All My Friends Are Superheroes (6 page)

‘Yes?’ asked the Perfectionist.

‘Why am I not working out?’

‘You will. I know you will,’ the Perfectionist said. There was a silence.

‘Okay,’ the Ticker said.

‘I should get going,’ the Perfectionist said.

‘I’ll let you go then.’

‘Okay.’

They both hung up.

The Perfectionist replays this last conversation and worries that she rushed her sister off the phone. She worries about all of them. She puts her finger on the airplane window and draws a circle. Her sisters, the Perfectionist concludes, are perfectly sad. She feels lucky to have escaped the tragedies that happened to them. Then the Perfectionist remembers her wedding. She remembers the six months since. She remembers why she’s flying to Vancouver.

ELEVEN
THE TWO BOXES

Tom has returned to the toilet on the airplane. He’s in the one on the right. Three people have knocked. He puts his fingers underneath his eyes and pulls down the skin. He studies his eyes, all red rims and dark circles. ‘Raccoon,’ he says. He’s never seen himself look so tired.

This isn’t true. Tom has seen himself this tired once before, but that tired was so different from this tired. He can remember everything about that tired; the television was still on, the only light in the living room, and it flickered blue like a strobe light.

The Perfectionist had sat up. She pulled down her shirt. Her hair was messed up (perfectly). She studied him. She
kept her eyes open and kissed him. The kiss lingered. Tom lost track of whose lips were whose. Then the Perfectionist stood up. She pointed the remote at the television and turned it off. She reached out for Tom’s hand and he gave it to her.

They walked upstairs, Tom a step behind her. He tried not to stare at her ass. He squeezed her hand and wished his palm wasn’t so sweaty. They reached the top of the stairs and turned towards her bedroom.

Only three days earlier they’d had their first kiss, but this wouldn’t be the first time Tom had been in the Perfectionist’s bedroom. One night, a Wednesday night, not even a month ago, she’d brought him upstairs. They’d both attended the Ear’s birthday party, and they’d both been drinking, and they’d ended up walking home together. At her front door she’d invited Tom up. He’d accepted.

The Perfectionist hadn’t been with anyone since she broke up with Hypno. The sex with him had been so good the Perfectionist had taken it for granted. She really liked Tom, was sure they’d become really great friends, but nothing more. She didn’t know if their friendship would survive a one-nighter but she felt reckless and took Tom straight to her bedroom.

The Perfectionist pushed Tom onto her bed. She took off his shirt. She took off his shoes and his socks. She took off his pants. She took off his boxers.

With most guys the Perfectionist would stop there. She didn’t. She was still feeling reckless. She took off his skin.
She took off his nervous system. She lifted up his rib cage. His heart beat in her hand. And there, underneath it, she found a jewelled golden box. She opened it. Inside she found his hopes, his dreams and his fears. She stared at them. She was surprised to find them there and surprised at how beautiful they were. At that exact moment, the Perfectionist fell in love with Tom.

She put back the box and his skin and his clothes. She held him.

The Perfectionist remembered that moment as they approached her bedroom door. Tom slowed down. The Perfectionist didn’t. She walked past her bedroom. She kept walking.

There was a room at the very end of the hallway. Tom hadn’t noticed it before. The door was closed. The Perfectionist let go of his hand. She opened the door and flicked on the light. Inside, the carpet was worn and grey. Finishing nails stuck out of white drywall. In the centre of the room were two giant cardboard boxes, the kind refrigerators come packed in.

On the box to the left, in the Perfectionist’s handwriting, was the word ‘FRIEND.’ On the box to the right, also in the Perfectionist’s handwriting, was the word ‘LOVER.’ These two boxes were the only objects in the room.

Tom looked at the Perfectionist. The Perfectionist looked at him. Tom looked back to the boxes and then back at the Perfectionist. He scratched his head.

‘Well?’ the Perfectionist asked.

Tom looked at her, looked at the boxes and looked back at the Perfectionist. He still didn’t understand.

‘Which one?’ she demanded. She moved her arms, suggesting he should get in one.

Tom walked into the room and stood between the two boxes. He looked at the one marked ‘LOVER’ and he looked at the one marked ‘FRIEND.’ He made his decision quickly. With sharp steps he moved in front of the box marked ‘FRIEND.’ Picking it up, he lifted it over his head and put it inside the box marked ‘LOVER’. Then he turned around, picked up the Perfectionist, and lifted her inside the boxes. He climbed in with her. In the morning, there wasn’t much left of either box.

Tom runs his finger along the stainless-steel tap above the sink. With a little water he pats down his hair. He puts fresh toilet paper on the cuts on his wrist before unbolting the bathroom door. The ‘occupied’ light switches off.

TWELVE
FIND YOUR OWN SUPERHERO NAME

It’s true most superheroes have funny names. But they have to come up with these names by themselves. Think about how hard it is. Try it, right now; boil down your personality and abilities to a single phrase or image. If you can do that, you’re probably a superhero already.

