It was actually Laura who had told Daniel when he was becoming famous. They'd gone to a Christmas party at Marvel in New York, and when they entered the room, they were separated in the crush. Later, she told him that as he walked through the crowd, she could hear everyone talking in his wake. Daniel, she had said, people definitely know you.
When he'd first been given a test story to draw, years ago - a godawful piece that took place inside a cramped airplane - he'd worried about things that he never would have given a second thought to now: having F lead in his pencil instead of something too soft, testing the geometry of arches, mapping the feel of a ruler in his hand. If anything, he had drawn more from the gut when he was starting out - emotional art, instead of cerebral. The first time he'd penciled Batman for DC Comics, for example, he'd had to reimagine the hero. Daniel's rendition had a certain length ear and a certain width belt that had little to do with the historical progression of art on that character and far more to do with poring over the comic as a kid, and remembering how Batman had looked at his coolest.
Today, though, drawing wasn't bringing him any joy or relief. He kept thinking about Trixie and where she would be at this hour of the day and if it was a good thing or a bad thing that she hadn't called him yet to say how it was going. Ordinarily, if Daniel was restless, he'd get up and walk around the house, or even take a run to jog his brain and recover his lost muse. But Laura was home - she had no
classes until this afternoon - and that was enough to keep him holed up in his office. It was easier to face down a blank page than to pull from thin air the right words to rebuild a marriage. His task today was to draw a series of panels in hell with adultery demons - sinners who had lusted for each other in life, and in death couldn't be separated from each other. The irony of having to draw this, given his own situation, had not been lost on Daniel. He imagined a male and a female torso, each growing out of the same root of a body. He pictured one wing on each of their backs. He saw claws that would reach in to steal a hero's heart, because that was exactly how it felt.
He was cheating today, drawing the action sequences, because they were the most engaging. He always jumped around the story, to keep himself from overdoing it on the first panel he drew. But just in case he started running out of time on a deadline, it was easier to draw straight lines and buildings and roads than to dynamically draw a figure.
Daniel began sketching the outline of an ungainly, birdlike creature, half man and half woman. He roughed in a wing . . . no, too batlike. He was just blowing the eraser rubbings off the Miraweb paper when Laura walked into his office, holding a cup of coffee.
He set down his pencil and leaned back in his chair. Laura rarely visited him in his office. Most of the time, she wasn't home. And when she was, it was always Daniel seeking her out, instead of the other way around.
“What are you drawing?” she asked, peering down at the panels.
“Nothing good.”
“Worried about Trixie?”
Daniel rubbed a hand down his face. “How couldn't I be?” She sank down at his feet, cross-legged. “I know. I keep thinking I hear the phone ring.” She glanced down at her coffee cup, as if she was surprised to find herself clutching it. “Oh,” she said. “I brought this for you.”
She never brought him coffee before. He didn't even really like coffee. But there was Laura with her hand outstretched, offering the steaming mug . . . and in that instant, Daniel could imagine her fingers reaching like a dagger between his ribs. He could see how a wing that grew from between her shoulder blades might sweep over the muscles of her trapezius, wrapping over her arm like a shawl.
“Do me a favor?” he asked, taking the mug from her. He grabbed a quilt that he kept on the couch in his office and leaned down to pull it around Laura.
“God,” she said. “I haven't modeled for you in years.” When he was just starting out, he'd pose her a hundred different ways: in her bra and panties holding a water gun; tossed halfway off the bed; hanging upside down from a tree in the yard. He would wait for the moment when that familiar skin and structure stopped being Laura and became, instead, a twist of sinew and a placement of bone, one he could translate anatomically into a character sprawled just the same way on the page.
“What's the quilt for?” Laura asked, as he picked up his pencil and started to draw. “You have wings.” “Am I an angel?” Daniel glanced up. “Something like that,” he said. The moment Daniel stopped obsessing about drawing the wing, it took flight. He drew fast, the lines pouring out of him. This quick, art was like breath. He couldn't have told you why he placed the fingers at that angle instead of the more conventional one, but it made the figure seem to move across the panel. “Lift the blanket up a little, so it covers your head,” he instructed. Laura obliged. “This reminds me of your first story. Only drier.” Daniel's first paid gig had been a Marvel fill-in for the Ultimate X-Men series. In the event that a regular artist didn't make deadline, his stand-alone piece would be used without breaking the continuity of the ongoing saga.
He'd been given a story about Storm as a young child, harnessing the weather. In the name of research, he and Laura had driven to the shore during a thunderstorm, with Trixie still in her infant seat. They left the sleeping baby in the car and then sat on the beach in the pouring rain with a blanket wrapped around their shoulders, watching the lightning write notes on the sand. Later that night, on his way back to the car, Daniel had tripped
over the strangest tube of glass. It was a fulgurite, Laura told him, sand fused the moment it was struck by lightning. The tube was eight inches long, rough on the outside and smooth through its long throat. Daniel had tucked it into the side of Trixie's car seat, and even today it was still delicately displayed on her bookshelf.
It had amazed him: that utter transformation, the understanding that radical change could come in a heartbeat.
Finally, Daniel finished drawing. He put down his pencil, flexed his hand, and glanced down at the page: This was good; this was better than good. “Thanks,” he said, standing up to take the blanket off Laura's shoulders.
She stood, too, and grabbed two corners of the quilt. They folded it in silence, like soldiers with a casket's flag. When they met in the middle, Daniel went to take the blanket from her, but Laura didn't let go. She slid her hands along its folded seam until they rested on top of Daniel's, and then she lifted her face shyly and kissed him.
He didn't want to touch her. Her body pressed against his through the buffer of the quilt. But instinct broke over him, a massive wave, and he wrapped his arms so tightly around Laura he could feel her struggling to breathe. His kiss was hungry, violent, a feast for what he'd been missing. It took a moment, and then she came to life beneath him, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, pulling him closer, consuming him in a way he could not ever remember her doing before.
Before.
With a groan, Daniel dragged his mouth from hers, buried his face in the curve of her neck. “Are you thinking
