want to be impressed, but it was a very effective move. His mere touch sent a tingle up my arm. Whoa. What was up with that?

  “Chloe,” he purred. A lion’s purr. Was I his potential meal?

  “I’m a fan of your webcomic,” Eric said. “You’ve got a wonderful sense of humor.”

  “Uh, th-thanks.” I stammered like a moron. I wasn’t used to the megawatt attention of high-powered guys. Make that warm-handed, good-smelling, high-powered guys. Not that I believed a word he was saying.

  “I like the way you had Nasty Andy collapse after the cubicle softball game last month.”

  I melted into a real smile. He’d read my strip. Ultimate compliment.

  Eric smiled his shark smile, showing teeth meant for killing. I knew it, but somehow, I still was charmed.

  “We don’t have cubes at Fantastic Comics,” he continued. “Have you ever toured our offices?”

  “Uh, no.” Because I don’t like your comics, I don’t like corporate comics, I don’t like superhero comics. But I might like you, Eric.

  I shivered a little in the heat of his stare.

  “I’ll give you a tour. Want to go now?”

  “Don’t we have to stay here?” I asked, kind of shocked. Was he seriously coming onto me? We’d known each other thirty seconds, max.

  “You don’t want to hang around much longer with all these old farts, do you? Everybody here is old enough to be my father. Old Dickie Crandall could be my grandfather.”

  His words should have come across as totally phony, but somehow they struck me as sincere. I fought the feeling.

  He had a point. There was little to be gained by staying. Unless I was totally off base, maybe Eric Wood was interested in some romance with the girl from the boondocks. Chicago is a major city, but to New Yorkers, it might as well be a tiny town in Nowhere, Idaho. I wasn’t completely averse to the idea of spending time alone with this sexy guy. Just me and him and eleven million people.

  I glanced over at Jerry. He looked about ready to leave, himself. I didn’t think I’d get another chance with him tonight. Still, it would be useful to know how Jerry and Eric interacted, since Eric now ran the company Jerry had helped build.

  “Jerry is a real icon. I’m pretty excited to be in his company,” I said, not exactly objecting to Eric’s ideas. Just stating my own.

  “Although he’s a game guy,” Eric countered smoothly, “he’s pretty old, and he tires easily. He’ll only come in for an hour or two a day to shoot his parts of the show. The TV people already know they have to schedule around his needs.”

  Uh-oh. Potential setback. Jerry could be off-limits to me even when we were in the same studio. I still had the important question to ask him.

  Eric
shook his short mane of dark hair, and I couldn’t help reacting viscerally. The man was hot.

  “We’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other. We could start tonight,” he said.

  Maybe Eric had paid attention to the news. Might as well find out, and possibly blunt some of the force of his male aggression. Otherwise, he would roll over me any second. I could feel my knees weakening, that female thing when you are sexually excited and your body signals you to lie down and let it happen. Yeah, my body was betraying me, even though my mind was rock steady. Although hyped up on caffeine.

  “What do you make of these supposed sightings of supervillains in New York lately?” Not a clever way of asking, but it shifted the conversation from me to the reason I was here. It got the job done.

  Eric surprised me. He reacted oddly. Instead of the easy denial I expected, he showed a mere blink of his eyelids and his face lost all expression. A layer of tension suddenly added to his stance. If I hadn’t been looking hard, I’d have missed it.

  “I saw the video. It was murky.” He acted as if it was no big deal. Acted, for sure. He was trying to hide how extremely interested he was in this topic. Why?

  “Do you think it was faked?” I nervously played with the chain of my pendant. Eric’s eyes followed it to where it disappeared into my cleavage. My breasts seemed to expand at his look. Down, girls.

  “Do you?” he challenged.

  “Yes,” I said firmly. I wanted to believe so, anyway, despite all Roland’s evidence to the contrary.

  “If you don’t believe, why are you asking about it?”

  “I wondered if it was a publicity stunt by corporate comics—uh, that is,” I stammered, stumbling over my tongue. I didn’t want to insult him directly.

  Eric looked amused. “You indies like to call what we do corporate comics.” He said it pleasantly.

  I resisted grinding my teeth at his patronizing attitude. “I’m sorry what I draw doesn’t appeal to your taste,” I said, with sarcasm intended. “I’m proud of being an indie.”

  “You appeal very much to my taste, even from the little I’ve already seen,” he said with an obvious double meaning as he looked me up and down.

  I didn’t want to commit myself with a reply. He definitely was coming on to me hot and heavy. Though I wasn’t sure of his sincerity, my nipples were showing my interest because of the extremely thin dress I was poured into. I didn’t bother to look to see if Eric’s well-fitted jeans were similarly revealing his interest in me. I recognized the lust of a predator easily enough. I was female meat and of course he wanted some. I didn’t hold it against him, exactly. Still, I had no way of knowing yet if he was a friend or an enemy. My body said “friend,” but hormones can’t always be trusted.

  Sunset slanted a golden glow into the room, but I didn’t pay much attention. The noise of the party, high before, seemed to blend and fade out. Eric got to me. He was open about his sexual interest, and I felt open too. There was something magical about being at a Rockefeller Center cocktail party with a bunch of high-powered people and the sexiest one there was interested in me. Of course, I was the only female in the room, and the closest person in age regardless of gender. He didn’t have much to pick from. His next words reminded me of the real reason we were flirting.

  “Where did you see the attack you drew?” he asked with careful casualness. Something in his posture told me he was extremely interested in my answer.

