“Diabolical Dave McCay? Never heard of him.”
“Uh,” I thought about it for a moment, “What about Jovial Jerry Fine?”
He was unknown, too. Maybe they both worked at a different comic book company. Or if I was in a parallel world, perhaps neither man existed here. I took a walk around the reception room, trying to figure out what to do next.
Bodacious Barb. Surely she, an office girl, would not switch jobs the way Roland said the comic book artists did?
“What about Bodacious Barb Cole?”
They took offense for some reason. As if I asked for a big favor. “Certainly not. This is a busy office. You can’t see her without an appointment.”
“I’m her—I’m a relative of hers,” I said, desperate to get in, but not willing to say I was her daughter. “I’m sure she’ll speak to me. Tell her Chloe is here.”
The receptionists looked unconvinced. The typist said to the other, “It won’t hurt to ask, at least.”
After a few seconds of quiet conversation into the large microphone hanging like an elephant’s nose pendant on her upper chest, which she wore with a big headset, the operator must have received an okay. She clicked a button and waved me toward an inner door. “It’s the last office on the left, honey.”
I walked down a hall decorated as a workplace in the middle of the last century. Peeking into offices as I passed, I saw men smoking pipes, enthroned behind big desks. Women were sitting at huge metal office machines, typing away in tiny, windowless inner rooms. In fact, the usual setup in the mid-20th century, before feminism’s late-century surge. I must have traveled to the past.
The major surprise was the corner office at the end of the hall on the left. My mom, Bodacious Barb, sat behind a large executive desk, dressed in a pinstripe suit. She smoked a thin cigar. Still the same Barb. Or was she? This Barb was the boss, not a secretary.
“Uh, hi.” I didn’t know how to start this conversation. “You don’t know me but—”
“I know who you are,” she replied with a cool smile. “Dave told me about you.”
“What did he say? Wait.” My stupid childish interest in the father I’d never known had to be suppressed for now. I needed to get on with this. “The receptionists had never heard of Diabolical Dave McCay. Doesn’t he work for Fantastic Comics?”
“There is no Diabolical Dave in this dimension, Chloe. Nor has he been here. He’s back in your New York. Nor am I what you quaintly call a ‘single mom’ here.”
“You didn’t quit the business out of sympathy for Diabolical Dave after he was injured?” I assumed that’s what my mother did, although I had no proof she had ever been sympathetic to anyone. This Barb did not appear to be the caring type, either.
“No. I stayed, and rose through the ranks to run the company.”
“How could you in this pre-feminist era?” It didn’t seem like the kind of world where women were allowed to run anything.
Barb’s smile was condescending. “Chloe, you’ve traveled between dimensions, but you have not gone back in time. It’s the 21st century here, too. It merely looks a bit different from your world.”
Barb moved from behind the desk and with a gesture invited me to sit next to her on the couch. She set her cigar in an ornate glass ashtray and smoothed her skirt to cover her knees.
“Then how—?” I asked.
“How do I know about Diabolical Dave? How do I know about you?” Barb crossed her legs daintily at the ankle. “Dave sent me a message.”
“Oh. Did he send comics pages to your computer, too?”
“We don’t have personal computers here.”
“He phoned you?” I leaned toward her.
“No.”
Like my Barb at home, this Barb enjoyed toying with me. Some things are constants across dimensions. I’d never been one for guessing games, and of late I had lost what little sense of humor I used to have. What was funny about talking to my own mother, who claimed she wasn’t my mother? Why was she so awfully chummy with Diabolical Dave? How did they communicate if he’d never been to this dimension?
My father wasn’t here, but flying bubbles were. Roland. I had to find him. As usual, all roads led to Diabolical Dave.
“Would you cut the baloney?” I said. “I came here looking for him. Not that I care a whole lot now, because two bad guys in a big bubble have snatched my best friend and taken him somewhere. I need help.” I’d begun speaking in an angry rush, although strangely, without my usual profanity. By the last words, I was nearly crying.
