It wasn’t only how much better life was without comics that had startled him, but also how the comics business looked, viewed from outside. How small it was; how cruel and how ridiculous. All the warped personalities the industry either attracted, or else bent and fashioned for itself out of naïve enthusiasts who’d been expecting something else. He couldn’t understand why he’d not bailed out of the business years ago, though in a way he could. Part of the answer was just plain human inertia, and part was the fact that, from the inside, comics people and their weird behaviour could seem almost normal. Insular in their relationships, they tended to surround themselves with others from the same field who’d reflect or possibly surpass their oddness, which allowed them to believe that they were in a regular, acceptable reality. Which often made them a lot odder.

  Dan was grateful he’d escaped in time, though he’d admit that even that escape was qualified. Removing himself from the comics field was one thing, stopping thinking about comics was another. Constantly, he’d find his mind alighting on some decomposing gobbet from the mental garbage-tip of trivia that his career had left him with, when that was the last thing he wanted to be thinking of. If, on the news, they talked about the National Guard, then for a moment he would think they meant the character and not the military auxiliary. Somebody mentions gold, and he’d immediately assume that they were talking about Joe. He probably should have anticipated some sort of reaction – thirty-something years in any field would leave you with a lot of baggage, and especially an enterprise almost designed to be obsessional, like comics – but Dan wished he could stop doing it, or at least not in public, where it was embarrassing. For instance, when he’d visited his bank to tell them of his imminent change of address, the guy he’d spoken to had got a name badge on that said ‘A. Bell’. Dan jokingly enquired whether he got a lot of people asking him if he was Thunderman, to which the guy had just looked puzzled and said, ‘What?’

  Noticing that the sky was now the precise shade that he privately thought of as ‘Brute blue’, he sighed and figured a complete recovery was no doubt going to take a while. He was reminded of a fact that he’d picked up from Milton Finefinger, whose younger days had been more countercultural than Dan’s. Milton had said that junkies, when they’d kicked their habit – for however long – would often volunteer to be drug counsellors, a socially applauded cover for their real objective, which was to continue their involvement with a drugs world that was all that they could think or talk about. If Dan found himself helping fifty-year-olds over a Vindictives binge, he’d know he was in trouble.

  Judged by the faint migraine shimmer of the ruled horizon, it appeared the day was going to be a hot one. He just hoped he’d not imagined that For Sale board, or had not remembered it on the wrong stretch of road or something dumb like that. His fantasy that he could be a proper literary author, living miles from anywhere and shunning interviews like Salinger or Pynchon, had congealed over this last few months from idle dream to psychological necessity. After the awful spectacle he’d made of himself at Brandon Chuff’s funeral, he’d been observing radio silence and had not contacted anybody in the industry. He’d put his farewell dossier together, with the Thunderman script, Wellworth interview and all the other stuff, and it was published in Collectors’ Fugue without eliciting much in the way of a reaction or response, but the important thing for Dan was that he’d written it. His lip was better and he could speak normally again, since, for some reason, having quit the comics world, he was no longer trying to eat himself alive. He’d burned his bridges, settled his affairs and moved from his New York apartment to a rented room in South Bend while he scouted out a permanent address. Dan was committed, now, to his new life, and there could be no vacillating. Change or die, those were his options.

  He’d forgotten how much he liked Indiana, especially up north here where Lake Michigan was spitting distance. He could see it now, a glittering beyond the far trees on his right, apparently immobile in the crawling parallax. Dan had grown up in South Bend, back before he’d stupidly attended BeeCon1 in 1969 and given his mom the ambition to move to New York after her sister, Dan’s Aunt Brenda. In a gold glow of nostalgia, he’d originally thought that he might find a place in South Bend, so he could relive his childhood or some idiotic urge like that, but going back there had just demonstrated why that wouldn’t work. South Bend was obviously different now, as was Dan Wheems, and if you added the velocity of change for each of them, that gave the force for the collision of estrangements. South Bend wasn’t run-down, any more than everywhere was run-down, but it was no longer where he’d grown up, and he was no longer who’d grown up there. All the place could be for him was a progressively more disappointing reconstruction, where they were forever getting it all wrong. Much better finding someplace new that was nearby, so that he wouldn’t have to overprint all of those precious memories.

