Unfortunately, I had a crushing load of textbooks to get back to my dorm. Plus, after all that beer I drank, I had to pee real bad. So, I said my goodbyes to Stella; she headed east to her apartment on South University Avenue, while I trudged back to South Quad trying not to wet myself.
I realized halfway home that I hadn’t gotten around to telling Stella very much about myself—about how I was majoring in politics and society and urban labor stuff. Not that a glamorous New York Megahero would find my course of studies particularly interesting. I was proud and glad that the former See-Thru Girl would be attending my school. It made me feel good, knowing that a real-life Megahero walked among us—even if it was only one who could turn naked with but a thought.
I also realized I hadn’t gotten her number or her street address. This was crucial, because Arbor State is a huge school, and you can never be sure if you’re ever going to run into somebody ever again. But I needn’t have worried about Stella. I ran into her the very next morning in a convenience store near the Little Brown Jug; each of us was buying one of the last two boxes of tampons to be had on the shelves—that’s bonding for you—because already the campus was crawling with returning students. Stella’s apartment was right nearby—I still hadn’t met Pamela Jointly by this time—and Stella was eager to check out the whole campus. Since I had nothing better to do than to hang out with a former Megahero all day, we dropped off our boxes at her apartment—Pammy wasn’t there, she was at some faculty meeting—and we set out.
Me and the See-Thru Girl checked out every library and academic building on campus, most of which I was already familiar with. We had to make an obligatory stop at a licensed apparel shop so she could buy a grey Arbor State University Abyssinian Wolves T-shirt—she practically insisted on changing into it right away right there on Michigan Street, almost causing an incident, as you can imagine. Luckily, I pulled her into the McNichols Arcade, a row of posh shops off the main drag, where she could make a quick switcheroo behind a potted tree. One thing about the See-Thru Girl: she isn’t particularly ashamed of her body.
If I had to describe her, it would be as the classic fish out of water, at least in those first days on campus. She had lots of questions about how to navigate college life and so forth. To be honest, it made me feel kind of important, like a mentor; I instructed her in all the best places to eat, where to get groceries, and where she could find a pharmacy to refill her birth-control prescription—information which I had somehow accumulated but had absolutely no use for. I ate in a dining hall, had no sex life—no life at all to speak of. But she found my practical wisdom infinitely useful.
And we visited all those places, too—I don’t know where she was getting her money, but she flashed her Megatropolis Quartet more than once, and it wasn’t declined—so I guess Mr. Sloshy back in New York would be getting the bills for some time to come, at least until he caught on. I imagined him just waiting for his young wife’s back-to-school fling to peter itself out, after which the See-Thru Girl would come crawling back to him on her hands and knees. If that was the expectation, I saw no sign of it—Stella was going totally native, with the book bag, the spiral notebooks, the highlighters, everything.
After visiting the campus art museum and every gallery out along Liberty Road for some added culture, and peering into every antiquarian book shop and shopping at every posh clothing boutique along the way back, we were tuckered out. So, at the end of the afternoon, we said goodbye again. I still didn’t get her number.
School started up and I got busy with classes, and I suppose so did Stella, because I didn’t see her again except for random sightings across the Diag until nearly mid-November. It was already getting dark in the late afternoons when I spotted her in the crowded reading room of the undergraduate library. She was sitting at one of those long tables that have those dual-lamps with green glass every couple of seats. She reminded me of doughboy hunkered down in a foxhole, with piles of books stacked in front of her like sandbags. Her wavy blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail now, with a pencil shove behind her ear; she sported studious glasses and a perpetual frown as she read weighty tomes and pondered deep thoughts.
With the cooler weather, she had on a light windbreaker, blue with an embroidered white letter “Q” on the left. It resembled a varsity jacket and must have been part of her old Quartet uniform. Underneath it she had on the T-shirt we had bought that day; blue jeans covered her legs and she had on white tennis shoes. Even without any trace of makeup, she was startlingly pretty. Except for being statuesque and strikingly beautiful, you would have mistaken her for just about any other slightly older Arbor State undergrad approaching the end of her first semester.
