SECRET IDENTITY

by kelly link

Dear Paul Zell.

Dear Paul Zell is exactly how far I’ve gotten at least a dozen times, and then I get a little farther, and then I give up. So this time I’m going to try something new. I’m going to pretend that I’m not writing you a letter, Paul Zell, dear Paul Zell. I’m so sorry. And I am sorry, Paul Zell, but let’s skip that part for now or else I won’t get any farther this time, either. And in any case: how much does it matter whether or not I’m sorry? What difference could it possibly make?

So. Let’s pretend that we don’t know each other. Let’s pretend we’re meeting for the first time, Paul Zell. We’re sitting down to have dinner in a restaurant in a hotel in New York City. I’ve come a long way to have dinner with you. We’ve never met face-to-face. Everything I ever told you about myself is more or less a lie. But you don’t know that yet. We think we may be in love.

We met in FarAway, online, except now here we are up close. I could reach out and touch your hand. If I was brave enough. If you were really here.

Our waiter has poured you a glass of red wine. Me? I’m drinking a Coke because I’m not old enough to drink wine. You’re thirty-four. I’m almost sixteen.

I’m so sorry, Paul Zell. I don’t think I can do this. (Except I have to do this.) I have to do this. So let’s try again. (I keep trying again and again and again.) Let’s start even farther back, before I showed up for dinner and you didn’t. Except I think you did. Am I right?

You don’t have to answer that. I owe you the real story, but you don’t owe me anything at all.

Picture the lobby of a hotel. In the lobby, a fountain with Spanish tiles in green and yellow. A tiled floor, leather armchairs, corporate art, this bank of glass-fronted elevators whizzing up and down, a bar. Daddy bar to all the mini-bars in all the rooms. Sound familiar? Maybe you’ve been here before.

Now fill up the lobby with dentists and superheroes. Men and women, oral surgeons, eighth-dimensional entities, mutants, and freaks who want to save your teeth, save the world, and maybe end up with a television show, too. I’ve seen a dentist or two in my time, Paul Zell, but we don’t get many superheroes out on the plain. We get tornadoes instead. There are two conventions going on at the hotel, and they’re mingling around the fountain, tra la la, tipping back drinks.

Boards in the lobby list panels on advances in cosmetic dentistry, effective strategies for minimizing liability in cases of bystander hazard, presentations with titles like “Spandex or Bulletproof? What Look Is Right for You?” You might be interested in these if you were a dentist or a superhero. Which I’m not. As it turns out, I’m not a lot of things.

A girl is standing in front of the registration desk. That’s me. And where are you, Paul Zell?

The hotel clerk behind the desk is only a few years older than me. (Than that girl, the one who’s come to meet Paul Zell. Is it pretentious or pitiful or just plain psychotic the way I’m talking about myself in the third person? Maybe it’s all three. I don’t care.) The clerk’s nametag says Aliss, and she reminds the girl that I wish wasn’t me of someone back at school. Erin Toomey, that’s who. Erin Toomey is a hateful bitch. But never mind about Erin Toomey.

Aliss the hotel clerk is saying something. She’s saying, “I’m not finding anything.” It’s eleven o’clock on a Friday morning, and at that moment the girl in the lobby is missing third-period biology. Her fetal pig is wondering where she is.

Let’s give the girl in line in the hotel lobby a name. Everybody gets a name, even fetal pigs. (I call mine Alfred.) And now that you’ve met Aliss and Alfred, minor characters both, I might as well introduce our heroine. That is, me. Of course it isn’t like FarAway. I don’t get to choose my name. If I did, it wouldn’t be Billie Faggart. That ring any bells? No, I didn’t think it would. Since fourth grade, which is when I farted while I was coming down the playground slide, everyone at school has called me Smelly Fagfart. That’s because Billie Faggart is a funny name, right? Except girls like Billie Faggart don’t have much of a sense of humor.

There’s another girl at school, Jennifer Groendyke. Everyone makes jokes about us. About how we’ll move to California and marry each other. You’d think we’d be friends, right? But we’re not. I’m not good at the friends thing. I’m like the girl equivalent of one of those baby birds that fall out of a nest and then some nice person picks the baby bird up and puts it back. Except that now the baby bird smells all wrong. I think I smell wrong.

If you’re wondering who Melinda Bowles is, the thirty-two-year-old woman you met in FarAway, no, you’ve never really met her. Melinda Bowles has never sent late-night e-mails to Paul Zell, not ever. Melinda Bowles would never catch a bus to New York City to meet Paul Zell because she doesn’t know that Paul Zell exists.

Melinda Bowles has never been to FarAway.

Melinda Bowles has no idea who the Enchantress Magic Eightball is. She’s never hung out online with the master thief Boggle. I don’t think she knows what a MMORPG is.

Melinda Bowles has never played a game of living chess in King Nermal’s Chamber in the Endless Caverns under the Loathsome Rock. Melinda Bowles doesn’t know a rook from a writing desk. A pawn from a prawn.

Here’s something that you know about Melinda Bowles that is true. She used to be married, but is now divorced and lives in her parents’ house. She teaches high school. I used her name when I signed up for an account on FarAway. More about my sister Melinda later.

Anyway. Girl-liar Billie says to desk-clerk Aliss, “No message? No envelope? Mr. Zell, Paul Zell?” (That’s you. In case you’ve forgotten.) “He’s a guest here? He said he was leaving something for me at the front desk.”

“I’ll look again if you want,” Aliss says. But she does nothing. Just stands there staring malevolently past Billie as if she hates the world and everyone in it.

Billie turns around to see who Aliss is glaring at. There’s a normal-looking guy behind Billie; behind him, out in the lobby, there are all sorts of likely candidates. Who doesn’t hate a dentist? Or maybe Aliss isn’t crazy about superheroes. Maybe she’s contemplating the thing that looks like a bubble of blood. If you were there, Paul Zell, you might stare at the bubble of blood, too. You can just make out the silhouette of someone/something inside.

Billie doesn’t keep up with superheroes, not really, but she feels as if she’s seen the bloody bubble on the news. Maybe it saved the world once. It levitates three feet above the marble floor of the atrium. It plops bloody drops like a sink faucet in Hell. Maybe Aliss worries someone will slip on the lobby floor, break an ankle, sue the hotel. Or maybe the bubble of blood owes her ten bucks.

The bubble of blood drifts over to the Spanish-tiled fountain. It clears the lip, just barely; comes to a halt two feet above the surface of the water. Now it looks like an art installation, albeit kind of a disgusting one. But perhaps it is seeing a heroic role for itself: scaring off the kind of children who like to steal pennies from fountains. Future criminal masterminds might turn their energies in a more productive direction. Perhaps some will become dentists.

Were you a boy who stole coins from fountains, Paul Zell?

We’re not getting very far in this story, are we? Maybe that’s because some parts of it are so very hard to tell, Paul Zell. So here I linger, not at the beginning and not even in the middle. Already it’s more of a muddle. Maybe you won’t even make it this far, Paul Zell, but me, I have to keep going. I would make a joke about superheroic efforts, but that would just be me, delaying some more.

Behind the desk, even Aliss has gotten tired of waiting for me to get on with the story. She’s stopped glaring, is clacking on a keyboard with her too-long nails. There’s glitter residue around her hairline, and a half-scrubbed-off club stamp on her right hand. She says to Billie, “Are you a guest here? What was your name again?”

“Melinda Bowles,” Billie says. “I’m not a guest. Paul Zell is staying here? He said he would leave something for me behind the desk.”

“Are you here to audition?” Aliss says. “Because maybe you should go ask over at the convention registration.”

“Audition?” Billie says. She has no idea what Aliss is talking about. She’s forming her backup plan already: walk back to Port Authority and catch the next bus back to Keokuk, Iowa. That would have been a simpler e-mail to write, I see now. Dear Paul Zell. Sorry. I got cold feet.

“Aliss, my love. Better lose the piercing.” The guy in line behind Billie is now up at the counter beside her. His hand is stamped, like Aliss’s. Smudgy licks of black eyeliner around his eyes. “Unless you want management to write you a Dear John.”

“Oh, shit.” Aliss’s hand goes up to her nose. She ducks down behind the counter. “Conrad, you asshole. Where did you go last night?”

“No idea,” Conrad says. “I was drunk. Where did you go?”

“Home.” Aliss says it like wielding a dagger. She’s still submerged. “You want something? Room need making up? Nightshift Darin said he saw you in the elevator around three in the morning. With a girl.”

Girl is another dagger.

“Entirely possible,” Conrad says. “Like I said, drunk. Need any help down there? Taking out the piercing? Helping this kid? Because I want to make last night up to you. I’m sorry, okay?”

Which would be the right thing to say, but Billie thinks this guy sounds not so penitent. More like he’s swallowing a yawn.

“That’s very nice of you, but I’m fine.” Aliss snaps upright. The piercing is gone and her eyes glitter with either tears or rage. “This must be for you,” she tells Billie in a cheery, desk-clerk robot voice. It’s not much of an improvement on the stabby voice. “I’m so sorry about the confusion.” There’s an envelope in her hand.

