Superfolks by Robert Mayer

Author:Robert Mayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Published: 1977-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

Just once, he thought. If only once they would notice…

21

There was a new, joyous spring to his step. He was exultant from the rescue. High on happiness.

He had some calculations to make. In the old days he would have caught the tramp at the fifth-floor level. Today he would have been satisfied with the first floor. But he had caught him at the third. His powers seemed to ebb and flow with his location. Something to think about.

It would have to wait. The shop was on the next block, second from the corner. The large window badly in need of washing. An armless dressmaker’s dummy visible behind it. Faded ochre lettering on the door: Max Givenchy—Tailor.

He peered through the grime-coated window. Max was inside, his head bent low over the pressing machine, his white hair lost in the rising steam. The vivid past clutched at Brinkley’s chest.

He retreated to the corner, turned it, and slipped into the familiar alley. It was dark and narrow. The second door from the end, once painted brown, was peeling. The words on the door were visible now more as an absence of paint—an outline—than as the presence of real letters. Still, if you knew where to look, you could make it out. It said Heroes Entrance.

He pushed at the door. It swung open. It will never be locked as long as there is breath in my body, Max had said once (in his gelatinous accent, a blend of English, Yiddish, German, and half a dozen other eastern European dialects).

He stepped inside. The door opened directly into the changing room. Since Max Givenchy knew him as a hero—had to know him that way, to make the uniforms—he could not know him as Brinkley. It had been the same with Captain Marvel, with Batman, with all of them. No hero is a man to his tailor.

Empty wire hangers hung from nails in the wall. As if they had been waiting for him all these years. He hung up his civilian clothes. He hoped that Max would recognize him. Sometimes Max mistook him for Superman. And pronounced it Zuckerman.

He opened the other door, which led into the shop; and stepped majestically into view. The Man of I…I…He could barely think it. The man of iron. Lowercase.

Max didn’t see him. His head was still bent over the pressing machine. Brinkley felt his own heart pounding, as if with stage fright.

Max shut off the hissing machine, and pulled out the pants he had been pressing. He was a tall, white-haired bear of a man, his face lined with age, his hair splaying in all directions, a thick white moustache fringing his lip. He was wearing loose-fitting gray pants badly in need of pressing, and a red and black flannel shirt. A gray sweatshirt poked through at the neck.

“Hello, Max,” Brinkley said, quietly.

Max looked up, over rimless bifocals perched low on his nose. He stared at Brinkley, saying nothing. His lower lip began to quiver. He dropped the pants onto a counter.

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