IN THE WALLSPACE, once the window is secure, I switch on the light and fire up the computer on its small folding trolley. As the iMac goes through its start-up, I shuck out of my leathers and sniff my armpit and check my breath and squint into the small round wall mirror and then I put my Enercom phone and Miss Black’s business card (“For all sorceries, great and small”) on the pile of disorganised paraphernalia on the shelf unit built into the support struts at the back of my neighbours’ wall. The piles of business cards, scrawled notes, spiked receipts and creased paperwork seem to stare back at me like a mistreated pet. Not for the first time, I imagine what it would be like to have a secretary, a personal assistant as they call them these days, but because of my talk with Miss Black I start seeing the idea in a new light.

An agent?

On the top of the pile is Senator Keenan’s card and below is the one Nautilus gave me. Perhaps cleverly, the teal-coloured rectangle only has the name of his agent, Saul Osler, a mobile number and an e-contact. I turn the card over a handful of times before snatching up my cell. It’s just after one in the morning. On the computer, I moved the mouse in the cramped space allowed and click on a link I have to Enercom’s home page, and I hope I might be able to find some technical help because I can’t find the card for the woman who signed off on the sponsorship deal, Karen Someone-or-other.

The call to Nautilus goes through to a machine and I leave a terse request for him to call me back, hitchingly reciting the Enercom number. I put the phone down and there is a muted thumping on the bathroom wall letting me know Elisabeth is awake and knows I’m home. My phone problems will have to wait for another evening.

Thinking on Miss Black’s comments again, I thumb the power down button on Zephyr central and tug the lever to release the secret door, not bothering with the spy-hole as usual. A vision from the Hell of the Irish clad in a dark lavender gown awaits.

 

“I THOUGHT YOU were coming home hours ago?” is the first thing she says.

Wearing just a pair of boxers and feeling the cold, I say nothing as I start the shower running, hoping the banging pipes won’t wake Tess until Elisabeth tells me she’s staying at Astrid’s place.

“Again?”

“What of it? She’s fourteen years old, Joseph. She doesn’t have a wife to explain where she’s spending all her time.”

“God, you know where I’ve been. Out,” I say – not my cleverest response.

Elisabeth nods. “I didn’t see anything on the news.”

“I’m touched that you even looked.”

“Joseph,” she says, and eyes me seriously for a moment until I cease all other movements and concentrate on her stern expression. “Don’t talk to me as if I’ve stopped trying. One day I might, and you’ll know about it then.”

Elisabeth’s parents were refugees from 70s Derry and there’s still enough Northern Irish twang in her own voice that it reminds me of Bono and the other guy who shirt-fronted me at the nightclub and I go sullen, no real suitable reply, and shuck my shorts off and step into the shower which is too hot as usual. I rapidly spin the cold water tap and the handle comes off, so I repeat the move using slightly more care.

Elisabeth switches on the exhaust and steps from the room.

When I’ve crackled dry, I dress in jeans, a faded pair of trainers, a long-sleeve tee under a Jets shirt, and I grab my motorcycle jacket as I head for the door. Elisabeth sits on the bed like she’s riding it side-saddle, a pool of light falling upon her from the tasteful reading lamps we recently installed. Her mouth opens in an O of surprise as I go for the front door and it’s a pernicious but immature part of me that takes pleasure in it.

Down the all-night deli, I tinkle in through the glass doors and make a hotdog from the machine and take a napkin and eat while browsing through the newspapers and magazines. I take copies of the Post and Starscene and the last two Chronicles, since I don’t know what day Sal’s article appeared. Once the unmoderated buying begins, it’s hard to know where to stop. Even TV Week does a line in supers gossip, and once I’ve got a Who, a What’s Weekly, a Give-Me-Five and CityLife, even the teen magazines start looking reasonable. I belatedly realise I am on the cover of a kids’ magazine that is one part activities, one part comics, and three parts mindless drivel, with the caption “Could he be your father?” emblazoned underneath. I grab this one as well and head to the counter where the Uzbekistani teenager with a mohawk and lip ring nods coolly as he tallies up my spend.

I’m yearning for coffee and at the same time looking forward to sleep. I stumble and lose my hold on the magazines just inside the doorway to the flat and Elisabeth emerges, wild dark hair standing up, watching with quiet eyes as I clutch my purchases to my chest and push the loose magazines along the floor with my foot and through to the coffee table in the lounge. The flatscreen is on mute, tuned to a news channel showing forest fires half a world away, and the city is dark and asleep outside the panel windows that line that wall of our apartment. A modular sofa starts beneath the windows and curls around the coffee nook and I sit down, followed by Elisabeth, and start pawing through the Post.

