Spiderman 3 (13 page)

This day she found nothing charming.

"It's me," she said. Peter had given her a key to the front door of the apartment building in which he lived, but she needed his aid to come into the apartment.

"Hey! Come in!" his voice came.

She rolled her eyes in annoyance. "You know I can't open the door!"

"Pull, lift, and give it a good shove." He still sounded distracted. Clearly he was in the middle of studying and didn't want to be bothered to get up. At that moment she would have kicked the door open if she weren't afraid of breaking her leg. She wasn't ruling out the possibility of kicking
him
, though.

"
Just come on and help me
!" Her tone of voice made it clear that she was fed up, and if he didn't get off his ass and open up, she was going to turn around and leave, and it would be a cold day in hell before she saw him again.

Obviously she had managed to convey her mood exactly, because she heard the sound of a chair being pushed back from the desk (yep, studying), and moments later Peter swung the door open and looked at her quizzically. She held up the newspaper in response. Clearly he didn't understand, because he said, "What?"

"The review," she replied icily.

"The review! I forgot!" He hit his forehead with the base of his hand and obviously thought he knew what the problem was. He assumed she was annoyed with him because he'd forgotten that her play's opening-night notices were going to be hitting the streets. She was holding the
New York Times
, unarguably the foremost paper in setting critical perception for New York City. Indeed, most of the other papers were irrelevant. The
Times
could make or break you. "How was it? Great?"

She felt her throat constricting with fury. "They hated it. They hated me."

Peter looked as if he thought either Mary Jane had read it wrong or he had heard her wrong. "They can't hate you," he assured her, as if she had said something on par with announcing that Congress had endeavored to repeal the law of gravity.

In response, she turned to the Arts and Leisure section and began to read aloud. She uttered each word in a tense, clipped manner." 'The young Miss Watson is a pretty girl, easy on the eyes but not on the ears. Her small voice didn't carry past the first row.' "

"That's ridiculous," Peter assured her. "I was there."

"You were
in
the first row."

"So something was wrong with the acoustics. Or the sound guys didn't have you wired properly. Any one of a hundred technical things, none of which have anything to do with you or your performance." Seeing she wasn't mollified, he took the newspaper from her, tossed it aside, and put his hands gently on her shoulders. "Listen, you have to know you were great. This is something you just have to get used to. You can't take it so personally. I've been through it. Spider-Man gets attacked all the time—"

"Spider-Man isn't your real name! At least you have something to hide behind! I don't!" Here Peter was nattering on about his alter ego? How could he not understand? "This isn't about you; it's about me!" she snapped at him, probably more angrily than she should have, but she didn't care. "It's about my career!"

"I know. Exactly," he said, as if they were on the same wavelength when she knew they weren't. "And all you have to do is believe in yourself and pull yourself together and get right back up on that—"

She clamped a hand over his surprised mouth. "Don't give me the horse thing." He nodded in mute acknowledgment, and she removed her hand, but she was no less frustrated. Why was someone as intelligent as Peter being so dense? "Try to understand how I feel. I look at these words and it's like… like my father wrote them."

Understanding dawned on Peter's face. He knew full well that Mary Jane's father had lived for tearing her down at every opportunity. When she had wanted to embark on her acting career, her father had been her first and loudest critic. She had been determined to prove him wrong in his negative assessment of her abilities. Now it was looking as if her father was correct.

Peter took a moment to regroup and started to open his mouth to reply, when the police radio he kept on his desk crackled to life. Keyed in to the emergency frequency, it only went active when something truly major was hitting the band. That happened now, and Mary Jane saw Peter wince as the voice—static-filled since Peter's eavesdropping connection wasn't exactly legal—announced, "All units in the vicinity of Fifty-sixth and Madison, report. Large crane out of control. Approach with caution, Fifty-sixth and Madison. Pedestrians in danger."

Instantly, Mary Jane felt conflicted. Part of her wanted Peter to ignore it, to focus on her. On the other hand, how could she be that selfish? Yes, her career was on the line, her ego was on the line, but so were lives. Careers could be rebuilt, shattered egos restored, but dead was dead. If Peter could save their lives…

She hated this. She hated that she couldn't even seek solace from her boyfriend without it turning into a major soul-searching referendum on her priorities as a woman and a human being.

Peter stared at her, waiting for some clue as to what she was thinking. She gave none. She just gazed at him with an impassive face. She didn't even give him the slightest twitch of an expression when the sound of a siren blew in the front window. As if he were prompting her because she'd missed a cue, he said hopefully, "Go get 'em, tiger?"

He never even considered staying for me.

But… what did you want him to say? "Don't worry, honey, let people's lives be at risk. This is more important."

Except this is more important, to me at least.

My God, how can you even think that?

She lowered her head, feeling frustrated, feeling ashamed, feeling angry that she had come seeking emotional support, and all she had gotten was more frustration and conflict. First the review had belittled her talent. Now she herself was belittling her values as a person. A little more support like this and she'd be ready to throw herself off the roof.

