LITMIR.BIZ

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for the liberation of all who toil in chains—as the Escapist. The sound of their raised voices carries up through the complicated antique ductwork of the grand old theater, rising and echoing through the pipes until it emerges through a grate in the sidewalk, where it can be heard clearly by a couple of young men who are walking past, their collars raised against the cold October night, dreaming their elaborate dream, wishing their wish, teasing their golem into life.

       9

      THEY HAD BEEN WALKING for hours, in and out of the streetlights, through intermittent rainfall, heedless, smoking and talking until their throats were sore. At last they seemed to run out of things to say and turned wordlessly for home, carrying the idea between them, walking along the trembling hem of reality that separated New York City from Empire City. It was late; they were hungry and tired and had smoked their last cigarette.

      “What?” Sammy said. “What are you thinking?”

      “I wish he was real,” said Joe, suddenly ashamed of himself. Here he was, free in a way that his family could only dream of, and what was he doing with his freedom? Walking around talking and making up a lot of nonsense about someone who could liberate no one and nothing but smudgy black marks on a piece of cheap paper. What was the point of it? Of what use was walking and talking and smoking cigarettes?

      “I bet,” Sammy said. He put his hand on Joe’s shoulder. “Joe, I bet you do.”

      They were at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, in a boisterous cloud of light and people, and Sammy said to hold on a minute. Joe stood there, hands in his pockets, helplessly ordering his thoughts with shameful felicity into the rows and columns of little boxes with which he planned to round out the first adventure of the Escapist: Tom Mayflower donning his late master’s midnight-blue mask and costume, his chest hastily emblazoned by the skilled needle of Miss Plum Blossom with a snappy gold-key emblem. Tom tracking the Nazi spy back to his lair. A full page of rousing fisticuffs, then, after bullet-dodging, head-knocking, and collapsing beams, an explosion: the nest of Iron Chain vipers wiped out. And the last panel: the company gathered at the grave of Misterioso, Tom leaning again on the crutch that will provide him with his disguise. And the ghostly face of the old man beaming down at them from the heavens.

      “I got cigarettes.” Sammy pulled several handfuls of cigarette packages from a brown paper bag. “I got gum.” He held up several packs of Black Jack. “Do you like gum?”

      Joe smiled. “I feel I must learn to.”

      “Yeah, you’re in America now. We chew a lot of gum here.”

      “What are those?” Joe pointed to the newspaper he saw tucked under Sammy’s arm.

      Sammy looked serious.

      “I just want to say something,” he said. “And that is, we are going to kill with this. I mean, that’s a good thing, kill. I can’t explain how I know. It’s just—it’s like a feeling I’ve had all my life, but I don’t know, when you showed up … I just knew.…” He shrugged and looked away. “Never mind. All I’m trying to say is, we are going to sell a million copies of this thing and make a pile of money, and you are going to be able to take that pile of money and pay what you need to pay to get your mother and father and brother and grandfather out of there and over here, where they will be safe. I—that’s a promise. I’m sure of it, Joe.”

      Joe felt his heart swell with the longing to believe his cousin. He wiped at his eyes with the scratchy sleeve of the tweed jacket his mother had bought for him at the English Shop on the Graben.

      “All right,” he said.

      “And in that sense, see, he really will be real. The Escapist. He will be doing what we’re saying he can do.”

      “All right,” Joe said. “Ja ja, I believe you.” It made him impatient to be consoled, as if words of comfort lent greater credence to his fears. “We will kill.”

      “That’s what I’m saying.”

      “What are those papers?”

      Sammy winked and handed over a copy each of the issues for Friday, October 27, 1939, of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold and of a Czech-language daily called New Yorske Listy.

      “I thought maybe you’d find something in these,” he said.

      “Thank you,” Joe said, moved, regretting the way he had snapped at Sam. “And, well, thank you for what you just said.”

      “That’s nothing,” said Sammy. “Wait till you hear my idea for the cover.”

       10

      THE ACTUAL CURRENT OCCUPANTS of Palooka Studios, Jerry Glovsky, Marty Gold, and Davy O’Dowd, came home around ten, with half a roast chicken, a bottle of red wine, a bottle of seltzer, a carton of Pall Malls, and Frank Pantaleone. They walked in the front door boisterously quibbling, one of them imitating a muted trumpet; then they fell silent. They fell so quickly and completely silent, in fact, that one would have said they had been expecting intruders. Still, they were surprised to find, when they came upstairs, that Palooka Studios had been transformed, in a matter of hours, into the creative nerve center of Empire Comics. Jerry smacked Julie on the ear three times.

      “What are you doing? Who said you could come in here? What is this shit?” He pushed Julie’s head to one side and picked up the piece of board on which Julie had been penciling page two of the adventure he and Sammy had cooked up for Julie’s own proud creation, a chilling tale of that Stalker of the Dark Places, that Foe of Evilness himself,

      “The Black Hat,” said Jerry.

      “I don’t remember saying you could use my table. Or my ink.” Marty Gold came over and snatched away the bottle of India ink into which Joe was about to dip his brush, then dragged his entire spattered taboret out of their reach, scattering a number of pens and pencils onto the rug, and completely discomposing himself. Marty was easily discomposed. He was dark, pudgy, sweated a lot, and was, Sammy had always thought, kind of a priss. But he could fake Caniff better than anyone, especially the way he handled blacks, throwing in slashes, patches, entire continents of black, far more freely than Sammy would ever have dared, and always signing his work with an extra-big letter O in Gold. “Or my brushes, for that matter.”

      He snatched at the brush in Joe’s hand. A pea of ink fell onto the page Joe was inking, spoiling ten minutes’ work on the fearsome devices arrayed backstage at the Empire Palace Theatre. Joe looked at Marty. He smiled. He drew the brush back out of Marty’s reach, then presented it to him with a flourish. At the same time, he passed his other hand slowly across the hand that was holding the brush. The brush disappeared. Joe brandished his empty palms, looking surprised.

      “How did you get in here?” Jerry said.

      “Your girlfriend let us in,” Sammy said. “Rosa.”

      “Rosa? Aw, she’s not my girlfriend.” It was stated not defensively but as a matter of fact. Jerry had been sixteen when Sammy first met him, and had already been dating three girls at a time. Such bounty was then still something of a novelty for him, and he had talked about them incessantly. Rosalyn, Dorothy, and Yetta: Sammy could still remember their names. The novelty had long since worn off; three was a dry spell now for Jerry. He was tall, with vulpine good looks, and wore his kinky, brilliantined hair combed into romantic swirls. He cultivated a reputation, without a great deal of encouragement from his friends, for having a fine sense of humor, to which he attributed, unconvincingly in Sammy’s view, his incontestable success with women. He had a “bigfoot” comedy drawing style swiped, in about equal portions, from Segar and McManus, and Sammy wasn’t entirely sure how well he’d do with straight adventure.

      “If she’s not your girlfriend,” said Julie, “then why was she in your bed naked?”

      “Shut

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