Barb started laughing. She laughed eerily like my own mom did when she thought I was being very dense. Not only were they the same person physically, they also had the same personality.
“Such emotion. A bubble is a personal transporter. Your friend is probably fine.” She brushed Roland’s fate aside. Or tried to.
I can be persistent. “I must find my friend. I think those thugs are working for the Purple Menace. Do you know anything about him?”
“Too much.” She made a moue of distaste. “He used to work for me. Then Diabolical Dave contacted our world, and everything went haywire. Power started flowing into people randomly. Other strange things happened. The Purple Menace started his criminal career. Dave sent you here to clean up this Purple Menace problem.”
“Fine, but first I need to find Roland.” My words sounded mulish to my ears, as if I was fighting with my own mom.
“Roland is this friend you’re upset about? If the Purple Menace’s henchmen have him, he’ll be fine.”
She must have seen my disbelief on my face, because she continued, “Criminals are seldom violent to other people here, unlike in your world. They prefer to damage property, to make grand gestures against public edifices. They don’t even curse.”
I’d begun to notice that. It seemed I couldn’t say bad words anymore. Cute that nobody else could, either.
“You don’t have to worry about your Roland,” Barb said. “Concentrate on stopping the Purple Menace. He’s a major nuisance. He used to be a nobody. In the last two months, he has become very powerful and dangerous.”
“How do you know this? How is Dave telling you anything? How do you even know about him?”
Before Barb could answer me, if she had even intended to, the two costumed villains from before were suddenly outside the window in their midair bubble, and the giant hand had now re-formed into an enormous gripper. It started trying to pull out the glass. I was sure they wanted me. Barb immediately raced to her desk and spoke into a machine, calling for help. Office workers wielding gun-like weapons appeared in a hurry.
“The Purple Menace has it in for me because I got the job he wanted. I’ve had to fight off attacks before,” she explained, as two employees opened the windows and started firing at the men in the bubble. I’d swear what the guns shot out were ping-pong balls, but they did have an effect. The bubble was pushed back.
“They’re after you this time,” Barb said. “You’d better leave. They’ll wreck my office trying to grab you, and it took me a year to get this decorated.”
Barb’s people continued to force the bubble away from the windows.
“Could I have one of those?” I asked her.
“They won’t work on the Purple Menace,” she said. “You have more power than you think. Go use it.” Barb made a shooing motion at me. “Go on. Those fellows are mere henchmen. Defeat the Purple Menace,” Barb repeated.
Apparently she didn’t consider an attack like this a key battle.
“How?” I asked. She didn’t answer. I gave up and took off. I wanted to get away from the men in the bubble. I wasn’t ready to fight them. If only Barb had let me have one of her weapons. With it, I could defend myself and rescue Roland.
Why had Barb been cagey about how she and Diabolical Dave communicated? Did he have interdimensional ESP? Did he show up in her dreams? What powers did my invisible father have? Argh. This was getting me nowhere.
I ran outside the building, with a w
ary eye on the guys in the bubble. I hoped Barb would keep them distracted long enough for me to escape the area. I intended to put a healthy distance between me and them. Although I should tail them if I could, and find Roland.
Whatever plans I had didn’t matter, because I didn’t make it even one block. The Purple Menace scooped me up from right off the sidewalk.
“Now I’ve got you,” he chortled as he flew—yes, he flew under his own power like any caped superhero—up to the top of a building. Then he dangled me over the side.
So I screamed.
Chapter 12
Everything that happened before could have had some scientific, human-type explanation. Not flying. No, I had definitely crossed over to the world of the comic book.
The Purple Menace could fly. He was the supervillain I’d battled many times in my dreams.
After a few seconds of complete disorientation, I started struggling. I dangled in midair, over a very long drop to the street.
“Cut it out or I’ll drop you,” he said with cold indifference. His eyes were focused above me, scanning the sky.
“Soon, my greatest enemy will arrive to fight me. It won’t matter whether you are alive or dead. My plan for world domination will be complete.”
