All My Friends Are Superheroes - Andrew Kaufman [0]
Andrew Kaufman
copyright © Andrew Kaufman, 2003
first edition
This epub edition published in 2010. Electronic ISBN 978 1 77056 010 9.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Published with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
We also acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and through the Ontario Book Initiative.
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA
CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Kaufman, Andrew, 1968-
All my friends are superheroes / Andrew Kaufman.
ISBN 1-55245-130-5
I. Title.
PS8571.A8688A75 2003 C813’.6 C2003-904961-2
for Marlo
ONE
DESIGNATED WAITING AREA
Tom and the Perfectionist sit in the designated waiting area of Gate 23, Terminal 2, Lester B. Pearson International Airport. It’s 10:13 a.m. Tom watches the Perfectionist check the address on her carry-on luggage. She tugs the tag. It’s the third time she’s done this. She looks around the airport lounge. There are more people than seats. She can’t figure out why no one has taken the empty chair to her right.
The chair to her right isn’t empty. Tom sits in this chair. To the Perfectionist, Tom is invisible. He’s been trying to convince her he isn’t since August 14th, their wedding night, six months ago. Tom has whispered and shouted. He’s made phone calls and sent faxes, telegrams and e-mails. Mutual friends have tried to convince her that Tom isn’t invisible. They can see him. She can’t. Tom is invisible only to the Perfectionist.
They have fifteen minutes before boarding flight AC117 to Vancouver. The Perfectionist is completely unaware that Tom’s beside her. He touches the back of her head; the Perfectionist begins to hiccup. Whenever Tom touches her head, she hiccups. When he touches her leg she has muscle spasms. Touching her back makes her sneeze. Tom takes his hand away from her head and puts it in his lap. The Perfectionist stops hiccuping.
Their relationship has never been simple. The Perfectionist is a superhero. The source of her power is her need for order. She needs it so badly she can will it to happen with her mind. Tom isn’t a superhero, although the Perfectionist isn’t the first superhero he’s dated.
Tom’s first superhero girlfriend was Someday. She had red hair, a compact frame and two superpowers: an amazing ability to think big and an unlimited capacity to procrastinate. Someday had never used her superpowers in combination until one Sunday morning, three months after she’d started dating Tom. They were lying in bed. Someday was staring at the ceiling.
‘Imagine it all,’ Someday said.
‘Hmmm,’ Tom said. He kissed Someday’s freckled shoulder.
‘We’re going to get married and own a home. We’re going to have kids ... ’ she said.
Tom stopped kissing her freckled shoulder. He stopped moving his fingers. They could hear the refrigerator.
‘... someday,’ Someday quickly added.
The moment she said it, she shrank. It started happening all the time.
‘I’m going to paint the bathroom ... ’ she’d say.
‘Don’t say it!’ Tom would yell.
‘... someday,’ Someday would say. She’d shrink.
Every time Someday used her superpowers in combination she shrank, and every time she shrank, she shrank by a little bit more. When they’d met in March, Someday stood 5′4″. By May she was 4′7″. At the end of August she was 11″. By October she was sleeping on the cotton from a bottle of aspirin.
The last time Tom saw her was in December, through a microscope. She stood next to a dust particle.
‘Someday, I miss you!’ Tom told her.
‘Someday you won’t,’ she said.
She disappeared.
Tom’s second superhero girlfriend was TV Girl. As a child, TV Girl loved television. She could empathize with the people on television in ways she couldn’t with real-life people. She watched so much television, caring so much about the people she watched, that her connection with television became biological. She started crying televisions. When TV Girl was sad, little television sets would flow