Next thing I know, I was back at the Inland Ocean Archeological and Anthropological Institute. The afternoon sunlight was still beaming through the windows on all sides of the top floor of the Wardell Building, through the stacks and stacks of rare books and manuscripts.
I found myself seated alone, in the cross-legged position, on the oriental rug, barefoot in my athletic shorts and tank top. I looked at my hand; my class ring was still there; I reached over to my book bag—I knew I was back in my native reality because my butthole still hurt from my weekend with Trent. I fished out my wristwatch out of my book bag; the date hadn’t even changed; barely a few minutes had passed.
What a rip-off—I had replayed three years of my life on fast-forward, but had hardly aged a second. And of course, Doctor Messiah was nowhere to be seen. He was probably already off to Manitoulin Island with his Egyptian deity, Michele Selket, for the waning days of summer vacation.
I stood up, put on my sandals, and grabbed my stuff. Before I left, I went over to the aisle where bound collections of vintage pulps and volumes of fantastic literature lined the shelves. I had read a number of these already, but I selected I few I hadn’t and stuffed into my bookbag. I stopped at Michele’s desk, filled out the requisite sign-out slips, and left them in her in-box. I even used her date stamp—this was, after all, part of the Warren Woodward library system, and if I wanted to remain in good standing as a graduate student, I had to follow the rules. They had be returned in two weeks.
I wandered back to my apartment, but only after going a very roundabout way, stopping at the Mudbelly’s Books, the hole-in-the-wall used book store next the adult film theater. I casually browsed the gated porn section, ignoring the eyes of a couple of indigents who ogled me in my shorts and tank top. They were too mortified at seeing a female in their male-only masturbatory sanctum to bother me, and quickly wandered off, so I had the rack of magazines to myself. I know girls aren’t supposed to like porn, but that’s bullshit, and I needed something fresh to look at.
Most commercial porn is aimed at the so-called “male gaze”—gay or straight—but I didn’t care. I was in the mood for images of people sixty-nining in various gender combinations—just the aesthetics of those intertwined bodies excited me. Only problem was the stock at Mudbelly’s was a bit too thumbed through, if you know what I mean, and some of the pages were stuck together, which was a real turn-off. So, I left to porn section, which was a relief to the lurkers pretending to peruse the history shelves, who quickly snuck back in.
I went over a few aisles and picked up a few more paperbacks of fantastic fiction by Juan Philippí Herder—a very uneven writer—and a few more by George Welton Flood, Niles Verdigris, and Ogden Boyle Homer to round out my growing library. I got out of there and stopped in the new porno magazine shop in front of the porn theater and took a chance on several new magazines in plastic bags. At the counter, I realized I was short a few bucks, but the clerk cut me a deal just to get me out of there, because apparently I was making the usual male jerkoff clientele nervous there, too.
By the time I got home, I realized I had spent all the remaining pocket money I had on me and didn’t have a thing to eat in the house. I got on the phone.
“I’m starving,” I pleaded.
Within the hour, Mama was at my back door with a carful of groceries; I helped her unload her Chevy Nova into the kitchen.
“You’re helpless,” she said, as she put groceries away in the cupboards. “You finally graduate from college, and all you do is lay about the house. What did you do with all your graduation money? Blew it in New York, I suppose.”
“New York didn’t cost me anything,” I said. “I flew under my own power, and the Megatropolis Quartet had a full pantry. Jasper and Fanny cooked almost every night.”
“Then what happened to all those checks you got for graduation?” asked Mama.
“I deposited those in the bank,” I said. I used a commercial bank closer to where I lived, not the Civix Savings and Loan branch my mother managed, precisely to keep her out of my business. “I haven’t withdrawn anything all summer. But it was after four when I called you, and the bank was already closed.”
Mama sighed and went to her purse, pulling out an envelope of cash. “Here, this’ll tide you over.”
“Mama, I don’t need this,” I said, trying to hand it back to her. “I told you, I still have …”
Mama refused to take back the envelope. “You shouldn’t touch your gift money for household expenses,” she said. “You should be saving that for an adventure.”