“I need you to have a look at my phone.”

“Your phone? You don’t have a phone.”

“Zephyr’s phone,” I clarify.

“What are you doing?”

“Reading.”

“It’s 2am.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I’m tired. I’ll come to bed when I’m done.”

“You don’t want Tessa to see those magazines. . . .”

“I know,” I reply.

Instead of disappearing, Elisabeth eventually comes and sits across from me. I briefly eye the long legs that disappear under her gown as she tucks them beneath herself. Her work cell sits on the ledge behind the sofas and she checks it for the time and sighs, tapping her fingers against the samsonite letting me know she wants a cigarette.

“Go on.”

She laughs, more a purr than a laugh, and hunts down a cigarette and lights it, smoke spiralling slowly through the air.

“Explain yourself, Joe. This seems kinda nuts.”

“I’m reading about Zephyr.”

“You used to keep a scrapbook,” she says.

“I used to be sixteen.”

“We both used to be sixteen,” Elisabeth says and I look up, wincing through the smoke at the face of the girl I fell in love with in high school and who has since grown older, less interesting, yet even more essential to my life. I nod.

“I have to treat Zephyr like a business. I’m thinking about . . . I’m not sure what I’m thinking about, but it’s a change from the ground up.”

“You’re changing costumes again?”

“No.”

I wait a good minute before saying, “Aquanaut has an agent. . . .”

“Bully for him.”

“I think it’s a good idea.”

“And who’s heard of Aquanaut? If I wasn’t your wife – Zephyr’s wife – I wouldn’t know him from half the head-cases you’ve mentioned in the past seventeen years.”

“He calls himself Nautilus now.”

“Whatever. That’s better than Aquanaut.”

“I thought if I had an agent, a . . . PA, maybe even an office – even a virtual one – then this would be more like a job.”

“A PA?”

“You’ve got one. And you’re always reminding me this isn’t a real job.”

Elisabeth snorts contritely. “Don’t hold it against me. I’ve been saying it for twenty years and it hasn’t mattered yet. You don’t have to have a real job, Joey. That’s what you’ve got me for.”

“I want more than just . . . just scamming money from reporters for stories,” I say with a touch more anger than I expected.

A spark leaps from my eye to the glass window and vanishes.

“Is this about money?”

I drop my gaze to the table. I have opened Starscene to reveal photo after photo of figures in costumes mixing with film stars, musicians, famous directors, supermodels, the Dalai Lama, Robert Mugabe, Princess Mary of Denmark, King William, Giorgio Armani. Their masked, multi-coloured heads grin out of the pages at me. Overleaf, there are stills from the latest Paris Hilton video leaked to the Internet. The headlines “Masked Ball” and “Superhero Gangbang” read garishly. I recognise Sky Blue grinning, naked except for his blue-and-white wrestler’s mask, his lower torso pixellated, Paris leaning back into him with her eyes as droopy as ever. Paragon and Lionheart are also in the scene, masks intact. For a moment, the surreal idiocy of the whole thing overwhelms me and I flick back over the glossy pages with such haste they threaten to tear, and nearly invisible smoke curls off my fingers. When Elisabeth places her hand over mine, the page falls open to an image of U2 descending from the stairs of a plane painted the colours of the Pan-African flag; and the caption reads: Bono, the Edge, Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton.

“I don’t care about Zephyr,” Elisabeth quietly says, kissing the side of my brow. “I never did. Oh Joey, can you forgive me? I was a girl. It was so surreal, so amazing . . . but I moved on. You should’ve moved on too.”

I try to say something and fail, realising I have nothing in my lungs, so I take a breath so deep my chest shudders. I feel the urgent need to communicate, but I don’t want to overdo it.

“The amazing becomes mundane so quickly, honey,” Elisabeth says. “I still love you. Do you believe that? You don’t have to make Zephyr into a . . . franchise to please me. You need to do something for yourself . . . something other than beating up bad guys and waving to photographers.”

I am feeling calm again. I turn slightly, but in the dark, between the shadows and the smoke, I can barely pick Elisabeth from the silhouette of the city.

“What would I do, huh?”

“Didn’t you always want to go to college? Write? For real?”

I’m out of the room so quickly there’s not even the chance to make a breeze. I slam the door to Tessa’s room behind me and curl up fully clothed on her short bed, a banana print comforter across me. The panelled windows are veiled by thick velvet drapes, cut by a teenage hand and never hemmed. Somewhere close by, an ambulance starts up its siren and I close my eyes.

Zephyr 1.9 “Older, Less Interesting, But Even More Essential” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose