The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

the bedroom. Her question hangs in the air. For the rest of his life, Avi will regret not grabbing his daughter immediately and saying Yes, Emmeline, yes, always.

—

Kay holds Emmeline aloft, swishing the girl back and forth like a wiper blade. She sets her down and smooths the short sleeves down over Emmeline’s shoulders, her hands stopping at Emmeline’s elbows.

“You must be cold,” Kay says, pushing the door shut with her foot. A wedge of snow has blown in with her, but it’s not the cold she’s remarking on. After the accident, Emmeline wanted to keep her scars covered all the time. Avi argued that they should discourage this, but Kay shot him down. “Let the girl feel normal,” she said. Avi wonders when the last time Kay saw Emmeline’s arms bared was.

A white box sits by the door. Avi recognizes it as a comic book long box, the kind he used to keep in his closet at college.

“I have a present for your dad,” Kay tells Emmeline. “You want to show it to him?” She points to the box.

Emmeline strains to pick up the long box, then carries it in front of her to the base of the stairs, and Avi sits on the bottom stair to inspect it. Kay walks behind Emmeline, hands resting light on her shoulders. She’s going to be tall. She’ll get her height from him, although she’s gotten everything else from Kay. Except those blue eyes. Her inexplicable eyes.

“I had something weird today,” Kay says, taking off her coat. “Leenie, hon, open the box.”

Emmeline takes the lid off the long box. “It’s comics,” she says.

“Pass one to Daddy,” Kay says.

“Which one?” Emmeline asks.

“You pick,” Kay says.

Emmeline flips through a couple, pulling some up out of the box to look at the covers. She settles on one and carries it over to Avi, pinched between two fingers by the corner like a dirty Kleenex.

It’s bagged and boarded, the way Avi used to keep his comics despite Kay’s cracks about it. Avi was better at taking care of things than he was at taking care of himself. He inspects the cover. “The trial of the Perfectional,” he says. “This issue’s a classic, Leener.”

Emmeline looks at him, questioning. He knows what the look is asking, and he nods. What he needs to say to Kay, what they need to share with her, is too big to put into words. With this look and this nod, they seal it away. He hands the comic back to Emmeline, and she carefully puts it back in the box.

“You would not believe my day,” Kay says, heading for the kitchen. Emmeline trots behind her, giving Avi one last look over her shoulder to confirm their pact.

“You went binge buying at Alleycat?” he says, forcing a smile. She grabs a bottle of white wine from the fridge and deftly uncorks it. They used to hit up the comic book store on North Clark together once they’d cautiously told each other that they were fans, a revelation no less intimidating than the second time they’d seen each other naked. The first time, they jumped into bed. The second time was a series of nervous uncoverings. Finding out about their mutual love of comics was the same. Avi was more shy about his fandom than about his body and never would have brought it up if Kay hadn’t found the long boxes in his closet after she’d moved in. He came back from an assignment to stacks of comics laid out around the living room as if she’d found a stash of pornography or busted a drug ring. “You were a Timely Zombie?” she asked him. He nodded sheepishly. “More of a National fan,” she said. “When I was a kid.” She was, if anything, a bigger fan than he was, picking up new issues on Wednesday and stowing them at her office. On their first Wednesday “date” to Alleycat Comics, all the clerks knew her name. They gave Avi awkward nods even after years as a regular.

“Those are from a new client,” Kay says, pouring him a glass. “This guy, I am not joking, hired me to read comic books.” Emmeline sits at the kitchen table, paging through an OuterGirl comic older than she is. Avi leans heavily on the counter, and Kay comes up behind, slipping her hands around his belly. His body tenses when she touches it. “This guy comes in, first thing this morning, with this box of comics. He says he’s interested in the legal issues around superpowers.”

Wine catches in Avi’s throat. “That’s weird,” he says. “What does that have to do with immigration?”

“He said he was a friend of one of the partners,” Kay says. “Mr. Salazar told him I would be perfect for this project he’s fiddling with.”

“What’s the project?” Avi asks, too casual.

“Unclear,” Kay says. “But he put me on retainer to read a bunch of comics and just think about them.”

“He paid you?”

Kay produces a check from her back pocket, trifolded and snow-damp. She presents it to Avi.

He should note the amount first. There’s that sound the van makes when he takes a hard left, and the other day when he finally took the bins of summer clothes down to the basement, he was sure he saw a leak under the hot water tank. They could use some extra cash. But what he sees first is the signature line. Kevin Bishop.

He holds the check, one more impossible thing thrown into his day. Once the borders fall, everything can come through. Kay, not noticing how he’s staring at it, takes the check and tucks it back in her pocket.

“What’s for dinner?” she asks, looking around at the bare counters, the empty table.

“I got caught up with some work,” Avi says.

“We’ll order in,” Kay says, scrolling through her phone. “Which one’s the good Indian place? Dinner is on Mr. Bishop.”

They spread out a buffet on the living room carpet and pass comics around. Avi opens another