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The Year of Penny has taken a decidedly naked turn.
No one, least of all Penny, can quite account for how this happened. It was a combination of factors, including a misquotation of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Penny's mom's gift of the New Our Bodies, Ourselves, and the usual Chicago-winter cabin fever mutating into something new and very, very naked.
"I'm not ashamed!" Penny twines her arms together and drops her head back, letting the music take her over. Lana Del Rey's "Video Games" is far too slow and syncopated for good belly-dancing, but Penny...is not a good belly dancer. She is many things, many wonderful things, and Alex loves her like another sister, but she isn't a good belly dancer.
Especially not when she's this naked.
"Bare-assed, even," Brad says.
Jane puts her hand over Brad's eyes. "Nudist, I think that's the preferred term."
Max takes a long swig of beer and looks at the ceiling. "I'm with Brad. Bare-assed really feels like the best call here."
"Look," Alex says and shades her eyes. "Can I just get a little validation? This is creepy, right?"
"We-ell," Jane says. Brad pushes back from the table and raises his hands. Max takes his chance to steal Brad's beer. "'Creepy' is kind of judgmental, wouldn't you say?"
Penny shimmies right up to Alex's shoulder and starts twitching her hips back and forth, half like a belly-dancer, half like a drunk girl with the volume too high on her earbuds.
"Um," Alex says and dodges Penny's hipcheck. She'd like to see Jane try to live with this for more than five minutes; she starts to twitch when Brad wears unironed jeans. "No?"
*
The nice thing about going somewhere with Max is that Alex never has to hurry to keep up. Usually everyone had longer legs than she did, plus they had a whole driven energy (places to go, people to see) that she was pretty sure she'd rarely, if ever, felt.
But Max ambles. Even in the depths of a winter night, so late it's closer to morning, so cold that she, who's lived in Chicago her whole life, can't open her eyes all the way or straighten up, he takes his time. Walk slow, talk loud, gesture lots: That'd be Max's motto, if he bothered to make one up.
"See here, grasshopper --" he's saying.
"What is that?" She's always wondered.
He stops short at the mouth of a narrow alley between two warehouse buildings. "What's what?"
"Grasshopper," Alex says. Her scarf, stretched over her mouth, tastes like her half-frozen spit. Or maybe her spit tastes like merino wool. It's a Zen question. She should remember that for yoga.
"Little friend, sidekick, junior," Max replies, circling his hand. His eyes glitter, very blue, in the dark as the clouds his breath make rise and disperse.
"Like Midge!"
"Who?"
"Midge," Alex says. "Barbie's best friend? Midge."
Max disentangles his arm from hers, shaking his head. "Nah, you're more Skipper. And anyway, I'm a dude. A bro, not a Barbie."
Alex's eyes sting. It's the wind, sure, but it's also emotion. "I just meant --"
Max wags his finger, then jabs it at her chest. "Skipper."
"Skipper doesn't even have boobs!"
Max grins, wolfish and toothy. "Exactly, girlfriend."
For a guy so fiercely adamant about his dudeliness, he sure channels the flamer within well. Alex shoves him, but slips in the gritty, slushy ice and falls on one knee.
Max is laughing as he heads down the alley.
Alex struggles up to her feet. "Hey, where're you going?"
She has no idea where they are. Max claims that his limo is parked somewhere around here, near an afterhours club he swears she'll love, but they haven't passed a human being for about eighteen blocks, and the blocks have been getting longer and longer, the street narrower, hemmed in by these low, wide warehouses.
Her knee smarts, but she hurries after Max as best she can. At a clutch of dumpsters, the alley splits. She pauses under the dim safety light, trying to make out which way he went.
Despite herself, she does the Scarecrow in Oz thing, crossing her arms, pointing in both directions: "Some people go both ways!"
She always does that at a fork in the road.
From above -- fire escape? Roof? Alex can't make anything out beyond the halo of that safety light -- a woman's voice calls out, "Halt, citizen!"
She hears men's shouts, the shuffle-scrabble of heavy boots on chunky ice, then another calm, clear voice, a man's this time.
"I'll take it from here, Raven."