Billie takes the envelope and goes to sit on a sofa beside a dentist. He’s wearing a convention badge with his name on it, and where he comes from, and that’s how she knows he isn’t a superhero and that he isn’t Paul Zell.

She opens her envelope. There’s a room key inside and a piece of paper with a room number written on it. Nothing else. What is this, FarAway? Billie starts to laugh like an utter maniac. The dentist stares.

Forgive her. She’s been on a bus for over twenty hours. Her hair is stiff with bus crud and her clothes smell like bus, a cocktail of chemical cleaners and other people’s breath, and the last thing she was expecting when she went off on this quest, Paul Zell, was to find herself in a hotel full of superheroes and dentists.

It’s not like we get a lot of superheroes in Keokuk, Iowa. There’s the occasional flyover or Superheroes on Ice event, and every once in a while someone in Keokuk discovers they have the strength of two men, or can predict the sell-by date on cans of tuna in the supermarket with 98.2 percent accuracy, but even minor-league talents head out of town pretty quickly. They take off for Hollywood, to try and get on a reality show. Or New York or Chicago or even Baltimore, to form novelty rock bands or fight crime or both.

But, here’s the thing; the thing is that, under ordinary circumstances, Billie would have nothing better to do than to watch a woman with a raven’s head wriggling upstream through the crowd around the lobby bar, over to the fountain and that epic bubble of blood. The woman holds up a pink drink, she’s standing on tiptoes, and a slick four-fingered hand emerges from the bubble of blood and takes the glass from her. Is it a love story? How does a woman with a raven’s beak kiss a bubble of blood? Paul Zell, how are you and me any more impossible than that?

Maybe it’s just two old friends having a drink. The four-fingered hand orients the straw into the membrane or force field or whatever it is, and the glass empties itself like a magic trick. The bubble quivers.

But: Paul Zell. All Billie can think about is you, Paul Zell. She has the key to Paul Zell’s hotel room. Back before she met you, way far back in FarAway, Billie was always up for a quest. Why not? She had nothing better to do. And the quest always went like this: Find yourself in a strange place. Encounter a guardian. Outwit them or kill them or persuade them to give you the item they’ve been guarding. A weapon or a spell or the envelope containing the key to room 1584.

Except the key in Billie’s hand is a real key, and I don’t do that kind of quest much anymore. Not since I met you, Paul Zell. Not since the Enchantress Magic EightBall met the master thief Boggle in King Nermal’s Chamber and challenged him to a game of chess.

While I’m coming clean, here’s a minor confession. Why not. Why should you care that, besides Enchantress Magic EightBall, I used to have two other avatars in FarAway. There’s Constant Bliss, who’s an elfin healer and frankly kind of a pill, and there’s Bearhand, who, as it turns out, was kind of valuable in terms of accumulated points, especially weapons class. There was a period, you see, when things were bad at school and things were worse at home, which I don’t really want to talk about, and anyway, it was a bad period during which I liked running around and killing things. Whatever. Last month I sold Bearhand when you and I were planning all of this, for bus fare. It wasn’t a big deal. I’d kind of stopped being Bearhand except for every once in a while, when you weren’t online and I was lonely or sad or had a really, really shitty day at school.

I’m thinking I may sell off Constant Bliss, too, if anyone wants to buy her. If not, it will have to be Magic EightBall. Or maybe I’ll sell both of them. But that’s part of the story I haven’t gotten to yet.

And, yeah, I do spend a lot of time online. In FarAway. Like I said, it’s not like I have a lot of friends, not that you should feel sorry for me, because you shouldn’t, Paul Zell, that’s NOT why I’m telling you all of this.

My sister? Melinda? She says wait a few years and see. Things get better. Of course, based on her life, maybe they do get better. And then they get worse again, and then you have to move back home and teach high school. So how exactly is that better?

And yes, in case you’re wondering, my sister Melinda Bowles is kind of stunning, and all the boys in my school who despise me have crushes on her even when she flunks them. And yes, a lot of the details I fed you about my life, Billie Faggart’s life, are actually borrowed from Melinda’s life. Although not all of the details. If you’re still speaking to me after you read this, I’ll be happy to make up a spreadsheet of character traits and biographical incidents. One column will be Melinda Bowles and the other will be Billie Faggart. There will be little checkmarks in either column, or both, depending. But the story about shaving off my eyebrows when I was a kid? That was true. I mean, that was me. And so was the thing about liking reptiles. Melinda? She’s not so fond of the reptiles. But then, maybe you don’t really have a chameleon named Moe and a tokay gecko named Bitey. Maybe you made up some stuff, too, except yeah, okay, why would you make up some lizards? I keep having to remind myself: Billie, just because you’re a liar doesn’t mean the whole world is full of liars. Except that you did lie, right? You were at the hotel. You left me the key to your room at the hotel in an envelope addressed to Melinda Bowles. Because if you didn’t, then who did?

Sorry. This is supposed to be about me, apologizing. Not me, solving the big mysteries of the universe and everything. Except, here’s the thing about Melinda, in case you’re thinking maybe the person you fell in love with really exists. The salient thing. Melinda has a boyfriend. He’s in Afghanistan right now. Also, she’s super religious, like seriously born again. Which you’re not. So even if Melinda’s boyfriend got killed, or something, which I know is something she worries about, it would never work out between you and her.

And one more last thing about Melinda, or maybe it’s actually about you. This is the part where I have to thank you. Because: because of you, Paul Zell, I think Melinda and I have kind of become friends. Because, all year I’ve been interested in her life. I ask her how her day was, and I actually listen when she tells me. Because, how else could I convince you that I was a thirty-two-year-old, divorced high-school algebra teacher? And it turns out that we actually have a lot in common, me and Melinda, and it’s like I even understand what she thinks about. Because, she has a boyfriend who’s far away (in Afghanistan) and she misses him and they write e-mails to each other, and she worries about what if he loses a leg or something, and will they still love each other when he gets back?

And I have you. I had this thing with you, even if I couldn’t tell her about you. I guess I still can’t tell her. Which is even weirder, I guess, than the other thing: how for so long I couldn’t tell you the truth about me. And now I can’t shut up about me when what I really ought to be explaining is what happened at the hotel.

Billie gets into an elevator with a superhero and the guy who blew off Aliss. The superhero reeks. BO and something worse, like spoiled meat. He gets out on the seventh floor, and Billie sucks in air. She’s thinking about all sorts of things. For example, how it turns out she doesn’t have a fear of heights, which is a good thing to discover in a glass elevator. She’s thinking about how she could find a wireless café, go online and hang out in FarAway, except Paul Zell won’t be there. She wonders if the guy who bought Bearhand is trying him out. Now that would be weird, to run into someone who used to be you. What would she say? She’s thinking how much she wants to take a shower, and she’s wondering if she smells as bad as that superhero did. She’s thinking all of this and lots of other things, too.

“Now that’s how to fight crime,” says the other person in the elevator. (Conrad Linthor, although Billie doesn’t know his last name yet. Maybe you’ll recognize it, though.) “You smell it to death. Although, to be fair, to get that big you have to eat a lot of protein and the protein makes you stinky. That’s why I’m a vegetarian.” The smile he gives Billie is as ripe with charm as the elevator is ripe with super stink.

Billie prides herself on being charm resistant. (It’s like the not having a sense of humor. A sense of humor is a weakness. I know how you’re supposed to be able to laugh at yourself, but that’s pretty sucky advice when everyone is always laughing at you already.) She stares at Conrad Linthor blankly. If you don’t react, mostly other people give up and leave you alone.

Conrad Linthor is eighteen or nineteen, or maybe a well-preserved twenty-two. He has regular features and white teeth. He’d be good looking if he weren’t so good looking, Billie thinks, and then wonders what she meant by that. She can tell that he’s rich, although, again, she’s not quite sure how she knows this. Maybe because he pressed the Penthouse floor button when he got on the elevator.

“Let me guess,” Conrad Linthor says, as if he and Billie have been having a conversation. “You’re here to audition.” When Billie continues to stare at him blankly, this time because she really doesn’t know what he’s talking about and not just because she’s faking being stupid, he elaborates: “You want to be a sidekick. That guy who just got off? The Blue Fist? I hear his sidekicks keep quitting for some reason.”

“I’m here to meet a friend,” Billie says. “Why does everyone keep asking me that? Are you? You know, a sidekick?”

“Me?” Conrad Linthor says. “Very funny.”

The elevator door dings open, fifteenth floor, and Billie gets off.

“See you around,” Conrad Linthor calls after her. It sounds more mocking than hopeful.

You know what, Paul Zell? I never thought you would be super handsome or anything. Don’t be insulted, okay? I never cared about what you might turn out to look like. I know you have brown hair and brown eyes and you’re kind of skinny and you have a big nose. I know because you told me you look like your avatar. Boggle. Me, I was always terrified you’d ask for my photo, because then it would really have been a lie, even more of a lie, because I would’ve sent you a photo of Melinda.

