Wonder City Stories

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The Cage of Follies

Suzanne avoided the Great Scot for a week, evading her officemates and the fascinating lure of its Campbell-plaid sign by bringing her own lunch and walking the long way around to her parking building. Only the impending doom of Thanksgiving impelled her thoughtlessly through those doors, albeit at 7 am the day before T-day, desperately seeking easy caffeine to revive her after a late night of pre-cooking.

She was enormously relieved and crushingly disappointed that Simon was not on duty at that appalling hour. She ordered her coffee (with two shots of espresso) from a plain-faced, brown-haired girl and peered around.

"Looking for someone, ma'am?" the girl asked as she made the coffee.

"Not really --" Suzanne's gaze dropped to the girl's name tag "-- Lizzie. Oh, could you put some milk in that, please? I'm sorry I forgot to ask."

"Of course, ma'am," Lizzie said, smiling. As she handed the hot cup in its protective cardboard sleeve over to Suzanne, she said, "Have a nice day, and a good Thanksgiving."

Suzanne was walking away when the girl added, "And tell Ira to have a nice Thanksgiving too, please."

Suzanne whirled around, but saw Lizzie vanishing into the back room.

Feeling very odd indeed (had she ever met the girl before? how did she know Ira? how did the girl know that she knew Ira?), she made her way to her office. She sat down in her uncomfortable desk chair and stared at her blank computer screen for a while before remembering to drink her coffee.

She set her hands on the keyboard and found herself hitting the Internet search engine rather than bringing up her project schedules. After a few false starts, she found a good combination of terms and settled in to read some blogs and FAQs.

A couple of hours slipped by, until she finally shook herself free and did some work, distracted and mechanical.

"You coming to lunch?" Sheila asked over the top of the cube wall.

"Not today, I think," Suzanne said.

"You okay?" her coworker whispered.

Suzanne looked up. "Yeah. Just tired. And I guess I'm feeling a little swamped."

Sheila smiled. "All right, kid. See you later. Eat something, all right?"

Suzanne nodded, then listened to the group drifting out. She opened the search engine window again and typed in something.

Five minutes later, she knew Simon's birth name. She had, of course, known whose child he... she?... was from that moment in the shelter when the back control room opened.

She thought she'd needed to know. But now that she knew, she felt kind of... dirty. Unkind. Invasive. Not a person that she liked.

Her fingers closed the search window before she really thought about it. And then she went back to working, because she really was swamped.

Around 4 pm, she called Vita Neville-Scott and asked her out for drinks that night. Vita said, "Uh-oh, trouble in paradise?"

"What do you mean?" Suzanne said.

"You only call me when you need someone to talk to these days," Vita said. "Don't worry, I wouldn't miss this for the world. Same place, same time. I'll see you."

Same place, same time, same drinks, same waiter even.

Vita was wearing a black pantsuit with a pearlescent rayon blouse under it, a modest amount of frothy lace at the collar and sleeves. Suzanne felt frumpy again, even though she was wearing her second-best black pantsuit with a pastel-pink shell under it. Perhaps, Suzanne thought, she felt frumpy because she was.

Simon hadn't thought so, a tiny voice said. She shoved it down.

Vita was halfway into her vodka Collins when she said, "All right, Mysterious Suzy. Spill. What's up with love's young dream?"

Suzanne might have rolled her eyes any other time, but now she just sighed. "It... it went really badly, Vita."

"Badly... how?" Vita said, setting her drink down and folding her hands expectantly. "Tell Dr. Vita."

Suzanne's mouth twisted and she set her eyes firmly in the depths of her Singapore Sling. "I... he was a ... she."

There was a moment of silence, and then Vita whooped with laughter.

Suzanne felt herself blushing brick-red and looked around to see half the other diners and drinkers staring at their table. "Vita!" she hissed.

Vita brought herself under control and dabbed gently at the corners of her mascara'd eyes with her napkin. "I'm sorry, Suzy Q, but Jesus, have you really been out of circulation so long you couldn't tell?"

Suzanne scowled at her friend. "It wasn't like there were tits or anything," she said, voice still low and angry. "And the goatee was pretty convincing too."

"Oh, Christ," Vita said with deep disgust, tossing back her drink. "One of them."

"What do you mean, 'them'?" Suzanne said, not trusting herself to take another drink herself.

"You know," Vita said. "Fruits who can't stand not having boobs. Dykes who need a dick to feel whole. I can't believe anyone lets them butcher themselves like that."

Suzanne felt sick, thinking back to the blogs and articles she'd read earlier in the day, the passionate descriptions of wrong bodies and self-loathing that she couldn't understand, but pitied. "Some people just don't feel like they're born in the right bodies," she said carefully.

"Oh, that's so much bullshit," Vita said, signaling for another drink. "The body you're in is the body you're in. Anything else is just attention-whoring."

