“Jerry was his first try. A public figure, easy to locate.” Roland shrugged. “I suspect the Purple Menace will escape from 30 Rock and hunt you now, Chloe.”
“I was set up.”
“By daddy dearest,” Barb chuckled.
“Don’t,” I said. I shot her a fierce look, but she only smiled broadly.
“Perhaps Diabolical Dave sent you the Amulet of Life to empower you,” Roland said.
“To leave town?” I scoffed.
“To travel to a different dimension,” Roland said.
“That’s how I drew it,” Jerry said. “Lord Raga had many adventures in other dimensions.”
I sent him an unfriendly look. “Comic books are fiction,” I said.
All three of my companions shrugged.
“Perhaps reality has altered,” Roland said. “Perhaps your father sent you a powerful tool?”
“Pardon me if I don’t buy it. Anyway, what’s the point of running away from this supervillain?”
“Ask Dave,” Barb said.
“Where is he?”
“No idea,” she shrugged.
“What else did Dave’s note say, Jerry?” I asked.
“Not a lot,” he replied, “It said, ‘There are worlds within worlds.’”
“That’s the clue,” Roland said. His eyes sparkled with excitement. “We should use the Amulet of Life to enter another dimension.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” I asked.
“Why don’t we try it and find out?”
“Like jump off the garage roof and hope we can fly? No way.”
“We’ll do a kind of séance. That’s how Lord Raga did it in the comic books.”
I eyed Roland with deep suspicion. “We?”
“You’re the chosen one. Not Jerry. But I’ll help,” he replied simply.
Jerry looked relieved to be off the hook. Barb continued to act amused, as if the appearance of a costumed supervillain would not affect her life, no matter what. A comfortable attitude to take, but I couldn’t follow her lead, because Roland was right. I was in this up to my neck. I didn’t like it, but I was involved.
“What will we do in another dimension?”
“Save the world,” Roland answered promptly, with a completely straight face.
“This is complete, utter crap.” I paced the living room in a fury of disbelief. Jerry looked taken aback. Barb watched, eyes glittering. Roland had an eager expression on his face. Darn him, he was enjoying this.
I stopped in front of him. “You’ve read too many of Jerry’s stories.” I turned to the comics icon. “No offense, Jerry, but comics are fiction, not fact.”
Jerry nodded his head agreeably. He’d probably heard it before.
Roland opened his mouth to speak, but I ranted on. “Crazy dreams. Mysterious artwork. A pendant that allows interdimensional travel. Sorry, an amulet.” I emphasized the term with a sarcastic twist to my mouth. “No way am I traveling to an unknown dimension.”
“I’ll go with you,” Roland reminded me.
“How will either of us do anything in some other dimension? Assuming it exists. Which it doesn’t. Argh.” I wanted to tear my hair out. This was crazy. Did Roland have trouble separating reality from fantasy? What frightened me was neither of the so-called adults in the room had jumped in to say his idea was absurd.
Barb did offer a bit of consolation. “Either the séance takes you somewhere or it doesn’t.”
“I can’t believe you said that,” I shrieked. “You’re my mother. You’re supposed to care about my safety. If I go to a different dimension, I could get killed.”
“Once the Purple Menace realizes you have the Amulet of Life—and he will—you’ll probably be safer in another dimension,” she replied.
“Thanks for nothing.”
“It would work, Chloe,” Roland pleaded. “We’ll join hands and hold the Amulet of Life, and be transported to this other dimension. We’ll find out how to stop the Purple Menace. On his home turf.”
“What do you think, Jerry? You’re the famous comic book creator. Roland and Barb are obviously insane.” I expected Jerry to be the voice of reason.
Instead, he shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”
Roland looked at me hopefully. Jerry was neutral. Barb’s expression suggested she knew I would be all right. I recalled her giving me the same kind of look before I totally messed up the first time I rode my bicycle without training wheels. Could I trust her now?
This was no dream. We had seen the Purple Menace in the flesh in broad daylight. He was a bad guy. If I could stop him, I should. “Okay.”