My dad says I look so much like Melinda did when she was a kid, it’s scary. That we could practically be twins. But I’ve seen pictures of Melinda when she was fifteen and I don’t look like her at all. Melinda was kind of freakish looking when she was my age, actually. I think that’s why she’s so nice now, and not vain, because it was a surprise to her, too, when she got awesome looking. I’m not gorgeous, and I’m not a freak, either, and so that whole ugly duckling thing that Melinda went through probably isn’t going to happen to me.

But you saw me, right? You know what I look like.

Billie knocks on the door of Paul Zell’s hotel room, just in case. Even though you aren’t there. If you were there, she’d die on the spot of heart failure, even though that’s why she’s there. To see you.

Maybe you’re wondering why she came all this way, when meeting you face-to-face was always going to be this huge problem. Honestly? She doesn’t really know. She still doesn’t know. Except that you said: Want to meet up? See if this is real or not?

What was she supposed to do? Say no? Tell the truth?

There are two double beds in room 1584, and a black suitcase on a stand. No Paul Zell, because you’re going to be in meetings all day. The plan is to meet at the Golden Lotus at six.

Last night you slept in one of those beds, Paul Zell. Billie sits down on the bed closest to the window and she even smells the pillows, but she can’t tell. It’s a damn shame housekeeping has already made up the room, otherwise Billie could climb into the bed you were sleeping in last night and put her head down on your pillow.

She goes over to the suitcase, and here’s where it starts to get kind of awful, Paul Zell. This is why I have to write about all of this in the third person, because maybe then I can pretend that it wasn’t really me there, doing these things.

The lid of your suitcase is up. You’re a tidy packer, Paul Zell. The dirty clothes on the floor of the closet are folded. Billie lifts up the squared shirts and khakis. Even the underwear is folded. Your pants size is 32, Paul Zell. Your socks are just socks. There’s a velvet box, a jeweler’s box, near the bottom of the suitcase, and Billie opens it. Then she puts the box back at the bottom of the suitcase. I can’t really tell you what she was thinking right then, even though I was there.

I can’t tell you everything, Paul Zell.

Billie didn’t pack a suitcase, because her dad and Melinda would have wondered about that. Fortunately nobody’s ever surprised when you go off to school and your backpack looks crammed full of things. Billie takes out the skirt she’s planning to wear to dinner, and hangs it up in the closet. She brushes her teeth and afterward she puts her toothbrush down on the counter beside your toothbrush. She closes the drapes over the view, which is just another building, glass-fronted like the elevators. As if nobody could ever get anything done if the world wasn’t watching, or maybe because, if the world can look in and see what you’re doing, then what you’re doing has to be valuable and important and aboveboard. It’s a far way down to the street, so far down that the window in Paul Zell’s hotel room doesn’t open, probably because people like Billie can’t help imagining what it would be like to fall.

All the little ant people down there, who don’t even know you’re standing at the window, looking down at them. Billie looks down at them.

Billie closes the blackout curtain over the view. She pulls the cover off the bed closest to the window. She takes off her jeans and shirt and bra and puts on the Boston Marathon T-shirt she found in Paul Zell’s suitcase.

She lies down on a fresh white top sheet, falls asleep in the yellow darkness. She dreams about you.

When she wakes up she is drooling on an unfamiliar pillow. Her jaw is tight because she’s forgotten to wear her mouthpiece. She’s been grinding her teeth. So, yes, the teeth grinding, that’s me. Not Melinda.

It’s 4:30, late afternoon. Billie takes a shower. She uses Paul Zell’s herbal conditioner. She folds the borrowed T-shirt and puts it back in Paul Zell’s suitcase, between the dress shirts and the underwear.

The hotel where she’s staying is on CNN. Because of the superheroes.

For the last three weeks Billie has tried not to think too much about what will happen at dinner when she and Paul Zell meet. But, even though she’s been trying not to think about it, she still had to figure out what she was going to wear. The skirt and the sweater she brought are Melinda’s. They fit okay; Billie hopes they’ll make her look older, but not as if she is trying to look older. She bought a lipstick at Target, but when she puts it on it looks too Billie Goes to Clown School, and so she wipes it off again and puts on ChapStick instead. She’s sure her lips are still redder than they ought to be; she hopes no one will notice.

When she goes down to the front desk to ask about Internet cafés, Aliss is still on the front desk. “Or you could just use the business center,” Aliss tells her. “Guests can use their room keys to access the business center. You are staying here, right?”

Billie asks a question of her own. “Who’s that guy, Conrad?” she says. “What’s his deal?”

Aliss’s eyes narrow. “His deal is he’s the biggest slut in the world. Like it’s any of your business,” she says. “But don’t think he’s got any pull with his dad, Little Miss Wannabe Sidekick. No matter what he says. Hook up with him and I’ll stomp your ass. It’s not like I want this job, anyway.”

“I’ve got a boyfriend,” Billie says. “Besides, he’s too old for me.”

Which is an interesting thing for her to say, when I think about it now.

Here’s the thing, Paul Zell. You’re thirty-four and I’m fifteen. That’s nineteen years’ difference. That’s a substantial gap, right? Besides the legal issue, which I am not trying to minimize, I could be twice as old as I am now and you’d still be older. I’ve thought about this a lot. And you know what? There’s a teacher at school, Mrs. Christie. Melinda was talking, a few months ago, about how Mrs. Christie just turned thirty and her husband is sixty-three. And they still fell in love, and yeah, Melinda says everyone thinks it’s kind of repulsive, but that’s love, and nobody really understands how it works. It just happens. And then there’s Melinda, who married a guy exactly the same age that she was, who then got addicted to heroin, and was, besides that, just all-around bad news. My point? Compared to those thirty-three years between Mr. and Mrs. Christie, eighteen years is practically nothing.

The real problem here is timing. And, also, of course, the fact that I lied. But, except for the lying, why couldn’t it have worked out between us in a few years? Why do we really have to wait at all? It’s not like I’m ever going to fall in love with anyone again.

Billie uses Paul Zell’s hotel room key to get into the business center. There’s a superhero at one of the PCs. The superhero is at least eight feet tall, and she’s got frizzy red hair. You can tell she’s a superhero and not just a tall dentist because a little electric sizzle runs along her outline, every once in a while, as if maybe she’s being projected into her too-small seat from some other dimension. She glances over at Billie, who nods hello. The superhero sighs and looks at her fingernails. Which is fine with Billie. She doesn’t need rescuing, and she isn’t auditioning for anything, either. No matter what anybody thinks.

For some reason, Billie chooses to be Constant Bliss when she signs onto FarAway. She’s double incognito. Paul Zell isn’t online and there’s no one in King Nermal’s Chamber, except for the living chess pieces who are always there, and who aren’t really alive, either. Not the ones who are still standing or sitting, patiently, upon their squares, waiting to be deployed, knitting or picking their noses or flirting or whatever their particular programs have been programmed to do when they aren’t in combat. Billie’s favorite is the King’s Rook, because he always laughs when he moves into battle, even when he must know he’s going to be defeated.

Do you ever feel as if they’re watching you, Paul? Sometimes I wonder if they know that they’re just a game inside a game. When I first found King Nermal’s Chamber, I walked all around the board and checked out what everyone was doing. The White Queen and her pawn were playing chess, like they always do. I sat and watched them play. After a while the White Queen asked me if I wanted a match, and when I said yes, her little board got bigger and bigger until I was standing on a single square of it, inside another chamber exactly the same as the chamber I’d just been standing in, and there was another White Queen playing chess with her pawn, and I guess I could have kept on going down and down and down, but instead I got freaked out and quit FarAway without saving.

Bearhand isn’t in FarAway right now. No Enchantress Magic EightBall either, of course.

Constant Bliss is low on healing herbs, and she’s quite near the Bloody Meadows, so I put on her invisible cloak and go out onto the battlefield. Rare and strange plants have sprung up where the blood of men and beasts is still soaking into the ground. I’m wearing a Shielding Hand, too, because some of the plants don’t like being yanked out of the ground. When my collecting box is one hundred percent full, Constant Bliss leaves the Bloody Meadows. I leave the Bloody Meadows. Billie leaves the Bloody Meadows. Billie hasn’t quite decided what she should do next, or where she should go, and besides it’s nearly six o’clock. So she saves and quits.

The superhero is watching something on YouTube, two Korean guys breakdancing to Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Billie stands up to leave.

“Girl,” the superhero says. Her voice hurts to listen to.

“Who, me?” Billie says.

“You, girl,” the superhero says. “Are you here with Miracle?”

Billie realizes a mistake has been made. “I’m not a sidekick,” she says.

“Then who are you?” the superhero says.

“Nobody,” Billie says. And then, because she remembers that there’s a superhero named Nobody, she says, “I mean, I’m not anybody.” She escapes before the superhero can say anything else.

Billie checks her hair in the women’s bathroom in the lobby. Nothing can be done. She wishes her sister’s sweater wasn’t so tight. She decides it doesn’t make her look older, it just makes her look lumpy. Melinda is always trying to get Billie to wear something besides T-shirts and jeans, but Billie, looking in the bathroom mirror, suddenly wishes she looked more like herself, forgetting that what she needs is to look less like herself. To look less like a fifteen-year-old crazy liar.