There was a sound at the window and she turned and realized that, as she'd been standing there zoning out in distraction, Peter had changed into his costume and was standing at the open window, his mask in his hand, one foot on the sill.

"Wait for me?" he asked, hopeful.

Mary Jane made no reply, since she had no clue as to whether she would.

He pulled on his mask, fired a webline, and swung away. Mary Jane stared for a long time at the open window, at the emptiness that it represented. There was something tremendously symbolic in that.

She remembered when she'd sprinted here in her wedding dress, convinced that she had been running toward something. Now she began to wonder if instead she'd simply been running away from something else. She felt lonely, directionless. Support from critics hadn't been there for her professionally; support from Peter hadn't been there emotionally.

Yet she felt guilty for feeling this way, and perhaps that was what rankled her most of all. She wondered if this was how a doctor's wife felt, always playing second fiddle to the needs of her husband's patients. That wasn't really the same, though. A successful doctor's wife had a home, and friends, and at least she didn't have to worry about her husband being killed on the job. She supposed she was closer to a policeman's wife. Even then, though, an entire support system was in place: other spouses of cops who understood the risks, plus a salary, benefits.

Mary Jane was in a unique club. She had no one to whom she could talk about her feelings, no one to share her frustrations or concerns. She had thought she had Peter, but it was Spider-Man who really had Peter, had possessed him, taken him over. She had believed she could understand, had wanted to be supportive. But she desperately needed to be the focus of Peter's world. Not all the time. Just occasionally she had to know that she came first.

She glared at the radio that was continuing its distress warning and had an epiphany—she would never, ever come first. Total strangers would always be more important to Peter than she was.

It both galled and mortified her that she was angry about it. What the hell kind of match was such a selfish girl with such an unselfish guy?

Mary Jane walked over to the desk where his open science books lay, afforded them a quick glance, crumpled the newspaper, and dumped it in the trash can. She headed for the door, pulled it open, then turned and glanced back at the room once more, wondering if she was ever going to set foot in it again.

Something curious caught her eye. Peter, a typical guy, had left clothes strewn around, and she noticed his dress shoes lying in the corner in the shadows. One of them had a huge chunk of what looked like black tar on the sole. She wondered what in the world Peter had stepped in.

She picked the shoe up and glanced around to find a rag to clean it off, then stopped herself and wondered just how much of a glutton for punishment she was. Peter had ditched her to go off and be a hero; she was an emotional wreck over it, and she was going to fix his shoes in the midst of all that?

Mary Jane shook her head at her own foolishness, tossed the shoe aside, walked out the door, and closed it behind her.

The shoe landed in the sunlight near the radio. The radio blared loudly, and feedback caused a high, shrill tone to cut through the air. As soon as that happened, the ebony substance on Peter's shoe pulsed, flexed, then peeled itself off the sole. It left a small part of itself behind, but didn't seem especially slowed by it. It moved quickly away from the sunlight, away from the radio, undulating across the floor as fast as it could. Within seconds it had made it to the cool, quiet darkness of the closet, slithering inside and taking refuge in the shadows once more.

Unaware of the unearthly drama unfolding in the apartment she'd just left, Mary Jane was walking down the hallway when she found her way blocked by Ursula, the wafer-thin daughter of Peter's landlord. Mary Jane had spotted her before, looking at Peter with the puppydog eyes that only a teen girl with a hopeless crush could possibly
effect. Just hold out hope, kid. Maybe someday soon you'll be old enough so you can have your heart cut in half too
.

"Hi, Mary Jane," Ursula said with forced perkiness.

"Hi." MJ started to step around her, in no mood for conversation.

Ursula didn't move aside. MJ didn't think she was being rude; she was just oblivious to the fact that Mary Jane wanted to leave. "How's Peter?" Ursula asked.

"He went out."

From the blinking surprise in Ursula's face, Mary Jane instantly realized she'd given the wrong answer. Who knew how long Ursula had been standing there? She would have known that Peter hadn't gone past her. And she was too credulous to consider the possibility that Mary Jane might be lying and Peter was still up in his apartment. Still, she sounded dubious as she said, "He always goes so fast."

"Very fast." Seeing that Ursula wasn't moving anytime soon, and surrendering to the inevitability of a conversation, she forced herself to appear interested as she asked, "What are you up to?"

"Not much. Washing dishes at a jazz club." Since that clearly wasn't especially interesting, she added, "The waitresses sing. I can't sing. Can you sing?"

Of all questions to ask.

She thought of Peter's excuses as to how the critics got it wrong. But she also considered that, if she'd read that review about someone else, she would have taken the critic's assessment at face value.
So why then, but not now
?

Making one of the most difficult admissions she'd ever uttered, Mary Jane said, "I don't know."