“I wanted to ease your boredom, Mikhail. I get bored too.” He thought a moment. “Actually, working Stamz’s beat, I’m more likely to be psychically tormented than bored—but suffering that psychic torment spares me physical pain.” He folded the Instigator and laid it on the floor. Reading the execrable rag made him feel polluted, as if he had just lied to a nun or kicked a puppy, but at least he had no headaches, nosebleeds, or crazy-making itches.
The Mick picked up a pink plastic flamingo that Bari had given Xavier to help hold his Philistine Syndrome in check. He collapsed into the bean-bag chair that she had sent over at about the same time. Xavier hated the flamingos— there was one in every corner—but he hated even more the dogs-playing-poker painting that hung in the place where once he’d had a brush-stroke reproduction of an Auvers-period Van Gogh. He had begun to see how poor Vincent could have killed himself. Embracing the flamingo, Mikhail said, “What if you found some, well, lowbrow art—TV sitcoms, comics, belly dancing—that also just happened to be, like, good.”
“Oconee intelligentsia,” Xavier murmured.
“Sir?” (That was a first: Mikhail never said sir.)
“Nothing. Just my private phrase for a contradiction in terms. Don’t fret it.”
The Mick didn’t. “I was thinking that if you exposed yourself to a second-rate kind of art that had some first-rate examples, maybe you could balance off your problem, like, and get back to a fucking seminormal existence.”
“Like the world’s most meticulous manufacturer of plaster-of-Paris flamingos?”
“Yeah. Or the world’s best ventriloquist, or cartoonist, or kazoo player.”
“Argh.”
“Worth a zap.” The Mick rocked his flamingo as if it were an infant. Meanwhile, his bean-bag chair emitted crepitating melodies that only a gastrointestinal specialist could love.
*
The next morning, by either destiny or coincidence, Grantham informed Xavier that he wanted him to attend a press conference at Salonika Towers. That afternoon, the editor-in-chief of Uncommon Comics, the New South’s independent answer to Marvel and DC, would be there, with several of the fledgling company’s artists, to make an important announcement.
“That’s one I’d like to cover,” Lee Stamz groused.
“Would that you could,” Xavier said.
“No dice,” Grantham said. “Things are snapping along nicely as they are.”
Xavier telephoned Mikhail, comic aficionado par excellence, and advised him to meet him at Salonika Towers at two o’clock.
“Take a taxi,” he said. “On me.”
19
Stalwart in Salonika
Xavier met Mikhail on the sidewalk outside Salonika Plaza, an elaborate shopping complex not far from the Ralph McGill Building.
Ginkgo trees graced the stonework court in front of the galleried towers, a band was playing Dixieland on a raised redwood deck to one side of the smoke-colored doors, and bright awnings and sail-sized advertising banners flapped all the way up the face of the three chockablock towers containing the Salonika Plaza Mall and its chic, scurrying patrons.
“Decadent fucking bourgeois capitalism run fucking amok.”
“Yes, I know. Which store would you like to go to?”
“Goldfinger’s,” The Mick said.
“You’re in luck. That’s where we’re going.”
Goldfinger’s: the official bookstore, souvenir gallery, and comic-book emporium owned and operated by the backers of Uncommon Comics, UC’s premier retail outlet in Oconee, if not the Southeast. It was also, unquestionably, an even more flagrant example of “decadent fucking bourgeois capitalism run fucking amok” than the department stores, boutiques, jewelry stores, health-food bistros, exotic restaurants, and chichi import houses occupying the rest of the high-rent floor space in Salonika Plaza. The Mick ignored this fact, for Goldfinger’s allowed him to conspicuously acquire and consume comics in plush surroundings. It provided reading rooms and free soft drinks to patrons who could validate a five-dollar, or larger, purchase within the past week.
“But why’re you going to Goldfinger’s?” Mikhail asked.
“Don’t you listen to the radio or read the ads in your illustrated trade journals?”
“Is that your smart-ass fucking euphemism for comics?”
“No, it’s my clever-fanny sexual-intercoursing euphemism for comics.”
This riposte flew right over The Mick. “Then today’s the day!” he exclaimed. “Today’s the day UC introduces three new characters and updates its Stalwarts for Truth series!”