Although apparently what she looks like is a sidekick.

Billie doesn’t need to pee, but she pees anyway, just in case, because what if later she really has to get up and leave the dinner table? You’d know that she was going to the bathroom, and for some reason this seems embarrassing to her. The fact that she’s even worrying about this right now makes Billie feel as if she might be going crazy.

The maître d’ asks if she has a reservation. It’s now five minutes to six. “For six o’clock,” Billie says. “For two. Paul Zell?”

“Here we are,” the maître d’ says. “The other member of your party isn’t here, but we can go ahead and seat you.”

Billie is seated. The maître d’ pushes her chair in, and Billie tries not to feel trapped. There are other people eating dinner all around her, dentists and superheroes and maybe ordinary people, too. Costumes are definitely superheroes, but just because some of the hotel guests aren’t wearing costumes, doesn’t mean they’re dentists and not superheroes. Although some of them are definitely dentists.

Billie hasn’t eaten since this morning, when she got a bagel at Port Authority. Her first New York bagel. Cinnamon raisin with blueberry cream cheese. Her stomach is growling a little, but she can’t order dinner yet, of course, because you aren’t there yet, Paul Zell, and she doesn’t want to eat the bread sticks in the bowl on the table, either. What if you show up, and you sit down across from her and her mouth is full or she gets poppy seeds stuck in her teeth?

People who aren’t Paul Zell are seated at tables, or go to the bar and sit on bar stools. Billie studies the menu. She’s never had sushi before, but she decides that she will order boldly. A waiter pours her a glass of water. Asks if she’d like to order an appetizer while she’s waiting. Billie declines. The people at the table next to her pay their bill and leave. When she looks at her watch, she sees it’s 6:18.

You’re late, Paul Zell.

Billie eats a bread stick dusted with a greenish powder that makes her lips burn, just a little. She drinks her water, and then, even though she went to the bathroom not even a half hour ago, she needs to pee again. She gets up and goes. Maybe when she comes back to the table, Paul Zell will be sitting there. But she comes back and he isn’t.

Billie thinks: Maybe she should go back to the room and see if there are any messages. “I’ll be right back,” she tells the maître d’. The maître d’ couldn’t care less. There are superheroes in the hotel lobby and there are dentists in the elevator and there’s a light on the phone in room 1584 that would flash if there were any messages. It isn’t flashing. Billie dials the number for messages just in case. No message.

Back in the Golden Lotus no one is sitting at the table reserved for Paul Zell, six o’clock, party of two. Billie sits back down anyway. She waits until 7:30, and then she leaves while the maitre d’ is escorting a party of superheroes to a table. So far none of the superheroes are ones that Billie recognizes, which doesn’t mean that their superpowers are lame. It’s just, there are a lot of superheroes and knowing a lot about superheroes has never been Billie’s thing.

She rides up the glass-fronted elevator to Paul Zell’s hotel room and orders room service. This should be exciting, because Billie’s never ordered room service in her life. But it’s not. She orders a hamburger, and when the woman asks if she wants to charge it to her room, she says sure. She drinks a juice from the minibar and watches the Cartoon Network. She waits for someone to knock on the door. When someone does, it’s just a bellboy with her hamburger.

By nine o’clock Billie has been down to the business center twice. She checks Hotmail, checks FarAway, checks all the chatrooms. No Boggle. No Paul Zell. Just chess pieces, and it isn’t her move. She writes Paul Zell an e-mail; in the end, she doesn’t send it.

When she goes upstairs for the last time, no one is there. Just the suitcase. She doesn’t really expect anyone to be there. The jeweler’s box is still down at the bottom of the suitcase.

The office building in the window is still lit up. Maybe the lights stay on all night long even when no one is there. Billie thinks those lights are the loneliest things she’s ever seen. Even lonelier than the light of distant stars that are already dead by the time their light reaches us. Down below, ant people do their antic things, unaware that Billie is watching them.

Billie opens up the minibar again. Inside are miniature bottles of gin, bourbon, tequila, and rum that no one is going to drink, unless Billie drinks them. What would Alice do, Billie thinks. Billie has always been a Lewis Carroll fan, and not just because of the chess stuff.

There are two beers and a jar of peanuts. Billie disdains the peanuts. She drinks all of the miniatures and both normal-sized cans of beer. Perhaps you noticed the charges on your hotel bill.

Here is where details begin to be a little thin for me, Paul Zell. Perhaps you have a better idea of what I’m describing, what I’m omitting. Then again, maybe you don’t.

It’s the first time Billie’s ever been drunk, and she’s not very good at it. Nothing is happening that she can tell. She perseveres. She begins to feel okay, as if everything is going to be okay. The okay feeling gets larger and larger until she’s entirely swallowed up by okayness. This lasts for a while, and then she starts to fade in and out, like she’s jumping forward in time, always just a little bit dizzy when she arrives. Here she is, flipping through channels, not quite brave enough to click on the pay-for-porn channels, although she thinks about it. Then here she is, a bit later, putting that lipstick on again. This time she kind of likes the way she looks. Here she is, lifting all of Paul Zell’s clothes out of the suitcase. She takes the ring out of the box, puts it on her big toe. Now there’s a gap. Then: here’s Billie, back again, she’s bent over a toilet. She’s vomiting. She vomits over and over again. Someone is holding back her hair. There’s a hand holding out a damp, cold facecloth. Now she’s in a bed. The room is dark, but Billie thinks there’s someone sitting on the other bed. He’s just sitting there.

Later on, she thinks she hears someone moving around the room, doing things. For some reason, she imagines that it’s the Enchantress Magic Eightball. Rummaging around the room, looking for important, powerful, magical things. Billie thinks she ought to get up and help. But she can’t move.

Much later on, when Billie gets up and goes to the bathroom to throw up again, Paul Zell’s suitcase is gone.

There’s vomit all over the sink and the bathtub, and on her sister’s sweater. Billie’s crotch is cold and wet; she realizes she’s pissed herself. She pulls off the sweater and skirt and hose, and her underwear. She leaves her bra on because she can’t figure out how to undo the straps. She drinks four glasses of water and then crawls into the other bed, the one she hasn’t pissed in.

When she wakes up it’s one in the afternoon. Someone has left the Do Not Disturb sign on the door of Room 1584. Maybe Billie did this, maybe not. She won’t be able to get the bus back to Keokuk today; it left this morning at 7:32. Paul Zell’s suitcase is gone, even his dirty clothes are gone. There’s not even a sock. Not even a hair on a pillow. Just the herbal conditioner. I guess you forgot to check the bathtub.

Billie’s head hurts so bad she wonders if she fell over when she passed out and hit it on something. It’s possible, I guess.

Billie is almost glad her head hurts so much. She deserves much worse. She pushes one of the towels around the sink and the counter, mopping up crusted puke. She runs hot water in the shower until the whole bathroom smells like puke soup. She strips the sheets off the bed she peed in, and shoves them with Melinda’s destroyed sweater and skirt and all of the puke-stained towels under the counter in the bathroom. The water is only just warm when she takes her shower. Better than she deserves. Billie turns the handle all the way to the right, and then shrieks and turns it back. What you deserve and what you can stand aren’t necessarily the same thing.

She cries bitterly while she conditions her hair. She takes the elevator down to the lobby and goes and sits in the Starbucks. The first time she’s ever been inside a Starbucks. What she really wants is a caramel iced vanilla latte, but instead she orders three shots of espresso. More penance.

I know, I find all of this behavior excruciating and over the top, too. And maybe this is a kind of over-the-top penance, too, what I’m doing here, telling you all of this, and maybe the point of humiliating myself by relating all of this humiliating behavior will only bring me even greater humiliation later, when I realize what a self-obsessed, miserable, martyring little drama queen I’m allowing myself to be right now.

Billie is pouring little packets of sugar into her three shots of espresso when someone sits down next to her. It isn’t you, of course. It’s that guy, Conrad. And now we’re past the point where I owe you an apology, and yet I guess I ought to keep going, because the story isn’t over yet. Remember how Billie thought the room key and the bus ride seemed like FarAway, like a quest? Now is the part where it starts seeming more like one of those games of chess, the kind you’ve already lost and you know it, but you don’t concede. You just keep on losing, one piece at a time, until you’re the biggest loser in the world. Which is, I guess, how life is like chess. Because it’s not like anyone ever wins in the end, is it?

Anyway. Part two. In which I go on writing about myself in the third person. In which I continue to act stupidly. Stop reading if you want.

Conrad Linthor sits down without being asked. He’s drinking something frozen. “Sidekick girl. You look terrible.”

All during this conversation, picture superheroes of various descriptions. They stroll or glide or stride purposefully past Billie’s table. They nod at the guy sitting across from her. Billie notices this without having the strength of character to wonder what’s going on. Every molecule of her being is otherwise engaged, with misery, woe, self-hatred, heartbreak, shame, all-obliterating roiling nausea and pain.

Billie says, “So we meet again.” Which is, don’t you think, the kind of thing people end up saying when they find themselves in a hotel full of superheroes. “I’m not a sidekick. And my name’s Billie.”