I went and put the envelope in my bedroom, under my stack of sixty-nine magazines under my pillow. When I returned to the kitchen, Mama had finished putting away the last groceries in the fridge and was clapping imaginary dust from her hands.
“Well, that’s all taken care of,” she said. She grabbed her purse and motioned to the car. “Well, what are you waiting for? I’m not going to cook it for you. You can do that on your own time. Let me take you out for a bite.”
***
Mama took me to dinner at the Union Stripe Tavern, the restaurant where ordinarily I waitressed, except they didn’t need me back after I’d returned from New York. It was a slow night and there were all new girls on the wait staff and the regular manager had the night off; I didn’t recognize anyone and nobody recognized me. I realized I had never actually dined there when I wasn’t working; it was fun being anonymous for a change. We sat at a table in the cool dining room, an ersatz blend of faux 1896 San Francisco décor under an Art Deco ceiling, with a Wurlitzer-styled neon-lit bar, the night outside growing dark and Woodward Avenue lighting up.
“What’s good here?” Mama asked, perusing the menu.
“The half-pound burger with bleu cheese and mashed olives,” I said without skipping a beat. “Or swiss and mushroom, my favorite.”
“Mmm, sounds good,” she said. The girl came up and took our order.
“I got a postcard from your sister the other day,” Mama said, reaching again into her purse. “Writes that she’s somewhere near Mount Pleasant. May wind up in Chicago, performing at Second City, before the summer is over.” She showed me several postcards; I had gotten very similar ones. “Why aren’t you doing something fun like that, Sissy? I expected you to go on a big adventure after your graduation.”
“Mama, I was gone to New York through the Fourth of July, remember?”
“Yes, but what all did you do there? Did you see any sights? Did you have any fun? No, you helped a bunch of people from another dimension find shelter. You could have volunteered your time in Detroit doing that. That’s hardly an adventure.”
“I just spent three years an alternate reality,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Does that count?”
“Alternate reality? You mean like where the other Alice comes from?”
“Not exactly that reality,” I told her. “Not the reality where Alice James became the Mod Puma. Nobody in that whole universe had Megapowers. I was just a Civilian, too. Until I got zapped by the Cosmic Cue-Ball.”
“That doesn’t sound like any fun,” said Mama. “Just a Civilian—is that how you think of me? The Alice James who didn’t become a costumed crime fighter?”
“That’s not how I think of you at all,” I said. “I think of you as the Alice James who became the best mama in the world.” I took her hand. “And you raised two devoted and loving daughters, who appreciate when you bring them groceries.”
Mama snorted at that. “Ha! What would you do without me?”
“What do you and Alice Too call each other, anyway?”
“I call her Alice, and she calls me Alice, of course,” said Mama. “I see her most everyday now. The two of us have been whipping your friends into shape, physically and domestically.”
“How are things up in Troy, anyway?”
Mama explained how the Mod Puma had become the de facto athletic trainer of the Troy+Thems, while she had effectively become the RA, managing the dorms. “Those Youthful Permutations don’t know how to take care of themselves. I don’t know how they ever got along, all down in that church commune.”
She explained how she had Sabersnag, Kiddo, Tempy, and even Domina on a rigorous, regimented work schedule, cleaning the bathrooms and doing laundry. Only the Negative Woman, who was a visiting scientist, seemed to escape these chores. “The first thing a team needs is discipline; I learned that much in management school.”
She also showed me her biceps. “Have you noticed? I’ve been working out,” she said. “Alice is the best trainer I’ve ever had. I’ve lost fifteen pounds since your graduation.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “You share the identical metabolism. Organically, you’re closer than identical twins.”
“I could have been a costumed crime fighter,” said Mama. “You watch out; I might still be.”
***
We finished our appetizer, a plate of onion rings, and then our burgers came. Mama wasn’t even mildly curious about my exploits with Doctor Messiah. “Aren’t you concerned about how Clyde or your daughters turned out in that other reality?” I asked.