“I’d forgotten you came to Salonika only because UC has its headquarters here.”
“Forget that. Let’s move our butts, Uncle Xave.”
They entered Salonika Plaza’s right-hand tower. Goldfinger’s dominated the lofty glass-and-plastic, aluminum-and-copper court at its heart. Fountains splashed, cool air wafted, and exotic palms and multicolored orchids imparted the aura of a sanitized jungle to this section of the mall. Goldfinger’s had three floors on the central court. From its highest wrought-iron balcony hung a computer scroll, decorated with dozens of UC characters in action poses. It screamed:
I See UC, You See UC, We All See UC,
And What We All See Is
FAN-TABULOUS!!!
On the second balcony, a red-haired man in blue jeans and a pullover stood with three costumed figures more or less human in appearance. Xavier assumed them to be living stand-ins for the two-dimensional superheroes that kept the creative and managerial “talents” behind Uncommon Comics in bread money or filet mignon. (Blessed with both insight and experience, Xavier had long since figured out who got which. Why, he was still working on.)
“Who’re those three fools supposed to be?” he asked Mikhail.
“The Decimator, Mantisman, Saint Torque. They’ve all got their own monthly books. Together they were like, you know, the founding superheroes of ‘Stalwarts for Truth.’ Stalwarts has its own comic and six or seven alternate superheroes, depending on who’s doing the writing and penciling.”
“Don’t be shy, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” said the red-haired man on the balcony, the occasion’s de facto emcee. His voice boomed through the plaza.
“You know who that is?” The Mick said excitedly. “It’s Bowman himself, unc! Tim Bowman the Great! Jesus!”
Apparently The Mick had been looking so intently at the idiots in their superhero gear that he hadn’t initially recognized his hero, the man who had created them. Now that he had, he was as bug-eyed as if he wore goggles.
“Step into Goldfinger’s,” said Bowman, from the balcony. “We’re giving away copies of The Decimator, Mantisman, Snow Leopard, Scarab, Saint Torque, and Ladysilk while they last. One to a customer, please. The stalwarts here with me”—succinctly, Bowman introduced them—“will be happy to autograph their titles for you between three and four this afternoon. After which we’ll bring out—in person, as their own stalwartly selves—the three newest Uncommon Comics superheroes. You’ll want to follow the adventures of these latest Unique Continuum stalwarts every month.”
Xavier whispered, “So we can grab off another hunk of your allowances, kiddos.”
“Come on in, folks. No need to fear muggers or such here at Goldfinger’s. Guys like that wouldn’t dare show up while Mantisman, Saint Torque, and the Decimator are on the premises to defend you.”
As if to punctuate this assurance swashbucklingly, Bowman grabbed a cable (disguised as a vine) hanging from a lofty ceiling girder and swung out over the plaza’s crowd in a Douglas Fairbanksian maneuver that startled Xavier with its suddenness. Bowman passed overhead, pedaling air, and pushed off the elevator tube opposite Goldfinger’s with his tennis shoes. In addition to his casual clothes, he wore a scarlet Uncommon Comics cape for dash and publicity, and when he struck the escalator tube, he vented a bloodcurdling Tarzan yell. Swinging back to the stalwarts on the balcony, he twisted in midair and banged his knees into the railin
g. Saint Torque and the Decimator caught him and pulled him over the bar to safety.
“I’m okay!” Bowman cried, holding his leg. “Come see what’s goin’ down!”
“My God,” Xavier said, “the man’s a fruitcake.”
“He’s an or-what genius,” The Mick countered.
Bowman and the stalwarts retired from the balcony.
Inside, Goldfinger’s was pandemonium. Three quarters of the patron teenagers were male, most outfitted more like Ephebus Academy preppies than like The Mick, whose hoodluminati retropunk garb drew hostile stares and sarcastically lifted eyebrows. The grownups on hand seemed to be either keepers of the kids’ money or employees, while the line for complimentary comics snaked among the display racks and souvenir shelves for what Xavier estimated was a hundred miles. Mikhail got lost, quickly and deliberately.