“Whatever,” Conrad Linthor says. “Conrad Linthor. So what happened to you?”

Billie swigs bitter espresso. She lets her hair fall in front of her face. Baby bird, she thinks. Wrong smell, baby bird.

But Conrad Linthor doesn’t go away. He says, “All right, I’ll go first. Let’s swap life stories. That girl at the desk when you were checking in? Aliss? I’ve slept with her, a couple of times. When nothing better came along. She really likes me. And I’m an asshole, okay? No excuses. Every time I hurt her, though, the next time I see her I’m nice again and I apologize and I get her back. Mostly I’m nice just to see if she’s going to fall for it this time, too. I don’t know why. I guess I want to see where that place is, the place where she hauls off and assaults me. Some people have ant farms. I’m more into people. So now you know what was going on yesterday. And yeah, I know, something’s wrong with me.”

Billie pushes her hair back. She says, “Why are you telling me all this?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. You look like you’re in a world of hurt. I don’t really care. It’s just that I get bored. And you look really terrible, and I thought that there was probably something interesting going on. Besides, Aliss can see us in here, from the desk, and this will drive her crazy.”

“I’m okay,” Billie says. “Nobody hurt me. I’m the bad guy here. I’m the idiot.”

“That’s unexpected. Also interesting. Go on,” Conrad Linthor says. “Tell me everything.”

Billie tells him. Everything except for the part where she pees the bed.

When her tale is told, Conrad Linthor stands up and says, “Come on. We’re going to go see a friend of mine. You need the cure.”

“For love?” This is Billie’s lame attempt at humor. She was wondering if telling someone what she’s done would make her feel better. It hasn’t.

“No cure for love,” Conrad Linthor says. “Because there’s no such thing. Your hangover we can do something about.”

As they navigate the lobby, there are new boards up announcing that free teeth-whitening sessions are available in Suite 412 for qualified superheroes. Billie looks over at the front desk and sees Aliss looking back. She draws her finger across her throat. If looks could kill you wouldn’t be reading this e-mail.

Conrad Linthor goes through a door that you’re clearly not meant to go through. It’s labeled. Billie follows anyway and they’re in a corridor, in a maze of corridors. If this were a MMORPG, the zombies would show up any minute. Instead, every once in a while, they pass someone who is probably hotel cleaning staff; bellboys sneaking cigarettes. Everyone nods at Conrad Linthor, just like the superheroes in the Starbucks in the lobby.

Billie doesn’t want to ask, but eventually she does. “Who are you?”

“Call me Eloise,” Conrad Linthor says.

“Sorry?” Billie imagines that they are no longer in the hotel at all. The corridor they are currently navigating slopes gently downward. Maybe they will end up on the shores of a subterranean lake, or in a dungeon, or in Narnia, or King Nermal’s Chamber, or even Keokuk, Iowa. It’s a small world after all.

“You know, Eloise. The girl who lives in the Plaza? Has a pet turtle named Skipperdee?”

He waits, like Billie’s supposed to know what he’s talking about. When she doesn’t say anything, he says, “Never mind. It’s just this book—a classic of modern children’s literature, actually—about a girl who lives in the Plaza. Which is a hotel. A bit nicer than this one, maybe, but never mind. I live here.”

He keeps on talking. They keep on walking.

Billie’s hangover is a special effect. Conrad Linthor is going on and on about superheroes. His father is an agent. Apparently superheroes have agents. Represents all of the big guys. Knows everyone. Agoraphobic. Never leaves the hotel. Everyone comes to him. Big banquet tomorrow night, for his biggest client. Tyrannosaurus Hex. Hex is retiring. Going to go live in the mountains and breed tarantula wasps. Conrad Linthor’s father is throwing a party for Hex. Everyone will be there.

Billie’s legs are noodles. The ends of her hair are poison needles. Her tongue is a bristly sponge, and her eyes are bags of bleach.

There’s a clattering that splits Billie’s brain. Two wheeled carts come round the next corner like comets, followed at arm’s length by hurtling busboys. They sail down the corridor at top speed. Conrad Linthor and Billie flatten themselves against the wall. “You have to move fast,” Conrad explains. “Or else the food gets cold. Guests complain.”

Around that corner, enormous doors, still swinging. Big enough to birth a Greyhound bus bound for Keokuk. A behemoth. Billie passes through the doors onto the far shores of what is, of course, a hotel kitchen. Far away, miles, it seems to Billie, there are clouds of vapor and vague figures moving through them. Clanging noises, people yelling, the thick, sweet smell of caramelized onions, onions that will never make anyone cry again. Other savory reeks.

Conrad Linthor steers Billie to a marble-topped table. Copper whisks, mixing bowls, dinged pots hang down on hooks.

Billie feels she ought to say something. “You must have a lot of money,” she contributes. “To live in a hotel.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Conrad Linthor says. “Sit down. I’ll be back.”

Billie climbs, slowly and carefully, up a laddery stool and lays her poor head down on the dusty, funereal slab. (It’s actually a pastry station, the dust is flour, but Billie is mentally in a bad place.) Paul Zell, Paul Zell. She stares at the tiled wall. Billie’s heart has a crack in it. Her head is made of radiation. The Starbucks espresso she forced down has burnt a thousand pinprick holes in Billie’s wretched stomach.

Conrad Linthor comes back too soon. He says, “This is her.”

There’s a guy with him. Skinny, with serious acne scars. Big shoulders. Funny little paper hat and a stained apron. “Ernesto, Billie,” Conrad says. “Billie, Ernesto.”

“How old did you say?” Ernesto says. He folds his arms, as if Billie is a bad cut of meat Conrad Linthor is trying to pass off as prime rib.

“Fifteen, right?”

Billie confirms.

“She came to the city because of some pervert she met online?”

“In a MMORPG,” Conrad says.

“He isn’t a pervert,” Billie says. “He thought I was my sister. I was pretending to be my sister. She’s in her thirties.”

“What’s your guess?” Conrad asks Ernesto. “Superhero or dentist?”

“One more time,” Billie says. “I’m not here to audition for anything. And do I look like a dentist?”

“You look like trouble,” Ernesto says. “Here. Drink this.” He hands her a glass full of something slimy and green.

“What’s in it?” Billie says.

“Wheat grass,” Ernesto says. “And other stuff. Secret recipe. Hold your nose and drink it down.”

“Yuck,” Billie says. (I won’t even try to describe the taste of Ernesto’s hangover cure. Except, I will never drink again.) “Ew, yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck.”

“Keep holding your nose,” Ernesto advises Billie. To Conrad: “They met online?”

“Yeah,” Billie says. “In FarAway.”

“Yeah, I know that game. Dentist,” Ernesto says. “For sure.”

“Except,” Conrad says, “it gets better. It wasn’t just a game. Inside this game, they were playing a game. They were playing chess.”

“Ohhhh,” Ernesto says. Now he’s grinning. They both are. “Oh as in superher-oh.”

“Superhero,” Conrad says. They high-five each other. “The only question is who.”

“What was the alibi again?” Ernesto asks Billie, “The name this dude gave?”

“Paul Zell?” Billie says. “Wait, you think Paul Zell is a superhero? No way. He does tech support for a nonprofit. Something involving endangered species.”

Conrad Linthor and Ernesto exchange another look. “Superhero for sure,” Ernesto says.

Ernesto says, “Or supervillain. All those freaks are into chess. It’s like a disease.”

“No way,” Billie says again.

Conrad Linthor says, “Because there’s no chance Paul Zell would have lied to you about anything. Because the two of you were being completely and totally honest with each other.” Which shuts Billie up.

Conrad Linthor says, “I just can’t get this picture out of my head. This superhero going out and buying a ring. And there you are. This fifteen-year-old girl.” He laughs. He nudges Billie as if to say, I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing near you.

“And there I was,” Billie says. “Sitting at the table waiting for him. Like the biggest idiot in the world.”

Ernesto has to gasp for air he is laughing so hard.

Billie says, “I guess it’s kind of funny. In a horrible way.”

“So, anyway,” Conrad says. “Since Billie’s into chess, I thought we ought to show her your project. Have they set up the banquet room yet?”

Ernesto stops laughing, holds his right hand out, like he’s stopping traffic. “Hey, man. Maybe later? I’ve got prep. I’m salad station tonight. You know?”

“Ernesto’s an artist,” Conrad says. “I keep telling him he needs to make some appointments, take a portfolio downtown. My dad says people would pay serious bucks for what Ernesto does.”

Billie isn’t really paying attention to this conversation. She’s thinking about Paul Zell. How could you be a superhero, Paul Zell? Can you miss something that big? A secret as big as that? Sure, she thinks. Probably you can miss it by a mile.

“I make things out of butter,” Ernesto says. “It’s no big deal. Like, sure, someone’s going to pay me a million bucks for some thing I carved out of butter.”

“It’s a statement,” Conrad Linthor says, “an artistic statement about the world we live in.”

“We live in a world made out of butter,” Ernesto says. “Doesn’t seem like much of a statement to me. You any good at chess?”

“What?” Billie says.

“Chess. You any good?”

