Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

Then I stood up straight again and saw that Richard was making a face like he had a toothache. I didn’t know why I had to explain myself to Richard, so I leaned over Janne’s backward-leaning head again. Her lips opened.

“It’s a shame,” she said.

“What’s a shame?”

“That the camera’s not running.”

“Don’t be such a camera whore.” I kissed her again. But suddenly I felt bad for her, so tried to rephrase it more empathetically. “You probably couldn’t pick anything up in this light anyway.”

Marlon reappeared out of the darkness. I almost shouted because he appeared so quickly and silently. And from a completely different direction than he had gone off in.

Don’t you touch her, I thought, and my fingers clenched her shoulders so tightly that I probably caused her pain, but she didn’t make a sound. I was here now.

Janne held her breath. Marlon turned away and went over to the cooling grill.

“Richard?” he called softly.

“Right here.”

“Can I help with something? Cleaning up or something?”

Richard thought for a second. My hands moved from Janne’s shoulders.

“Not much. There’s a bit of trash on the lawn, can you grab that?”

“Sure,” said Marlon.

“We could just as easily do it tomorrow.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Exactly.”

Marlon walked around the table slowly — I pulled Janne’s wheelchair out of the way — stepped on a piece of tinfoil, picked it up, and tossed it onto the table. I could still see a plastic bag and a paper plate, but I didn’t say anything. I suddenly felt guilty and refused to consider why.

Marlon turned abruptly and went slowly toward the villa, testing the ground with his toes before every step.

“What about them?” I pointed at the guru and Kevin.

“They can’t stay out here. It’s too cold at night,” said Richard.

“But I’ll bet they’re heavy,” I said.

Richard had found two wheeled cots in the shed. We hoisted first the guru and then Kevin onto the cots and pushed them into the shed. Then we grabbed two blankets from the house and Richard spread them over the two of them. The guru’s face looked as if he was fighting with someone in his sleep. Sometimes his mouth formed mute words, his hands twitched and formed fists. Kevin lay there calm and smiling. Tears still glimmered in the corners of his eyes. He looked like a girl.

“Little angel,” said Janne as she sat there next to me, looking down at Kevin.

“Who? This queer?”

“Yeah.”

Richard shook Friedrich’s shoulder. Friedrich sat bolt upright, surprised, and then got up and wandered off toward the house. His amorphous body moved along behind Richard, slowly slogging along like a gigantic snail.

And Janne and I were alone.

She sat next to the grill and held her hands, shivering, over the coals. I pushed a few plates together on the table. I was oddly calm, and my hands weren’t trembling.

“Janne,” I mumbled. “Tell me, what can I do for you, Janne?”

She kept holding her hands closer and closer to the coals until they were practically touching them.

“Don’t burn yourself.”

“They’re not hot anymore,” she answered dully.

I went to her, squatted in front of her, and pulled her arm to me. I kissed her dirty hand and put it on my cheek. Her eyes were so dark that I barely recognized her.

“I love you.”

“Bullshit.” Janne tried to pull her hand away, but I didn’t let her. “Stop,” she said.

I took her other hand, blew the ashes off it, and put it to my lips.

“Don’t be so bitter. Everybody loves you. You don’t have to pretend.”

“Like you have any clue.” Suddenly she started crying.

I hadn’t reckoned with this. I never thought she would ever cry in front of me. And that the tears would be so big and glitter in the moonlight as they rolled down Janne’s cheeks.

“You look so beautiful when you cry,” I said.

She pulled away from me and hit me in the face. With the palm of her hand, on the cheek, a weak awkward slap. It didn’t even hurt. Still, it was the second smack of the day for my poor face. For a second I was shocked, then I approached the wheelchair from the other side.

“Don’t forget the other cheek,” I said, smiling.

“You’re an idiot. Do you not understand what you said?”

“You look so beautiful when you cry.”

“Exactly.”

Now she really started to sob. It was no longer single tears but torrents that left a wet trail on her face. She sniffled. It didn’t look so nice anymore. Her eyes swelled and narrowed to slits. Her nose was probably all red, too, but you couldn’t really tell in the dark. She sobbed like an old lady at a funeral and her shoulders trembled.

I put my arm around her. The tears tasted salty, what else.

“Don’t cry,” I said. “Look, you have no reason to cry. And you look most beautiful of all when you smile. Stop crying. You’ll have your movie and your face will look down from all the billboards and smile, everyone will recognize you and you’ll have to give autographs.”

She shook her head. I pushed her over to the house and up the ramp. She gestured with her hand that she wanted to go straight to her room. Maybe she was afraid to be seen because she didn’t look as good at that moment as she usually did. She kept turning her face away from me the whole time.

“You have to stop this bullshit,” I said. “It’s ridiculous.”

“Then take off your glasses.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Of course I do. Take them off, they’re stupid.”

“Screw you, Janne,” I said.

She rolled into her room ahead of me; I followed her and sat down on the bed.

She rolled over to the dresser and pulled out a bright white shawl and put it around her shoulders, shivering. Then she rolled over to the mirror and grabbed her hairbrush. I watched her. Nothing could be more beautiful than watching a girl brush her hair. Of course it was even more beautiful if the girl was yours.

“Do you want to marry me, Janne?” I asked. “Right now, or when we’re older — it doesn’t matter to me.”

She laughed. Watching the brush glide through her dense, shiny hair had a hypnotizing effect on me. I had to yawn so wide that my jaw cracked. I untied the laces of my sneakers, took them off, stretched out on the bed, and buried my nose in the pillows.

I was woken up by someone shining a flashlight in my face. I tried to push it away. But it wasn’t a flashlight after all but a ray of sunlight, so I had to move away from it. My nose tickled and I ran a hand over it and noticed a strand of black hair between my fingers.

Suddenly it all came back to me and I sat up.

Janne was sleeping next to me. We were sharing a blanket. She was under it and I was on top of it. She was wearing a long nightgown with lace trim. On anyone else it would have looked absurd. Janne’s hair was in a ponytail. The nightgown had slipped down over one shoulder.

It was light out, way too light out. At home I always kept the shades down. I went to straighten my sunglasses but my hand found nothing but air.

I didn’t have to look for long. They were sitting on the dresser. Right next to the hairbrush.

Fucking hell, I thought.

I climbed carefully across Janne, who was breathing evenly, and walked on my tiptoes across the room and slid the glasses onto my nose. I turned around again. Janne looked unimaginably beautiful. I had spent the night in her bed and slept through it all.

It was a gorgeous morning. Friedrich, with suds up to his elbows, was scrubbing the grill grates out on the lawn. Kevin was still quietly snoring in the cot. The guru wasn’t there.