“So, are we’s on the prowl fer superheroes or demented-lookin’ children like these in the pictures?”
“Laugh it up, big boy.”
Straight after, Pretty Amazonia frowned and, by turns, grimaced, looked horrified, and finally pushed angry.
“What is it, dollface?” the Brick asked, alarmed.
“Listen — they’re playing Olivia Newton-John. Hear that? ‘Xanadu’. Dear God, no. Turn it off!” she shouted at the waitress.
Repressing a grin, Jack looked again, long and hard, at the smiling façade of Bullet Gal in the Crime Crusaders pic.
“Why’d she do that?” he finally asked.
Surprisingly, PA intuited his meaning.
“You’re asking why Bullet Gal changed name and costume?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Nipper has a point. No one ever told me — what’s the hearsay on that?”
The woman fidgeted on her seat. “I haven’t the time for this.”
“What’s your hurry?” Jack asked.
“She’s late fer her meeting with the Women’s Canasta an’ Mah Jong Society,” laughed the Brick.
With no further word the woman vanished, leaving the two others to foot the bill.
“Guess she don’t like our ol’ Olivia,” the Brick decided while he and Jack divvied up their cash. “PA was right — there are still things ’bout her I dunno.”
#131
That evening Jack found Pretty Amazonia ensconced in the lofty hangar above Equalizers HQ.
Lying on her front on the concrete, flicking through a big book of manga and listening to Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, she twirled a metre-long coil of lavender hair round her forefinger.
Once Jack made some shoe-scuffing noises to announce his presence near the ladder, her eyes ventured up and over.
“Well, well,” the woman mused. “Look what the cat dragged in. What brings you here?”
“Me? On the prowl for a decent cheddar — I thought you were running late for your thingamajig with the Women’s Canasta and Mah Jong Society.”
“Ahh, the Brick and his zany sense of humour.” She smiled, closing her book. “I gather I owe you some money.”
“Forget it. Our shout.”
“That’s kind of you, hon, but are you sure Mister B agrees? He can be a miser and you might have to prepare yourself for another kind of shouting.”
“No worries.”
“Your funeral. I’ll pay next time, then.”
“Sure. PA, can I ask you a personal question?”
“Depends.”
“Yes or no?”
“What, am I supposed to take pot-luck and pray it’s a question I’m inclined toward?”
“You could always refuse to answer.”
“Ahh. An escape clause. I like that. All right.”
“I was curious. What happened between you and the Aerialist?”
PA frowned, although perhaps she was merely focusing on Maria Calas’s version of ‘Un bel dì, vedremo’ that played, sight-unseen, around the large space. “Am I that easy to read?”
“The comic there’s probably easier.”
“I doubt it.” She flipped through the pages. “This is written in the original Japanese.”
“Ah. Magical superhero girls’ stuff.”
“No, no — desperate love. Candy Candy, by Kyoko Mizuki and Yumiko Igarashi. Famous in Japan and Europe in the 1970s. Didn’t really hit it off in the U.S. or Australia.”
The woman reclosed the manga and sighed.
“The Japanese call these slice-of-life stories. Unrequited affection, lost first love, heart-rending triangles, and tragic sacrifices aplenty.”
PA rubbed her eyes. She looked abruptly a decade older.
“Unrequited affection,” she repeated, to no one in particular. Jack suspected she’d forgotten all about him. “That’s pretty much what I felt for the Aerialist.”
What was it Gypsie-Ann had said about women as well as men falling head over heels for the Cape? “You were in love with her.”
“Mmm.” She shrugged. “Kind of. Silly, I know. I could kick myself for being so stupid. She was never going to be interested in me. But you never met her, SC. The Aerialist was warm, funny, vibrant. Beautiful, too, a redhead with a fiery temper and a passion for life and living that knocked you out. This place has been a vacuum ever since she — well. You know.”
“Since she died.”
“Yeah. Brutal, but that. She could hold a pencil, too.”
“Huh?”
“The kid could draw — whipped up this one of me in about two minutes.”
PA went to the back of her book and extracted a piece of pad paper, which she then lobbed. It spiralled across the smooth surface of the floor to Jack’s feet.
“Nice shot,” he said as he picked it up and studied the lead-work. Torn out of some ring-pad, the page had creases and a coffee-cup stain. “I see she liked to exaggerate.”
“I think she preferred to capture the spirit,” PA mused. “Definitely, that’s how I see myself.”
“What, twelve years old and anatomically over-the-top?”
“The kid nailed the shōjo manga influence.”
“I guess.”
Jack wandered around beside the walls of the hangar, taking in the contours of the GWH’s white dirigible, the OS-2 Magnetic Rose, that was parked there. He wondered if the Rose would be flown again — it’d ended up an unspoken shrine to a man none of the Equalizers actually liked.
“You mentioned unrequited affection,” he mused.
“Mm-hmm. I believe we also mentioned cheese.”
“You said something else a few days ago, just after we met, about the Aerialist having had a fling with Sir Omphalos.”
PA slowly sat up, wrapping herself in her arms.
