Are You There and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

comic books. The comics were the only neatly arranged objects visible, stacked in orderly piles on a gate leg table in the dining alcove. Norman strode over. On the top of the first stack was The Shadow , vol. 5, issue 6: The Death Master’s Vengeance . Norman’s fingers trembled over the cover.
    “Not so fast!”
    Norman spun around in time to block the fat man’s attempt to brain him with a beer bottle. He knocked the bottle away and grabbed the man’s undershirt in his fists and gave him a hard shake. The man’s face bunched up, red cheeks popping out like cherry apples all webbed with an alcoholic’s burst capillaries.
    “I don’t know from lawyers, mister, but I’d say you’re a thief , for sure.”
    Norman pulled him close, nose to nose. “We’ll see who the thief is.”
    He released the man and picked up the comic. “My father wrote his initials in every book he ever owned.”
    “So?”
    Norman peeled back the cover of The Death Master’s Vengeance . On the first page, in the upper right hand corner, in blue ink faded into the ancient paper: B.H.: Bernie Helmcke.
    And Norman felt . . . nothing.
    Holding the impossible artifact in his hand, a comic book from his father’s lost collection, burned by his stepfather more than forty years ago, Norman felt absolutely nothing . Whatever hole its absence had made in his psyche remained unfilled. Norman rolled the mag up in his fist and started for the door.
    The fat man grabbed his arm. “Hold on—”
    Norm jerked his arm loose and shoved the man over the back of his chair. His legs stuck up in a “V” capturing the fish bowl picture tube, where a blurry Indian Chief’s head wobbled.
    *
    Scout was sitting in front of the hotel licking her butt when Norman came out. She stopped, and stood up on all fours.
    “I see you survived.”
    “Yes.”
    “And you got your Shadow .”
    “Right.”
    “But you don’t feel any better, do you?”
    “Look, Mona—”
    “Scout.”
    “Look, Scout. Do you know something I don’t know? And besides that, what made you think that fat nitwit was going to hurt me?”
    “I just like to keep you on your toes, Norm. Also I didn’t know he was going to be a fat nitwit; this is a very dangerous place, generally. And yes: I know something you don’t know.”
    “Would you like to share that information?”
    “Perhaps.”
    “Has anybody ever told you how annoying you can be?”
    “Is that what you’re telling me?”
    “Perhaps.”
    Scout put her nose up in the air. “Well. I’m glad to see your sense of humor is showing at least feeble signs of recovery.”
    “There’s never been anything wrong with my sense of humor.”
    “On the contrary, it’s been dead as a crate of door nails, as Dickens might have said. What you refer to as your sense of humor has really been bottled vitriol. Would you like me to tell you why the retrieval of your dad’s comic book failed to fill in any of the gaps in your windy head?”
    “You talk too much.”
    “I’m not talking at all, if you want to get technical. Anyway the reason you can’t fill gaps with comic books, or anything else, is that there is only one absolutely essential element, and without it all you are is a gap. Everybody has a portion of the essential element. In your case you decided to bury it deep. Hey, nobody’s blaming you; you got a rough shake. It was this element that the Thief had been after from the very beginning. He only took all that other stuff because he couldn’t find the damn thing.”
    “Are you going to get to the point one of these days?”
    Scout started walking. She tossed her head and thought-projected: “Love.”
    Norman caught up with her. “What about love?”
    “Without it, nothing is vitalized—that’s what about it.”
    “ Bon Nuit ,” Norman said. The comic book crackled in his fist.
    “The perfume doesn’t matter. It’s about your ability to experience love at all.”
    Norman halted at a bus stop, inspected the bench for