She spotted me walking down the middle aisle of the ginormous, high-ceilinged reading room. “Hi there, Clarissa!” she called, waving eagerly. As I approached, she rose from her wooden chair and pointed to the seat on the opposite side of the table with her pencil, pushing aside stacks of books to clear a space.
That was when I noticed something else, too: The See-Thru Girl was at least a good four months pregnant.
“Wow, look at you, Stella Sternlicht!” was all I could think to say—I know, brilliant, right? “You’re, uh, really getting into this college thing, aren’t you? …Gotta keep up with all that homework!” Stupid, I know. My eyes must have been bugging out of my skull; I couldn’t stop staring at her stomach.
She asked me how I had been, how my semester was going—but I was too dumbfounded to respond. I dropped my book bag on the floor and pulled out the chair, wondering if I was seeing things—I was still staring at her belly. “I guess your prescription refill didn’t work.”—There, I said it.
Stella smiled and rubbed her tummy. “It never had a chance to—seems I brought this little care package with me from home.” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that remark, but I noticed there wasn’t any ring on any of her fingers.
She sat down, and then I sat down. She asked me again how all my classes were going and all that. But my face was burning and my ears were ringing. All I could manage was, “Who’s the father?” which I suppose isn’t the most polite thing to say to someone you had only gotten to know a little bit before the start of the semester and hadn’t seen since. It also isn’t the coolest thing you can say loudly, which I did—judging from how other students along the long table suddenly turned and stared at us—I can completely lack social skills in that way. I whispered between the stacks of books, “Do you know who the father is?”
As soon as I said this, I kind of blushed again, because it occurred to me what a rude thing it was to assume that somebody didn’t know who the father of their child was.
But Stella just laughed. “Nobody you know.” She put the pencil back behind her ear, and returned to her reading.
I just sat there across the table from her, motionless. “Aren’t you going to ask me how I’ve been?” I asked.
“I asked you twice,” she said. “I didn’t think you felt like talking. Don’t you have some homework to do?”
“Sure,” I said. “Loads of it.”
“So, how’s your semester going?”
“I’m still a virgin,” I said.
I must have said this real loud too, because people at the next table were turning to look.
Stella laughed. “You wouldn’t believe how stupid I was at first,” she said. “When I started having morning sickness, it was actually Pammy who had to point out its significance to me.”
Suddenly, she explained, the apartment the journalism department Pammy had provided wasn’t going to be enough. “It was clear we were going to need more room, with a child on the way. So, we rented a house on Ann Street on the first of October. It’s a bit run down, but it was a steal rent-wise, considering the proximity to campus.”
“A house?” I said. “Boy, I would love to live in a house off-campus. I hate South Quad.” To be honest, I never spent much time in the dorms if I could help it; I lived in the campus libraries and coffee shops most of the time, but that was by inclination.
“You know, we’re looking for a housemate or two, if you’re interested,” said Stella. “We have two extra rooms. You could move in for next semester. That is, if you don’t mind living with a newborn baby after about April first.”
“Are you kidding? That would be great.” I would need to move my furniture from Detroit, but I could get my Daddy to help with that. “I could move in over Thanksgiving.”
“Maybe you’ll want to take a look at it first,” said Stella. “But I’m sure you’ll like it. Pammy’s teaching all the time; I hardly ever see her except on the weekends.” She wrote down the address and phone number. “Give us a call; maybe you can come by before Thanksgiving break.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “You’re not a couple, are you? You and Pammy? I mean, if you are, that’s all right.”
Stella burst out laughing. “Oh, God, maybe we should be,” she said, her arms wrapped around her belly. “Then maybe this won’t happen again.”
Again, that seemed slightly ambiguous. But I was even more preoccupied with the pending blessed event. “So, you’re going to keep it?”
“Of course, I’m going to keep it,” said Stella. She now seemed more like the mentor explaining the facts of life to me. “I’m going to raise my child, finish my degree, and go on to grad school.”
I leaned in conspiratorially, under the dual lamp, whispering again. “It isn’t Mr. Sloshy, is it? …You told me he couldn’t even get it up!”
“No, my husband is not the father of my child,” Stella said, calmly and evenly. “I haven’t seen Rex Rigid since I left New York—thank God.”
