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

bottle. He tells Emmeline about the Ferret, the R-Squad, and the Freak Phalanx. He’s evangelical, although he’s never tried to rope Emmeline into his habit. Music, yes. He’s played records for her since she was an infant. “This is the Beatles,” he’d say. “This is Aretha Franklin.” As if the baby were filing these things away. He’d take her up to his office and play records for hours, giving Kay a chance to sleep. She preferred to sing to Emmeline, whispering songs into her ear. When Emmeline started making sweet atonal mumbles, it was the songs Avi played that she regurgitated. “Under My Thumb” rather than “Row Your Boat,” “Trouble Man” instead of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

When Avi pauses to breathe or eat, Kay tells Emmeline the stories as if they were ancient myths or Just So stories. How the Astounding Family got their powers. How Red Emma swore revenge. How the Visigoth ended up in space and how he fought his way back to earth to discover centuries had passed.

“What happened to all his friends?” Emmeline asks.

Avi side-eyes Kay. They forget how little Emmeline is. They forget to shield her from sadness because she’s so able to take it in stride.

“He makes new friends,” Kay says. Emmeline pretends to be interested, but it’s a show she puts on for them. By the time the food is eaten, it’s close enough to her bedtime that Kay doesn’t bat an eye when she asks to go to bed. Avi wonders if she’s tired or needs to get away.

“Sure thing, Leener,” he says. “Who do you want to tuck you in?”

“Momma,” she says. Avi pretends to be hurt to cover up his surprise. He expected that Emmeline would take this chance to give them a moment to debrief, to finish the conversation they’d been having when Kay got home. Kay, a little drunk, holds her fists up like a victorious prize-fighter. She does a victory dance and hoists Emmeline onto her shoulders, teetering. As they start up the stairs, Avi struggles to get up off the floor, scooting backward so he can use a chair for support. He catches Kay looking back at him, wanting to help, knowing it’s not what he wants from her.

Avi puts the comics away. He moves all the superheroes from Timely Comics to the front of the box. These are the characters who are, in their grand ridiculous way, human. They can fly but also have to pay rent. They can shake the earth under them but can’t hold together a relationship. Kay prefers National Comics. Icons and archetypes. Gods in the shape of humans. He shuffles those toward the back. By the time Kay comes down, he’s got the Timely Comics in rough chronological order.

“She’s asleep?” he asks.

“She’s a brick,” says Kay. “We done with superheroes for the night?”

“I found some good ones,” Avi says. He takes one of the comics out of the box. An old issue of OuterMan. “This one, OuterMan is on trial for de-aging the Ruminator with a, what is it, it’s like a—”

“It was a ray,” she says. “It was the Ruminator’s device. A de-aging ray.”

“Right, right,” says Avi. He hands it to her and pulls out another. “This one has Medea sued for using her psychic powers to rig the New York mayoral election.”

“She was dating the candidate,” Kay says.

“Who turned out to be an evil time traveler,” says Avi.

“Eternus,” Kay says. Her voice goes dreamy. Before Emmeline, they’d lie in bed together, stoned, recalling details of old comic book plots. The reveal of Red Emma’s father. Iota body switched not with OuterWoman, as Avi remembered it, but with She-Savage. They built on each other’s knowledge, filling in their gaps.

Avi pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I need your help with something,” he says. Kay looks at the phone, wary. “Something’s not clicking in my head on this. I need your eyes.”

It’s something they used to say to each other. When Kay was stuck on a case. When Avi couldn’t get a piece to read right. They were careful not to overuse it. They both dealt with terrible things. They both trucked in horrors. It was important to protect each other. Sometimes you needed to get out of your own head. They developed a code, a safe phrase so they’d understand when it was truly important: I need your eyes.

On the screen of the phone, there’s the church, midday sun streaming through the stained glass. Pastor Baldwin in the front. At the right edge of the frame, the little girl. A triangle inscribed in a circle hung over the middle of the image.

“I can’t,” she says.

“I wouldn’t ask,” says Avi, “but I need something to break open on this, and I’ve lost my eyes.”

He intends it as a way to get her to the other thing. To start the conversation that will lead them back to their daughter. Kay puts her wine down on the coffee table. She puts her hand over her face. “Avi, I can’t,” she says. “If I put that shit in my head, it’s going to rattle around in there forever. Don’t ask me to.” What she means is, Don’t ask me again. Don’t call this promise in; don’t hold me to it.

“No, it’s fine.” He pockets the phone. He tells himself he will try again tomorrow by some other route. But he knows he won’t. He had another obvious way in, through the check, the comic books, Kay’s new client. But that would make all this about Kay. Her story instead of his. It’s also possible he picked the path he knew Kay would refuse so he could tell himself he tried without risking success. “I think there were some old Red Emma issues in there,” he says, pointing to the box. “You used to love her.”

They spend an hour reading the adventures of a prosecutor who swears revenge on organized crime after her entire family is gunned down. They each hold one