“Why should I be?” replied Mama. “It’s not going to affect me. They have their own lives to live—I have my hands full with this one. Frankly, I don’t see what good all those multiple dimensions are when folks don’t even know how to live properly in one reality.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“But you believe me, don’t you?” I was proud of my astral excursion. “You believe that I visited another reality just with my mind.”
“Of course I believe you, Sissy. When have I ever known you to lie?” She pointed a stern finger at me. “But you shouldn’t be messing around with that occult business; it’s the Devil’s own sorcery.”
“I should stick to mad science like the Time Turntable or the Dimensional Doorway?” I asked rhetorically.
“Don’t you go bad-mothing science,” said Mama. “You’re Grandmother Seedy is a scientist; I trust her more than I trust spooky spiritualists.”
“Scientists like Grandma Seedy split reality in two,” I reminded her. “And now it’s fusing back together willy-nilly. Scientists like Grandma Seedy invented Megaheroes, and all they’ve done is ruin the environment, from all I can tell.”
“You don’t have to follow in Alice’s footstep,” said Mama. “You should stay in school and finish your master’s degree at least.”
“That’s what I plan to do, Mama,” I insisted. “Why do you think I came back to Detroit.”
“All I can say is, you’re friends are doing some amazing things with all that machinery up there,” said Mama. “You should come up to Troy and visit, before you get all busy with school again.”
***
Mama insisted we ordered desert, which was all my quickly-fattening thighs needed.
“Doesn’t it bother you, Mama, knowing that we have loved ones in other realities, and we can’t do anything to help them, if they should need it?” I asked her. “It bothers me. I worry about it all the time now. What is going to happen to the other me in that other reality, now that Clarissa Too’s the only Megahero? What will happen to the other Avie, if she tries to be the Wondrous Warhound, but isn’t ready? They don’t have you or Alice Too to train them, or watch out for them; they don’t have me to protect them.”
“You can’t save everybody, Sissy,” said Mama. “Not even in this reality. You can’t carry the weight of one reality on your shoulders all by yourself, let alone an infinite number. You’re only responsible for the choices in front of you. You have to trust the Good Lord; everything else will take care of itself.”
I wondered what kind of Creator would have created such a complicated cosmos as the vast Multimensions, set it in motion, then walked away. I realized I had said this out loud when Mama got upset with me.
“I will not have you blaspheme the Lord, young lady,” scolded Mama. “Just because we’re in a restaurant and didn’t say a blessing before our meal doesn’t mean you’re allowed to throw all your Arbor State atheism around the table. Besides, the Lord is infinite. If he can love each and every one of is on this ol’ Earth, he can love as many ol’ realities as anyone could ever throw at him.”
I pondered who could possibly be throwing multiple realities at God while I dug into my slice of chocolate cream pie.
***
I spent the next two weeks holed up in the West Forest apartment, living off the groceries Mama had brought over. All I did was lay around reading my textbooks on urban social planning and fantastic fiction, and when I got tired of that, masturbating to my sixty-nine magazines. Somehow the combination induced me to dream of the Urban Renewal Eradicators from the Forbidden Future—those huge flying machines armed with lasers that relentlessly leveled the ancient ruins of Core City. Only in my dream-visions they morphed into Manhattan-sized, ringlike flying saucers that fellated or copulated with obscenely phallic, futuristic skyscrapers.
My only contact with the outside world were the postcards Avie sent home describing her adventures with several fellow camp counselors after leaving Camp Michi-Fo-La-Ca. First, they drove north to Central State University, where they met up with three horn players who worshipped the Chicago Transit Authority, who joined the caravan. Then, they visited Fort Michilimackinac and Mackinaw Island, circled through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, crossed Wisconsin, and visited an Ojibwe tribal reservation. Finally, they stopped in the Twin Cities for a beach volleyball tournament. Last I heard, they were planning to drive down to Madison to catch the annual marijuana smoke-in, visit a brewery in Milwaukee, and loop around Chicago, after which they expected to be back in Detroit in time for the start of fall semester. With any luck.
One morning, I came out of my bedroom to find a big, black cat, just staring at me with yellow-green eyes, sitting in the middle of the living room, in the center of the hook rug.