The nubile ingenue playing Saint Torque showed up beside Xavier to escort him to an interior office where the red-haired editor in chief of Uncommon Comics, seated and rubbing his knee, was already briefing the press about the “updating of our Unique Continuum.” Press releases and comic books abounded. There were illustrated guides to the characters whose “distinctive likenesses” were trademarks of UC, Inc. There were letters of testimonial from movie stars, TV personalities, and other well-known connoisseurs of “illustrated storytelling.” Xavier took no notes. He saw no need. Instead, he spent most of his time discreetly ogling the healthy young woman—sixteen? seventeen?—in the Saint Torque costume.
From a handout, he learned that, while a child, her character had been struck by a ricocheting bullet during a bank robbery and paralyzed. The bullet had lodged, inoperably, at the base of her spine. With the onset of puberty, though, Samantha Pershing—the stalwart-to-be’s “real” name—had recovered from her paralysis to find that the residual spin from the bullet still in her back had given her a most unusual superpower: She could, if adrenalized by an innocent person’s fear and helplessness, fly through the air like a missile, through the water like a torpedo, or through the earth’s crust like a drill bit, and thus rescue that endangered person.
“What rubbish,” Xavier said aloud.
“I beg your pardon,” said Tim Bowman, and Xavier saw that everyone in the room—artists, reporters, ersatz superheroes—was looking at him just as if he’d belched during a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. It was astonishing how devoted to, and jealous of, the nonsense that supported them these people were. They were zealots, True Believers, hallowing the origin and exploits of Saint Torque, and every other UC “stalwart,” like hagiographers hallowing the lives of the great Catholic saints.
“Nothing,” Xavier said sheepishly. “Go on.”
Tim Bowman orated again, the reporters from the trades asked more questions, and superhero lookalikes—Mantisman, the Terrier, Ladysilk, etc.—wandered in and out as autograph sessions and other publicity maneuvers demanded.
Mantisman was the oddest-looking impersonator there, a person costumed in a long, green, insectoid exoskeleton—the lone Stalwart for Truth (according to the Official Guide to the Unique Continuum of UC Comics) who operated not in Salonika itself, which the comics always referred to as Nick City, but in the Oconee countryside. In fact, Mantisman’s identifying shtick was that he was largely a rural superhero, defending farmers from livestock and equipment theft, ponds and streams from those who’d pollute them, Afro-Americans and other ethnics from the vigilante activities of retro-Ku Klux Klansmen, and deer and other game animals from poachers.
Xavier couldn’t quite fathom Mantisman’s modus operandi—his exoskeleton contained a mysterious power source permitting him to hover or to jet—but he mostly relied on surprise, along with the fear that his appearance evoked, to overcome his adversaries. In “real life” (avowed the Official Guide), he was an entomologist named Grady Rupp employed by the state Department of Agriculture in a county extension-service office in the tiny town of Hothlepoya, Oconee. No one but the governor, who had been in office for decades, knew of Rupp’s secret identity as a flying insect.
“Gak,” said Xavier. Everyone gaped at him again. He gripped his throat as if he had involuntarily reingested part of his lunch. Go on, he signaled the others with a nod: Don’t mind me.
The Mick entered the office with a stack of free comics. How had he avoided the lines, stolen past the security people, and squeezed under Xavier’s arm? Now he was waiting for Bowman to wow everybody with UC’s latest marketing ploy.
Said Bowman, “Here to introduce the three Unique Continuum stalwarts who’ll debut this week is America’s most admired superhero . . . the Decimator!”
Xavier felt Mikhail’s excitement. This claptrap was the highest creative endeavor he could imagine. He would think himself Michelangelo if Bowman asked him to submit some drawings to a UC project. As for me, Xavier mused, I’m bored past boredom. But I’m not bleeding from the nose or trying to outlast the trots. I’m suffering this mental agony from a physical posture of—Nietzsche be praised—“great healthiness.” Physically, he was as stalwart in Salonika as the imaginary Stalwarts for Truth. Psychically, he was a conflicted mess.
*
The actor impersonating the Decimator swaggered into the packed manager’s office of Goldfinger’s. His uniform was a streamlined parody of a Roman centurion’s: a tight-fitting hard-plastic helmet, a form-fitting breastplate, a pleated skirt, and sandals that suggested a minimalist variety of athletic shoe. The Decimator was the monarch of the UC line, the superhero par excellence, known around the world (and even to Xavier Thaxton, an avowed debunker of the “popular arts”) from the trio of films based on his heroics, his animated TV ads for Dwoskyn Pest Control, and a syndicated strip featured in at least twelve papers overseas. What Superman was to DC and Spiderman to Marvel, Decimator was to the Unique Continuum of Uncommon Comics—“ever stalwart in his battle against the crime lords of Nick City.”
