Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

"Oh, I've been up all night," Rosa said brightly. – "Not a wink?"

"Not that I recall. My brain was going crazy."

"Get anything?"

Rosa had a lead story due for Kiss Comics in two days. She was the second-best illustrator of women in the business (he had to give the nod to Bob Powell) but a terrible procrastinator. He had long since given up trying to lecture her on her work habits. He was her boss in name only-they had settled that question years before, when Rosa first came to work for him, in a yearlong series of skirmishes. Now they were, more or less, a package. Whoever hired Sammy to edit his line of comics knew that he would be obtaining the valuable services of Rose Saxon (her professional name) as well.

"I have some ideas," she said in a guarded tone. All of Rosa's ideas sounded bad at first; she adapted them from a messy compound of her dreams, sensational newspaper articles, and things she picked up in women's magazines, and she was terrible at explaining them. It was always fascinating to see how they emerged under the teasing and topiary shapings of her pencil and brush.

"Something about the A-bomb?"

"How did you know?"

"I happened to be in the bedroom with you while you were talking out loud last night," he said. "Foolishly trying to sleep."

"Sorry."

Sammy broke a half-dozen eggs into a bowl, splashed them with milk, shook in pepper and salt. He rinsed one of the eggshells and tossed it into the coffeepot on the stove. Then he poured the eggs into a pan of foaming butter. Scrambled eggs was his only dish, but he was very good at it. You had to leave them alone; that turned out to be the secret. Most people stood there stirring them, but the way to do it was to them sit for a minute or two over a low flame and bother them no more than half a dozen times. Sometimes, for variety, he threw in some chopped fried salami; that was how Tommy liked them.

"He was wearing the eye patch again," Sammy said, trying not to make it sound too important. "I saw him trying it on."

"Oh, God."

"He swore to me that he wasn't planning anything."

"Did you believe him?"

"I guess. I guess I chose to. Where's the salami?"

"I'll put it on my list. I'm going to the store today."

"You have to finish that story."

"And so I shall." She took a loud sip of her lemon water. "He's definitely up to something."

"You think." Sammy took down the peanut butter and got the grape jelly from the Frigidaire.

"I don't know, I just think he's been a little jumpy."

"He's always jumpy."

"I'd better walk him to school, as long as I'm up anyway." It was much easier for Rosa to govern her son than it was for Sammy. She didn't seem to give the question nearly as much thought. She believed that it was important to put trust in children, to hand over the reins to them from time to time, to let them decide things for themselves. But when, as frequently occurred, Tommy squandered that trust, she did not hesitate to clamp down. And Tommy never seemed to resent her heavy discipline in the way that he chafed under Sammy's lightest reproof. "You know, make sure he gets there."

"You can't walk me to school," Tommy said. He came into the kitchen, sat down before his plate, and stared at it, waiting for Sammy to pile it with eggs. "Mom, you can't possibly. I would die. I would absolutely die."

"He would die," Sammy told Rosa.

"Which would be very embarrassing for me," Rosa said. "Standing there next to a dead body in front of William Floyd Junior High."

"How about I walk him instead? It's only ten minutes out of my way." Sammy and Tommy generally said goodbye to each other at the front gate before setting off in opposite directions for the station and the junior high school, respectively. From second through sixth grade, they had parted with a handshake, but that custom, a minor beloved landmark of Sammy's day for five years, had apparently been abandoned for good. Sammy was not sure why, or who had made the decision to abandon it. "That way you can stay here and, you know, draw my story"

"That might be a good idea."

Sammy gentled the steaming pudding of butter and eggs onto Tommy's plate. "Sorry," he said, "we're out of salami."

"It figures," Tommy said.. "I'll put it on my list," said Rosa.

They fell silent for a moment, Rosa in her chair behind her mug, and Sammy standing by the counter with a slice of bread in his hand, watching Tommy shovel it in. He was a trencherman, was Tom. The little stick of a boy had vanished under a mantle of muscle and fat; he was looking a little bit portly, in fact. After thirty-seven seconds, the eggs were gone. Tommy looked up from his plate.

"Why's everybody looking at me?" he said. "I didn't do anything."

Rosa and Sammy burst out laughing. Then Rosa stopped laughing, and focused on her son, always a little bit cross-eyed when she was making a point.

"Tom," she said. "You weren't planning to go into the city again?"

Tommy shook his head.

"Nevertheless," Sammy said, "I'll walk you."

"Drive me," Tommy said. "If you don't believe me."

"Why not?" Sammy said. If he took the car to the station, Rosa would not be able to drive to the grocery store, or to the beach, or to the library "for inspiration." She would be more likely to stay home and draw. "I might just take it all the way into the city. They opened a new lot around the corner from the office."

Rosa looked up, alarmed. "All the way into the city!" Even leaving their car, a 1951 Studebaker Champion, at the train station was not protection enough. Rosa had been known to walk to the station to fetch it, just so that she would be able to drive around Long Island doing things that were not drawing romance comics.

Just let me get dressed." Sammy handed the slice of bread to Rosa. "Here," he said, "you make his lunch."

Breakfast palaver at the Excelsior Cafeteria on Second Avenue, a favorite morning haunt of funny-book men, circa April 1954:

"It's a hoax."

"I just said that."

"Somebody's pulling Anapol's leg."

"Maybe it's Anapol."

"I wouldn't blame him if he did want to jump off the Empire State Building. I hear he's in all kinds of trouble over there."

"I'm in all kinds of trouble. Everybody is in all kinds of trouble. I challenge you to name me one house that isn't having problems. And it's only going to get worse."

"That's what you always say. Listen to you. Listen to this guy, he kills me. He's like a, a filling station of gloom. I spend ten minutes listening to him, I go away with a full tank of gloom, it lasts me all day."

"I'll tell you who's a fountain of gloom, Dr. Fredric Wertham. Have you read this book of his? What's it called? How to Seduce an Innocent?"

There was loud laughter at this. The men at the surrounding tables turned to look. The laughter had been a little too loud, certainly for the hour and the condition of their hangovers.

Dr. Fredric Wertham, a child psychiatrist with unimpeachable credentials and a well-earned sense of outrage, had for several years been trying to persuade the parents and legislators of America that the minds of American children were being deeply damaged by the reading of comic books. With the recent publication of the admirable, encyclopedic, and mistaken Seduction of the Innocent, Dr. Wertham's efforts had begun to bear real fruit; there had been calls for controls or outright bans, and in several southern and midwestern cities local governments had sponsored public comic book bonfires, onto which smiling mobs of American children with damaged minds had festively tossed their collections.

"No, I haven't read it. Have you read it?"

"I tried. It gives me a pain in the stomach."