A Hundred Thousand Worlds (2 page)

B
rett Kazan draws intricate dreams on his bar napkin. He works in from the edges. He uses the constraint of the space to compress concepts into ideas, ideas into images. He is using a Tachikawa .3mm that fell out of his portfolio onto the sidewalk outside of their apartment this morning. When he went to pick up the last of his things. Debra’s apartment. Not theirs. Not anymore. Brett likes the .3 for fine line work. With a canvas this small, everything is fine line work.

Across the table from Brett at the bar of the Holiday Inn Cleveland, Fred Marin is still talking. One of the things Brett likes about Fred is his ability to fill space with words. When Brett draws
Lady Stardust,
the comics series they’ve collaborated on for three years, he leaves acres of negative space on the pages. They come back to him packed with dense verbiage. One of the comic’s trademarks, Fred says. Brett’s been crashing on Fred’s couch in Williamsburg the past few weeks. Fred starts talking when he walks in the door and doesn’t stop even after he’s fallen asleep. Late at night, Brett can hear Fred muttering full, incoherent sentences into his pillow. It’s better, after the almost silent last weeks with Debra, with the two of them speaking only to work out the logistics of never speaking again. Passing each other in the hall silently, or waiting for water to boil for coffee, examining their respective feet. Conversation seems like the one thing every apartment needs.

“What’s left in Brooklyn anyway?” says Fred. It’s likely he’s been talking about Brooklyn for a while now. “You should be looking in the Bronx. There are good things happening in the Bronx.” If Fred could afford it,
he’d live in Manhattan, in one of those buildings that look like they’re made of mercury held in stasis. A building you never see anyone coming or going from. Brett isn’t sure Fred
can’t
afford it. They don’t talk about how Fred can afford to live alone in Williamsburg. They don’t talk about money at all. Never have. But somehow Fred has made it through the middle of his twenties living in New York and never needed to hold down a steady job, while Brett has scraped by, augmenting his service industry jobs with the occasional bit of design work and the money Black Sheep Comics pays them for
Lady Stardust
. Combined with owing Debra on the rent most months, it had been a foolproof financial plan.

When he went by this morning before they left, he’d worried there might be a scene. He imagined himself and Debra standing in the kitchen in silence. Early light coming in from the east-facing window. Exactly this, a scene with no script, no dialogue. But everything he’d come to pick up was stacked in the hallway outside the apartment door. He left the keys under the welcome mat. Across the Ohio state line, he sketched the moment of finding his things in the hall. A portfolio, a guitar he didn’t know more than three chords on, a Duane Reade bag of assorted T-shirts. They seemed full of meaning once he’d drawn them.

“This place is so abstract,” says Fred. Fred says
abstract
when he means
cliché.
Not sure why. “It’s like a set for a documentary about the set of
Cheers
. These chandeliers or whatever. Where are the velvet Elvises and sad clowns and jackalopes? What’s wrong with dark wood and exposed Edison bulbs?”

“Dark wood and exposed Edison bulbs are abstractions, too,” says Brett. He doesn’t look up from his drawing. It’s easier to adopt Fred’s incorrect use of the word than to correct him.

“Elegant abstractions are still elegant,” says Fred. He is drinking whiskey, which explains the rhetorical questions. “Why couldn’t that be how Cleveland reinvents itself? A citywide commitment to elegance. Public works projects promoting simple lines. Municipal policy enforcing a de Stijl color palette. Who doesn’t love red, white, and black?”

“Blue and yellow, too,” says Brett. Fred knows art movements only from the album covers they pop up on and the comics artists they influence.

Brett stops and looks at his napkin. It’s gotten cluttered. Busy. Last week at New York Comic Con, he and Fred went to Howard Berryman’s booth in Artist Alley. Berryman had revolutionized comics in the seventies. Ultrarealistic style, muscles on muscles. Legendary run on
The Ferret
with Porter Coleman writing. Nowadays he couldn’t get a steady gig. Berryman was selling commissioned sketches on pieces of paper no bigger than bar napkins. Head shots of the Ferret, Red Emma, the Diviner. Three hundred a pop. Took him three minutes a go, including chitchat with the buyer. A guy known for the obsessive detail of his panels making a living rendering characters with a minimum number of lines. And here’s Brett, who prides himself on spacious page layouts, cramping twelve issues’ worth of story onto a bar napkin. He wads it up and sets it next to his pint. It soaks up condensation from the glass. Secret blues hidden in the Tachikawa’s black ink bleed out. All the lines blur into one another.