“Uh, excuse me?” I sounded meek. Not hard. I felt pretty humble dangling in midair.
“What?”
I talked the Purple Menace into hoisting me back to solid ground. Of course I lied myself blue in the face. I promised information about the amulet and the portal I didn’t know. I would have given him insider info on the stock market too, if he’d asked. I needed time to regroup.
Once I was back on the solid ground of the roof, the Purple Menace shook me hard enough to make me stumble. “Talk.”
Edging away, I enlightened him about the Amulet of Life being in the other world. He didn’t take it well. He looked angry. Now what?
Desperate times call for desperate measures. So much of my dreams had come true. Perhaps one more element would. I raised my hands delicately and pointed them at the Purple Menace. My fingers began to feel weird. Warm at the tips. The heat didn’t bother me. It made me tingle. Then it happened. Jagged yellow bolts shot out from my fingers at the Purple Menace, throwing him backward into the roof building. The impact knocked him down.
Oh, joy. I had superpowers.
“I did it. I did it. I did it.” I cut my victory dance short when I noticed the Purple Menace had gotten up and was heading toward me, angrier than ever. Uh-oh.
I tried the bolts again. Meanwhile, I saw out of the corner of my eye the bubble with the two henchmen approaching. I must not have been very far from Barb’s office, because another bolt, colored green, shot at the bubble. It dropped like a stone to the sidewalk.
I turned my head and saw the Purple Menace about to clobber me. I raised my hands and gave him all I had. It was him or me. I pushed him back fifty feet with my bolts. He hit a smokestack. This time, he did not get up. I gingerly walked closer. He was out cold, but breathing.
I had superpowers. Or else I was hallucinating and in such deep psychosis that a state institution would gladly house me for life.
Now what? I’d stopped the Purple Menace from killing me. Not the same as stopping him permanently. If I didn’t exist in this dimension because I had never been born, the cops could hardly arrest him for kidnapping and attempted murder. Anyway, I couldn’t stay here for a trial.
I needed to consult with Diabolical Dave. I’d been a fool to come here so unprepared. But I hadn’t expected the amulet to work.
I had to get away from the Purple Menace and rescue Roland somehow.
“Chloe. Chloe. Over here.” Roland’s voice came from an open door on the roof. He waved frantically at me, almost dancing with glee. His hat bounced on the back of his head. I ran to him. My own sweet pillbox hat was still firmly attached to my hair because I’d bought bobby pins to secure it. When I reached Roland, he grabbed me and hugged me. I hugged him back.
“I saw what you did. It was amazing. You’re a superheroine.”
I let him hug me some more before I pulled out of his arms. “Let’s get out of here before he wakes,” I urged, casting a look over my shoulder at the supervillain lying nearby.
Roland checked out the Purple Menace, who was still out cold. “I’d say we have some time. Nice job, Chloe.”
“Thanks, but let’s get going.” I pushed him toward the stairs.
The elevator on the next floor took a while. When we reached the street, we both looked around carefully in case the henchmen and their plastic bubble were still nearby, or the Purple Menace had revived. The coast was clear. For now.
We joined the crowds on the street, trying to look inconspicuous and still move swiftly. New Yorkers walked fast, so our haste didn’t mark us as unusual.
“We should get away from here. Immediately,” I fretted.
“Take the el?” Roland asked. He pointed to the platform high above Third Avenue.
“We’d be too exposed on an open platform. And I don’t know where those trains go. I don’t know anything about the Third Avenue el except that it was taken down long before I was born.” Panic crept into my voice.
Roland put a calming hand on my arm. “Let’s hike to an underground subway line. Those haven’t changed, right?”
I nodded gratefully. “We can find one in a few blocks.”
As we walked to the nearest station, I quickly filled Roland in on what I’d learned since we’d been forcibly parted. Especially the part about there being no Diabolical Dave or Jerry in this world, yet Bodacious Barb was mysteriously in communication with the Dave from our world. How she had urged me to de-fang the Purple Menace.