"The hell you will," the woman says. Something happens, there's the sound of a scuffle, and a heavyset man falls to the ground in front of Alex.
Alex's breath catches in her throat, doubles back, plummets to her stomach.
As he lumbers to his feet, there's the glint of something in his hand, and he shoves her out of the way. She flattens herself against the nearest wall, hearing the woman curse -- "Look what you did!" -- and then everything gets even more confusing.
Fear courses through her veins, flashing hot, then cold. There's a black-clad woman dropping down from the next building. She is masked, goggled, long and lean in supple leather. Alex knows her leather and textiles, and that is the good stuff, make no mistake. "Which way?"
Alex can't speak. She points down the crooked fork of the alley, where more fighting can suddenly be heard. Is that Max's voice? Someone, maybe Max, cries out, and the leather-clad woman sprints off, jumping over the nearest dumpster one-handed.
On the roof opposite, she can just make out a dark figure watching them.
Alex can hear her heartbeat thundering. She gulps at the frigid air like a goldfish; it hurts her lungs almost as much as it would the fish himself. She squeezes shut her eyes and stays as still as she can.
She counts her heartbeat all the way past 300. She doesn't open her eyes until she feels a light caress down her cheek.
Squeaking, she ducks away.
The woman is rising upward on a cord wrapped around her arm. "All clear. Your friend'll be fine."
Sirens build in the distance.
Alex stumbles down the alley, sweeping her hands out in front of her blindly. She nearly trips over Max, who's sitting against the side of a dumpster, cradling something in his coat.
"I found a kitty!" he says, bright and perky as, well, Penny. "Kitty!"
*
Contrary to all appearances, Max didn't actually have a concussion.
What he had was a pregnant hairless cat that looked like a deformed baby dragon. She was the odd dull pink color of the soles of feet, splashed with a few spots of black. Her ears were pointed and elongated like Legolas's.
Despite that obvious resemblance, he called her Estelle, after both his great-grandma and his favorite Golden Girl.
Alex can't admit this out loud, but she's kind of jealous of that stupid cat. Everyone's so taken with her, with how she's got Max enthralled, that no one even cares about the real news.
Alex met a superhero.
Come on, that's a lot more interesting than Estelle's mean old yowl and swollen belly and the all-too-disquieting fact that Max is crocheting her little sweaters to wear. He's got her set up in his wicker bassinette wedged into the front seat of the limo, and she reclines there like a malevolent old lady, nipping at his hand whenever he pets her.
*
She tries one more time the next Sunday when they meet for brunch. Despite Max's attempt to put a wig and clothes on Estelle, animals aren't allowed in the restaurant, so Alex has a better chance of being heard.
"Can we talk about this?" she asks the table in general. "Superheroes. In Chicago. Hello?"
Her friends trade uneasy glances. No one seems to want to say anything. This is just like the time Alex befriended the poltergeist in the girl's bathroom in junior high.
"Honey --" Jane starts to say, but then she doesn't add anything.
"Cats lick themselves," Max says to no one in particular. "They're way more clean than -- me, for one, and I'm allowed in here."
"Cats also walk in their own turds," Dace tells him. "So, you know. There's that."
"Superheroes," Alex says more loudly. "Anyone?"
"Probably some of those nerdly hipsters who dress up in leotards and try to do the superhero thing," Penny says. "It was the big thing in Portland last year." She sighs and hugs herself. "I've always thought I should live in Portland. I just get it, you know?"
Brad points to Penny, nodding enthusiastically. "Nerds dressing up, definitely."
Alex frowns. They're not getting it, and she's running out of ways to explain what she saw. "But it was a girl --"
"Maybe it was a dominatrix," Dave says. "Going to meet a client."
"Lifestyler, more likely," Jane says sagely, nodding as she thinks it through. "I don't think a pro would go down to that neighborhood."
"Hey!" Max protests. "That neighborhood is up and coming, any day now it'll be the next Wicker Park, you wait and see."
"Definitely S and M," Penny says, "I mean, that much is obvious, right?"
"Like Exit to Eden?" Max shudders hard.
"The one with James Dean?" Alex asks in spite of herself. "And the guy from Frosty?"