“It’s Cleveland, I know,” says Fred. Brett isn’t sure whether he’s missed any of this rant. “But Brewer and Loeb are both from Cleveland. Which means the Astounding Family was created here. Which means Metro City was created here. The capital of the Timely Comics Universe. The—I’m going to say this—the greatest fictional location outside of Milton’s Hell. Is based on Cleveland.”

Brett scans the bar. Not because he’s ignoring Fred. Because Brett’s mind survives on a diet of visual details. He examines the chandeliers. At first they look identical. Mass-produced. But the lines of leading between the panels of stained glass are shaky. Handmade. The bar is full of people here for Heronomicon. Brett recognizes a lot of them from New York Con last week. Clever T-shirts. The shirts will be cleverer tomorrow. People save the cleverest shirts for day of. It’s a mix of fans and professionals. Most of them doing better, moneywise, than Brett and Fred. Freelancers from the Big Two companies, Timely and National, mostly. Fred says he and Brett are retaining their artistic integrity. Brett takes some comfort
that while he’s on the same rung of the ladder as these guys, he’s at least potentially climbing. Devlin over there, for instance. Kung fu T-shirt, bad goatee. Had a hot second three, four years ago. Does fill-ins for National now. Makes more than Brett does, but it’s as much as he’ll ever make. The industry’s only recently created this artistic working class within itself. Fred talks about it all the time. Still, if either of the Big Two came calling with a contract, they’d jump. Part of this trip is about getting discovered. Enough Triple-A ball. Brett thinks that’s the appropriate sports metaphor, anyway.

“So the DNA of Metro City is somewhere, dormant, in the genetic material of Cleveland. Levi Loeb was able to find it and grow it into an ideal city. Like Mister Astounding did to create the Perfectional. But now that we have the healthy template, couldn’t we start to graft bits of Metro City’s DNA back into Cleveland, but active this time? Couldn’t we take a broken real city and re-create it as a functioning fictional one?”

At the bar, a redhead orders a drink. In profile, she looks familiar. Line of nose sweeps from brow like a flipped parenthesis. Strong chin, almost masculine but not. She turns away and Brett tries to place her. Something from years ago.

“Isn’t that the woman from
Anomaly
?” he asks. Fred is filling the skies over Cleveland with silver dirigibles, but he stops to follow Brett’s eyes.

“Valerie Torrey?” he says. “What would she be doing in Cleveland?”

“She’d be a big get for Heronomicon,” he says. “Headliner, even.”

“She’d be a big get ten years ago,” says Fred. He’s decided he’s too cool for all this. “What’s she done since
Anomaly
?”

“Theater, maybe,” says Brett, sipping his beer. “Whatever people do after TV.”

“
Anomaly
was always overrated,” says Fred. “At least half of it objectively sucked.” Brett knows Fred is being contrary and he shouldn’t engage. He remembers the poster of Frazer and Campbell hanging in their dorm room. On Fred’s side. But it’s likely Fred will go on regardless. Better a conversation than a monologue.

“Objective suck?” he says.

“Irredeemable suck,” says Fred.

“When’s the shark jump?”

“The shark jump was ten years ago, I’m saying. Now your Miss Torrey there is past prime.”

“Ten years,” says Brett. It seems like an overestimate. “What season?” he asks.

“Minutes after the season-three finale,” says Fred. “The very moment Frazer and Campbell fuck. The second Campbell’s cock—”

“Point made,” says Brett. He must have missed Fred ordering a whiskey. Usually it’s rhetorical questions after two, swearing after four.

“It’s the
Moonlighting
curse,” says Fred. “And they never learn.”

“I liked season four,” says Brett.

“You only think you liked it,” says Fred, “because you liked the first three. You were being charitable, hoping it would return to form. Objectively, it sucked.” Sometimes Fred informs Brett, in detail, what Brett’s opinions are. He’s done it since college. He runs at about twenty percent correct. “And it got worse from there. Season six was abominable.” Another of Fred’s favorite words. Most of them start with
A.
“The end of that show was a mercy killing.”

Given the way the show ended, it’s an awful thing to say. But Brett downs his last swig of beer in silence. “Another?” Brett asks. Fred nods, almost glumly.

“I’ll buy if you go up and talk to her,” Fred says. Brett looks over his shoulder at her. She is tracing a circle around the base of her martini glass. Looking at nothing in particular.