“I was angry. The rumour was common knowledge among us Capes, and I began to wonder if this might’ve had some truth. They were…close. She never told me what their relationship entailed, and I guess she had no reason to — it wasn’t my business. But everyone in the Equalizers talked about it.”
“Any proof?”
“No, nothing to frame up and stick on the wall. Why all this interest?”
“I’m curious. How did you feel about the possibility they were together?” Jack stopped walking and looked directly at her. “About the Big O and the Aerialist having it off, I mean.”
“I told you before — it made me angry.”
“I didn’t believe you.”
“What makes you so intuitive?”
“Am I wrong?”
“No.” The woman paid a surprising amount of attention to straighten the bows on her short skirt. “You’re right. Honestly? It made me sad.”
“Jealous too?”
“Maybe.” PA now chewed the corner of her mouth and stared back his way. “Are you implying something?”
“Well, it’s a good reason to have bumped off the happy couple.”
“Don’t kid around — I thought we suspected Gypsie-Ann Stellar or Milkcrate Man.”
“You suspected them.”
“So, what, you’re now a budding detective in your free time?”
“Hardly. I want to be able to trust you.”
“You don’t?”
“Help me do so.”
“How? Trust isn’t a magic trick I can conjure out of thin air.” PA swept up her manga and slid out of the tome another sheet of paper, this one far better quality stuff, an ink drawing on Magnani stock. “This is her when she was Bullet Gal,” she said, handing it over.
“You mean the Aerialist.”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t it be framed up and hanging in the Rogue’s Gallery?”
Something resembling a sheepish look passed across the woman’s face. “Strictly speaking, Bullet Gal was never a member of the Equalizers — she’d changed character to the Aerialist by that point.”
“So you souvenired this picture.”
“Was it wrong o
f me?”
“Well, it doesn’t help with our trust issues.” Jack studied the Cape in this portrait. The subject looked laid-back, with a sardonic smile and a swagger she somehow exuded while sitting down. And — yes — the Cape was beautiful. “Lady liked her guns, huh?”
“I heard she was pretty good with them, too.”
“With a name like that, I guess she had to be.” Having passed the picture back, Jack sighed. “Now, about trust.”
As she carefully replaced her prize inside the book, PA nodded, eyes glittering. “All right. Cards on the table. I’ve kept your secret.”
Crap, Jack thought. Another one who knew his real age — maybe the Rat had blabbed? He seemed like that kind of unreliable git.
PA was looking straight at him, now exuding an expression difficult to decipher.
“How long do you intend on seeing her?”
Jack lost his train of thought and stared back at the woman. “What?”
“You heard me, my sweet.”
“See who?”
“That pretty blonde thing you’ve been shagging — the Blando.”
“What?” Jack repeated, stunned.
“Don’t project dumb. I know.”
“The hell you do. You’ve been spying on me?”
“No spying — not per se. More keeping an eye out from a distance, just in case.”
“Same thing. Jesus.” Jack stared at the high ceiling, his heart pounding. “Are you now going to blackmail me?”
“No! What kind of opinion do you have of me? Babe, we’re on the same team.”
“Are we? Where’s the trust?”
“Getting back to my point…”
Pretty Amazonia silently slid to her feet and walked the short distance to her teammate. The front of her costume was dusty from the cement, and she placed arms around him to hug, sharing the dust.
Not only that, but Jack felt like a child being crushed by an overzealous aunt who’d previously feigned indifference.
“We need to be able to believe in one another,” the woman said. “At least that much.”
“It’d help if we were a compatible height.”
“You ought to invest in a pair of Liftee Height Increase Pads — they’d give you an extra couple of inches for under two bucks, plus postage.”
“Yeah, right.”
PA relinquished her grip, but looked down at him with a worried expression.
“Sleeping with a Blando is against the rules. They’ll cart you straight out of here, if they find out — throw you back to the wolves in Melbourne.”
“I’m not sleeping with her,” he mumbled while brushing himself down.
“Call it what you like. Honestly? — I don’t care. As much as I bag out Blandos, I really don’t give a shit. I won’t tell anyone. But you need to trust me in return. Listen to me.”
PA placed her hands on his shoulders, pinning him to the spot.
“She’s not real. You do remember that?”
“She’s more real to me than anybody I ever met.”
“It has no future.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
The woman sighed. “What are you going to do? Tell her you’re an interloper from another world — a real one — and that this world is a fraud? Make her understand everything she’s ever believed in is rubbish? Or are you going to string her along and lie to her, the basis for any good relationship?”
“I’m not lying to her.”
“Does she know the truth?”
Jack remained tight-lipped and silent.
“Then you’re lying to her. If you really love the thing — really — she deserves better. You would’ve got away with this back when the Reset was working. I know too many unscrupulous Capes that did. Had a one night stand, disappeared in the wee hours, and the Blando never remembered a thing.”
“This isn’t a one night stand.”
“Of course it isn’t — with the Reset on the blink, you need to deal with consequences.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“God, I am.” PA shook her head. “All right. Just don’t get in too far over your head. Once one is here — in Heropa — for a while, it’s impossible to go back. To Melbourne, I mean. Things get messed up. Not because you’re a humdrum John or Jane Smith there, with next to no rights and zero powers. The fact is the real world is a horrible place that keeps getting worse.”
