“Communication, baby doll,” I say.
“Yes, Sir?”
The honorific makes me flinch. After hearing it from my bottoms for more than a decade, suddenly I don’t like it. I want her to call me Daddy and know we’re okay.
“I want to talk about what happened earlier.” I scratch my chin with the handles of my chopsticks. “Actually, I want to apologize.”
She lays her soft head against my shoulder. “You don’t need to apologize. I asked you to take it out on me. You did. Did it help?”
“Yes.” I released everything, all the awful tension that had built inside me. I’d be as relaxed as she is, if I wasn’t worried that I’d damaged things between us. “The thing is, I’m the daddy.” I’ve been a piss-fucking-poor daddy today. “I shouldn’t need to take out anything on you.”
She looks up at me, considering. “Wow,” she says, then she grabs another piece of salmon, swishes it in the plastic tub of wasabi-infused soy sauce, and pops it in her mouth.
“Wow?”
She chews carefully, ten times, remembering my rule, and swallows, before she says. “I didn’t realize you were Superman.”
“Superman,” I repeat. Is she fucking with me?
“Sure. Superman’s perfect, right? He never has bad days. He never messes up and feels awful about it afterwards. He can fix everything, even if he has to do something contrary to the laws of physics like make the world spin backwards to do it.”
She snakes her chopsticks toward another piece of salmon. I put mine in the way. I’ve had one piece and I’m not going to get a second if I don’t stake my claim.
She pouts. “You know, I’ve never liked Superman. He’s a dork.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I’m trying to be serious and apologize for what I put her through, but she clearly doesn’t want either my gravity or my remorse. I move my chopsticks and take a piece of eel instead, while she dives for the unprotected sashimi. I survey the sushi boat, which is wholly bare of salmon. Has she eaten every piece? Little minx. At least I don’t have to worry about her getting enough Omega-3.
“Who’s your favorite?” I ask.
“From Justice League, or comic book character?”
Sweet little geek. “Comic book character.”
“Oh, I was a huge X-Men fan, so, naturally, Wolverine.” She elbows me. Is she comparing me to Wolverine? The comparison stops at the name, thank you very much. “But Gambit was probably my all-time favorite. He was so cool.”
Can’t fault her taste in superheroes.
“He was,” I agree. “How’d you end up knowing so much about comics, baby doll? I thought your thing was English history.”
She lifts her eyebrows at me. “Why, because that’s what I write? I love heroic fantasy. Comics are the Illiad and Odyssey of our age. These are the stories of gods and monsters, heroes and villains, through which we pass our values to the next generation. Western society’s just forgotten how important those stories are and left them for radical subversives like Stan Lee and the Pinis and Matt Wagner to tell.”
“Radical subversives?”
“Yes,” she says forcefully, and I realize this is something my little girl has a strong opinion on. “ ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ Do you think anyone in Washington wants young people believing that? If a politician actually cracked the cover of a comic book and realized what those stories were about, they’d faint. Individual responsibility, self-sacrifice for the greater good, loyalty to your tribe, acceptance and equality for people who are different? They’re everything politics should be about but isn’t.”
“Wow.”
She snorts and makes a lightning jab for a piece of tuna. “Who was your favorite?”
“Elektra.”
“Elektra Assassin? Awesome series. Did you have the individual comics? I only read the graphic novel. And did you like Miller’s Rōnin? I had trouble getting into that.”
I chuckle. Fuck, she’s such a geek. Such an adorable little geek. Who’d have guessed what lay behind the white silk bows and French poetry she wore like armor when we first met?
“Okay, I bow to your superior nerd credentials. Do you really have a signed set of ElfQuest comics?”
She flushes redder than the tuna. “Maybe.”
She does. “I have the original run of Elektra Assassin. I’ll bust them out for you when we get home. That always impresses the chicks.” At her renewed grin, I continue, “But I want to see these EQs, because if they really are signed, I’m trading my unsigned set for yours. Daddy’s privilege.”
She giggles. “I only have the Original Quest signed, but they’re the ones by Wendy and Richard Pini, not the crappy Marvel ones with the oversaturated colors.” She looks up and gives me huge, puppy-dog eyes. “Daddy, can I have the last piece of tuna?”
Hearing her call me Daddy again is such a profound fucking relief. Funny that what felt strange just a few days ago now feels like the world’s been set to rights. Grinning, I survey the wreckage. She’s eaten every piece of tuna except one forlorn piece of sashimi.
“Yes, since you asked, monkey.”
She pounces on it, spears it with her chopsticks and, grinning, pops it in her mouth.
“So, you read comics for the heroic storylines, huh?”
She shrugs and suddenly draws into herself.
What the fuck? My twisted obsession with my sister didn’t phase her, making her role-play a widow while I beat the shit out of her gave her a huge catharsis, but asking her about her motivation for reading comic books makes her recoil?
I try to restore the light atmosphere before my stupid question. “I read them for the hot chicks.”
She smiles, but it’s not the grin she was wearing a minute ago. Did she read them for masturbatory material, too? Is she ashamed of that? Or is it something else?
“I read them because they were cheap,” she admits after a long silence. “I only had ten dollars a week from babysitting. There was a used book and comic store near where we lived. I’d cycle there every day after school.
