Spiderman 1 (49 page)

"At least
. . .
 
I think I am." Then she did turn back and
look at him. "This isn't the time to talk about this."

"No, go on," he said urgently. Fighting to remain non
chalant, he took a step closer to her, closing the distance be
tween them. "Would I know his name? This guy?"
"You'll think I'm a stupid little girl with a crush."
With as much fervency as he could muster, he said,
"Trust me."

She looked into his eyes, long and hard, and suddenly she
laughed as if tremendously embarrassed over having been
caught at something. "I'm, like, head over heels!" she ex
claimed. "It's whacked!"
"Who is he?"

"It's funny. He saved my life twice, and I've never seen
his face."

It was all Peter could do to suppress a smile. Granted,
he'd been hoping that M. J. would say that it was himself . . . except under the mask, it was. In a way, he was competing
with himself. The absurdity of the situation struck him as
amusing.
"Oh. Him."

She swiped at his shoulder in mock annoyance. "You're laughing at me!"

"No, I understand. He is extremely cool."
If I do say so

myself. . .

"But do you think it's true, the terrible things they say

about him?"

"No way," he said immediately. "That isn't Spider-Man,
not a chance in the world." Then he realized he'd said it with

a bit too much intensity to sound natural, and she was look
ing at him oddly, as if waiting for an explanation. "I
. . .
know him a little bit. I'm sort of his," and he lowered his
voice to sound very
entre nous,
"unofficial photographer."

"How do you always manage to find him?"

He shrugged. "Wrong place, right time, I guess."

M. J. looked him up and down, and suddenly he felt un
comfortable. As if he had opened a door he really didn't
want to walk through. But it was too late to retreat as Mary
Jane asked, "You ever . . .
 
talk to him?"

"Sometimes," he said uneasily.

"Does he ever talk about me?"

"Uh . . .
 
yeah. Once. Once he asked what I thought of
you."

She drew a sharp intake of breath. She rested a hand on
his arm as if wanting to touch someone who had once
shaken hands with Elvis. "What did he say?"

He didn't have the faintest idea what to say. And then he
reached deep, deep into his imagination, and he looked
across the room into a mirror on the wall. There was Spider-Man, reflected at him, looking at him with his masked face,
and maybe he was laughing under it, or frowning
 
. . .
 
it was
impossible to tell.

He saw his own image reflected in the mirrors of Spider-
Man's eyes, and he said, "I said
 
. . .
 
I said, Spider-Man, I said
the great thing about M. J. is when
 
. . .
 
when you look in her eyes, and she's looking back in yours and smiling, well . . .
everything feels
 
. . .
 
not quite normal because you feel . . .
stronger. And weaker at the same time, and you feel excited
and at the same time, terrified." He pulled his gaze away from the mirror to look at Mary Jane, and her eyes were
moist. Peter was suddenly brimming with confidence; she was hanging on his every word.

"Spidey—I call him Spidey sometimes—the truth is,"
and he looked back to his reflection, saw the webslinger in

the mirror, waiting to hear the "truth," "you don't know what
you feel, except you know the kind of man you want to be
and what it is, is
 
. . . "

His confidence started to waver. He was getting tangled
up in his mouth, in his thoughts. Now it was Peter who
wasn't able to look into Mary Jane's eyes as he completed
telling her the conversation that he had, indeed, had a hun
dred times with Spider-Man
 
. . .
 
in his head.

"It's as if, when you're with her, it's as if you've reached
 
. . .
 
the unreachable
 
. . .
 
and you weren't ready
for it."

Oh my God, that sounded horrible . . .
 
like some half-
baked Don Quixote thing . . .

He looked back up at her and was dumbfounded to see that tears were welling in her eyes.

"You said that . . .
 
?" she said with a choking sound in her
throat.

And suddenly Peter felt guilty and small. What he had done was voice his innermost thoughts, true, but he knew
that he'd misrepresented himself. However he didn't have
the faintest idea how to go about fixing it. "Uh
 
. . .
um
. . .
sssomething like that." Then guilt spilled over into embar
rassment, for he knew he had said too much. In pretending
to speak to Spider-Man, he had really, truly told M. J. how
he felt, and she had to know it.