“How’d you get in here?” I asked, expecting an answering. When there was no response, I said, “Not the talking kind of cat, are you?”
She—I’m not sure how I knew she was a girl, but I knew—could have come in from the front or back door, down from the supposedly sealed off stairs in Avie’s room leading to the upstairs apartment, or even up from the basement, which had a doorway to the other side of the duplex.
I turned and went down the wall to the kitchen. She followed me.
“You hungry, girl?” I asked. I fed her some leftovers from the fridge. I noticed a tear in the old wooden screen door in back, leading out to the alley. I pushed the back door shut. “So, that’s how you get around,” I said.
I let her eat her food and went back to the living room, where I plopped myself on the couch to read. Momentarily, she came back in and sat again, right in the middle of the floor. She just kept staring at me. “What? You want to be let out now?”
I got up and went to the front door; I noticed the screen had pulled away from the corner of the wood frame there, too. “So, you have the run of the joint, I see.” I walked back to the living room; the cat hadn’t moved.
I sat down and tried to read. But I couldn’t concentrate, as you can imagine, with a cat staring at me. “Well, make yourself at home,” I said. “We’re used to a cat living here, so I’m sure Avie won’t mind. What should we call you? Sylvie? Natasha? Licorice?” We used to have a cat named Licorice when I was growing up.
The cat bounded up to the bookshelf outside my bedroom; she pawed a volume; it came tumbling to the floor.
“Aw, cat,” I said. “I have to read that this fall.”
I reached from the couch to pick it up; I saw it was my used, beat-up copy of Jack Kerouac’s Dr. Sax.
But before I could pick up the book, the cat leapt down and set her paw on it with her full weight.
“Hey, that’s Dr. Sax, lady,” I said. The cat just stared at me. “Is that what you want to be called?” I asked. She meowed. “Everyone else in my life is a doctor,” I said. “May as well have a cat called doctor, too.”
The cat meowed again, leapt onto the sofa, and curled up at my feet. I sat there the rest of the morning reading Dr. Sax with Dr. Sax at my feet.
***
A mid-August heat wave sent me and Dr. Sax retreating to the cool of the basement for several days, during which I left only to use the bathroom or raid the refrigerator. I had my work cut out for me, studying for the forthcoming semester; I’d be both a grad student with my own courses and seminars to attend as well as a teaching assistant for one of those mass lecture courses, so I had plenty to study. While in my subterranean lair, a bomb could have gone off and flattened the Metropolitan Detroit and I’d have been none the wiser, until I had to pee. Where the cat went, I had no idea; she must have gone outside at night to do her business, because I never got a litter box and the apartment never smelled.
The swelter finally broke the weekend before my orientation meetings were set to begin. That Saturday was rainy and cold, a portent of the Michigan autumn to come. The basement became so damp and clammy I had no choice but to lug my books and papers back upstairs. I had them spread all over the living room and especially the sofa and I must have looked a fright, what with my smudgy glasses and baggy sweats and not having showered for a week. I’d reverted to the frumpy scholar I’d been as freshman, when I barely left my South Quad dorm room in Ann Arbor.
Precisely at noon, in a downpour, a van without a muffler pulled up in front of the apartment—Avie’s fellow camp counselors dropping her off. She shouted a fond farewell, grabbed her duffel bag, and scurried up the front steps to our door.
“I’m back, Sissy!” she shouted, before she was even through the vestibule. She tossed her wet duffel onto the sofa, crinkling all my spread-out papers and books, in a rush to give me the requisite big hug, which was also sopping. Her wet hair smelled nice, and I’d forgotten how much I’d missed her. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through!” she said, and began chattering nonstop—about her camping experience, the drive north on I-75, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, and every detail along the way.
My brain, unaccustomed to listening to human speech for days, couldn’t keep up. I quietly moved her duffel to her bedroom, straightened up my papers and books, and made us both some coffee and breakfast in the kitchen, all while she continued to talk. I even stripped and took a shower in the bathroom, which was right next to the kitchen, as Avie kept talking to me through the shower curtain. I was beginning to wonder if I could survive the school year with my sister as a roommate, or if I would have to commit murder to maintain my sanity. When I got out, she was leaning against the bathroom sink, still talking a mile a minute while I toweled off.
