Superhero

A short story by Jim Correale

 

     One evening, well after midnight, Wonder Woman rang my bell, and when I opened the door she was there on the stoop with a sidekick. They were both drunk.

     Even when it hit me that this was the Friday night before Halloween, I’m sure I still had an expression that combined confusion and amusement, and this – as well as the drunkenness – caused Edie (in her red tights and knee-high boots) and Alan (in green spandex with a strange symbol on his chest) to cut loose with laughter.

      “Hey,” Alan said, putting his hand up, in a gesture that asked me to hold on while he gathered his composure; however, his laughter was not so easily contained. After a second, Edie took over.

      “Hi Steve,” she said in that mildly deep, ever-so-slightly gravelly voice that was just one of the reasons I had a thing for her. In addition, she was adorable and friendly, having greeted me warmly the day I moved into the building’s first-floor apartment. “We were at a costume party and it looks like we both forgot our keys.”

     They were in the foyer by now, Alan hanging onto his girlfriend as they slowly stepped in and prepared to ascend the stairs to their apartment on the top floor.

     “I know who you are, but who is Alan supposed to be?” I asked, honestly curious.

     “He’s the Green Lantern. Aren’t you, Al?”

     With eyes half closed, Alan nodded and mumbled, “Fellow crime-fighter of the Justice League of America.”

     “I’m really sorry we woke you,” Edie said with a chuckle. “We don’t know anyone else in the building that well. Thank you so much.”

     “No problem,” I said.

     Back on that first day I’d run into her on the front steps. She asked about my place and I invited her in to have a look. She marveled that it was twice the size of her and Alan’s apartment, and I offered that my heating bill for a Maine winter would probably be twice as much as theirs.

     Despite that initial encounter, I saw her infrequently after that. I bumped into Alan once in a while going in and out of the building, and one night they had me up for some homemade vegetarian chili, but less than a year after I moved in they found nicer digs on the other side of Portland and were gone.

     Now, as the two of them moved up that first flight of stairs, I broke free from the forceful grip that Wonder Woman’s spandex-clad posterior had on my eyes, and it occurred to me that just letting them into the building hadn’t solved all of their problems.

     “Um…How are you guys going to get into your apartment with no keys?” I called out in a half-whisper.

     “We’ll figure out something,” was Edie’s reply, drifting down from above. I figured my help might be needed, so I pulled the door to my apartment shut – making sure that my own keys were safely in a pocket of the sweatpants I had on – and bounded two steps at a time, reaching the third floor as the pair was almost in front of their apartment.

     “We’re hoping we left the door open,” Alan said, and then he tried the knob, but it was locked.

     “Damn,” Edie said, looking up and down the hall. I took a step back and leaned against the railing, sizing up the door.

     “Well, you guys could sleep on my couch and then call the realtor in the morning. Or we could force in the door.”

     “No way,” Edie said, as she walked toward the end of the hall. “They charge $50 for a lost key…and a new door would cost a lot more.”

     She was standing in front of the window, craning her neck as though examining its handicraft and the specifics of its installation. She swung the sash open and poked her head out, continuing her inspection.

     “Edie?” I said, my voice inflected in order to indicate that I knew what she was thinking and that she would be crazy to even consider it.

     “I can make it. It’s only like three feet to the kitchen window.”

     “No way,” I immediately replied with an incredulous tone. “It’s too dangerous.”

     I looked at Alan, but he was leaning against the door virtually asleep. I looked back at Edie, and she was peeling off her red superhero boots. Then she took off her shiny fake-metal wrist bands and tossed them on the grungy blue carpet. I walked over and stuck my head out the window and a soft breeze of cool air greeted me. The ledge along the building was maybe a foot wide. The drop was 30 feet.

     I had become quite conscious of being the only sober individual among the three of us, but I was just a neighbor – not a close friend – and, though I was fifteen years older than either of them, Edie and Alan were adults in their late twenties. They weren’t kids.

     Still, I couldn’t let her go out there; and yet, how could I stop her?

     “Wait a second,” I said, taking a step back and bringing my hands up, palms out, as if I were physically resisting an encroaching object of some mass – like a giant stone. “You can’t do this. If you fall and get hurt I will be responsible.”

     “Don’t worry,” Edie said, “I won’t fall. I’ll be fine.”

     “Yeah,” Alan blurted out, though his eyes were still closed. “Don’t worry. She’s Wonder Woman.”

     I went over to him and put my hands on his shoulders, hoping to quickly convince him that this was a really bad idea. He opened his eyes and immediately pushed himself off the door and walked past me. I turned to see Edie’s remaining hand and foot follow the rest of her red-encased body out the window. Alan went to the sill and leaned out, speaking in calm, reassuring tones.

     Before I could make it to the window, Alan said, “She’s in,” and passed me on his way back to the door. In his haste and unsteadiness, he tripped and when he hit the floor he began to laugh again. I spun around as the door opened, and I don’t believe that I ever wanted to hug anyone as much as I wanted to, at that moment, grab onto Edie – and not just because she was cute and brave. Also – even more so – because she hadn’t fallen and been killed or injured, which would have left people, herself and her boyfriend among them, asking why the rational and sober neighbor hadn’t done something to prevent this.

     Edie helped Alan off the carpet and into the apartment, stopping on the threshold to thank me again. Then she wished me goodnight and shut the door.

     I was immeasurably relieved that disaster had been averted, though keenly aware that this was through no action of my own. Before heading back downstairs I went to the end of the hall and shut the window. I saw then that the red knee-high boots and the shiny fake-metal bracelets were on the floor where they’d been thrown, and I picked them up and placed them neatly outside the apartment door.