“I’m not bad,” Billie says. “You know, it’s just for fun. Paul Zell’s really good.”

“So he wins most of the time?” Ernesto says.

“Yeah,” Billie says. She thinks about it. “Wait, no. I guess I win more.”

“You gonna be a superhero when you grow up? Because those guys are way into chess.”

Conrad Linthor says, “It’s like the homicidal triangle. Like setting fires, hurting small animals, and wetting the bed means a kid may grow up to be a sociopath. For superheroes, it’s chess. Weird coincidences, that’s another one. For example, you’re always in the wrong place at the right time. Plus you have an ability of some kind.”

“I don’t have an ability,” Billie says. “Not even one of those really pointless ones like always knowing the right time, or whether it’s going to rain.”

“Your power might develop later on,” Conrad Linthor says.

“It won’t.”

“Well, okay. But it might, anyway,” Conrad Linthor. “It’s why I noticed you in the first place. Probably. You stick out. She sticks out, right?”

“I guess,” Ernesto says. He gives her that appraising a cut of meat look again. Then nods. “Sure. She sticks out. You stick out.”

“I stick out,” Billie says. “I stick out like what?”

“Even Aliss noticed,” Conrad says. “She thought you were here to audition, remember?”

Ernesto says, “Oh, yeah. Because Aliss is such a fine judge of character.”

“Shut up, Ernesto,” Conrad says. “Look, Billie. It’s not a bad thing, okay? Some people, you can just tell. So maybe you’re just some girl. But maybe you can do something that you don’t even know about yet.”

“You sound like my guidance counselor,” Billie says. “Like my sister. Why do people always try to tell you that life gets better? Like life has a bad cold. Like, here I am, and where is my sister right now? She drove my dad up to Peoria. To St. Francis, because he has pancreatic cancer. And that’s the only reason I’m here, because my dad’s dying, and so nobody is even going to notice that I’m gone. Lucky me, right?”

Ernesto and Conrad Linthor are both staring at her.

“I’m a superhero,” Billie says. “Or a sidekick. Whatever you say. Paul Zell is a superhero, too. Everybody’s a superhero. The world is made of butter. I don’t even know what that means.”

“How’s the hangover?” Conrad Linthor asks her.

“Better,” Billie says. The hangover is gone. Of course she still feels terrible, but that’s not hangover related. That’s Paul Zell related. That’s just everything else.

“Sorry about you know, uh, your dad.” That’s Ernesto.

Billie shrugs. Grimaces. As if on cue, there is a piercing scream somewhere far away. Then a lot of shouting. Some laughing. Off in the distance, something seems to be happening. “Gotta go,” Ernesto says.

“Ernesto!” It’s a short guy in a tall hat. He says, “Hey, Mr. Linthor. What’s up?”

“Gregor,” Conrad says. “Hope that wasn’t anything serious.”

“Nah, man,” the short guy says. “Just Portland. Sliced off the tip of his pointer finger. Again. Second time in six months. The guy is a master of disaster.”

“See you, Conrad,” Ernesto says. “Nice to meet you, Billie. Stay out of trouble.”

As Ernesto goes off with the short guy, the short guy is saying, “So who’s the girl? She looks like somebody. Somebody’s sidekick?”

Conrad yells after them. “Maybe we’ll see you later, okay?”

He tells Billie, “There’s a get-together tonight up on the roof. Nothing official. Just some people hanging out. You ought to come by. Then maybe we can go see Ernesto’s party sculptures.”

“I may not be here,” Billie says. “It’s Paul Zell’s room, not mine. What if he’s checked out?”

“Then your key won’t work,” Conrad Linthor says. “Look, if you’re locked out, just call up to the penthouse later and tell me and I’ll see what I can do. Right now I’ve got to get to class.”

“You’re in school?” Billie says.

“Just taking some classes down at the New School,” Conrad says. “Life drawing. Film studies. I’m working on a novel, but it’s not like that’s a full-time commitment, right?”

Billie is almost sorry to leave the kitchen behind. It’s the first place in New York where she’s been one hundred percent sure she doesn’t have to worry about running into Paul Zell. It isn’t that this is a good thing, it’s just that her spider sense isn’t tingling all the time. Not that Billie has anything that’s the equivalent of spider sense. And maybe room 1584 can also be considered a safe haven now. The room key still works. Someone has remade the bed, taken away the towels and sheets in the bathroom. Melinda’s red sweater and skirt are hanging down over the shower rod. Someone rinsed them out first.

Billie orders room service. Then she decides to set out for Bryant Park. She’ll go watch the chess players, which is what she and Paul Zell were going to do, what they talked about doing online. Maybe you’ll be there, Paul Zell.

She has a map. She walks the whole way. She doesn’t get lost. When she gets to Bryant Park, sure enough, there are some chess games going on. Old men, college kids, maybe even a few superheroes. Pigeons everywhere, underfoot. New Yorkers walking their dogs. A lady yelling. No Paul Zell. Not that Billie would know Paul Zell if she saw him.

Billie sits on a bench beside a trashcan, and after a while someone sits down beside her. Not Paul Zell. A superhero. The superhero from the hotel business center.

“We meet again,” the superhero says. Which serves Billie right.

Billie says, “Are you following me?”

“No,” the superhero says. “Maybe. I’m Lightswitch.”

“I’ve heard of you,” Billie says. “You’re famous.”

“Famous is relative,” Lightswitch says. “Sure, I’ve been on Oprah. But I’m no Tyrannosaurus Hex.”

“There’s a comic book about you,” Billie says. “Although, uh, she doesn’t look like you. Not really.”

“The artist likes to draw the boobs life-sized. Just the boobs. Says it’s artistic license.”

They sit for a while in companionable silence. “You play chess?” Billie asks.

“Of course,” Lightswitch says. “Doesn’t everybody? Who’s your favorite chess player?”

“Paul Morphy,” Billie says. “Although Koneru Humpy has the most awesome name ever.”

“Agreed,” Lightswitch says. “So are you in town for the shindig? Shindig. What kind of word is that? Archeological excavation of the shin. Knee surgery. Do you work with someone?”

“Do you mean, am I a sidekick?” Billie says. “No. I’m not a sidekick. I’m Billie Faggart. Hi.”

“Sidekick. There’s another one. Kick in the side. Pain in the neck. Kick in the shin. Ignore me. I get distracted sometimes.” Lightswitch holds out a hand for Billie to shake, and Billie does. She thinks that there will be a baby jolt maybe, like one of those joke buzzers. But there’s nothing. It’s just an ordinary handshake, except that Lightswitch’s completely solid hand still looks funny, staticky, like it’s really somewhere else. Billie can’t remember if Lightswitch is from the future or the eighth dimension. Or maybe neither of those is quite right.

Two little kids come up and want Lightswitch’s autograph. They look at Billie, as if wondering whether they ought to ask for her autograph, too.

Billie stands up, and Lightswitch says, “Wait a minute. Let me give you my card.”

“Why?” Billie says.

“Just in case,” Lightswitch says. “You might change your mind at some point about the sidekick thing. It isn’t a long-term career, you know, but it’s not a bad thing to do for a while. Mostly it’s answering fan mail, photo ops, banter practice.”

Billie says, “Um, what happened to your last sidekick?” And then, seeing the look on Lightswitch’s face, wonders if this is not the kind of question you’re supposed to ask a superhero.

“Fell off a building. Kidding! That was a joke, okay? Sold her story to the tabloids. Used the proceeds to go to law school.” Lightswitch kicks at a can. “Bam. Damn. Anyway. My card.”

Billie looks, but there’s nobody around to tell her what any of this means. Maybe you’d know, Paul Zell.

Billie says, “Do you know somebody named Paul Zell?”

“Paul Zell? Rings a bell. There’s another one. Ding dong. Paul Zell. But no. I don’t think I do, after all. It’s a business card. Not an executive decision. Just take it, okay?” Lightswitch says. So Billie does.

Billie doesn’t intend to show for Conrad Linthor’s shindig. She walks down Broadway. Gawks at the gawkworthy. Pleasurably ponders a present for her sister, decides discretion is the better part of harmonious family relationships. Caped superheroes swoop and wheel and dip around the Empire State Building. No crime in progress. Show business. Billie walks until she has blisters. Doesn’t think about Paul Zell. Paul Zell, Paul Zell. Doesn’t think about Lightswitch. Pays twelve bucks to see a movie and don’t ask me what movie or if it was any good. I don’t remember. When she comes out of the movie theater, back out onto the street, everything sizzles with lights. It’s Fourth of July bright. Apparently nobody in New York ever goes to bed early. Billie decides she’ll go to bed early. Get a wake-up call and walk down to Port Authority. Catch her bus. Go home to Keokuk and never think about New York again. Stay off FarAway. Concede the chess game. Burn the business card. But: Paul Zell, Paul Zell.

Meanwhile, back to the hotel, Aliss the nemesis has been lying in wait. Actually, it’s more like standing behind a flower arrangement, but never mind. Aliss pounces. Billie, mourning lost love, is easy prey.

“Going to your boyfriend’s party?” Aliss hisses. There’s only one s in that particular sentence, but Aliss knows how to make an s count.