In “real life,” according to the Official Guide and the famous first issue of his eponymous title (a comic book now worth, in mint condition, $500), the Decimator was a former Green Beret. Before Vietnam, he had been a military-history major. After the fall of Saigon, he had lived for three years in Rome, journeying around the Mediterranean to assess that region’s best responses to terroristic acts and to brainstorm ways to use these responses in U.S. cities. He was independently wealthy, of course, but worked off and on with the Army Corps of Engineers as a consultant. His “real” name was Grant Mayhew. Like Bruce Wayne (Batman), he had no superpowers, but was strong, wily, and resourceful. Mayhew had acquired his name the Decimator by taking hostage a tenth of the total membership of each of the major crime syndicates in Salonika. He held the thugs in solitary in the Catacombs under Nick City, using them as leverage against the capos who worked out of Satan’s Cellar but who sought to extort tribute from merchants in tonier parts of town.
(Once, shortly after The Mick had moved in, Xavier had argued with him the credibility of this scenario: “It’s stupid, Mikhail. If a self-appointed vigilante kidnapped the members of crime families and demanded they quit doing evil, they’d take hostages of their own—innocent people with no connection to the mobsters’ crass activities—and the potential for loss of life would widen, not narrow.”
“The hoods would surrender, Uncle Xave. The Big D hits ’em where they live.”
“Pure juvenile fantasy, Mick. In real real life, the violence would escalate, people would die, and Mayhew would agonize over every victim of his macho confrontation ethic.”
Mikhail replied, “It’s only fucking stories, Uncle Xave.”
“Right. Bad stories. Prevarications.”
“Interesting ones. Amusing ones. Better than the artsy-fartsy crap you want me to read.” And he’d retreated to his sanctum and slammed the door.)
The actor-model playing the Decimator looked about twenty-five, hardly old enough to be either a Vietnam veteran or an expert in counterterrorist procedures. Nor did he closely resemble the actor who’d played t
he Decimator in the three films licensed by Uncommon Comics. He was a good-looking would-be heartthrob who lifted weights and who probably sent photographs of himself to Playgirl hoping to acquire a staple through his umbilicus. “The three newcomers to our Unique Continuum are ready to meet you guys,” he said, making no effort to keep up the illusion of stalwartliness. “They’ll come out one by one, as I call their names and, like, present themselves to y’all for interviews and pix. Okay?”
“You and he have the same speech teacher?” Xavier asked The Mick, sotto voce.
“Ha ha,” The Mick said, mildly.
“Okay, here’s the first one. We call him the DeeJay.”
And so the character dubbed the DeeJay bopped into the room. Xavier squinted at this young man, studied a handout, and quickly discovered that the DeeJay—his costume was a retropunk zoot suit—owned a portable radio station from which he broadcast warnings to hoodlums and tips to the police. Also, in his daily strolls through Le Grande Park, the DeeJay chased any bad guys he happened to see. Usually, he apprehended them by taking old 45 RPM records from the tote bag he carried and hurling them like Frisbees. The 45s struck the hoodlums in the crook of the knee and invariably brought them down. There was more about the DeeJay, but Xavier, who’d already overdosed on stalwartly nonsense, tuned it out. The Mick, however, kept paging through the free comic book devoted to the DeeJay’s first adventure.
The Decimator then announced the name of a new female stalwart, Gator Maid. Half listening, Xavier learned that this character—her impersonator wore a simulated alligator-skin bodysuit—was a female counterpart of Mantisman, another rural superhero. As herself, “Alice Gatlin” was a marine biologist with a doctorate from the University of Miami. She worked for the federal government in the Choctawhatchee Swamp near the Oconee coastline on the Gulf of Mexico. Unlike Mantisman, Gator Maid sometimes entered Salonika to battle urban crimesters, for she was good at navigating Nick City’s sewers. She helped the Decimator kidnap bad-guy hostages and guard the Catacombs against sabotage and attempted escapes.
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