It's Superman! A Novel (40 page)

“Let me just grab something to write with, Ceil, so I can get your address.”

Mrs. O’Shea presses a finger on the hook and holds it down for a count of three, then releases it.

She doesn’t need to hear any more of the recording: she knows perfectly well where Ceil Stickowski lives.

Releasing the telephone button once more, she is reconnected with the phone-tap supervisor on duty that evening (the rerouting station has been relocated from the split-level home in Corona, Queens, to a liquor store basement in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn). “Thank you again.”

“Certainly.”

“You can erase it now.”

“Of course.”

Mrs. O hangs up. For a minute she stands mulling in the living room of Lex Luthor’s apartment (hers, too!) at the Waldorf-Astoria. She picks up the phone again and dials. Lets it ring ten times before hanging up and dialing a different number. “Paulie? Do you have any idea where Mr. Luthor is?”

“No. Why? Something the matter?”

She glances at the small clock on the mantel.

It’s a few minutes past seven.

“I need you to drive over here now and pick me up.”

“What’s going on?”

“Paulie. Hang up, get into your car, and drive over here—now. ”

“Since when did you start giving me orders?”

“Now,
Paulie,” she says and hangs up.

5

It is full dark and cold enough to see your breath when Clark and Willi exit Central Park at Grand Army Plaza. Clark’s eyes flick toward the bronze and gilt equestrian statue of William Tecumseh Sherman, to the Fountain of Abundance, then to the Plaza Hotel. He stares at the heavy traffic moving along Central Park South, at the sign on Bergdorf-Goodman. Nearby are hansom cabs with bonneted horses standing placidly in their traces. Liveried drivers huddle in groups sipping coffee from cardboard cartons, eating soft pretzels slathered with yellow mustard, talking and laughing but spotting each couple that passes—“How’s about a nice romantic Halloween drive through the park? Better than flowers, better than—ach,
what
were we talkin’ about?”

Clark gazes at everything. “Bet you wish you had your camera with you
now,
huh?”

Willi makes a face. “Close your mouth, you look like a rube.”

“I
am
a rube!” He laughs. “And seeing as how I’m wearing a black mask, blue tights, and a red cape, I should worry how I
look
? And I won’t even mention how
you
look.” He nudges Willi with his elbow, does it again, again.

“Cut it
out,
would you?”

As they are crossing the street, a gust of wind sweeps under Clark’s cape, balloons it up behind him and into the face of a fat man in a box-plaid swagger coat. It knocks off his hat. Stammering apologies, Clark snatches it from the street before it can roll away, hands it back. The man looks at him, at Willi the Invisible Man, and lumbers on.

“I’m still not sure about this stupid cape.”

“Maybe you oughta shorten it.”

“But I like it long.”

“Then shut up already.”

The young, fashionably dressed men and women hurrying up or down the steps of the Plaza remind Clark of that Gatsby novel he read in coal tenders and sidecars moving through New Mexico and Arizona. And he realizes that for the first time all day his and Willi’s costumes are failing to elicit amusement. Even the doorman gives them a contemptuous look.

In front of the Hotel St. Moritz a woman is climbing out of a long white limousine.

“Willi! I think that’s Myrna Loy! It’s Myrna Loy.”

“You’re nuts.”

“I’m not, it’s her.”

“She doesn’t even
look
like Myrna Loy.”

“It was her.”

“Was not.”

“Was too.”

They cross Sixth Avenue and continue west, Clark’s eyes darting, lifting, opening wide, his lips moving as he recites to himself the names of all the skyscraper hotels they pass: the Barbizon, the Hampshire House, the Essex.

Willi says, “I’m freezing.”

Clark shrugs and walks over to the curb—better vantage—and checks out the façade of the New York Athletic Club, counting stories: . . . nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.

“You don’t feel the cold? At all?”

“Well, I feel a change in the air. But nah, I never feel cold. Or hot.”

“You’re lucky, you know it?” Willi crosses his arms and repeatedly slaps his hands against his upper arms. “Must be nice.”

“What, not feeling the cold? I guess.”

“I’m talking more . . . in general. In general it must be nice not having any of our, you know, frailties.”

“No, hey no. I’m not so different, come on. I’m not.”

“Do you have to brush your teeth?”

“I do it.”

“Yeah, but do you
have
to? You get cavities?”

