Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Above his head arched foot-high letters proclaiming boldly the escapist! while at his feet a pair of firefighters crawled around on their hands and knees, searching the drawers and kneeholes of the reception desk for a bomb. The firemen, their visors glinting, looked up as Harley led Governor Smith and Mr. Love past.

"Find anything?" Smith said. One of the firemen, an elderly fellow whose helmet looked far too large for him, shook his head.

The comic book workshop, or whatever it was called, had none of the polish and gleam of the waiting room. The floor was concrete, painted light blue and littered with fag ends and crumpled carnations of drawing paper. The tables were a homely jumble of brand-new and semidecrepit, but there was full daylight on three sides, with spectacular if not quite breathtaking views of the hotel and newspaper towers of midtown, the green badge of Central Park, the battlements of New Jersey, and the dull metal glint of the East River, with a glimpse of the iron mantilla of the Queensboro Bridge. The windows were shut, and a pall of tobacco lay over the room. In a far corner, against a wall from which his built-in drawing table canted downward and out, hunched a pale young man, lean, rumpled, shirttails dangling, adding billowing yards of smoke to the pall. Al Smith signaled to Harley to leave them. "Five minutes," Harley said as he withdrew.

As soon as the police captain spoke, the young man whirled around on his stool. He squinted nearsightedly in the direction of Smith and Love as they approached, looking mildly annoyed. He was a good-looking Jewish kid, with large blue eyes, an aquiline nose, a strong chin.

"Young man," Smith said. "Mr. Kavalier, is it? I'm Al Smith. This is my friend Mr. Love."

"Joe," the young man said. His grip in Love's was firm and dry. Though he appeared to have been wearing his clothes rather too long, they were good enough clothes: a broadcloth shirt with a monogram stitched onto the breast pocket, a raw silk necktie, gray worsted trousers with a generous cuff. But he had the undernourished look of an immigrant, his deep-set eyes bruised and wary, the tips of his fingers stained yellow. The careful manicure of his nails had been ruined by ink. He looked ill rested, dog-tired, and-it was a surprising thought to Love, who was not a man especially sensitive to the feelings of others-sad. A less refined New Yorker probably would have asked him, Where's the funeral?

"Look here, young man," Smith said. "I've come to make a personal request. Now, I admire your dedication to your work here. But I'd like you just to do me a favor, a personal favor to me, you understand. Here it is. Come along now, and let me stand you to a drink. All right? We'll get this little problem cleared up, and then you'll be my guest at the club. Okay, kid? What do you say?"

If Joe Kavalier was impressed by this generous offer from one of the best-known, most beloved characters in contemporary American life, a man who once might have been president of the United States, he didn't show it. He merely looked amused, Love thought, and behind this amusement there were hints of irritation.

"I'd like to another time, maybe, thank you," he said, in an indeterminate Hapsburg accent. He reached for a stack of art board and took a fresh piece from the top. It appeared to the observant Love, who always took a ready interest in learning the secrets and methods of any kind of manufacturing or production, to have been preprinted with nine large square frames, in three tiers of three. "Only I have so much work."

"You're quite attached to your work, I can see that," Love said, catching the younger man's air of amused unconcern.

Joe Kavalier looked down at his feet, where a pair of metal cuffs linked his left ankle, in a gray sock with white and burgundy clocks, to one of the legs of his table. "I was not wanting to be interrupted, you know?" He tap-tap-tapped the end of his pencil against the piece of board. "So many little boxes to fill."

"Yes, all right, that's very admirable, son," Smith said, "but for gosh sakes, how much drawing will you be able to do when your arm is lying down on Thirty-third Street?"

The young man gazed around the studio, empty but for the smoke of his cigarette and a pair of grunting firemen, the buckles on their raincoats rattling as they clambered around the room.

"There isn't no bomb," he said.

"You think this thing's a hoax?" Love said.

Joe Kavalier nodded, then lowered his head to his work. He considered the page's first little box from one angle, then another. Then, rapidly, in a firm and certain manner and without stopping, he began to draw. In choosing the image he was now putting to paper, he didn't appear to be following the typewritten script lying stacked at his elbow. Perhaps he had committed it all to memory. Love craned his head to get a better look at what the kid was drawing. It seemed to be an airplane, one with the fierce-looking jambeaux of a Stuka. Yes, a Stuka in a streaking power dive. The detail was impressive. The plane had solidity and rivets. And yet there was something exaggerated in the backward sweep of the wings that suggested great speed and even a hint of falconish malevolence.

"Governor?" It was Harley. He sounded as if he was irritated with Al Smith now, too. "I got two men with a wrench ready and waiting."

"Just a moment," Love said, and then felt himself blush. It was Al Smith's decision, of course-it was Al Smith's building-but Love was impressed by the young man's good looks, his air of certainty with regard to the bomb's fraudulence; and he was fascinated, as always, by the sight of someone making something skillfully. He wasn't ready to leave either.

"You've got half a moment," Harley said, ducking out again. "With all due respect."

"Well, now, Joe," Smith said, checking his watch once again, looking and sounding more nervous than before. His tone grew patient and slightly condescending, and Love sensed that he was trying to be psychological. "If you won't evacuate, maybe you'll tell me why the Bund- would this be the Bund?"

"The Aryan-American League."

Smith looked at Love, who shook his head. "I don't believe I've ever heard of them," Smith said.

Joe Kavalier's mouth bunched up at one corner in a small, eloquent smirk, as if to suggest that this was hardly surprising.

"Why are these Aryans so upset with you people here? How did they come across these controversial drawings of yours? I wasn't aware that Nazis read comic books."

"All kinds of people are reading them," said Joe. "I get mail from all over the country. California. Illinois. From Canada, too."

"Really?" Love said. "How many of your comic books do you sell every month?"

"Jimmy-" Smith began, tapping the crystal of his wristwatch with a fat finger.

"We have three titles," the young man said. "Though now it's going to be five."

"And how many do you sell in a month?"

"Mr. Kavalier, this is fascinating stuff, but if you won't agree to come quietly I'm going to be obliged to-"

"Close to three million," Joe Kavalier said. "But they all get passed along at least once. They get traded for other ones, between the kids. So the number of people reading them, Sam-my partner, Sam Clay-says it's maybe two times how many we sell, or more."

"Das ist bemerkenswert," said Love.

For the first time, Joe Kavalier looked surprised. "Ja, no kidding."

"And that fellow out there in the lobby, with the key on his chest. That your star attraction?"

"The Escapist. He is the world-greatest escape artist, no chains to hold him, sending him to liberate the enprisoned peoples in the world. It's good stuff." He smiled for the first time, a smile that was self-mocking but not quite enough to conceal his evident professional pride. "He is made up by my partner and me."