Nor, she said, was it the assistant registrar she had picked up right after Labor Day (before she knew she was pregnant); nor the diminutive Martian (who had audited her Gender and Sexuality course in October); nor anyone else she had gotten to know since arriving in Ann Arbor. Seems our little Ms. Sternlicht hadn’t exactly cloistered herself in a convent since she’d hit town.
“Then it had to be somebody back in New York,” I reasoned, making deductions like some dime-book detective. Then it suddenly hit me. “Megaton Man! —You’re going to have Megaton Man’s baby, aren’t you?!”
I guess I blurted out this latter exclamation rather loudly, because this time half the reading room turned around to stare at us.
“Does he know?” I asked, returning to a hushed whisper. “Have you told him?”
“It doesn’t matter who the father is. My life as a Megahero is over. I’m a full-time student now. I put off my education once before, for love; I’m never doing anything so foolish ever again. I’m having my baby and I’m going to raise her to be a normal person—whether she’s green or sloshy or a Martian—or a three-headed troglodyte.”
“So, you know she’s going to be a girl?” I can be importunate.
“No, I don’t know,” said Stella crisply. “I haven’t had time to think about it. It will happen as it happens. I’ve got other things to worry about, as you can see.” She pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose—I know that’s a cliché, but she did—and returned her attention to the pile of homework in front of her. “But if she is a girl, I want to name her Simone; I’ve always adored the name Simone.”
Simone Sternlicht, I thought to myself. I slouched back in my chair and let out a “Oowee.” I fanned my face with some paper library request slips that sat in tiny wooden tray on the table.
I needed to be studying for a test the next day myself, but I was still digesting all this new information.
“But don’t you think you should tell Megaton Man?” I said after a while. I felt I had a right to know, since I was potentially going to be Stella’s housemate, and would become complicit in a cover-up. Besides, I felt I had attained some level of intimacy with the See-Thru Girl, and owed her the benefit of my best judgment. Somebody had to make sure she had thought this thing through. “I mean, he is the father, isn’t he?”
“I told you,” said Stella, looking up at me over her reading-glass frames. “It doesn’t matter. I haven’t heard nary a word from Megaton Man since I left Megatropolis. Not a letter, not a phone call…he couldn’t care less if I were alive or dead. He doesn’t deserve to know.” She was strong on this.
But what if it turns out to be Baby Monster Thing, I wondered, and destroys Ann Arbor? Megaton Man would certainly hear about it then. But I didn’t say this. Some instinct told me I had said enough already—too much, no doubt. I didn’t want to blow my chance to see this all unfold for the world. Or to get out of South Quad.
The Monday before Thanksgiving was terribly cold. The sky was grey as if threatening to snow, the first real storm of the winter. You could feel the campus already relieving itself of students who fled to get home early. Even though there were classes clear through to Wednesday afternoon, kids were packing up and taking off for a long holiday break.
I met Stella at a sub shop on the corner near Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Books. We headed north together toward Ann Street, as if I somehow might lose my way. It was only a couple blocks; Stella, wearing only her “Q” jacket, was visibly cold, and walked faster than I expected a pregnant woman to walk to keep warm. She looked like a freshman who was still wearing the clothes she brought with her to campus in August; everybody we saw on the streets looked similarly cold. After Thanksgiving, I knew, everyone would be back on campus wrapped in heavy winter coats for the last couple weeks of the semester.
I was cold too, to tell you the truth. I had on a light jacket, but at least I had on my Arbor State Abyssinian Wolves knit cap and scarf; I made a mental note to bring back my feather-down jacket from Detroit, even if for some reason I didn’t move in with Stella and Pammy.
I met Pammy, finally, on the front lawn of the house on Ann Street. She stood outside, wrapped warmly in a long, dark wool overcoat, calmly smoking, looking at the house appraisingly as if she were still thinking about renting it. But she and Stella had moved in weeks before; Pammy just didn’t like smoking in the house. She greeted us as we walked up the sidewalk.
“Hello,” she called to me. “You must be Clarissa.” Her dark brown hair had grown out somewhat from a Dorothy Hammill cut she had gotten in New York. She held out her hand to me.