To his surprise, Mary Jane reached out and took his hand.
Hers was warm and delicate in his, and suddenly he felt as
if anything were possible. He couldn't take his eyes off her, and he was suddenly completely convinced that she was in the same predicament, unable to look away from him. He
started to speak, with absolutely no idea what he was going
to say.
"Hello."

That wasn't even remotely what he'd intended to say. On the other hand, it wasn't his voice. It was the voice of Harry

Osborn, who was standing in the doorway of the hospital room, staring at them with a smile that did not in any way
touch his eyes.

Immediately, acting like two people caught at something,
they withdrew their hands. But the damage was done, and
Peter knew it
. . .
 
knew it all too well.

Harry, who had come in response to a phone message
from Peter, remembered almost nothing of his visit to the
hospital.

He made small talk, he tried to be polite. But the image
of Peter and Mary Jane holding hands seared itself into his mind, obliterating everything else.

Had Peter set him up? Informed him of May Parker's con
dition just so he could show up and find the two of them looking at each other, like they were ready to get a room of
their own
 
. . .
 
and he didn't mean a hospital room
 
. . .
 
?

He felt as if he was incapable of containing the fury that
welled up within him. He stayed for a few minutes, but
quickly made his excuses, and the moment he departed, he expunged everything from his recollection except for that
mental snapshot of those hands, those damnable hands.

Harry spent the rest of the day walking, just walking endlessly. And slowly, as the time passed, the anger burned less brightly, for it was impossible to sustain that level of white-
hot rage.

But he didn't want to go back to his apartment and see
Peter waiting there, fumbling with excuses, trying to determine what to say and what not to say. So instead he went to the place he'd come to think of simply as his father's home,
even though he himself had lived in the townhouse for as
long as he could remember.

It was night when he used the key to let himself in
through the front door. A full moon cast its shadow on the
doorway. Harry felt he could sympathize with the moon.

After all, did it not bask in reflected glory? Same with Harry Osborn, someone who could only trade on the surname built
up by his father, or pass classes with the help of a friend who
had stolen his girlfriend.

"Dad?" he called out as he stepped into the front hall.

There was no answer, but light was spilling from the
staircase that led to the upstairs hall. Harry stood at the bot
tom of the stairs, and he could faintly hear voices. They were so soft from where he was standing that they were little more
than murmurs, but the vehemence and anger in the tones
was unmistakeable. There were two men, and he was rea
sonably sure that one of them was his father. "Dad? Is that

you?"

The voices abruptly stopped. A moment later, his father
appeared at the top of the stairs. He didn't move from the
spot, though, appearing to his son like a great, dark shadow.
"What is it?" he called down.

Harry took a deep breath. He was about to say the most
difficult words he had ever uttered, and he wondered if his
father would ever have any appreciation over how hard
it was for him to say it. "You were right about M. J. You
were
 
. . .
 
you were right about everything. She's in love with
Peter."

He had no idea how his father was going to react. He ex
pected laughter, perhaps, or sneers, or all manner of unbridled contempt. But instead there was simply a thoughtful
pause, and then: "Parker?"

That was all, with no more emotion than a computer
being fed a new bit of data.

No, Peter Piper. She's really into pickled peppers.
But he
held back the flip response that would be formed more by
bitterness than wisdom. "Yeah," Harry said.

Osborn started to move down the stairs toward him, one leisurely step at a time. As he would walk, one foot would
hang off the step a moment, as if even his feet were involved

in deep thought, before he would descend to the next step
down. "And . .. how does he feel about her?"

"Are you kidding?" Harry snorted. "He's loved her since
the fourth grade. He just acts like he doesn't. But there's nobody Peter cares about more."

Surprisingly, he heard—of all things—a soft chuckle
coming from his father. How in the world could any of this be remotely funny? But then, sounding extremely sincere, Norman Osborn said, "I'm sorry. I
. . .
 
haven't always been there for you, have I?"

Harry couldn't believe it. He'd never heard his father
sound this sympathetic about . . .
 
about anything. "Well . . .
you're busy," he said. "You're an important man. I under
stand that."