Spiderman 3 (33 page)

ALL THAT JAZZ

Curtis Connors, working late in his lab, held the phone close to his ear while he waited for the young woman who had answered the phone to summon Mr. Parker from wherever the devil he was. Some half-eaten Chinese food sat in its cartons on the lab table behind him. "Mr. Parker!" he said when he finally heard Peter's voice on the other end. "Dr. Connors here."

"Yes, sir." Peter's voice sounded a little deeper than usual, and Connors almost wondered whether he was speaking to the right person.

Glancing at a small sample of the black goo that was currently sitting on a microscope slide, Connors said, "Quite a specimen you left me, Parker. Its chemistry is not unlike material found in that chondritic meteorite in the seventies. You know it, Parker?" He was reasonably sure that Parker did. Chondritic meteorites were pieces of space rock that had fallen to earth with relatively little differentiation from the stone body from which they'd originated. Connors was referring specifically to the Jilin meteorite shower of 1976, in which—among other things—the largest, single, known chondritic meteorite ever discovered, weighing 1,770 kilograms, had fallen in the People's Republic of China.

But Peter didn't answer immediately. "Parker?" Connors prompted.

"Yeah." Peter sounded almost indifferent, which Connors found disturbing.

"My findings are very preliminary, but this substance seems to be an entire living organism." Parker was acting in an unusually distracted manner, and Connors was hoping he was speaking with enough emphasis to get the boy's attention. He had no idea why Parker sounded so disinterested. Maybe the girl who'd answered the phone was doing a striptease for him. Whatever the reason, Connors didn't care. "
A living organism
," he emphasized. "Possibly a parasite. It amplifies characteristics of its host… especially aggression."

He glanced across the room at the cage that had contained two lab mice. He had put a minuscule amount of the parasite on one of the mice and left the other alone. He had then watched in shock as the treated mouse ripped its companion to shreds. "This could be dangerous," he said, which was possibly an understatement. Suddenly a thought occurred to him. "Peter… you didn't keep any, did you? Peter?"

Peter laughed in response. "Doc… I'm not stupid. Thanks for the information. Let me know what else you find."

He hung up before Connors could say another word.

The following day was a blur to Peter.

He woke up knowing one thing above all else: life was simpler with the suit on. Priorities remained in order, and pesky questions of morality simply didn't apply. Matters had become overly complicated, and he was tired of it. Putting on the black suit was like causing the rest of his difficulties to disappear into a pleasant haze of white noise.

His first stop was the
Daily Bugle
. He knew he would always cherish the sight of a sputtering J. Jonah Jameson as Peter strutted into Jonah's office, flopped into a chair, tilted it back, and placed his feet up on Jameson's desk.

"
Shoes
?" said a stunned Jameson.

Ignoring Jameson's shock, Peter pulled three photos from his portfolio, flicking them across Jameson's desk like cards from a Las Vegas dealer. Each one landed squarely in front of Jameson, one next to the other. His little hunting expedition the previous night had borne fruit, and Jameson was salivating over the trophies: superb shots of a diamond heist in progress, being thwarted by a menacing Spider-Man in his black attire.

The subject of Peter's feet forgotten, Jameson asked, "How much?"

"Well," Peter replied in leisurely fashion, "seeing as how I'm the only photographer you've got…"

He lowered his feet, leaned over, and picked up Jameson's personal candy jar. He popped the top before Jonah could say a word, extracted a fancy caramel, unwrapped it, and flipped it into the air.

"… more." He caught the caramel in his mouth.

"More caramels? Because if that's what you really want—"

Peter half-smiled, knowing that he had the upper hand and reveling in it. "More money. More than you paid Brock. More than you paid me. More than you paid anybody, ever."

"I can't afford that!"

"Then I walk these over to the
Globe
, and we don't do business anymore. Can you afford
that
?"

Jameson gave Peter a reptilian glare. "Where the hell did
this
come from? I get rid of one punk and another sprouts up, like weeds. You used to be a cream puff."

"Yeah, well…" Peter smiled. "Now I have layers."

Beneath his clothing, the black costume approved.

With more money in his pocket than he could remember having in quite a while, Peter strode the streets of New York as if he owned the city.