“I have references,” I said, holding out a typewritten sheet of paper. Yes, I actually brought references.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Pammy, smiling at Stella. “You come highly recommended already.”
The three of us looked up at the house. It was a little rundown; it could use a coat of paint. The front yard was already gathering leaves that need to be raked. The wooden porch had a bench swing that would have hung by chains, but had already been taken down for the winter and sat resting on the planks of the porch. There was a long driveway that ran to the back to a garage with old wooden barn-style doors; one didn’t close, and I could see the Megatropolis Quartet station wagon parked inside. Next to the garage was a dwindling stack of firewood; the back yard was neat, rimmed in a chain-link fence.
We walked in the back door, which proceeded directly to stairs leading down to the basement. We took a left turn instead into the kitchen. There was a table with Pammy’s writing spread all over it; the oven was on and a sheet of cookies baking inside smelled delicious. Pammy shed her heavy coat and marched down the hall to hang it in the front closet. Her slim figure was lithe in a tight French-cut T-shirt and faded jeans. Neither Stella or I took off our jackets, although we could feel the warmth radiating from the oven; a wind-up timer rang and Stella grabbed some oven mitts and pulled out a sizzling tray of tollhouse cookies. She had timed her walk perfectly to campus and back—I wondered, had I been late to our rendezvous, whether the cookies would have burned and I would have been crossed off the prospective housemate list.
Adjacent to the kitchen was the dining room, which stood mostly empty; that led to the front living room which was fairly spacious but still also empty. A little study nook with a desk and shelves of books had been set up next to the foyer; this, too, was Pammy’s workspace, although she liked to do most of her work in the kitchen between meal times. Next to that was the foyer and front door, and the hallway leading back past a half-bathroom to the kitchen. From the foyer landing was a stair leading up to the second floor.
I mentioned all sorts of furniture I could bring back from Detroit to fill out the first floor, if they wanted, such as a sofa and a dining room table and some bookshelves. Nothing special, but things I knew my parents had stored in the basement or that I thought I could round up from the old neighborhood. Both Stella and Pammy were agreeable and excited.
Upstairs was the full bathroom with a tub and shower—the toilet ran continuously—and the four bedrooms. Stella had the room facing the backyard—she had a queen-sized bed with a pink bedspread all covered with clothes, which was strange, since all she seemed to wear was blue jeans and tennis shoes. Pammy had the one diagonally opposite facing the front yard; it was done up in dark, sober colors, and based on a quick peek looked very intellectual. Mine would be the one next to Pammy’s, with a big closet that concealed another door and stairs leading up to the attic. They still hadn’t decided what to do with the fourth bedroom—maybe a TV room or another study or a place for workout equipment or something.
There were radiators in all four rooms, but they only hissed a dusty chill. The second floor was quite a bit cooler than the first floor, and the house overall was noticeably draftier and colder the further one got from the warm kitchen. I made a note to have Daddy bring back some of those clear plastic sheets and a heat gun.
“So, what do you think?” asked Stella eagerly, once we were back down in the kitchen. “Would you like to move in?”
I finally felt comfortable enough to pull off my Abyssinian Wolves knit cap. “You had me with the cookies,” I said, smiling. I handed my deposit check to Pammy, who didn’t even look it over, but set it on the kitchen table next to some school papers she was grading. The cookies had cooled just enough to eat—the chocolate chips were still gooey—and we toasted our new housemate arrangement by eating half the sheet, getting our chins all covered in chocolate and crumbs in the process.
Afterwards, I said, “Well, have a happy Thanksgiving—I’ll see you on Sunday.” We hugged our goodbyes and put my Abyssinian Wolves knit cap back on. Pammy had gone into the half-bathroom and I surreptitiously set my typed sheet of references down among the papers on the table. Stella let me out the front door; I felt the planks of the front porch yield beneath my feet before I bounded down the path to the sidewalk in front of my new Ann Street home.
Next: Me and Sue Caza!
Archival Images:
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| Megaton Man balks at a serious relationship with the See-Thru Girl in Megaton Man #5 (Kitchen Sink Press, August 1985). |
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All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures on this page are ™ and © Don Simpson 2019, all rights reserved.
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