“What does she expect you to do?” he asked, hustling me past an interesting display of women’s hats in a store window.
“Beats me. Stop him somehow.”
“No mistake. He’s a bad guy, right?”
“Up there on the roof, he threatened to kill me.”
“That’s twice today. Definitely on the bad side,” Roland said, whistling.
“He’s the supervillain who invaded our dimension and attacked so many places, not to mention invading my dreams. Maybe other people’s, too.”
I kind of muttered the last words. I didn’t want to tell Roland that Eric might have dreamed about the Purple Menace. Once I learned about the amulet and the world portal, Eric’s words while dreaming made terrifying sense. What role did Eric play in his dreams? Where did his dreams come from? Surely not from Diabolical Dave, who had a grudge against Fantastic Comics and would consider Eric, the executive, a despicable sell-out.
“We need to act decisively,” Roland said, interrupting my worried train of thought about Eric.
“Yes, but doing what? In which world? The Purple Menace knows too much about us, and we know very little about him. We need to go back to our dimension to talk to Dave.”
I hardly took a breath before continuing, “Where did those henchmen take you? How did you escape?”
“They landed the bubble on the roof of an industrial loft building in lower Manhattan. We went downstairs to a room with a ton of machines in it. Big, clunky machines like comic book artists used to draw.”
“We should go over there and destroy those machines so they can’t menace us again,” I said, “but we need to see Dave first.”
Roland pointed toward the subway entrance at 59th St. “Do you know where this subway line goes? Why does it say downtown when we’re already downtown?”
“Downtown means the financial district at the south end of Manhattan,” I replied absently while I scanned the old black-on-white lettered signs showing destinations. “I think this one will get us to Times Square. Close enough to where we started.” We checked with the token seller in the booth and Roland pulled out some change to buy us tokens. They cost 15 cents each. Unreal.
“Bodacious Barb—the Barb of this world—says this is the present. But why is a subway ride so cheap? And wha
t’s with the hats?” I asked.
“It’s as if time has stood still in this dimension somehow,” Roland replied. “Dunno about the hats.”
Once we were on the underground platform, waiting for a train, I prompted Roland, “Finish your story. How did you escape those two costumed kidnappers?”
“I’d like to say I shot bolts out of my fingers the way you did,” Roland said, showing open envy. “All my life I’ve wished I had superpowers.”
I couldn’t help preening a little, even though I felt bad for his frustrated fanboy side. “Maybe anybody can have them here. Why don’t you try?”
“You’re sweet, Chloe.” He patted my shoulder. “I can’t get powers by wishing for them.”
“Okay, then I dare you,” I said. I wanted Roland to have the powers he yearned for.
“We haven’t got time for games.”
“Sure we do. The train’s not here yet, and this side of the platform is almost deserted. Try it. Go on.”
“Try what?”
“I don’t know. Bolts? Flying?” I asked hopefully. “Flying. Now there’s a cool superpower.”
We checked out the station platforms. The nearest person was fifty feet away. Roland aimed his fingers discreetly in the opposite direction. Nothing. He rose on his toes. He could not fly either. Bummer.
“Here’s the train,” Roland said, a little down at the mouth over his lack of powers.
I put my arm around him and gave him a brief hug. He’s not alpha male sexy, like Eric. But he’s a good guy. “I wish you had superpowers,” I said.
“Me, too. I’m playing the girl in this adventure,” he joked, shaking off his show of feeling as we stepped inside.
We did one transfer and then got off at Times Square where the second train line ended. There we walked downtown, still underground, in a street-wide tunnel under 6th Avenue that led from 42nd Street downhill to the 34th Street station, with exits along the way. Safe from our attackers. Funny how some things were different here, but many were the same. At least, architecturally. The tunnel was closed to pedestrians in our world a long time ago. I’d only seen it through the bars that kept it empty. Now, small shops and kiosks dotted the broad walkway, selling the usual subway foods and reading materials. Among the magazines were lots of prominently displayed comic books.
Temporary Superheroine Page 9