Max squints at her. "Burl Ives was in Rudolph, and, no. The one with Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O'Donnell. That kind of S and M? Or the good kind?"
"What's the difference?" Brad asks, then yelps when Jane elbows him.
"The difference," Dave says, raising his voice, "can be found in any number of details..."
"I never wanted to have to see so much as Dan Aykroyd's nipple," Max says, "Hell, I didn't want to know he had nipples! But full-on gear?" His voice drops to a plaintive whimper. "Why?"
"Because you touch yourself at night," Brad informs him.
"No, because you touch yourself," Max retorts.
As they poke each other and grapple for headlock supremacy, Dave continues, "...and of course there are socialization factors to consider, including but not limited to..."
And they're off, debating movies Alex isn't sure she's seen or not, dropping names, riffing and segue-ing, as she picks at the label on her water bottle.
"Guys. Guys. Guys." Alex repeats herself seven times, takes a breath, and tries again. "Guys. I saw superheroes."
*
It's been a long while since Alex had a project like this to absorb her attention. There was the wedding, of course, but she'd rather not think about that. Before that, there was opening her store. That really was the last time she had something so big and all-important.
"I don't know..." Penny says, curling up on the divan with a glass of wine. "Why not make the store your project again? Or dating?"
Alex waves her off. "The store's fine. Never been busier." She taps at, then strokes, the touchpad on the laptop in front of her but the screen doesn't change. "How do I turn this on?"
"Keep rubbing it like a lamp, see what happens," Max says from the floor. He's wreathed in yarn, the crochet hook in his hand, Estelle in his lap chewing on the yarn tail.
"Seriously, guys, this is important," Alex says.
"But --"
Penny can't say more; Alex interrupts her. "No, I don't want to date. Not right now."
"But? Boys?" Penny whispers hopefully.
"Dating's stupid," Max puts in. "May I recommend lots of casual sex and a sweet beautiful princess kitty to come home to?"
Penny kicks him. "Grindr's not available for us, you know that."
"Sucks to be you," he says. "Best thing that ever happened to me. Don't even have to get dressed usually."
The screen finally flickers to life. Alex goes to Google and enters "Chicago superhero lady in leather".
Three hours later, she looks up. Max, Penny, and Estelle are nowhere to be seen; all the lights are off, so the laptop's screen bathes her hands in a wavering blue glow. From Google, she figured out quickly not to include "in leather"; that way lay lots of very interesting but hardly pertinent information. (She did bookmark a few interesting Tumblrs, however. Jane isn't the only Kerkovich who has an eye to spare for the ladies as well as the gents.)
Instead, she went to Wikipedia, got overwhelmed with all the links, swam around there, read about the Chicago and Urbana mini-comics scenes, and checked out issue-level summaries of The Great Lakes Avengers and Justice League Detroit. From there -- maybe, it's already such a blur -- she came to message boards and various forums. Most of them were for talking about made-up (so far as she knew) superheroes, but there were one or two that seemed more serious.
They hadn't been updated in a long time, however, and one forum bounced her email registration back. On the one that did let her post, she left an account of what she'd seen and where they had been -- or as best as she could describe it, since she actually hadn't been able to find that street again. Not that Max was any help.
*
Determined to find the hero (or heroes! There was that guy on the roof, giving Raven a stern talking-to), Alex goes out twice, once on a Saturday night, then again on a Wednesday. It's a whole BYOB ("DIY," Brad corrected her when she asked his advice. "DIY, dude") thing: anyone can be a superhero.
Of course, she doesn't have any leather clothing besides the beat-up jacket Jane wore during her riverboat pi gao phase, so Alex settles for dark wool, layers of it, tights beneath stretchy Prada trousers, a turtleneck sweater and long cashmere cape loaded with fringe.
The look isn't quite superhero. Not even dominatrix. More Anna Wintour does Iqaluit. But it'll have to do.
"Where ya going?" Penny asks when Alex is trying to sneak out. She slides on big Bono-style sunglasses, then a charcoal grey beret that she thinks was her mom's.
"Nowhere?" Alex tries to look casual. It's difficult when she's swathed in darkness and Penny's reclining on the sofa, her breasts sliding heavily to either side.