“Great.” Roland said. “Let’s set up.”
Jerry and Barb sat on the couch watching as Roland and I opened a card table and laid the Amulet of Life in the middle. Roland and I sat at the table, holding hands, and each put one hand on the amulet.
“Now what?” I questioned. “What do we say?”
“Lord Raga’s chant from the comic books, of course. ‘Great spirits, let us pass, as if through a mirror glass’,” Roland intoned. Jerry mouthed the words along with him. Barb blew smoke and enjoyed herself.
“‘Great spirits, let us fly, as if into the blue sky.’”
Hokey. But I mumbled the words also.
“‘Great spirits—’”
The doorbell rang.
Chapter 9
We froze.
Barb called out, “It’s open.”
Eric and two men burst through the front door. Eric strode toward me, his face showing concern. For me? Or for something else?
“Chloe, Jerry, I finally found you. The masked crazy man managed to escape. What’s going on?”
“How did you find us?” Roland asked. I jumped up, to do what, I did not know.
Eric ignored Roland. “Research,” he said, and gestured at the two men with him, “By my assistant editors. They came up with Bodacious Barb.”
“Impressive,” she said, and took a drag from her cigarette.
“What are you doing?” Eric asked again.
“None of your business,” I said. Maybe it was his demanding attitude, or maybe it was my resentment at him for blowing me off this morning before I’d had a chance to decide if I wanted a relationship with him. “Go away.”
“Make me,” he shot back, confident I couldn’t make him do anything. He stood too close, knowing his physical presence would soften me.
In answer to his challenge, I sat down at the table and took Roland’s hand again. Eric gave a kind of jump. Roland looked pleased that I chose him over a man he’d suspected of being his rival.
“Great spirits, let us pass, as if through a mirror glass,” I intoned, returning my gaze to the Amulet of Life.
“Great spirits…” Roland continued, and so did I.
“Stop. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Eric’s vehemence surprised me. Why should it matter if we chanted some lines from old comic books?
Jerry also surprised me, as did Barb. Out of the corner of my eye I could see them both move to stand in front of me and Roland, guarding us from Eric and his men.
The amulet suddenly caught fire. It began to burn my fingers and give off huge clouds of smoke. The room filled incredibly fast. Impossibly fast. Then the room wasn’t there anymore.
Chapter 10
The smoke receded.
Roland and I stood on the sidewalk of a New York City street, in an era when men and women still wore hats. The women wore bright dresses and had dainty short gloves on, too. Most of the men were smoking short, unfiltered cigarettes or pipes.
Roland and I gaped.
“Look at all the space-age buildings. Skyscrapers, they called them,” he said, wide-eyed.
The buildings looked sleeker than in New York today, which is saying a lot. Instead of a few starkly modern, Mies van der Rohe-inspired towers mixed with older, more ornate styles, there were an overwhelming number of completely blank buildings, straight out of an o
bjectivist fantasy of the future. They must have had windows, but they presented a smooth face to the world. Each was a different pale color, too, or shot with silver or gold. One even sparkled like a diamond.
“They’re like something John Galt would build,” I said.
“Who is John Galt?”
“An Ayn Rand protagonist who—oh, never mind. This place reminds me of a glossy magazine illustration or an old movie, not something real,” I said. “Look at the clothing.” There was none of the eclectic mix of garments typical in Manhattan or Chicago. “Everybody is so formal.”
“Check out the cars.” Roland said.
Trust a guy to notice. The cars were a mix of today’s and some mid-century modern visionary’s idea of what cars would be in a utopian future: great bulges and fins, yet sleek, graceful, and some of them riding above us on a highway in the sky. In the sky. Awesome. It was finally sinking in. The amulet had transported us to a different world.
“This can’t be real, can it?” I asked. I expected to wake up. We kept looking around in awe. Roland had a big smile on his face. He was in fantasy heaven.
“We’re in another dimension, Chloe,” he said. “We must be.”