He winked at passing women and received approving smiles. He passed one particularly sexy young woman and didn't hesitate to reach back and pat her behind. She whirled angrily around, facing him, and he tossed off a flashy finger/thumb wave, as if to say,
The two of us are lookin' good, and we got it goin' on
. She returned the wave, although minus the thumb and with a different finger extended, but Peter was already sauntering away.

He paused outside a men's clothing store with a sign that read: DISCOUNT ITALIAN suits. The mannequins in the window had solid black heads, and black arms sticking out from the sleeves. It made it easier for Peter to imagine the suits on him, and he decided that there was no reason to settle for imagining it.

A half hour later, he emerged from the store outfitted in a flashy new suit with new boots just for a hint of the truly audacious. He rocked back and forth on the boots. Peter once again thought of Travolta and performed a few experimental pelvis thrusts, back and forth, back and forth. Nodding in self-approval, he strutted down the street.

He glanced at his watch and noticed that he had, yet again, missed class. Somehow that didn't bother him at all. It wasn't as if Connors were going to say something that Peter didn't already know. He'd already lost a bit of respect for the old doc after Connors had called the symbiote a "parasite." How could Connors have gotten it so wrong? A parasite was something that simply took from its host without giving anything back. The symbiote, the "organism" as he'd called it, didn't take; it
gave
. It gave him more confidence, enabled him to see just how the world should be treating him… and how he should treat it in return.

There was still enough time, though, to get over to ESU and accomplish something really important.

Peter flagged a cab and urged the driver to lay on all possible speed, assuring him he'd cover any tickets the guy might get. Both of them were fortunate that no police cars stopped them, although it might have been that they were moving so fast that the cops thought they couldn't catch up. Peter leaped out of the cab, tossing a twenty to the cabbie while telling him to keep the change, and ran across the campus.

Gwen Stacy had just emerged from the science building when someone seemed to appear out of nowhere directly in front of her. She jumped, so startled that she dropped the books she'd been carrying. Peter deftly plucked them out of the air and restacked them before she'd even registered who the new arrival was.

"Peter!" she exclaimed, taking the books back from him. "You weren't in lab! Where've you been lately?"

"TCB."

She looked confused.

He ticked off the letters on his fingers. "Taking. Care. Of Business." He stretched his arms in either direction and turned in place.

It took Gwen a moment to comprehend that he was waiting for a comment on the suit. "Oh. Very nice. New outfit. And…" She stared at him, puzzled. "Are you… taller?"

"When a guy's with you, he's always gonna walk a little taller."

Gwen smiled at that and flushed slightly. "Well, now aren't you the smooth talker. So where have you been?"

He waved off the question as if it weren't worth his time. "That's the past. I'm thinking about the future… namely this evening."

"What about this evening?"

"You and me. We"—he smiled—"are stepping out."

"Mr. Parker," said Gwen coyly, "are you asking me out on a date?"

"Asking? Who's asking? This," he said suavely, plucking her hand out of the air and kissing her knuckle, "is a fait accompli."

Her instinct was to say no. Her father's warning from the other day flashed in her head—maybe this was the exact wrong time to start going out on dates.

But Peter Parker was a very different animal from Eddie Brock. It wasn't as if he were a stranger; he was at least a good guy with a lot going on upstairs. She could count on him to spend time with her and be thinking about something else other than what she'd look like with her clothes off.

"Well then"—Gwen smiled—"who am I to fight 'fait'?"

A small jazz combo was in the middle of "One O'Clock Jump," an old Count Basie standard, when Peter guided Gwen into the Jazz Room. The place was packed, with customers tapping their feet to the music. Peter started snapping his fingers to the beat, and Gwen imitated him, grinning.

A hostess escorted them to a table. Gwen, now really getting into the music, moved her hips to the beat and was practically dancing to it by the time the hostess seated them. Peter glanced around the club, looking to spot a familiar face. Gwen, unaware of where Peter's attentions were, said, "Great idea, Pete!" as she sat. "I never put you and jazz together."

"Jazz. Fits in with the natural order of the universe, y'know." He sat opposite her. "Branch of science."