"You look like a cat burglar." Penny struggles up onto her elbow, tilting her head to study Alex. "You look awesome. Can I come?"
"Poetry reading," Alex tells her and snaps her fingers like a beatnik. "You hate those, remember?"
Penny scowls and sticks out her tongue. "I hate poetry! There is nothing lower-etry." As Alex laughs and closes the door behind her, Penny adds in a shout, "Down with poetry! There should be no more-etry!"
Her online research suggests what Alex already suspected: costumed vigilantes tend to operate in high-crime areas. Then again, criminals also tend to operate in such places, and though she was an accomplished scrapper once upon a time, she's sure she isn't up to dealing with, like. Guns and boxcutters and god knows what.
So she goes to South of the Yards, the neighborhood her mom's parents grew up in, and waits around a couple different corners looking for someone in distress.
It's harder than you might think. A couple cars honk and slow down, and she realizes too late they probably think she's a working girl. Then, when she tries to help an elderly guy over the snowbank and across the street, he leers at her, all red gums and clacking dentures, because he thinks she's working, too. Alex does succeed in helping a couple other oldsters across the street, carries groceries up six flights for a nice middle-aged lady, and helps a pudgy kid put up flyers about his lost dog.
It's not much, but she enjoys it. It's just cool, hanging out with new people, going the extra mile (or, more accurately, an extra couple yards).
*
The store gets busy as the holidays approach, then, surprisingly, even busier as they pass. Women enter, bundled up snug as caterpillars, then shed their coats and scarves and hats, emerging with sweat-dampened skin and bright eyes, eager to touch soft light fabric and see color other than slush, snow, stormcloud and exhaust.
Alex is working by herself for the most part. Max is busy with Estelle's newborn litter and Dave is nursing some frostbitten toes from too many hours in the unheated food truck. Neither of them is particularly good in the store anyway; they're klutzy and tend to knock over her displays and make fun of the froo-froo accessories.
But this is why she wanted to have a store, after all -- getting to help people, choose amazing colors and out-of-this-world textures, dressing women until they look drop-dead fabulous, all of this. It's like she's playing dress-up, every day, while getting paid for it (or sort-of breaking even, some of the time, hopefully).
This pleasure she takes, it's not something she can explain very well, not to Jane or even Penny. Dave always thought it was cute, and maybe it is, but Alex is pretty sure that it means something more than her than just cute.
Maybe it's silly. Stupid, or superficial, or whatever, draping this shawl over one woman's shoulders, bringing the sleeve of that Breton-striped jersey up to meet someone else's cheek. The smiles she gets, starry eyes and sighs that let out more stress than their owners knew they felt, those make her feel as good as Jane does when she closes a deal or Brad when he scores a big client.
"Excuse me?" a soft voice asks Alex while she's ringing up one customer and wrapping up a necklace for another.
"Just a sec --"
A third customer flings open the changing stall curtain. "I'm gonna need a size eight, hon."
"I just wanted to ask --"
Alex almost bundles the first lady's Amex into the second's gift-wrapping, then, once it's saved from that fate, swipes it the wrong way through the machine and has to start all over. "Sorry, sorry," she says to everyone but no one, "just a minute, just give me --"
"An eight!" the woman in the stall shouts. "In blue! This yellow makes me look nauseated."
"I'll just leave a note," the soft voice says, but when Alex finally looks up, handing the receipt to the necklace lady and the necklace to the credit card customer, they're the only ones there.
"Blue eight coming right up," she says, switches the package and receipt, and smiles as wide as she can.
She really does love her job.
It's not until well after closing, when she's swept and mopped, refolded all the displays, dicked around on Facebook and watched some Jem and the Holograms episodes on YouTube, all in the name of avoiding naked Penny shenanigans for as long as possible, that she finds the note. She'd totally forgotten about it and whoever it was who'd left it; the note itself is wedged between a dangly earring display and the tray of mints she keeps beside the register.
The paper is ripped from a notebook, chlorine-blue lines that make her think not just of swim team practices before dawn but of high school study hall and the eons of boredom experienced in each and every one.
I'd like to talk to you about what you saw. R~~~~~~
There's just an address scrawled below, somewhere north of East 59th. The University, probably, somewhere Alex has never dreamed of going, at least not since field trips in middle school.
