Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

The party was in full swing. Not quite as many people had come as had been expected, it had been the invitation to the home, people inclined to maintain a comfortable distance were put off by the intimacy , that’s what Evgenija yelled disappointedly in my ear in the kitchen. But actually it was good because nearly everyone had a place to sit.

“Awesome!!!” I shouted back in her ear. I’d thrown my arm around her neck and pulled her tightly to me because there was an incredible din that was either in the house or maybe just in my head. The little pearl earrings in her earlobes brushed the tip of my nose; I nearly bit them but I just missed them. Evgenija laughed and removed my arm. I choked on the cloud of perfume she left behind. I didn’t know exactly how many of the tiny glasses I’d downed, two or five, I’d done it just like Tammy had taught me: don’t think, don’t clink glasses, down the hatch, and a little something afterwards. My throat was burning. I hadn’t felt so light for a long time.

Evgenija had tied a red apron over her black outfit. Claudia’s striped skirt was barely a centimeter longer. It took effort to distinguish them from each other through the haze of cigarette smoke. They stood at the stove, stirred the pots, pulled baking sheets out of the oven, and ordered Tammy around. Tammy didn’t listen to them. She moved through the babble of conversation like a fish in an aquarium, a smile on her face that made me worry. She kept stopping and sitting down next to one of the handpicked guests. Maybe she was confusing a funeral for a champagne reception.

Some of the men she talked with seemed familiar, one I recognized as the mayor who had held the office since I was a child, another I’d seen in a TV interview, he’d defended a twisted murderer. They kissed Tammy’s hands, put their knotty old man hands on the back of her head, held her girlish forehead against their black-clad shoulders, paused for a while, let her go again, and looked with mournful eyes down at her cleavage. A few of them blew their noses loudly into bath-towel-size monogrammed handkerchiefs. Why were they all bawling, I wondered. Until I remembered again.

It was difficult to move through the room. There were tables and chairs and benches all over the place, same thing outside in the garden, but I couldn’t stay in one place, I just followed Tammy around. I was afraid that something awful might happen, and wanted to try to head anything off before it went too far. I tripped over handbags and outstretched legs, once I fell into Kevin’s lap and he hugged me and wiped my cheeks with the back of his hand.

“What an amazing foster dad you had!” he said, and his smeared eyelashes hung heavy with mascara teardrops.

“Excuse me?” I made a halfhearted effort to straighten myself back up, but my legs didn’t want to hold me. “What are you talking about?”

“He must have been unbelievable.”

“You’re drunk. You didn’t even know him.”

“If he wasn’t so amazing then all these people wouldn’t have come.”

“He was a lawyer, Kevin. These are clients and colleagues. They know how to be respectful.”

“No.” He shook his head and strange particles of ash scattered onto my black jacket from his hair.

I finally managed to stand up, leaving my hand on his shoulder.

“I’m really touched that you all came,” I slurred. “Really.”

“I know,” Kevin answered with glazed eyes. “We’d never leave you in the lurch.”

That scared me so much that I excused myself and moved on, following Tammy. I had to pass Janne and practically climbed over her wheelchair — she was deep in conversation with the mayor, who looked up at me and with a furrowed brow squinted at my face as if he was asking himself whether he was dreaming.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” I said, leaning down to Janne and planting a kiss on her lips. The expected slap didn’t materialize, she was probably too surprised. I let Janne go and righted myself again so I could focus on her face better.

“She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” I explained to the mayor.

He smiled politely. Janne took my hand and squeezed it. I was a half-orphan now and she was a good friend, there was nothing illicit in the gesture and the mayor looked on benevolently.

“Do you think a girl like this could love a monster like me?” I asked a touch too loudly.

He smiled even more politely. Janne let go of my hand and pushed me away with both arms, though it didn’t come across as angry, more like playfully intimate. I kissed her head, found my balance with effort, and headed off.

I found Richard and Friedrich in the garden. Claudia had lit the torches and put a huge ashtray out. I joined them, took a cigarette out of Richard’s chest pocket, and peered into Friedrich’s face.

“How are you?” he asked. It wasn’t so much that I heard it as I read it on his lips.

“Very well. I have to ask you guys something.” I put my arm around Friedrich’s shoulders and pulled him near. This was no longer one of my moves; before, more than a year ago, I used to do it regularly, with boys and girls, and they always liked it when I grabbed them, my touch was quick and coveted. Friedrich didn’t want to be pulled closer now. He stood steadily on his legs and his lips pursed. Then he twisted his arms so he could give me a friendly pat on the shoulder and free himself from my embrace.

“What did you guys do with him?” I asked Richard and pointed to Friedrich. “You can’t even recognize him. He was a fat chatterbox and now, just a few days later… Friedrich, has your hair gotten gray?”

He smiled. “It’s just the light. The guru revealed something to us,” he said.

“Do tell.”

He hesitated.

“Is it about you?”

“About you, too.”

“Oh.” For a moment I was almost sober again. Suddenly I wanted to call Claudia and ask her to put me to bed. Instead I said as calmly as possible, “So? Can you summarize it for me?”

“We’re not the people we always thought we were.”

I looked back and forth between him and Richard. They continued to look at me impassively.

“And that’s why you are different now than before,” I managed to grind out.

“I always was,” said Friedrich. “I just didn’t know it.”

“And what’s the story with me? Can you tell me?”

And then he told me.

I reached behind me for a wall to brace my suddenly wobbly spine against. Unfortunately I didn’t find one.

“Thanks for the talk,” I said and staggered away.

I puttered around the garden for a long time. It got cooler and the guests retreated to the house, jamming the place up to the last hallway until there was no place else left to stand. I could see them through the fogged up window. The black clothes melted into a single mass, the faces slowly lost their mournfulness. Here and there I could make out familiar facial features. At one stage I jumped because I thought I saw Lucy. The sound of the voices condensed into a single ill-defined cloud that sent out occasional thunderclaps of laughter. Suddenly I heard guitar chords accompanied by other tones that I couldn’t immediately place. I pressed my nose to the glass and saw an accordion.

Evgenija was sitting on the table; the musical instrument that I had at first taken for some kind of animal whined ruefully in her lap. Her left foot hung in the air; the high-heeled shoe had slipped down. A massive knee in black pants, whose owner I couldn’t make out, pushed under Evgenija’s toes to brace them as they felt around in the air.

She couldn’t start singing along now too, I thought, but right at that moment she showed that indeed she could. I couldn’t see who was playing guitar. I just hoped it wasn’t Claudia.