“I seem to remember.”
“Sure. We all do. It’s been in a downward spiral ever since the Catastrophe. I get so utterly depressed whenever I go back, half my mind there, half in Heropa. If I felt out-of-sync before, these days I feel like a total outsider. Once you’ve seen and clutched at the stars, it’s not easy to return to oblivion. There’s nothing for me in Melbourne, and I would not risk my place here for anything. Anything.”
“Thought you said this world isn’t real.”
“It isn’t. But Heropa is an escape hatch. So I’m not going to kill anyone, or compromise my standing. I need you to trust me on that alone.”
Jack looked at her hard. “You don’t make it easy.”
“I know I have an attitude from hell.”
“Attitude sounds perky. I’m seeing more a chip on the shoulder. Speaking of which, can I have my arms back?”
The woman lifted her hands in over-theatrical fashion. “Voilà. So now the question is — could you try to trust me?”
“Try? That’s all you’re asking?”
“It’s a start.”
“No catches?”
“None I can think up on the spot.”
“All right. I will. Try.” Surprising himself, Jack meant what he said.
“There’s a boy. You’re a good man, hon, better than I expected. And, if this works out, I’ll owe you one.”
“Just promise to say nothing more about Louise. I don’t need you lecturing me.”
“That’s her name?”
Silence.
“My lips are sealed, sewn, glued — you name it.”
PRANCE, PRANCE, PRANCE
#132
When the Brick exited the building not long later, Jack couldn’t decide why, exactly, he followed.
There were too many mysteries circulating, no clear-cut answers.
Thirty seconds between them, each man passed a sleeping guard in the dark foyer, the muted portable TV creating dancing monochrome shadows in one corner.
The Brick carried an umbrella and declined to take his car — perhaps he felt it was the perfect evening to promenade the city, wrapped in an overlarge trench coat with a straw hat and a pair of sunglasses his only disguise. Oddly, the ruse seemed to work. No one on the streets noticed this hulking behemoth passing them by.
For a while, the Equalizer walked beneath a wooden trellis overpass that shook and groaned whenever one of the peak-hour trains scuttled along. Jack hung back several metres, far enough to remain anonymous (he was wearing a suit and hat), unless the Brick actually looked his way. The man didn’t. He focused ahead and occasionally up at the brilliantly lit city skyline. There was a zeppelin, hundreds of feet in length, sliding through a network of spotlights and heavy cloud-cover.
They passed a boarded-up haberdashery. Most of the other shops, although still in business, had closed by this hour and some had their metal shutters down, others lights on in their window displays. It started to rain.
Slowing down as he passed a row of lit-up store windows, the Brick inspected a Smoke Mahout window display in a pharmacy, hats on show in the LaValle Millinery Shop, a bookstore called First Editions, and finally Mount Hollywood Art School.
The rain was getting heavier and Jack had already raised his umbrella, but the Brick took longer to open his. After a few short seconds sheltering beneath it, he shrugged, closed it again and laid it on his shoulder — even went so far as to skip the next few steps along the pavement. The lamppost was probably lucky that the Equalizer didn’t try swinging around it.
The Brick reopened his umbrella, grinned boldly to n
o one, and stomped off.
From the darkened doorway of the pharmacy close by his left, Jack heard a voice, all quiet-like. “Hey, mister.”
Since the rain had eased off, the Equalizer dropped his brolly and examined the shadows. The first thing he noticed was a glowing cherry, and then an individual stepped out into the yellowish luminescence, cigarette dangling from his lips.
“There’s only two things in this world that a ‘real man’ needs: a cup of coffee and a good smoke. Got the ciggie, but not the Joe. Can you lend me a dime?”
Jack noted that the fancy coat the newcomer wore was hardly down-at-the-heel. “You don’t look short of a buck.”
“Still. Won’t tell the big fella you’re following him, if you do. C’mon — help a fella out.” He lifted an upside-down red hat, as if that was where Jack was supposed to drop his donation.
He had no time for this. He took out his wallet and deposited a dollar bill. “Get yourself a Thermos to go with the coffee.”
“Sweet.”
When he turned around, Jack realized he’d lost sight of the Brick. The street was dead quiet in both directions.
“Think you’ll find the guy went up there.”
The charity-case pointed across the road and up to the third floor of a tenement building. It had big windows with blinds drawn, ‘SATORI DANCE STUDIO’ stencilled in orange letters on the glass.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nup. Favour for a favour”
“I didn’t get your name, stranger.”
“Didn’t give it.”
The man faded back into the doorway, so Jack took that as his notice to move on. Having checked for non-existent traffic, he crossed the street and found an iron staircase leading off the footpath.
He ascended the steps quietly, three at a time, and finally came to a small, covered balcony with a door that had the number three on it and the name of the studio, along with splashed black paint that formed a rough kanji symbol.
Jack could make out music within. Something orchestral — melancholic, yet oddly uplifting, all strings and horns and a softly tinkering harp.
The large window was just to his right, spattered with droplets of water, and he noticed a gap: about an inch, between closed blind and the sill, through which light escaped. Jack leaned over to put an eye to the glass.