Jonathan Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I remember you always said you were going to buy X-Men forever, unless Chris Claremont quit writing. I always thought of you as like the ultimate collector.”

Demoralizing how Arthur owned him, like a stink you couldn’t wash off. True enough, Dylan still picked up the new X-Men . Not every month, but sometimes. Other month’s issues he didn’t take home, just skim-read beside the spinning rack at the cigar shop on Fourteenth. Like making out with an ex-girlfriend at a party, grudgingly, a chip on your shoulder that you had nothing better to do. Which was exactly what Dylan and Amy Saffrich had been doing all summer, clinching in hallways and bathrooms in the desultory wake of their term’s-end breakup. The months between high school and college were a time of glum derangement, everyone half-spun to new destinies and arrived nowhere yet, living at home, infantile. It only followed that Arthur Lomb would wander into this breach to assert his thin claim.

“No,” Dylan said now. “I mean, why sell.”

“Oh. Heh. I’m just trying to raise some-funds.” Arthur spoke airily. “Now seemed like a good time to get out.”

“Right, right,” said Dylan, pretending to mull.

“I’m sure it’s pretty valuable by now. Everything’s still in fine or near-fine condition.”

“Uh huh.”

Dylan’s plan dawned in curiosity, no notion it would lead to Mingus and the ring, no inkling it was born in the betrayal and rebuke of seeing DOSE on the prison. It began merely as an impulse to see inside Arthur Lomb’s house one last time, to see inside his room, to see Arthur’s mom again, maybe. Nothing more. Dylan was safe already, he was gone, scot-free to Vermont. Why not tour what he’d left behind?

“When can I stop by and take a look?” he said lightly.

“Tonight?”

Arthur looked like he couldn’t believe his luck. His proposition had been a potshot, a lark.

So, like all the best deals, each would believe they were gypping the other. “I’m off at eleven,” Dylan said. “Be at home.”

The apartment was the same, a time capsule: carpet, piano, addled tortoise-shell cats. Arthur Lomb’s mom braless in a batik T, listening to WBAI. She greeted Dylan with gushy gratitude, seemingly awed to find him still associating with her son. Dylan was generous, her manner seemed to say, just allowing her to consider Dylan Ebdus and Arthur Lomb still some version of two-of-a-kind. Arthur, meanwhile, had already sneered into his room and shut the door.

“Off to college?”

“ Camden.”

“That’s wonderful, Dylan. I’m so happy for you. God, you’re so grown up.”

Disgusting to realize he was flirting with Arthur’s mom, to realize, now that he grokked girls, he’d always been flirting with Arthur’s mom. Worse, she was fuckable.

“I, um, I’ve got to look at some stuff Arthur’s got for me.”

“It’s good to see you, Dylan.”

“Yeah.”

The collection was buried in Arthur’s closet beneath balled underwear and a heap of brand-x porn mags, mostly Players and Hustler . Arthur seemed unembarrassed at the spill of black centerfolds, their purple-backlit Afros and cocoa aureolae. Was he practicing being black? Dylan didn’t want to know. Arthur tugged the plastic dairy crates full of mylar-sealed comics into the center of the room and sprawled back on his bed, lit a Kool.

“Good as gold.”

Dylan knelt self-consciously on the carpet, which was full of pot seeds and blackened matchheads, and browsed the crates. He felt he’d been reduced to something, propelled back in time to bug juice and chess disgrace, but pushed it from his head. The collection looked mostly status quo. Arthur had massed a surprisingly strong war chest of mint number one’s: five or ten each of Peter Parker , The Eternals , Kobra , Ragman , Mister Machine , Nova . For what it was worth.

“You want to sell the whole thing?”

“Yup.”

“What, uh, what number did you have in mind?”

“Five hundred.”

“You’re insane.”

“Four.”

“I’m not even making an offer unless you put back the Howard the Ducks and Omegas . Plus X-Men #97 . I assume that’s what’s under your bed.” Dylan had spotted the plastic sleeves glinting there.

Arthur was impossible to shame. “Sure. Four for everything, Howard , Omega , whatever.”

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”

“You must think I’m a chump.”

“One-fifty.”

“You shitface. When can you get it?”

“I’ve got it with me. But you have to help me carry them home.”

They fished the hidden cache from under the bed, then each hoisted up a crate. They slipped downstairs, to Arthur’s stoop. In the glow of money Arthur would be incautious, boastful. Now would be safe for Dylan to confirm what he suspected, that the trail of funds led to Mingus. As he counted out twenties he said:

“So-funds for what?”

“Gus and Robert and me are gonna buy a quarter kee and cut it up and make some real money. From Barry’s connection.”

“Cocaine?”

Arthur pounced. “No, we thought we’d go into your line-chocolate sprinkles.”

“So you guys are pooling cash.”

“Uh huh.”

“Do you think Mingus would be interested in selling his comics, too?” Dylan asked.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Arthur. “Those comics are ruined .” As if the interior pages of his own didn’t feature breast-tracings and Sea-Monkey ads adorned with oversize cock-and-balls. But Dylan let it go.

“Yeah, I know they’re in bad shape but he’s got some titles I’m interested in.” Let Arthur think him crazy, suspect what he liked, he’d never grasp Dylan’s real angle here, behind the blind of the comics. No worry, anyway: dollar signs served in place of Arthur Lomb’s eyes and, behind them, his brain.

“I suppose he’d listen to a reasonable offer.”

Dylan milked it. “I’d have to get some more cash from the bank.”

“That’s an excellent idea, so you can finish the transaction right there.”

“But mention it to him.”

“I’ll do that.”

Only six weeks. Arthur Lomb’s two crates of number ones relocated to his own closet’s depths, Dylan Ebdus in his loft bed stewed in self-contempt, and the only solace was the escape so near he could hear it like a distant throb, a summer boom box on a Puerto Rican patio or a DJ in the Wyckoff Gardens courtyard. He might seem momentarily to have been drawn back into Arthur and Mingus’s morass but it was only to conclude some old business, the thing left undone to earn his vanishing from Dean Street. Six weeks: he could scheme, be craven as Arthur, didn’t matter. He was waving goodbye.

He jerked himself to sleep to thoughts of Arthur’s mom, a tribute he’d owed for years.

Arthur, playing liaison now, set it up for the following night, a Friday. He was pretentiously vague and spooky on the phone, as though Dylan and Mingus couldn’t manage an encounter without his help.

“We’ll meet you on the stoop and let you in. Don’t knock, you’ll wake up Senior.”

“I know Mingus’s grandfather, Arthur.”

“You haven’t seen him lately.”

“No, not lately.”

“Just take my word for it.”

Arthur and Mingus were on the stoop at the appointed time. Mingus greeted Dylan with a hug, butted his head into Dylan’s shoulder, phantom-boxed him. “Dillinger, where you been , man? My boy’s done got all grown, damn !”

Dylan told himself he’d have returned the hug if he and Mingus were alone. Under Arthur Lomb’s gaze he felt brittle, iced over. Whatever punkish stature Dylan had assembled in Manhattan didn’t register in Arthur’s eyes: reflected there Dylan saw a cone scooper, a whiteboy . So in defensiveness he shrugged Mingus off, was all business. Best for now to emphasize the transaction. Anyhow, Dylan had conceived a plan in which this was only a dry run: buy comics now, buy something else later.