  That was if ‘someplace new’ really existed and was actually a property that was for sale, rather than an abandoned filling station that he’d misinterpreted as it blurred past. This last was the conclusion that he was reluctantly approaching, being fairly sure he should have come across the place by now. Hell, if he went much further, he’d be in Chicago. Before Dan could stop himself, a comic book brain that was in withdrawal had reminded him that Banner Comics had been published in Chicago, and begun to list the outfit’s questionable highlights. He felt angry – at his inability to stop converting everything into a comics reference, at his driving all the way out here to find a dream home that he only thought he saw, at this whole ‘new life’ nonsense. He was just about to turn around and drive dejectedly back to South Bend when, right out of nowhere, there it was ahead of him.

  OK, it was two houses side by side, one white, the other pink, a double cone of strawberry and vanilla for a sunny day, but it was definitely the right place. He saw now how it was the vanilla property that was for sale, while the pink house had some old guy in its front garden, watering the flowers, with his hose set to a fine spray that fanned pint-sized rainbows everywhere. Dan hadn’t previously realised just how beautifully the residence was situated, at least when approached from this direction. It was practically right on the lakeside. As he neared the picture-perfect buildings, slowing down to pull in, the old man switched off his hose and killed the rainbows, turning to regard Dan with his face completely motionless, his eyes coloured the same as the May sky.

  The gardener looked to be around five-six, five-seven, lean and sinewy with muscles of beef jerky, a good head of white hair, and skin like a weather-beaten satchel. Nothing in the man’s appearance was remarkable except his socks, which had contrasting stripes of neon green and neon orange. Dan switched off the engine and the old guy was still staring at him, frozen in place and not even blinking. He had one of those old-fashioned Norman Rockwell faces, classically American, that automatically made you assume you knew it from TV or somewhere. In his stillness was a kind of tension and a barely noticeable apprehension, and Dan realised belatedly that he might well be the first visitor this place had seen in months or years. For all the man knew, Dan might have been sent here by the IRS, a debt-collection agency, or some scheme that locates birth parents using DNA. Anxious to reassure someone who might be a potential next-door neighbour, Dan got out of the car with his hands up, in apology, leaving the keys in the ignition.

  ‘Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to startle you or anything. I was just driving by and noticed what a beautiful environment you’ve got here. I grew up in Indiana, down in South Bend, and I guess I’d thought of maybe settling here again, now I’m retired. My name’s Dan Wheems.’

  Dan stuck his hand out. The old fellow stared at it as if it were an alien artefact for a few seconds, and then offered up his own in a surprisingly firm handshake. Raising his blue eyes, he gave Dan a wide grin that lit his fissured features like an ivory sun over a rusted desert.

  ‘I’m Charlie Morelli. Yeah, I gotta say, I wondered who you was when you drove up like that. Didn’t I see you go by here a week, ten days ago?’

  The voice was unmistakably from Brooklyn, and the question served to underline how very sparse the traffic was in this neck of the woods, if his last drive past had been such a big event that the guy still remembered it. On Dan’s way over – now he thought about it – he’d not passed another vehicle in getting on three quarters of an hour. You could get up to anything out here.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, you may have done. That’s probably when I first saw this place, and since then I’ve been trying to remember where I saw it. Say, that’s quite a New York accent you got there.’

  Morelli nodded genially and chuckled.

  ‘It’s a funny story. I was born in Providence, Rhode Island, back in 1929. Irene and Joe, my mom and dad, they ran a bakery, and so when I flunked out of high school that was where I worked, you know? Dad moved the business to New York in 1951, and naturally I went along, which explains where I got the accent. Then, in 1963, I marry this cute girl, Joan Summers, and, I’ll tell ya, that was the biggest mistake I ever made. I tried to run a pizza joint out in Connecticut, but then, in 1970, the bitch walked out on me. Thank God we’d not had any children, that’s all I can say. I moved to Cleveland and worked at a vacuum-cleaner dealership until 2005, when I retired out here. I’m crazy about gardening, and I’m a big Sinatra fan.’