"Simon's not an attention whore," Suzanne said.

"Maybe she's an exception to the rule," Vita said, waving Suzanne's objection away.

"He," Suzanne said with some heat.

"Honey, you're the one that called her a she," Vita said, smiling up at the waiter who provided her with more alcohol.

"I didn't mean..."

"Of course you did," Vita said, leaning across and patting Suzanne's hand. "She misled you and lied to you and... Jesus, when did you find out? When the clothes came off?" Vita's voice dropped. "Was she... 'packing'? You know, with a fake one?"

Suzanne pulled her hand away sharply, back straightening as she tried to put even more distance between herself and this woman she'd known for years. "No. No! H-- Simon stopped everything before... anything... happened. And told me." She felt, unaccountably, like she was about to cry. "He was a complete gentleman about everything."

"I bet," Vita said, rolling her eyes.

Suzanne stood up, bumping the table, spilling both their drinks. "I have to go," she said. She pulled a twenty from her purse with shaking fingers and threw it on the table, then snatched up her coat and hurried away.

"Suzy!" Vita called after her, voice full of surprise.

When Suzanne reached the street, she began to run. When the stitch started in her side, she was in the parking garage, and she gasped her way to her car, letting herself in with difficulty and collapsing inside. She leaned her head back against the headrest. She wasn't crying. She hadn't cried. Her eyes felt like she had, though.

The drive home felt longer than normal, and she did it in silence, not listening to the radio stations. She was half afraid of hearing one of the songs she'd started associating with Simon, more afraid of hearing a song that made her think of Mitch, or even the good days with Josh.

The house was quiet when she let herself in, and smelled richly still of the cooking she'd done the night before and of the turkey roasting in the oven, per her instructions. Suzanne heard a page turn in the living room, and assumed it was the companion for the evening. "How was everything tonight?" she asked as she hung up her coat.

"Just fine, dahhhling," a throaty voice twanged from the living room. She heard the person get up, heard the striking of high heels on the floor, and turned to find herself face-to-face with the companion.

At least six feet tall, dressed in a spectacular strapless lavender taffeta gown that reached the sparkling four-inch-high purple pumps on one side and was ruched up to the hip on the other, with plum-color lipstick bounded by a thick black line and metallic purple eyeshadow from drawn-on eyebrows to false eyelashes, the companion had topped the ensemble with a Carmen Miranda-style headdress that boasted an enormous array of fruit. She... he?... smiled, the smile playing up the vivid rouge on her/his brown cheeks. "Ira's gone to bed early," s/he purred, "and Josh is as usual. You're home early."

Suzanne was too astonished by this apparition to answer immediately. She blinked and nodded and finally found her voice enough to say, "Yes. Thank you. Are you... do you have a show to go to?" She couldn't help noticing the grapes that were dangling over one of the person's eyes.

The companion smiled more broadly. "Perhaps I do. Are you all right?"

Suzanne nodded wordlessly.

"Then I'll get along, honey." The companion strode to the door and smiled back over his/her shoulder. "You take it easy now. Happy Thanksgiving."

Suzanne stared at the door that had closed after... her... for a long time. She wondered if she should have invited her to come for dinner tomorrow. And then wondered, helplessly, if Simon had anywhere to go.


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Who Can Surprise Well Must Conquer

"You sure look happy, Mr. Feldstein," the companion said in her heavy Caribbean accent as Ira wandered into the kitchen.

"I am," he said, and peered at her more closely. "I'm sorry, I must be getting old, because I can't remember your name."

The woman flashed a grin, brilliant white teeth and dark chocolate skin making for a nice contrast in Ira's blurry vision. "You never asked," she said, then added, "but you've known me a long time, Ira Feldstein."

Ira peered more closely at the woman, frowning. "I have?"

"We first met in January 1946," she said, pulling a loaf of bread from the refrigerator and commencing with sandwich construction. "At a party in New York City given by the Golden Guardian."

Ira took a more martial stance, or at least as martial as he could manage these days, feet braced further apart, fists raised. "There were a lot of people at that party. Including some folks that went on to become supervillains!"

She laughed and layered boiled ham onto the pumpernickel bread. "I've never been a villain. Shall I tell you another time we met?"

Ira didn't lower his fists, though he might have shuffled his feet closer together. "Sure."

She looked straight at him. "I pulled you out of the rubble after your nemesis, Dr. Noontime, went berserk from his mind-enhancing device in July 1958. I took you to the hospital, where they treated you for your shattered knee and broken ribs, and called the Gold Stars to stop him." She turned back to putting thin slices of Swiss cheese atop the boiled ham and adding a generous dollop of Dijon mustard to the opposing bread slice.