She links arms with Billie. Pulls her into an elevator.

“What party?” Billie says. “What boyfriend?” Aliss gives her a look. Hits the button marked Roof, then the emergency stop button, like she’s opening cargo doors, one, two. Goodbye, cruel, old world. That bomb is going to drop.

“If you mean Conrad Linthor,” Billie says, “That was nothing. In the Starbucks. He just wanted to talk about you. In fact, he gave me this. Because he was afraid he was going to lose it. But he’s planning on giving it to you. Tomorrow, I think.”

She takes out the ring that you left behind, Paul Zell.

Surely you’ve checked the jeweler’s box by now. Seen the ring is gone. Billie found it in the bed sheets that morning when she woke up. Remember? I was wearing it on my big toe. All day long Billie carried it around in her pocket, just like the business card. It didn’t fit her ring finger.

I slipped it on and off, on and off, all day long.

Billie and Aliss both stare at the ring. Both of them seem to find it hard to speak.

Finally: “It’s mine?” Aliss says. She puts her hand out, like the ring’s a cute dog. Not a ring. Like she wants to pet it. “That’s a two-carat diamond. At least. Antique setting. Just explain one thing, please. Why did Conrad give you my ring? You expect me to believe he let some girl carry my diamond ring around all day?”

“Yeah, well, you know Conrad,” Billie says.

“Yeah,” Aliss says. She’s silent for another long moment. “Can I?”

She takes the ring, tries it on her ring finger. It fits. There’s an inappropriate ache in Billie’s throat. Aliss says, “Wow. Just wow. I guess I have to give it back. Okay. I can do that.” She holds up her hand. Drags the diamond along the glass elevator wall, then rubs at the scratch it’s left behind. Then checks the diamond, like she might have damaged it. But diamonds are like the superheroes of the mineral world. Diamonds cut glass. Not the other way around.

Aliss presses the button. The elevator elevates.

“Maybe you should go to the party and I should just go to bed,” Billie says. “I have to catch a bus in the morning.”

“No,” Aliss says. “Wait. Now I’m nervous. I can’t go up there by myself. You have to come with me. Except we can’t act like we’re friends, because then Conrad will suspect something’s up. That I know. You can’t tell him I know.”

“I won’t. I swear,” Billie says.

“How’s my hair?” Aliss says. “Shit. Don’t tell him, but they fired me. Just like that. I’m not supposed to be here. I think management knew something was up with me and Conrad. I’m not the first girl he’s gotten fired. But I’m not going to say anything right now. I’ll tell him later.”

Billie says, “That sucks.”

“You have no idea,” Aliss says. “It’s such a crappy job. People are such assholes, and you still have to say have a nice day. And smile.”

She gives the ring back. Smiles.?

The elevator opens on sky. There’s a sign saying Private Party. Like the whole sky is a private party. It’s just after nine o’clock. The sky is orange. The pool is the color the sky ought to be. There are superheroes splashing around in it. That bubble of blood floating above it, like an oversized beach ball. Tango music plays.

Conrad Linthor lounges on a lounge chair. He comes over when he sees Billie and Aliss. “Girls,” he says.

“Hey, Conrad,” Aliss says. Her hip cocked like a gun hammer. Her hair is remarkable. The piercing is in. “Great party.”

“Billie,” Conrad says. “I’m so glad you came. There are some people you ought to meet.” He takes Billie’s arm and drags her off. Maybe he’s going to throw her in the pool.

“Is Ernesto here?” Billie looks back, but Aliss is having a conversation now with someone in a uniform.

“This kind of party isn’t really for hotel staff,” Conrad says. “They get in trouble if they socialize with the guests.”

“Don’t worry about Aliss,” Billie says. “Apparently she got fired. But you probably already know that.”

Conrad smiles. They’re on the edge of a group of strangers who all look vaguely familiar, vaguely improbable. There are scales, feathers, ridiculous outfits designed to show off ridiculous physiques. Why does everything remind Billie of FarAway? Except for the smell. Why do superheroes smell weird? Paul Zell.

The tango has become something dangerous. A woman is singing. There is nobody here that Billie wants to meet.

Conrad Linthor is drunk. Or high. “This is Billie,” he says. “My sidekick for tonight. Billie, this is everyone.”

“Hi, everyone,” Billie says. “Excuse me.” She rescues her arm from Conrad Linthor. She heads back for the elevator. Aliss has escaped the hotel employee and is crouched down by the pool, one finger in the water. Probably the deep end. You can tell by her slumped shoulder that she’s thinking about drowning herself. A good move: perhaps someone here will save her. Once someone has saved your life, they might as well fall in love with you, too. It’s just good economics.

“Wait,” Conrad Linthor says. He’s not that old, Billie decides. He’s just a kid. He hasn’t even done anything all that bad, yet. And yet you can see how badness accumulates around him. Builds up like lightning on a lightning rod. If Billie sticks around, it will build up on her, too. That spider sense she doesn’t have is tingling. Paul Zell, Paul Zell.

“Ernesto will be so disappointed,” Conrad Linthor says. They’re both jogging now. Billie sees the lit stair sign, decides not to wait for an elevator. She takes the stairs two at a time. Conrad Linthor bounds down behind her. “He really wanted you to see what he made. For the banquet. It’s too bad you can’t stay. I wanted to invite you to the banquet. You could meet Tyrannosaurus Hex. Get an autograph or two. Make some good contacts. Being a sidekick is all about making the contacts.”

“I’m not a sidekick!” Billie yells up. “That was a dumb joke even before you made it the first time. Even if I were a sidekick, I wouldn’t be yours. Like you’re a superhero. Just because you know people. So what’s your secret name, superhero? What’s your superpower?”

She stops on the stairs so suddenly that Conrad Linthor runs into her. They both stumble forward, smack into the wall on the twenty-second floor landing. But they don’t fall.

Conrad Linthor says, “My superpower is money.” The wall props him up. “The only superpower that counts for anything. Better than invisibility. Better than being able to fly. Much better than telekinesis or teleportation or that other one. Telepathy. Knowing what other people are thinking. Why would you ever want to know what other people are thinking? Did you know everyone thinks that one day they might be a millionaire? Like that’s a lot of money. They have no idea. They don’t want to be a superhero. They just want to be like me. They want to be rich.”

Billie has nothing to say to this.

“You know what the difference is between a superhero and a supervillain?” Conrad Linthor asks her.

Billie waits.

“The superhero has a really good agent,” Conrad Linthor says. “Someone like my dad. You have no idea the kind of stuff they get away with. Fifteen-year-old girls is nothing.”

“What about Lightswitch?” Billie says.

“Who? Her? She’s no big deal,” Conrad Linthor says. “She’s okay. I don’t really know much about her. She’s kind of old school.”

“I think I’m going to go to bed now,” Billie says.

“No,” Conrad Linthor says. “Wait. You have to come with me and see what Ernesto did. It’s just so cool. Everything’s carved out of butter.”

“If I go see, will you let me go to bed?”

“Sure,” Conrad Linthor says.

“Will you be nice to Aliss? If she’s still up at the party when you get back?”

“I’ll try,” Conrad Linthor says.

“Okay,” Billie says. “I’ll go look at Ernesto’s butter. Are we going to go meet him?”

Conrad Linthor levers himself off the wall. Pats it. “Ernesto? I don’t know where he is. How should I know?”

They go into the forbidden maze. Back to the kitchen, and through it, now empty and dark and somehow like a morgue. A mausoleum.

“Ernesto’s been doing the work in a freezer,” Conrad Linthor says. “You have to keep these guys cold. Wait. Let me get it unlocked. Cool tool, right? Borrowed it from The Empty Jar. He’s one of dad’s clients. They’re making a movie about him. I saw the script. It’s crap.”

The lock comes off. The lights go on. Before I tell you what was inside the freezer, let me first tell you something about how big the freezer is. It will help you visualize, later on. The freezer is plenty big. Bigger than most New York apartments, Billie thinks, although this is just hearsay. She’s never been in a New York apartment.

What’s inside the supersized freezer? Supervillains. Warm Gun, Glowworm, Radical!, Heatdeath, The Scribbler, The Ninjew, Cat Lady, Hellalujah, Shibboleth, The Shambler, Mandroid, Manplant, The Manticle, Patty Cakes. Lots of others. Name a famous supervillain and he or she is in the freezer. They’re life-size. They’re not real, although at first Billie’s heart slams. She thinks: who caught all these guys? Why are they so perfectly still? Maybe Conrad Linthor is a superhero after all.

Conrad Linthor touches Hellalujah’s red, bunchy bicep. Presses just a little. The color smears. Lardy, yellow-white underneath. The supervillains are made out of butter. “Hand-tinted,” Conrad says.

“Ernesto made these?” Billie says. She wants to touch one, too. She walks up to Patty Cakes. Breathes on the cold, outstretched palms. You can see Patty Cakes’s life line. Her love line. Billie realizes something else. The butter statues are all decorated to look like chess pieces. Their signature outfits have been changed to black and red. Cat Lady is wearing a butter crown.