But now a superhero wants to talk to her. A superhero! At the U of C! It makes perfect sense, really. What would be a better mild-mannered secret identity than nerdly academic? Alex, for one, would never have guessed.
The exhilarating anticipation froths and buzzes in her veins all night long. She sleeps, but only to dream about having her own couture show in Milan, with Raven as her model, strutting the catwalk into the flickering glare of strobes and the amazed shouts of the crowd.
When she wakes before dawn, she's already thinking about what she'll say, how to express her admiration without coming off creepy and/or pathetic. Usually when she wakes up, it takes a good half hour to get her brain in gear enough to think in complete sentences. Today, she's practically writing a Vanity Fair-style interview before she's finished brushing her teeth.
*
She expects to be stopped as soon as she sets foot on campus. At the very least, she will probably have to show ID to get into the building. She doesn't belong here; it must be blindingly obvious.
Even taking the limo doesn't help her feel more confident. Usually it's perfect for feeling glam, a little special, out of the ordinary and able to tackle anything; today she just notices how much it needs new shocks.
"Just get out of the car," Max suggests none too helpfully from the front seat. The kittens mewl and climb up his arm and around his neck. "It's almost lunch time. Babies gots to get fed."
"Wish me luck," Alex says.
"Break a leg!" Max's voice breaks into a squeak as a kitten chomps down on his earlobe.
Somehow, despite how out of place Alex feels, no one looks twice as she trudges up the slick stairs and into the overheated old building. The air inside is damp and overpowering, musty and hot, and she's soaked with sweat by the time she's made her way through the labyrinth of offices and cubicles and rooms lined with more books than she remembers being in any library.
The girl she finds in the tiny office with the door marked "Janitor" is no superhero. Her name is Rosalie Mendes and she's not at all what Alex dreamed about.
Alex introduces herself, says hello, but the whole time she feels weirdly faint. Like she's half outside her own skin, hovering like a ghost to watch an awkward TV-movie that never should have gotten made.
This girl is her height, with a riot of kinky curls and smudged, thick-lensed glasses that keep sliding down her nose. She's heavier than Alex, curvy as Penny in about two-thirds Penny's height, all squished down and wide. Her sweater is striped like Bert and Ernie's, hugging her curves, old and ratty at the cuffs and threadbare at the elbows.
She's not Raven, any more than Alex herself is a superhero.
"I think there's been a mistake," Alex says. She tries to back up, but the door's closed behind her and she can't find the knob.
Rosalie flips madly through a three-ring binder, her tongue caught in the corner of her full, dark lips. "Right! You posted to the Midwest Vigilante Sightings forum? Last month?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"I'm researching urban legends. For my post-doc? Interviewing people who believe they've seen things out of the ordinary --"
Alex crosses her arms. She's not a superhero or a famous designer. She's just a kook. "You think I'm lying."
Rosalie holds up her hands and shakes her head furiously. Her curls bounce every which way; they're tipped with caramel color, really pretty. "No, no! That's not my call."
"But you do." She should be used to this by now. Why isn't she used to this?
"No, no, I don't." Rosalie sounds sincere. Maybe she is. "Look, I just want to hear your story. That's all. Is that okay?"
Alex doesn't know what to say. That's not such an unusual occurrence, but caught here, wedged in between books and the door, with this cute girl staring at her wide-eyed and hopefully smiling, she feels -- it's not blank. It's not anxious, either, or embarrassed. It's like she's been put on pause, like time's taking a breath, and she can do or saying anything she wants, anything in the world. Possibility unfurls all around her, waiting, radiant.
"Yeah, sure," she says and smiles. Smiling feels like letting go, catching up, going forward. "That's more than okay."
"I need food, I think I'm about to fall over," Rosalie says. "Want to come with?"
"I never say no to food." When Rosalie grins at that, Alex adds, "No, really. It's like one of my personal rules for life. And, and happiness. Also survival, obviously."