Ira stared at the floor and racked his memories for what felt like an eternity of awkward silence, fists slowly lowering. She plated the sandwich, cut it in half, dropped a handful of potato chips beside it, added a large scoop of store-bought potato salad, and set it on the kitchen table.

Finally, Ira looked at her. "The Outsider?" he said tentatively.

That flash of a grin again. "I knew you'd remember."

Ira gave her a puzzled look. "But you were always a Ja-- I mean, an Asian person."

She shrugged and put the kettle on for tea. "I was a Japanese soldier when you met me, and an Asian woman of various ethnicities after that, because that's who was most 'outside' to you then. Now I'm a black woman from Haiti. Also, you expected a West Indian woman, because all the staff helping here are West Indian women."

Ira sat down, a little hard, in his chair at the kitchen table. "I guess we never actually talked about what you looked like to each of us. Do you always change, then?"

"My power finds a happy medium for crowds," she said, putting teabags into two mugs. "It's easier with individuals."

Ira ate a chip and chewed it thoroughly. After he swallowed, he said, "So, are you always, you know, a... a colored person?"

"Person of color," she said gently. "No, not always. I got to be a white man in an Italian suit last night."

"Huh." Ira picked up half his sandwich and bit into it. "How did that happen?"

"It was a very colorful party," she said, pouring the hot water into the mugs. "So why are you so happy?"

Ira had to think back to remember being happy. "Oh! Well, I went to see Madame Destiny yesterday, and she gave me good news."

"Really?" She set Ira's cup next to his plate with a spoon, and sat opposite him with a plain cup of tea.

"Yes," he said, putting his sandwich down and reaching for the sugar bowl. "I asked if Josh would ever come back to us, and she said, 'Yes, very soon.'"

"How exciting," the Outsider said, without sounding very excited at all.

Ira didn't notice. "I also asked if, you know, I was crazy, or going crazy, and she said no. That was a relief."

"I can imagine," she said, taking a sip of tea.

Ira smiled. "I used my third question to ask if Suzanne would be happier soon, and she said yes. I mean, I expected so, since Josh is coming back, but I wanted to make sure. She's a good girl, and works so hard, you know."

The Outsider nodded. "Yes, I do know."

"So what brings you here?" Ira said, taking another bite of sandwich.

She shrugged. "I have to work too."

"But why a... healthcare companion or whatever it's called?"

She smiled and sipped her tea. "Because that person is always an outsider."

Ira shook his head and ate. They talked for a while about Josh and Suzanne and even a bit of para team gossip that the Outsider had heard.

Finally, Ira noticed the kitchen clock.

"I'd better be going!" he exclaimed, wiping his mouth with a napkin. "I'm taking over Edna's time at the Y today so she can see her grandkids."

The Outsider nodded and smiled. "I'll keep an eye on things here," she said.

"Thanks," Ira said earnestly. "I feel better knowing that another para is here, watching things."

"We're all paras, you know," she said. "All the people who come in to help."

"Really?" Ira said, standing up. "Couldn't they get other jobs? There's got to be something better paid out there for paras."

She shrugged. "It doesn't matter if you can lift a tank, if you're poor, or a person of color, or couldn't go to college, Ira. For these women, being superstrong, for instance, just means that they don't need help getting the patient up off the floor when he or she falls off the toilet."

Ira stared at her.

She made a little shooing motion. "Go on, Ira. You're going to be late."

He hurried to the front hall, picking up his keys and wallet and nametag and checking his reflection in the mirror. He was still an old man, and a somewhat stupid one, he thought.

By the time he reached the Y, he had remembered the Oracle's words about Josh, and had regained his good mood. He hummed as he sorted the small pile of paperwork on the calendar blotter, checked the keys in the keybox, and read through the notices in the black plastic inbox. Work done for now, he pulled the magnifying glass out of the top drawer, along with his pencil and his crossword puzzle book, and settled in for a quiet afternoon.

Sometime around dinnertime, a person stepped up to his desk. He looked up.

She was a young woman, maybe 18 or 19, with wavy brown hair pulled into pigtails at the sides of her head. Freckles sprawled generously over her pug nose and broad cheeks. She had hazel eyes and a rakish grin, and wore a plain white t-shirt and a biker jacket.

She was so familiar.

So, so familiar.

Without realizing it, Ira stood bolt upright, staring at her. Her grin faltered. "Pops? You okay?" she said.

He nodded wordlessly, staring.

"You're white as a ghost," she said, moving around the side of the counter, looking concerned, pushing the desk chair back into position behind Ira. "Why don't you sit down?"

Ira sat down hard on the desk chair, still staring, but he started breathing again.

She relaxed a little. "Look, is there anything I can do? Get you a glass of water or something?" The grin spread across her face like lightning again and she gave him a thumbs-up. "Tin Lizzie is here to save the day!"

Ira fainted then. It seemed like the only thing to do, really.