Part of the problem with finding your superhero name is that it may refer to something you don’t like about yourself. It may actually be the part of yourself you hate the most, would pay money to get rid of. Certainly the Perfectionist had a hard time coming to terms with her superpower. The Gambler, OneNight and Brutally Honest all spent years accepting their superpowers.

The final stage of finding your superhero name is accepting how little difference it really makes. Okay, there’s this thing you can do, a thing you can do like no other person on the planet. That makes you special, but being special really doesn’t mean anything. You still have to get dressed in the morning. Your shoelaces still break. Your lover will still leave you if you don’t treat her right.

THE SLOTH

The Sloth hated himself. He considered himself lazy. He had a dead-end job and no plans to get a better one. His relationship was on-again-off-again, and he never got to the gym even though he kept paying the membership dues.

There was mould in his refrigerator and he watched reruns on
TV
. Sometimes he wore the same pair of socks twice in the same week.

The Sloth would sit on his couch, paralyzed by all the things he wasn’t taking care of. Then one day, a Wednesday, he just said, ‘Fuck it!’ He threw his hands up into the air and said, ‘Fuck it!’ This was the day that the Sloth discovered his superpower, an amazing ability to say ‘Fuck it’ and really, truly mean it.

WILD MOOD SWINGER

One of the few superheroes to wear a costume, Wild Mood Swinger is never seen without his large-lapelled polyester plaid leisure suit with white shoes and a matching belt. Blessed with the ability to achieve the highest emotional heights and cursed with the ability to sink to the lowest emotional depths, Wild Mood Swinger often does so during the same conversation. Strangely attractive to women.

COPYCAT

Copycat has the ability to mimic anyone’s personal style. Which wouldn’t be so bad, perhaps even a compliment, if
she wasn’t able to perfect her subjects’ style to the point where they start looking like less successful versions of themselves.

THE INVERSE

Shake the Inverse’s hand and the exact opposite of your life will flash before your eyes. This can be so overwhelming that the Inverse will not shake your hand unless you ask him to, and sometimes not even then.

A case in point is Businessman. When the Inverse shook Businessman’s hand, Businessman saw himself as having a work and going to life. The experience was so intense that Businessman retired the next day.

It’s exactly that sort of responsibility that the Inverse seeks to avoid and it’s why he has never shaken his own hand.

MR. OPPORTUNITY

He knocks on doors and stands there. You’d be surprised how few doors get answered.

MISTRESS CLEANASYOUGO

The most powerful superhero of all, the one everyone wishes they were, is Mistress Cleanasyougo. At the end of every day she folds her clothes. She never leaves scissors on the table, pens with no ink are thrown in the trash, wet towels are always hung up, dishes are washed directly after dinner and nothing is left unsaid.

THIRTEEN
BEGINNING DESCENT

The captain’s voice comes through Tom’s headphones. In confident tones he announces that flight
AC
117 is commencing its descent. They will be arriving in Vancouver in twenty minutes. Local time will be 5:17 p.m. The captain requests that all passengers return to their seats and fasten their seatbelts. Tom looks up. None of the passengers are standing so no one moves. He feels the plane tilt downwards. He tries not to cry. He has twenty minutes to convince his wife that he isn’t invisible. He disobeys the captain’s orders and dares another trip to the bathroom. He pushes past the man in seat 27
D
.

As Tom walks down the aisle, the man in seat 27
D
begins to study the Perfectionist. He watches her watch
clouds out the airplane window. The Perfectionist notices she’s being studied. She doesn’t look over. She keeps her eyes on the clouds.

He swallows, clears his throat. His thumb and forefinger rub together.

‘Perf ?’ he asks.

The Perfectionist looks over. He’s looking right at her. For the first time she looks right at him. She reaches out and traces her index finger across his lips.

‘Literal?’ she asks.

‘Literal?’ says the Broken-Hearted Man. ‘Nobody’s called me that in years.’

The Literal and the Perfectionist dated in high school. They were very much in love. They were each other’s first. They separated to go to university but pledged to stay together.

To prove his love the Literal gave the Perfectionist his heart. He put it in a shoebox, wrapped the box in silver paper and carried it down to the post office. After licking twenty-nine dollars and forty-seven cents’ worth of stamps, he addressed the package to the Perfectionist, c/o McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.

Three weeks later, the same shoebox arrived in the Literal’s mailbox. It was wrapped in the same silver paper, but the box had been opened. His heart was inside. At that moment, the Literal stopped being the Literal. He became the Broken-Hearted Man. He was so crushed he never talked to her again.

‘What are the chances I’d be sitting next to her on an airplane?’ the Broken-Hearted Man asks himself. Impossible odds. Must be fate. Daily for thirteen years, sometimes three times a day, he’d rehearsed this moment. He knew exactly what he was going to say, what tone of voice he’d use. He wouldn’t be bitter – that would make him look weak. He’d be casual. He would be glad to see her. It wouldn’t be the most important moment of his day.