“But what about you?” she said finally. “I guess you’ve had your hands full, too.”
“Are you kidding?” I said, hanging up the towel. “All I did was read. It’s not like there’s ever much going on in this neighborhood over the summer.”
Avie followed me to my bedroom as a I put on some fresh sweats. “Not even Ditty in the City?” she asked, flopping on my bed. “How could you not have heard the music at night?”
This made me stop and think. I knew I’d been in a fog for nearly a month, but not that much of a fog. The annual outdoor fair took place in an alley just a block away from our apartment; could I have missed the whole thing while I’d slept in the basement?
“Avie, that’s not until after Labor Day,” I said. “Don’t confuse me. You’re thinking of the street fair in Ann Arbor. That’s in late July.”
“Well, did you go to that?” she asked. “You know how we always look forward to that every year.”
“No, of course not. I don’t drive,” I said. But I could see Avie felt betrayed, having broken our sisterly tradition. I added, “It wouldn’t have been the same without you.”
Now Avie felt guilty that she hadn’t been around to take me. “You could have flown,” she said, sullenly. “My sad, introverted sister. I leave you alone all summer, and you go back to your old ways.”
I was about to explain how the whole Megahero thing had been something of a turn-off for me lately, but I didn’t have to. On cue, Dr. Sax emerged from the basement and brushed up against Avie’s leg.
“Oh, look, we have a cat!” said Avie, delighted. She patted the bed; the cat leapt up, and Avie started stroking her. “What’s her name? Licorice?”
“That’s what I suggested. But no, she wants to be called Dr. Sax.”
“That’s appropriate,” said Avie, finding nothing remarkable in a cat naming herself. “Legend has it Jack himself visited this neighborhood, years ago.” Avie rubbed Dr. Sax behind the ears, after which the cat briskly shook her head, like it had had a mini-orgasm. “At least you had company, Sissy.” The cat jumped down onto the floor.
“Don’t worry, Avie,” I said, sitting on the bed next to her and stroking her arm. “We’ll go to Ditty in the City in a few weeks together, all right?”
“Oh, that’s not important,” said Avie. “That wasn’t what I was referring to, anyway. I meant you must have had your hands full with all that excitement up in Troy. That must have kept Ms. Megaton Man pretty busy.”
But before I could ask what the heck she was talking about, she leapt up from my bed.
“That reminds me, I saved the clippings for you.”
She bolted out of my bedroom and ran into hers. She must have rifled through her duffel bag, because when she returned, she had a sheaf of articles clipped from Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago newspapers.
“See? You guys are famous all over the Midwest,” Avie announced.
I unfolded one of the clippings; it was from the week before. The headline screamed,
Megaheroes Clean Up After Flying Robot Attack!
Injuries, property damage reported in Troy+Thems fracas.
—
Teen team reports international menace averted, for now.
(FPA Syndicated News)—Few are aware that an ordinary-looking office building at Big Beaver Road and Livernois houses a group of Youthful Permutations, but their presence has not gone unnoticed by stateless evildoers. On Wednesday afternoon, residents ran for cover in the busy business district of Troy as flying robotic drones tied to the Arms of Krupp rained down terror…
“What the screw-bum!” I said. “This really happened? Last week?!” It wasn’t making sense; I was wondering if Avie had been visiting an alternate reality.
“Yes, it really happened,” said Avie. “I can’t believe you guys are getting national coverage finally! I’m so proud of you. It was on the front page for three days straight.” She explained she had almost cut her trip short just to get back here, but there had been too much theater to see in Chicago, and her friends and she had already purchased tickets. “The story was only on the back pages by the time we went through Gary, Indiana; I didn’t save those.”
“But Avie, I didn’t…”
“I thought it was odd, too,” said Avie. “None of the coverage mentioned Ms. Megaton Man by name. What’s up with that? Racial bias, no doubt.”