"Now you're talkin'." A small bowl of pretzels was on the table. Gwen picked one up and daintily bit off a piece. Then she started looking around the club, taking in the ambience, leaving Peter free to scope the place out. Finally he found what he was looking for: Mary Jane. She was clear across the way, waiting on another customer.

The band wrapped the Basie number, to strong applause. The pianist stepped away from the piano, heading offstage, perhaps to get a smoke or maybe just hit the bathroom. The trumpet player moved to the microphone and said, "Let's hear from you, Mary Jane."

Mary Jane smiled, starting to head toward the bandstand. The band played some traveling music as she made her way through the cluster of tables to the stage. Gwen saw her and was visibly startled. "Isn't that Mary Jane? Your old girlfriend?"

"Wild, huh?" said Peter, making it sound like a staggering coincidence.

Still not having realized that Peter had deliberately chosen this spot because of Mary Jane's presence, Gwen asked solicitously, concerned that the experience might be too painful for him, "Would you rather go someplace else?"

"I can handle it," he said easily. Then he rose and stepped away from the table.

Mary Jane had just gotten to the microphone and was about to announce the name of the song she was to sing when Peter reached the stage and sat at the piano. MJ was startled to hear the keys sound on the old Steinway, and when she turned and looked to see what was happening, her eyes widened in disbelief. The rest of the musicians were equally taken aback that this stranger from the audience had apparently joined the band. It wasn't unprecedented, but it usually happened much later in the evening when the audience was a lot more inebriated.

"
Peter
?" Mary Jane gasped.

Peter spoke into the microphone next to the piano. "I'd like to dedicate this to a special lady out there." He looked at Mary Jane, paused for dramatic emphasis, and then shifted his gaze to Gwen. "A
very
special lady." Then, not giving Mary Jane time to register what had just happened, keeping her emotionally off-balance, he turned to the band and said, "Fellas, just straight eights until the turnaround."

He started a fast piano riff, gliding into a free-form jazz composition. Thanks to the black costume, it seemed that the piano lessons his aunt had insisted he take had paid off in the long run. Nice. All he needed to be a virtuoso was some confidence, and he certainly had that in spades these days.

The band started picking up his tempo, and Peter nodded approvingly. "Now that's eighteen karat." He turned to the audience and grinned. "These guys are really in the pocket."

Mary Jane was still standing in the spotlight, clearly not knowing what to do, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other like a small child in desperate need of a bathroom. Then the spotlight, much to Peter's secret glee, moved away from Mary Jane and over to him. The crowd naturally shifted their attention with it, some even adjusting their chairs so that their backs were to Mary Jane.

Peter was feeling at home, playing with such expertise one would have thought he'd been part of the band for years. He nodded to the other guys, "Take it on one time, without me now."

Without missing a beat, he sprang from the piano bench and leaped onto the dance floor. He shouted to the crowd, like a 1960s hipster, "Now dig on this!"

Throwing all caution aside, he unleashed a flurry of break-dancing steps with a healthy element of both Elvis thrusts and John Travolta disco tossed in, capped by a series of athletic moves that would have seemed possible only for an Olympic-level gymnast… or Spider-Man, of course, but that wouldn't have occurred to any of them.

During a musical break when just the bass and drums were holding down the backbeat, Peter snapped around in an air-guitar move worthy of Chuck Berry and called out, "Now how 'bout a little o' that… um-um-
um
!"

The band promptly responded with three similar funky cords. Pushing his luck and his moves beyond all reason, Peter sprang into the air and landed atop the piano bench with a one-handed handstand. As he balanced on the one hand, he reached out with his free hand and worked the keyboard, right on cue.

The musicians looked a little stunned at the gargantuan showboating from their unexpected and, frankly, uninvited new member, but the crowd went nuts. They had never seen anything like it. No one had.

Maintaining his one-handed pose, Peter abruptly switched hands for a low piano part, then changed yet again for a high part. The number built to a crescendo and Peter sprang into the air and landed on the stage in a split, his arms in a
V
formation. The applause was thunderous. He glanced over at Mary Jane and saw her slink away from the microphone. She descended the stairs but didn't move far away from them. Instead she just watched Peter with a look of infinite sadness. Well, if she was feeling sorry for him, then her pity was surely misplaced.