  Dan smiled and nodded, but was privately bemused. The tale was nondescript and overdetailed, certainly, but for the life of him he couldn’t see how it was funny. Drifting bees emitted sounds like distant aeroplanes and nosed amongst the roses, as Dan made an effort to restart the conversation with this friendly old guy and his probably generic aura of familiarity.

  ‘That’s one heck of a story. So, 2005, you’ve lived out here around ten years now? You must probably have known the people had the place next door.’

  Charlie Morelli glanced up at the white house with the messy garden that adjoined his own.

  ‘No, I don’t know who lived there. Place was empty when I got here.’ Turning, he subjected Dan to an appraising look, eyes narrowed so the wrinkles looked like woodgrain. ‘You said you was thinking about settling here, where you grew up, right? So, I’m thinking it was that For Sale sign in the yard next door what made you stop. Is that about the size of it?’

  Dan swallowed nervously. He’d not considered that Morelli might not want a neighbour, and he hoped there wouldn’t be bad blood affecting his prospective tenancy.

  ‘Um, yeah. I won’t deny I’d thought about it. I appreciate that you must like it out here on your own, the privacy and everything. If I were to put in an offer, would that be a problem?’

  Charlie looked down at the lawn and rubbed the back of his neck with the hand that wasn’t still holding the switched-off hosepipe. He looked more like somebody that Dan had seen before than ever, maybe an exasperated senior doctor in an old TV show. He snighed wearily, somewhere between a snort and sigh, and raised his head to look at Dan with a conflicted frown.

  ‘Look, I’ll be honest with you, you’d have asked me that a week ago, when you drove past before, then I’d have probably said beat it, you know what I mean? You seem like a nice guy and everything, but I’d kind of got used to my own company. Since then, though, I been thinking. I’m not getting any younger, and what if I have an accident here, miles from anywhere? And it might be good for my nerves and my mental health, having somebody I could talk to just once in a while; that’s what the doctors say. I guess a guy could go nuts living out here on his own. I sometimes worry on my own behalf. I mean, will you look at these fuckin’ socks! What kind of normal adult guy wears shit like this? No, go ahead and call the people on the sign. It could be you’d be doing me a favour.’

  Both men were laughing now, Dan Wheems with huge relief. He knew that he still had to go through all the complicated balls-ache that was part of buying property, but right there in that moment, he felt that he’d made it: he’d escaped the comics industry, if only by moving halfway across America so that it could no longer find him. Charlie and Dan started talking like old friends, both looking forward to each other’s company when they were right next door. Morelli said how glad he was that Dan had shown up on his doorstep.

  ‘Naturally, I’d have liked it better if you’d been some stacked broad but, hey, what’s a heaven for, right?’ The old man was smiling, and although Dan felt a bit uncomfortable about the sexual banter, he was more absorbed in Charlie’s grin and in the look he had, squinting against the sunshine. With the light like that, he almost looked like … Dan’s jaw dropped in sudden realisation, and he burst out laughing at his own childish thought processes, his own preposterous inanity.

  Morelli was still grinning at him, but now with puzzled amusement.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  It took a few moments to get Dan’s self-deprecating mirth under control, and then he wiped his eyes to offer explanations and apologies.

  ‘I’m what’s so funny. Honestly, if you knew what a jerk I was, you wouldn’t want me moving in next door. See, what it is, the job that I was in, when I retired six months back, I found out that I still thought about it all the time. It was like everything I saw, I couldn’t help but be reminded of some little detail out of my old life.’

  Morelli nodded like he understood. ‘Yeah, I’m like that with my old work. You know, the dealership in Cleveland? Some jobs, I guess they come back to haunt you, right enough.’

  Dan started chuckling again.

  ‘Boy, they sure do. When I was looking at you there, the thing that made me laugh is that I caught myself thinking you looked like someone from the dopey business that I used to be in, this guy called Frank Giardino. Seriously, I’m going to need some of that hypnotherapy, so that I can forget about all of this useless junk.’