Conrad Linthor puts his hand on Hellalujah’s shoulder. Puts his arm around Hellalujah. Then he squeezes, hard. His arm goes through Hellalujah’s neck. Like an arm going through butter. The head pops off.

“Be careful!” Billie says.

“I can’t believe it’s butter,” Conrad says. He giggles. “Come on. Can you believe this? He made a whole chess set out of butter. And why? For some banquet for some guy who used to fight crime? That’s just crap. This is better. Us here, having some fun. This is spontaneous. Haven’t you always wanted to fight the bad guy and win? Now’s your chance.”

“But Ernesto made these!” Billie’s fists are clenched.

“You heard him,” Conrad says. “It’s no big deal. It’s not like it’s art. There’s no statement here. It’s just butter.”

He has Hellalujah’s sad head in his arms. “Heavy,” he says. “Food fight. Catch.” He throws the head at Billie. It hits her in the chest and knocks her over.

She lies on the ice-cold floor, looking at Hellalujah’s head. One side is flat. Half of Hellalujah’s broad nose is stuck like a slug to Billie’s chest. Her right arm is slimy with butter and food dye.

Billie sits up. She cradles Hellalujah’s head, hurls it back at Conrad. She misses. Hellalujah’s head smacks into Mandroid’s shiny stomach. Hangs there, half embedded.

“Funny,” Conrad Linthor says. He giggles.

Billie shrieks. She leaps at him, her hands killing claws. They both go down on top of The Shambler. Billie brings her knee up between Conrad Linthor’s legs, drives it up into butter. She grabs Conrad Linthor by the hair, bangs his head on The Shambler’s head. “Ow,” Conrad Linthor says. “Ow, ow, ow.”

He twists under her. Gets hold of her hands, pulls at them even as she tightens her grip on his hair. His hair is slick with butter, and she can’t hold on. She lets go. His head flops down. “Get off,” he says. “Get off.”

Billie drives her elbow into his stomach. Her feet skid a little as she stands up. She grabs hold of Warm Gun’s gun for balance, and it breaks off. “Sorry,” she says, apologizing to butter. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

Conrad Linthor is trying to sit up. There’s spit at the corner of his mouth, or maybe it’s butter.

Billie runs for the door. Gets there just as Conrad Linthor realizes what she’s doing. “Wait!” he says. “Don’t you dare! You bitch!”

Too late. She’s got the door shut. She leans against it, smearing it with butter.

Conrad Linthor pounds on the other side. “Billie!” It’s a faint yell. Barely audible. “Let me out, okay? It was just fun. I was just having fun. It was fun, wasn’t it?”

Here’s the thing, Paul Zell. It was fun. That moment when I threw Hellalujah’s head at him? That felt good. It felt so good I’d pay a million bucks to do it again. I can admit that now. But I don’t like that it felt good. I don’t like that it felt fun. But I guess now I understand why supervillains do what they do. Why they run around and destroy things. Because it feels fantastic. Someday I’m going to buy a lot of butter and build something out of it, just so I can tear it all to pieces again.

Billie could leave Conrad Linthor in the freezer. Walk away. Somebody would probably find him. Right?

But then she thinks about what he’ll do in there. He’ll kick apart all of the other buttervillains. Stomp them into greasy pieces. She knows he’ll do it, because she can imagine doing the same thing.

She lets him out.

“Not funny,” Conrad Linthor says. He looks very funny.

Picture him, all decked out in red and black butter. His lips are purplish-bluish. He’s shivering with cold. So is Billie.

“Not funny at all,” Billie agrees. “What the hell was that? What were you doing in there? What about your friend? Ernesto? How could you do that to him?”

“He’s not really a friend,” Conrad Linthor says. “Not like you and me. He’s just some guy I hang out with sometimes. Friends are boring. I get bored.”

“We’re not friends,” Billie says.

“Sure,” Conrad Linthor says. “I know that. But I thought if I said we were, you might fall for it. You have no idea how stupid some people are. Besides, I was doing it for you. No, really. I was. Sometimes when a superhero is in a really bad situation, that’s when they finally discover their ability. What they can do. With some people it’s an amulet, or a ring, but mostly it’s just environmental. Your adrenaline kicks in. My father is always trying stuff on me, just in case I’ve got something that we haven’t figured out yet.”

Maybe some of this is true, and maybe all of it is true, and maybe Conrad Linthor is just testing Billie again. Is she that stupid? He’s watching her right now, to see if she’s falling for any of this.

“I’m out of here,” Billie says. She checks her pocket, just to make sure Paul Zell’s ring is still there. She’s been doing that all day.

“Wait,” Conrad Linthor says. “You don’t know how to get back. You need help.”

“I made a trail,” Billie says. All the way through the corridors, this time, she pressed the diamond along the wall. Left a thin little mark. Nothing anyone else would even know to look for.

“Fine,” Conrad Linthor says. “I’m going to stay down here and make some scrambled eggs. Sure you don’t want any?”

“I’m not hungry,” Billie says.

Even as she’s leaving, Conrad Linthor is explaining to her that they’ll meet again. This is like their origin story. Maybe they’re each other’s nemesis, or maybe they’re destined to team up and save the world and make lots of—

Eventually Billie can’t hear him anymore. She leaves a trail of butter all the way back to the lobby. Gets onto an elevator before anyone has noticed the state she’s in, or maybe by this point in the weekend the hotel staff are used to stranger things.

She takes a shower and goes to bed still smelling faintly of butter. She wakes up early. The bubble of blood is down in the lobby again, floating over the fountain.

Billie thinks about going over to ask for an autograph. Pretending to be a fan. Could you pop that bubble with a ballpoint pen? This is the kind of thought Conrad Linthor goes around thinking, she’s pretty sure.

Billie catches her bus. And that’s the end of the story, Paul Zell. Dear Paul Zell.

Except for the ring. Here’s the thing about the ring. Billie wrapped it in tissue paper and sealed it up in a hotel envelope. She wrote “Ernesto in the kitchen” on the outside of the envelope. She wrote a note. The note says: “This ring belongs to Paul Zell. If he comes looking for it, maybe he’ll give you a reward. A couple hundred bucks seems fair. Tell him I’ll pay him back. But if he doesn’t get in touch, you should keep the ring. Or sell it. I’m sorry about Hellalujah and Mandroid and The Shambler. I didn’t know what Conrad Linthor was going to do.”

So, Paul Zell. That’s the whole story. Except for the part where I got home and found the e-mail from you, the one where you explained what had happened to you. That you had an emergency appendectomy, and never made it to New York at all, and what happened to me? Did I make it to the hotel? Did I wonder where you were? You say you can’t imagine how worried and/or angry I must have been. Etc.

I’ll be honest with you, Paul Zell. I read your e-mail and part of me thought, I’m saved. We’ll both pretend none of this ever happened. I’ll go on being Melinda, and Melinda will go on being the Enchantress Magic Eightball, and Paul Zell, whoever Paul Zell is, will go on being Boggle the Master Thief. We’ll play chess and chat online, and everything will be exactly the way that it was before.

But that would be crazy. I would be a fifteen-year-old liar, and you would be some weird guy who’s so pathetic and lonely that he’s willing to settle for me. Not even for me. To settle for the person I was pretending to be. But you’re better than that, Paul Zell. You have to be better than that. So I wrote you this letter.

If you read this letter the whole way through, now you know what happened to your ring, and a lot of other things too. I still have your conditioner. If you give Ernesto the reward, let me know and I’ll sell Constant Bliss and the Enchantress Magic Eightball. So I can pay you back. It’s not a big deal. I can go be someone else, right?

Or else, I guess, you could ignore this letter, and we could just pretend that I never sent it. That I never came to New York to meet Paul Zell. That Paul Zell wasn’t going to give me a ring.

We could pretend you never discovered my secret identity. We could go on being Boggle the Master Thief and the Enchantress Magic Eightball. We could meet up a couple times a week in FarAway and play chess. We could even go on a quest. Save the world. We could chat. Flirt. I could tell you about Melinda’s week, and we could pretend that maybe someday we’re going to be brave enough to meet face-to-face.

But here’s the deal, Paul Zell. I’ll be older one day. I may never discover my superpower. I don’t think I want to be a sidekick. Not even yours, Paul Zell. Although maybe that would have been simpler. If I’d been honest. And if you’re what or who I think you are. And maybe I’m not even being honest now. Maybe I’d settle for sidekick. For being your sidekick. If that was all you offered.

Conrad Linthor is crazy and dangerous and a bad person, but I think he’s right about one thing. He’s right that sometimes people meet again. Even if we never really truly met each other, I want to believe you and I will meet again. I want you to know that there was a reason that I bought a bus ticket and came to New York. The reason was that I love you. That part was really true. I really did throw up on Santa Claus once. I can do twelve cartwheels in a row. I’m allergic to cats. May third is my birthday, not Melinda’s. I didn’t lie to you about everything.

When I’m eighteen, I’m going to take the bus back to New York City. I’m going to walk down to Bryant Park. And I’m going to bring my chess set. I’m going to do it on my birthday. I’ll be there all day long.

Your move, Paul Zell.