People on the street stared at us, too. My TV show garb, a camisole top with a gap showing flesh at the waist and a miniskirt below, must look shockingly brief in a society where women still wore tailored suits that covered them below the knees. With matching hats and gloves. The men seemed to like the display I made, but the women glared as they pulled their men away. Roland’s casual band T-shirt and blue jeans also stood out as too informal for a downtown street.
“We’d better find some clothes,” I muttered. “Why didn’t we think of this?”
“What’s wrong with our clothes?” Roland asked.
“Can’t you see people staring at us? At any moment, the women are going to tar and feather me,” I said between clenched teeth. “C’mon. There’s Woolworth’s. My mom always said they were the original discount stores. We’ll disguise ourselves.” I yanked him inside.
Once safely off the public street, we looked at each other in dismay.
“What about money? I don’t have my backpack,” I said. The girlie garb I wore had no pockets.
“Do you think they’d take credit cards?” Roland asked.
“Not if we’re in the past.”
“But how could we be in the past if there’s a highway in the sky?” he countered.
“I don’t know. Are we even on Earth anymore?”
“The street smelled like New York,” he replied.
I nodded. It had. But probably we were in the past, based on the old-fashioned clothes straight out of 1962. Yet not our past, not with highways in the sky.
“I’ve got a little cash. Maybe they won’t think it’s play money,” Roland shrugged. He was too happy to be in a new dimension to care.
“We’re screwed.” I said. Would our money be accepted? U.S. dollars changed their look as of 2000, when the bills went to colors. “This might not work.”
“Oh, come on, Chloe. You’re way too negative. Let’s try.”
“Okay. First, something to cover me. Compared to the women here, I look like I’m walking around in my underwear. As for you, a real shirt with buttons, and a tie. And trousers, not jeans. Hats and gloves for both of us. Everybody on the street is wearing hats and gloves.”
We quickly found what we needed. I swapped out my skimpy modern garb for a modest dress with a full skirt, in case I needed to run in it. I looked like a grandmother going to church. Roland got a dress shirt, which he buttoned and tucked in, and a tie and dress pants. Plus a fedora Frank Sinatra might have worn. I doubt Roland had ever worn a classic man’s hat before, only baseball caps. I’d never worn a serious lady hat myself. I quite fancied the white Jackie Kennedy pillbox style I picked. It completed my church lady ensemble.
When we went to pay, we got lucky. The prices were a third of what they’d be at a discount store in our world. Roland’s meager collection of crumpled bills was enough. The clerk accepted the multicolor bills with the giant Andrew Jackson heads without batting an eyelash. As she rung up the sale, Roland and I exchanged puzzled looks.
Outside in our new gear, we blended in with the people on the street. “Now we won’t be stared at,” I said in satisfaction.
“C’mon.” He started tugging at my hand.
“Where are we going?”
“To find Diabolical Dave.”
“We’re supposed to stop the Purple Menace,” I said.
“Yes, but we need Diabolical Dave to tell us how. Fast. We don’t know how long we can stay in this dimension. Or universe, or whatever it is,” he pointed out.
Roland was right. Junk science got us here—I refused to call it magic—and we had no clue how long this visit would last.
“We should have thought of this before we used the amulet to power away from Queens. Great. We came here for nothing. If this is the past,” I continued, thinking aloud, “Diabolical Dave would still be working at the Fantastic Comics offices. Since you’re such a fanboy, I bet you remember what their office address was fifty years ago.”
“Yep,” he replied with pride. “This way. It’s at 2nd Avenue and 63rd Street.”
Of course it couldn’t be that easy. A few minutes later, a buzz from above alerted us. Two costumed characters began to descend toward us from the sky, in a flying machine shaped like a giant soap bubble. They wore green spandex costumes, but no masks. I’d seen them and the bubble before, battled them before, in my dreams. I also recognized them now as look-alikes of the two men who had been with Eric when he burst in at Barb’s house. There, they’d done nothing except glare at us. Here, they seemed to have a machine in the bubble. They aimed it in our direction. A weapon. A giant hand extended toward us, like the one in my Meadowlands dream.