“Give me twenty up front,” says Brett. “If I chicken out, I’ll give it back.”

Fred makes a show of extracting his wallet from his back pocket, takes out a twenty. He pauses and shakes his head. “Past prime,” he says. “Bet’s only worth ten.”

Brett snatches the twenty out of Fred’s hand and heads to the bar.

Despite Fred’s opinion of his opinion, Brett enjoyed all of
Anomaly
.
Even tried to get Debra into it on DVD. She wasn’t big on sci-fi. Bad sign. In college, though, they’d plan their Sunday nights around it. He and Fred. Rush back from the dining hall to be settled in by nine. After each episode, they’d get high and come up with time travel stories. Unintelligible, mostly. The trouble with time travel is no rules. The first rule when they’d started working on
Lady Stardust
was rules. They had a bible before Brett drew a panel. The second rule was no working high.

Valerie Torrey, then, is as close to a celebrity as it gets, as far as Brett’s concerned. He fingers Fred’s twenty in his pocket. He anticipates handing it back over along with their drinks. He’s no good at approaching normal girls on his best days. Debra approached him. Before her, not a lot to speak of. By the time he’s thought to think about what to say, he’s standing next to her. Awkward close. Casting a shadow on her drink in weird colors. Muted browns and oranges.

She turns to him. Eyes light green.
Jade,
he thinks. Television ten years ago must have had terrible picture quality. Her eyes were never this green on the show.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” he says. Stands there. Somewhere in the final issue, Lady Stardust should wear a jade dress. She should wear it on the cover. Sell a million copies. Green, like that. She’s waiting for him to say something. “You’re Valerie Torrey,” he says. Charmer. Go around informing people of their own names. Worse than Fred.

“I am,” she says.

“You’re here for the convention,” he says. Good. Excellent. Tell her why she’s here.

“I am,” she says, and waits.

“I am, too,” he says, out of breath. Why out of breath? “I’m an artist.
Lady Stardust
.”

“Your name is Lady Stardust?”

“No,” he says. “It’s the comic I draw. Black Sheep Comics? I thought you might have . . .” Trails off. Of course she hasn’t.

“I don’t read comics much,” she says. Of course she doesn’t. Who does? “Is it good?”

He shrugs. “It’s a little over the top. Transvestite lounge-singer spy forced to kill her lover a dozen times to save him. My friend over there writes it.” He points to Fred, who’s been staring at them. Can probably hear Brett wheezing like a fat kid in gym class. Fred waves enthusiastically. Obviously drunk. She waves politely back. “It’s glammy,” Brett continues. Babbling now. “Which people are still buying. Fluorescent eye shadow. Martian go-go dancers. Sex, hallucinogens, and galactic ennui. Fred’s working through his Byron-on-acid phase.”

He is willing himself to shut up. He is reminding himself he has won the bet. So shut up.

“So not for kids,” she says.

A panel from issue eleven. Lady Stardust, transvestite transplanetary cabaret starlet. Standing behind her lover, David, currently incarnated as a mute clown named Beep Beep. One of her hands points a ray gun over his shoulder and directly at the reader. The other is down the front of his pants. All seen through the ragged bloody hole she’s shot through an alien mobster’s head.

“No,” he says. “Not for kids.”

“Huh,” she says. She turns away from him a little. Showing her profile. Finishes her drink.

“Can I buy you another?” he asks. She smiles and shakes her head. She moves slowly. Like an actress in an old movie. There’s a word.
Languid.

“I have a gentleman waiting for me upstairs,” she says. There is something femme fatale sexy about this.

“I—oh—” Brett stammers. “I wasn’t trying to—” Wasn’t he? The thought of a chance hadn’t occurred to him. Blood rushes to his cheeks. She starts laughing. Not malicious. Languid. Femme fatale gone.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I couldn’t resist saying it that way.” She smiles at him. Warm. Friendly. Smile that says he never had a chance. “It’s my son,” she says. “I left him watching TV for a bit, but I have to get back.”

She takes a bill out of the small black rectangle of her purse. Puts it on the bar. She stands up to go.

“Your friend,” she says, “did he dare you to come up and talk to me? He’s been watching us pretty intently.”

“He bet me twenty bucks,” Brett says. He pulls the twenty out of his pocket. Crumpled and damp with his sweat. Disgusted, he puts it back.