LITMIR.BIZ

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I wasn’t really supposed to. He was telling me something, something important, and it was for me to listen and take it in. Nothing else.

      “I won’t call the police this time, Joey. But I want you to stay away from those three guys. They’re nothing but trouble. And if you come across them, walk away, head the other direction. Got it?”

      I didn’t want to, felt like I was already relinquishing my manhood and I wasn’t even a man yet, but I nodded and said: “Yes, sir.”

      I started to walk out of the office, and his hand on my shoulder stopped me again.

      “But to be on the safe side …” he began, then paused.

      “Yes, sir?”

      “Keep Bandit with you all the time,” he finished, and smiled.

      I smiled too, and ruffled my dog’s coat and slapped him on the flank.

      “Yes, sir. You can count on that.”

      Then I was out the door, through the break room, and into the bookstore, a maze of covers and bindings and that smell of new leather and paper—something akin to what I imagined heaven must be like—I breathed it in, and went looking for my new sad friend in the comics section.

      * * *

      Comic books and how to read them, and which ones to read, is a thing of intricacy bordering on something like art. You have to read certain storylines to make sense of other storylines, and you have to understand the relationships between characters for those stories to make sense. Furthermore, add in variables like the creative teams, the artists and writers who put together the stories—some of whom shouldn’t be doing anything higher brow or complicated than Archie; others whose imaginations and love of magic had led them to novels and movies and other creative pursuits—and you have a recipe for disaster unless you have yourself a guide through the whole mess.

      I tried being that guide for Bobby, virgin of all things Marvel and DC, allowing him to peruse the rack and shelves of titles. Deftly, I steered him clear of the craptastic stuff that really shouldn’t be used as anything other than backup asswipes when the toilet paper recession hit.

      When he reached for some sort of Japanese manga garbage, I grabbed it out of Bobby’s hands and just barely restrained myself from throwing it across the aisle and stomping on it. I replaced it with a trade collection of a book called Preacher by a guy named Garth Ennis.

      “Forget that manga shit,” I said.

      Mrs. Old Lady Makeup was walking by just then and gave me a dirty look. She saw Bandit was still with me and gave another harrumph.

      “Sorry, ma’am. I have Tourette’s syndrome,” I said, and flinched and jerked and twitched my face and said another “shit” just for good measure. She stormed away again, presumably to help the makeup stocks rise for the Wall Street makeup tycoons.

      “Read this,” I said, turning back to Fat Bobby, pressing the Preacher book closer to him, like he might lose it. “It’ll change your life.”

      “Okay,” he said uncertainly, eyeing the disturbing cover with confusion. Then his face, confused but still pleased at the prospect of what my dad’s ten dollars could get him, fell and slackened again, and I thought to myself, Oh great, what now? “Joey, I don’t think I can buy this.”

      “What are you talking about?” I asked, listening but turning back to the shelves at the same time, trying to decide if I wanted X-Men or Spiderman, or both. “You got ten dollars there, you can get whatever you want,” I said, then quickly added: “As long as it’s not that crap,” and pointed at the manga stuff.

      “It’s my dad,” he said, and though he wasn’t blubbering or crying this time around, I could tell that the thoughts that led to that were stirring just below the surface. “I don’t think he’d let me read comics. He’d think it was sissy stuff, a waste of time. He’d probably throw them away.”

      Having been raised on books, novels, and comics alike, the value of comics, both monetary and otherwise, fuel for a kid’s imagination, had been ingrained in me since time immemorial. The very idea of someone throwing away comics, discarding them as if they were merely cartoons on paper, horrified and angered me. It was an injustice I couldn’t allow.

      “We’ll keep them at my house,” I said. The idea came to me spontaneously, right there, and I didn’t know where it came from but it felt right. “I’ll get you a separate box. You can come over and read them whenever you want.”

      That shiny, beaming look erupted again on Fat Bobby’s face, that same joyous rapture that had sprung up when Dad had presented him with the $10 bill. It spoke of things too powerful for words, equal parts gratitude, appreciation, and something else altogether. It was as if Bobby were seeing things with new eyes, or maybe just seeing things that he’d never seen before. And it amazed him that things could be this way.

      “You’d do that for me?”

      He seemed not like a boy my age but a child years younger, looking up at someone they thought a hero. Someone almost worthy of worship. I think I must have felt how my dad felt earlier in the office, consoling this large, fat boy like he was still an infant.

      It felt good to be held up this way by someone else.

      It made you think, even if in vague and flitting spurts, of the person you could be, if only you had the courage to be a certain way all the time.

      “Sure. No big deal.”

      If possible, his smile grew even wider, like a fissure ripping a massive planet in two. That look of near worship again in his eyes—I felt high and mighty, but in a good way, not an uppity one.

      I just hoped he wouldn’t build some sort of shrine to me in a closet at home.

      That would be sort of queer.

      “Thanks, Joey.” I shrugged as if it were nothing. He looked again at the comic in his hand. “Preacher huh? Are you sure?”

      My mouth was open and I was about to say something, when a sound like music interrupted me. The music formed words and a shiver went through me tingling like electricity.

      “I’d go with something Batman personally,” said the voice like music, and I thought, Oh, this is it. This is what an angel sounds like. I turned, and there she was, the girl from the break room. “Something by Frank Miller or Jeph Loeb,” she said, and my mind quaked with nerdy excitement, my dork sensors reaching overload.

      No way in hell does she read comics, I thought.

      No way does she know the writers and artists, I added.

      I was in love, and I had no idea what to do next. I shuffled from one foot to the other. I crammed my hands into my pockets and pulled them out again. My face felt hot and I knew I was blushing, probably redder than the sun. I was scared, far more frightened standing there looking at her than I had been back at the stream with the three high school guys. This fear was somehow pleasant, though, and there was no other place I wanted to be.

      “Hey, Tara,” Fat Bobby said nonchalantly, as if he knew her, and she said hi back as if she knew him, and I thought, Holy shit, they know each other. Then I was mad because Fat Bobby hadn’t told me this, and this was fucking important information. This was bigger than who shot Kennedy, if there were little gray men in Area 51, bigger than discovering that Atlantis wasn’t lost at all but bobbing around right inside your crapper.

      I wanted to strangle him.

      I wanted to look at her.

      I wanted to run and hide.

      “Who’s your friend, Bobby?” she asked, looking at Bobby, and I thought to myself, trying to beam the message to her like I’d beamed messages to Bandit just a few minutes ago in Dad’s office: Don’t look at the fat boy! Look at me! Look at me for

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