“This is stupid. You think I’m not a human being or something?”

“Ever get a blister? Wear a pair of shoes that don’t fit and get a blister?”

“That doesn’t mean anything. That’s being human, getting a blister? What about that bomb?
That
didn’t hurt?”

“A normal person would’ve been blown to bits.”

“I didn’t say I was normal, I said I was human.”

6

“Pop. Pop, lookit! Is this amazing or what? Poppy, you looking?”

No, Paulie Scaffa’s father is not looking: he has dozed off again in what used to be Paulie’s favorite chair till the old man moved in and claimed it. Every night, every blessed night he just plops down there and won’t get up. Okay, it’s close to the radio, he can reach the dials, but Paulie has offered to
move
the radio, even offered to bring it into his father’s bedroom. Wouldn’t that be nice? He can stay in his room, he won’t have to get up at all except to go to the bathroom. But Mr. Scaffa made a face and muttered under his breath. He is
always
muttering under his breath, the old—

Being a good son is the hardest work in the world. What’s harder? Doing the right thing is very, very difficult. Sometimes it disrupts everything, makes your life a living hell. But what can Paulie do? The smelly old guy
is
his father . . .

“Pop, don’t you want to look at this? I think you’ll get a kick out of it.”

After dropping off Mrs. O’Shea at the Waldorf-Astoria, Paulie drove down to Water Street, like the boss said, but instead of leaving both robots there he left only one, took the other home with him. He figured the old man would enjoy seeing it. When Paulie was eleven his pop bought him an Erector Set, but he couldn’t assemble even the most rudimentary bridge or Ferris wheel, so the old man claimed it for his own and played with it for years.

“Pop, look!”

Paulie has some difficulty now recalling the proper sequence of buttons (he’s never used the remote-control device before, just watched Mr. Luthor), and all that he manages to do is start an ominous clicking noise inside the box. The lid won’t open.

Finally, though, it does.

But once the metal pole rises up (a lot more slowly than it ought to), he can’t make the Lexbot assemble itself. Which is the best thing about it, in Paulie’s opinion.

Now he’s jabbing buttons randomly, frustrated that he’s such a klutz, annoyed that his father isn’t responding. Doesn’t he have the common courtesy to wake up and pay some attention to his only son? But why should
tonight
be any different?

When a loud crackling sounds from down inside the box, Mr. Scaffa finally opens his eyes.

“What the hell you doin’? What’s that thing? Why’d you bring that thing inside?”

Oh, right:
now
he wakes up. Just in time to see Paulie looking
stunato.

“It’s a robot, Poppy, wait’ll you see.”

“What’re you tellin’ me,
robot
? What do you bring that in here for? Where’s Carl? At least he can play canasta.”

“Hey Pop, look. It opens up and turns into . . .” Paulie scowls, jabbing more buttons, the palm of his right hand so slick the remote-control housing is sliding all over the place.

The box, sitting on the living-room rug with its two-foot steel pole sticking out, begins to vibrate so tremulously that it bounces several inches to the left, then vibrates further, in a half circle.

“Te spach el cul!”
says the old man.

“Yeah? Same to you, Pop!”

Mr. Scaffa chops downward with his hand in disgust and dismissal. “Put that away, I want to listen to Edgar Bergen. Barbara Stanwyck’s gonna be on. I like her knockers.”

“How you supposed to see her knockers on the radio, Pop?”

“What do you know what I see?”

The telephone rings. Paulie answers it.

It’s Mrs. O’Shea, his second-least-favorite person in the world.

“I need you to drive over here now and pick me up.”

“What’s going on?”

“Paulie. Hang up, get into your car, and drive over here—now.”

“Since when did you start giving me orders?”

“Now,
Paulie.”

She hangs up in his ear.

“I gotta go back out, Pop.”

“Good! Put on the radio before you leave.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Paulie looks at the remote control in his hand, at the open box on the floor, at the gleaming metal pole, the unassembled Lexbot. This is positively the last time he’s going to do anything nice for the old bastard, it’s just not worth it.

He tosses the remote control on the telephone table.

A moment later Paulie’s father utters a loud cry as the Lexbot, shooting out appendages and subappendages, builds its own bulk, assembling itself at twice the speed it ordinarily does.

Paulie doesn’t like the sounds it keeps making.

“Turn it off!” his father shouts.