*
They go for Korean barbecue, because Rosalie needs protein and Alex always gets a kick out of grilling the meat herself. In between wielding the tongs and turning the pieces until they're just right, she tells Rosalie about Raven and the other guy and about going out herself. Somehow, Alex also ends up telling her about Dave and the wedding, about Jane's neuroses and Brad's smoothie addiction, about Max's lack of love life and Penny's nudist phase.
Basically, once Alex starts talking and eating, she finds it exceptionally difficult to stop.
"You're a great listener," she says and deposits another short rib on Rosalie's plate. "Sorry about yapping away."
Rosalie shrugs and takes an enthusiastic bite of meat. "No worries. You're a good talker."
Alex nudges the mushrooms back over the heat and drizzles them with a little vinegar; it spits and hisses on the fire, sending up a sharp, sour cloud. "I guess I haven't had really had someone new to talk to --"
She's had dates, of course, but no guy has been half so easy and fun to talk to as Rosalie. That's probably significant, now that she thinks about it.
"You say that a lot." Rosalie digs her fork into her rice bowl and takes a big bite. Ribbons of cabbage and flecks of sesame seed decorate her mouth for a second before she slurps it all in.
Alex chews her own enormous bite before swallowing and asking. God, she loves food. "What? I say what?"
Rosalie circles her hand for time. Finally, when she's finished, she takes a sip of wine and shrugs. "About not having things for yourself."
"Oh." Alex moves her food around the bowl, thinking about that. That sounds pretty selfish. "Do I?"
She already knows how selfish she can be. It takes a pretty selfish bitch to leave a guy at the altar in front of everyone they know, right? And it's not as if she can do anything to make up for it; she knows that all too well and Dave (and everyone else) has made it clearer than mud.
But maybe she has been trying, nonetheless.
"What's it called," she asks suddenly, dropping her fork, "when you try to forget yourself? Like punishment. In a monastery or whatever?"
Rosalie's brow furrows up; Alex can all but see her amazing brain flicking through its internal dictionaries and encyclopedias and tyrannosauruses.
"Never mind, it's cool," Alex says and reaches over to help herself to Rosalie's green onion salad. She doubts she'd remember the right word anyway. "Tell me more stories?"
She told Alex earlier about how the urban legend about spiders in the beehive hair-do can also be found in medieval French texts. People really distrust women's hair, apparently.
Rosalie grins. There's a smear of sauce near her dimple, and when Alex reaches over to wipe it off (she is Jane's sister, after all), Rosalie tips toward the touch, her eyes drifting closed behind her glasses.
*
She really likes Rosalie. She hasn't had a friend of her own, unconnected to the rest of the group, for a really long time. (Well, there was Bodhi the Rollerblader, but the less said about him, the better.)
"You liiiiiiiiike her," Brad singsongs at her a week later when she comes over for dinner. Jane likes playing house, having Alex the hapless kid over to feed and nurture and mentor.
Far as Alex is concerned, it's cool, because: free food, expensive wine, and PS3 with Brad. Win-win-win.
Alex scowls and pushes a forkful of Shepherd's Pie around her plate. Jane is on another weird-food kick, so there isn't any meat in this Shepherd's Pie, just quinoa and TVP and sliced oyster mushrooms.
"Brad, please," Jane says. She puts a motherly hand on Alex's shoulder. "Do you like-like her? Or just like her?"
Alex blinks and tries to figure out what doubling the word means. How does it change the meaning? She doesn't know how, but it does.
She should ask her smartypants egghead new friend.
Rosalie has this thing she does, where when she realizes you're looking at her, she pushes her crooked glasses up her nose and rolls her eyes and one side of her mouth deepens like she's about to smile. When she's looking for a reference in a book, she flips through the pages way too fast to be able to make anything out; it's just that she gets so excited about facts and references that she needs to take it out on the book itself, physically.
"Well, huh," Alex says. "How about that? I guess I do."
Brad looks at Jane, then at Alex, then back to his wife. "Lost me."
Jane's still looking at Alex, her gaze steady and searching. Her grip tightens on Alex's shoulder.
"Don't tell Dave?" Alex asks. Her voice feels small and prickly. Like an artichoke or something.
Jane just nods. When Alex smiles -- she can't not smile, not when she's talking about Rosalie -- Jane smiles back. She's on Alex's side, they're in this together, just like always.