  Morelli was still grinning. Probably he’d met a few New York neurotics back when he was slinging baked goods for his dad.

  ‘Huh. So, this guy, he was real handsome like me, is that what you’re saying?’

  Laughing, Dan was quick to reassure his new friend that Morelli was the better looking of the two men, by a mile. He really liked the sparky and plain-talking little guy, and thought it boded well that they could kid each other like this. Charlie wore a quiet and thoughtful smile, as if he was most probably considering the self-same thing, just gazing absently at Dan’s car and then glancing up the road where it ran on beside the lake. The old man nodded like he was agreeing with himself on something, maybe that inviting Dan to live next door had been a good decision. He appeared to realise suddenly that he was still holding the hose, and dropped it on the lawn where it fell into lazy coils, a sunning viper. Turning to regard the younger man, Morelli gave Dan a conspiratorial wink.

  ‘I’ll tell you what. Two guys as civilised as us, we didn’t ought to be out in this sun, sweating like animals. What say we go inside and grab a beer, so we can find stuff out about each other?’

  So that’s what they did. If it had been a film, then in this closing shot there’d be the house’s faded pink exterior, seen from the sunlit garden. Yellow roses nod encouragingly in the lower foreground where a drone explores, efficient as an engineer. In the near background, we see Dan and Charlie go in through the door, laughing and chatting, hands on shoulders, closing it behind them. With bees humming and birds trilling intermittent arias on the soundtrack, we hold on the closed front door for maybe fifteen seconds, then somebody coughs, it sounds like.

  Hold five seconds more. Cut to black screen.

  20. (February, 2021)

  Locked down by cold and Covid, much reduced in both people and purpose, New York had been turned into the set of an abandoned Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza, a gigantesque cheese-dream after the financiers had pulled all the money. Fifty-storey silence. Everywhere, haunted by absences. A post-disaster movie wanting for an evident disaster, Nothingnado. Even the obligatory newspaper moths that fluttered down the gutters with torn headlines to backstory the catastrophe were nowhere to be seen. It was the end of things with endings. It was the humanopause, or maybe the apocalapse.

  For Worsley Porlock, heading to his invitation upstairs at American, it was his big day, and, as with most big things, trying to keep it heated seemed to be a major problem. Worsley had a mask on – giving him the Brute’s nose, mouth and chin, which seemed disloyal for a visit to American but was the only one they’d had in stock – and therefore wasn’t leaving smokestack plumes of condensation in his wake, like the few unmasked people he could see there on the all but empty avenue. He passed one unmasked man who appeared frightened and offended at the same time, and who had on a red baseball cap that bore the legend Make America There Again. Everything steamed and shivered, and the whole thing felt like entropy for commerce.

  Or perhaps that was just Worsley, who had barely slept the night before and who was viewing the semi-deserted city through insomnia’s fractured lens. With apprehension and anticipation staging simultaneous TED Talks in his head, slumber had managed to evade him, and he’d filled the pale hours streaming Glenfield season one, so then he’d been disturbed as well as wakeful. Glenfield, unbelievably, turned out to be a dark and gritty reimagining of Blinky, named after the astigmatic character’s hometown. Now known as Bradley Brown so as not to offend the partly sighted, Blinky’s optic defect had been retooled to allow him visions of a strange, Lovecraftian netherworld, and best friend Bottleneck was managing a meth lab from a back room of Pop’s Soda Shop. In the first episode, the naked corpse of Blinky’s high school teacher Mrs Grimsby was discovered, wrapped in tinfoil, in the trunk of Blinky’s beat-up old jalopy, and things got more gritty from there on. If Worsley had remained in bed and suffered through a series of those micro-nightmares that attend the sleepless, then the residue of free-floating unease he felt now would be near identical to that which came with having watched six episodes of Glenfield. It had all just been so wrong, like having a beloved childhood teddy bear crawling towards you with a knife between its teeth. So, on this already unsettling morning, Worsley found himself further disquieted by Blinky, of all fucking things.