“Get over to Fantastic Comics as quick as you can. I’ll hold them off,” Roland said.
“What? I’m not leaving you,” I said. The men and their hand drew nearer. There was no question they wanted us.
“Go. Go now.” Roland was being noble. He was as scared as me.
I refused to go all girly and let him be the only target. “Forget it. I’m not going anywhere without you. Maybe we’ve got something on us we can use as weapons?”
Roland dug out the rental car key and a ballpoint pen from his pants. “Sorry. No pocketknives allowed on planes.”
The hand grew larger and larger as it neared us. We tried dodging it, but it changed course to follow us. We were on a crowded New York City sidewalk. We couldn’t get away. Worse, the people around us shrank back and let the bubble and its extended hand get closer. Thanks for nothing, folks. We ended up with our backs to the wall of a building, no door near us to escape into. We both tried to prick the hand with our makeshift weapons. Useless. As soon as one of us poked a hole in it, the hand repaired itself seamlessly.
“This isn’t working,” I said in despair.
“Get back, Chloe.” Roland shoved me behind him as the hand pressed against him. It picked him up. The hand retracted into the bubble with lightning speed. The bubble, with Roland now inside, rose swiftly in the air. Roland turned and stared at me as it retreated. Then he was gone.
Chapter 11
I stood on a strange street in a strange world, unable to comprehend how Roland could have been snatched off the sidewalk by men in a flying bubble. How could any of this be real?
He was gone—that I believed.
“Don’t worry, young lady.” A grey-haired gentleman spoke to me. He wore a hat, and carried a raincoat and elegant leather gloves despite the sunny July weather. He had a pencil mustache, too. Very mid-20th century.
“Those bubbles are a fancy new transportation device. Haven’t you seen one before?”
“It’s true,” said a middle-aged matron in pearls and a blue flat-brimmed hat whose netting covered the top part of her face. Her tailored blue dress had a matching three-quarter length coat in
the same fabric. Short white fabric gloves. What was it with this dimension and accessories?
“Your friend will be all right,” she said.
My shock began to wear off a little. My brain began to function again. These were well-meaning people, but where was Roland being transported? I needed answers they could not provide. The only likely source was the Fantastic Comics office. I turned tail and ran, through the throngs, around corners, and under elevated tracks.
They still had els in this version of Manhattan, yet all of the Manhattan overheads had been torn down by the 1960s in my world. The oddities kept coming back to that time period. I didn’t think it was a coincidence.
Running uptown took longer than I liked. Moving fast wasn’t easy in my new, heavy feminine clothes. People stared at me, as if I was doing something odd. If this was the year 1962 or close to it, running as a sport had not yet caught on. I considered slowing down, but time was more important than ever. A taxi was out of the question, since I had no cash. Roland had it all. We’d never expected to get separated.
I ran until I reached the office building that housed Fantastic Comics. Tears trickled down my cheeks. This couldn’t be the end. This couldn’t. Somebody must help me save Roland. It was one thing to break up with a guy because he wasn’t my soul mate, but I still cared about him. Roland was like the younger brother I never had. Wait, I used to have sex with Roland. Forget that analogy. Anyway, I wanted him back, and safe.
Before going inside, I tried to calm myself. I didn’t want to come across as hysterical. I gawked some more at the retro look of the people on the street. I’d fallen into a time travel movie. People wore heavy, constricting clothing. Almost every man wore a suit, or if not, a uniform. The women all wore starched cotton, or wool or silk dresses, or skirted suits in the same fabric. Almost no slacks. Always, hats and gloves. Fascinating.
Okay. Now I could breathe again.
Getting up to the Fantastic Comics office suite was easy. The elevator wasn’t locked, and there were no guards x-raying packages or demanding identification. On the sixth floor, in the outer office, a couple of women sat behind a glass window. One was typing on a typewriter. The other, nearer to the window, worked a switchboard, an antique phone-answering method I’d seen in old movies. She plugged and unplugged rubber-covered connectors with wires in them to send calls from the main office number to extension telephones. There I had my first setback.
Temporary Superheroine Page 8