  Oh, crap. Roland never told me which drawing he submitted with my contest entry. I never asked. Was it the falling building, the sky-high ship, or the airplane? The bridge was too recent. Oh, hell. When in doubt, give the standard answer beloved by politicians. “I don’t recall.”

  “You must have seen something? A video clip? A photo link?”

  “Maybe a photo-sharing site.” Safe answer. Out of thousands of cell phone pics, he couldn’t pin me down. I hoped.

  “Why did you draw the supervillain from a totally different angle than anything I saw online?”

  Oops. Of course the point of view in the mystery drawings was different. It was from my perspective as the superheroine, not that of an onlooker. Which I did not dare explain to Eric. He must have spent serious time checking out every single photo posted online. I wondered why.

  When he saw I wasn’t going to answer him, Eric went into coaxing mode. “I voted for you.” He smiled, intent on charming me. With the air of confiding a secret he continued, “I was impressed with your work. Especially with your totally new art style, so different from what you use for ‘Average Chloe.’”

  Was he toying with me? He must know to develop such a polished piece of artwork took more than a weekend and dashing off a drawing. It took years of learning and doing. Did Eric guess the submitted art was not my own?

  “Did anyone else submit artwork with a similar subject?” I asked. I would be happy if other people showed they were aware of what was going down. Despite the frequent Internet mentions of the supervillain attacks, the establishment media had all but ignored them.

  “No. Yours was the only one.” Eric looked a bit frustrated himself.

  “What about at your company? Have you seen art like it there? You must get portfolios all the time.”

  “We do.”

  I held my breath, hoping he would say he recognized the art style.

  “I’ve never seen anything like your art before,” he said.

  “No one has followed this crazy story and drawn versions of it?”

  “No. It’s just you, Chloe.” Eric paused and considered me in a thoughtful manner. “For some reason, you’re the only person in the entire comics business who thinks real life supervillains attacking real life people are worthy of a comic book drawing.”

  His words held a secret meaning. He was looking straight into my eyes and asking a question. A question I did not want to answer.

  His curiosity about my artwork explained why Eric had made a dead set at me from the moment he arrived. Flattering, but false, even though sheer male-female attraction was definitely an element. He had the purple-garbed supervillain on his mind first and foremost. No wonder his come-on lines were so brazen. No subtlety about Eric Wood when he had a goal in mind.

  I gave a polite half-laugh. I wanted to redirect his attention, get the heat off me. “Maybe someone in this room knows something?”

  Eric took my conversational detour as a signal to back off. Which it was. Obligingly, he turned toward the others. “Let’s ask our veterans.” He raised his voice. “Gentlemen, what do you make of the attacks by supervillains people are reporting?”

  “Nonsense,” Crandall said in a rasping voice. “Somebody’s manipulating this newfangled CGI stuff from your superhero movies.”

  He was probably sour because his company’s one venture into movies had been a bomb.

  Jerry had his own answer. His eyes gleamed. “It’s exciting to think comics have moved into the mainstream. I give credit to all the successful films. They’ve made the public familiar with our comic characters.”

  Half an hour ago, he’d dismissed the idea when I asked him. Now Jerry made all the right noises and eye contact and gestures, although he still hadn’t committed himself about the attacks. But what did I expect from a movie studio pitchman? Jerry’s artistic triumphs in the comics happened thirty years ago, according to Roland. Since then, all Jerry had done was sell superhero movies to the baby boomer executives who’d worshipped him when they were kids.

  “What about the supervillains? Are people making them up?” I asked.

  “Young people today. These kids who claim to have seen supervillains are probably on drugs,” another elderly man said. He ran an old second-tier comics company with its own printing press. Milton Giordano—that was his name.

  These men knew nothing. It was a dead end. Suddenly I couldn’t resist poking at them a little for being set in their ways. For insulting young people. We get blamed all the time.

  “There were photos on the Internet,”
I said, with an innocent air. How unconnected to today’s technology were these old guys? Did they even use the Internet? Did they know about Photoshop, the art program most people used to doctor photos?

  “Chloe…” Eric’s warning tone reminded me how impolitic it was to show these geezers how out of touch they were. But he smiled a little in appreciation. In case the old guys didn’t get it, he explained, “Posting altered photos is a favorite pastime on the net.”

  “Pranksters, bah,” someone said.

  The fun was over for now. The old guys knew nothing, and Eric wouldn’t let me tease them. Too bad.

  I wondered what part Eric played in my mystery. He surely was involved, but how? I needed to think about this new piece of the puzzle.

  I managed to extricate myself from his grasp with a promise to go out to a club with him later. He wanted me to leave with him, to tour his offices. Or so he said. No matter what my body signaled me, I didn’t want an instant hookup with Eric. He was an unexpected complication. I took a cab back to my hotel, alone, to regroup.

  Chapter 4

  Wednesday night

  I flew into the center of a construction site in lower Manhattan. The Purple Menace (somehow I knew his name now) pulled at an enormous crane, trying to topple it. It was nighttime, but a few construction workers still labored below. They were in danger.

  I flew straight at him and tackled him with all my might. We both fell toward the ground. Each of us struggled to hit the other, to fly up instead of fall down. Our divided efforts canceled each other out. The Purple Menace took a swing at my face, which I avoided by simply blocking his arm with my own. I tried to land a kick on him, but he brought up his leg and defended himself. I have no idea what kind of martial art we used.

  Neither of us gained an advantage. I twisted around, landing with a planned tumble. He landed better, and with a ferocious growl, rushed at me. I leapt up and felled him with a wrestling move I’d seen on TV, called a clothesline. His momentum sent him crashing face first to the ground. He was up immediately, almost before I could pivot back and get into a defensive stance.