“It’s a robot, Pop—see? Isn’t it great? Everybody in the
world’s
gonna own one.”

From the robot comes a deep unpropitious hum.

When the high back of the armchair bursts apart, spewing upholstery batting, the old man flings himself forward as though ejected, and in that way—although he bangs his elbow and sprains an ankle when he hits the floor—Mr. Scaffa saves himself from serious injury. A moment later the entire chair erupts into flames.

Despite his son’s presence of mind in grabbing a throw rug and beating out the fire, he calls Paulie every insult he can think of in Italian, from a jackass to a condom.

Paulie isn’t listening though. He merely goggles at the tall Lexbot in his living room.

Since when, he wants to know, was it supposed to do
that
?

7

Walking down Broadway, Clark can’t help grinning at all of the vaudeville and radio theaters they pass, the first-run movie houses, the restaurants and night clubs, the legitimate theaters lining the side streets. The Continental, the Hollywood, the Capitol! Lindy’s! Jack Dempsey’s! The Cotton Club! The Paradise! The Gaiety, the Fulton, the Shubert! He calls them all out and exclaims whenever he sees a famous actor’s name on a marquee: George M. Cohan! Katherine Cornell! Fanny Brice! Orson Welles in
Julius Caesar
!

For half an hour they wander around Times Square with its statues and fearless pigeons, its juice bars and wide-windowed clothing stores, its ticket offices, haberdashers, lunch counters, and novelty concessions. The Loew’s State (Errol Flynn in
The Perfect Specimen
), the Paramount (Cary Grant and Irene Dunn in
The Awful Truth
), the Rialto (Eddie Cantor in
Ali Baba Goes to Town
), the Astor Hotel, the New York Times building—spot news spelled out up high in letters that crawl around its four glazed terra-cotta sides. IDAHO FIREWORKS BLAST TOLL REACHES TEN . . . ITALY, GERMANY VOW MUTUAL AID IF ATTACKED . . . LA GUARDIA PREDICTS BIG WIN ON TUESDAY . . .

Clark is dazzled. By the electric lights and the walls of ever-shifting colors, by the blinking signs for chewing gum, beautiful girls, razor blades, by the pulse of inexhaustible energy, by the crowds, by the
crush.
He stares at and reads everything—even a small plaque affixed to a wall of the Knickerbocker building saying Enrico Caruso lived there once when it was the Knickerbocker Hotel.

“Would you come
on?”
says Willi. “I want to show you something. Let’s walk.”

At the out-of-town newsstand Clark asks if they carry the
Smallville Herald-Progress,
but the newsie just laughs.

Five minutes later Willi plants himself in front of a padlocked accordion gate pulled across the front of a pawnshop. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

“This is
that
pawnshop?”

“Yeah. The sign used to say Chodash’s.”

Now it says: Manhattan Hock—We Pay Cash For Gold.

Clark peers through a chink in the grating, studying the guitars, knives, pocket watches, and harmonicas on haphazard display in the window seat.

Narrowing his eyes, the pupils turning to vertical slits, he takes in the wardrobes and bureaus and china closets on display inside, the rolled-up carpets, feathered quilts and crewel bedspreads, the steamer trunks and Chinese screens. Musical instruments—saxophones, cornets, trumpets, banjos, violins—hang from hooks on the wall. A big brass National cash register. The glass-fronted showcase, deep shelves behind it that climb to the pressed-tin ceiling. “You think that Luthor guy still owns this place? Think it’s still a front?”

“Where’d you learn about
fronts
? And how should I know?”

“I bet he does.”

After a soft
clink
Clark rolls the gate back just enough to squeeze through.

“What’re you
doing
?”

The pawnshop door swings open.

Clark smiles over a shoulder at Willi.

Then he’s gone.

Now he’s back—pulling the door shut, sliding the gate back, grinning broadly, and passing Willi Berg a bulky 4x5 Speed Graphic camera. Flash gun attached.

“You’re nuts!” Willi swings the camera over his head like it’s a baby. “You are completely and totally nuts! And I’m gonna kiss you!”

“Don’t, okay? Let’s just get out of here.”

“I can’t believe you
did
that!”

“Let’s go!” Tugging Willi by a sleeve, Clark springs forward. But suddenly he is yanked backward—the hem of his cape snagged on the folding gate.