in black and white. The word balloons hung empty, the actress waiting for her lines. She did battle with robotic thugs on another page and her spinning kick sent one flying toward the reader, his steel jaw landing outside the lines of the panel.
“Long time ago,” Tyler said.
“These are good.” She looked toward him. “I mean, these are really good.”
“The Steel Web,” he said, looking faintly bashful. “Cybernetic defender of New Amsterdam in the post-robot-apocalypse of 2248.”
“New Amsterdam? Where’s that, Holland?”
“Nah, New Amsterdam was the original name for New York City. See, I wanted something futuristic because, you know, rebuilding after the robot apocalypse. But ‘New New York’ sounded wrong, ‘Neo York’ was too anime. Then I was going to call it ‘Noir York’ but it turns out there’s a whole series of fantasy novels that uses that…” He trailed off. “And I sound like a massive geek.”
“You didn’t get the memo. Being a geek is cool now.” She looked back to the pages. “I like her cable thing, it’s like Spider-Man.”
“Yeah, I totally stole that. I was a huge Spidey fan as a kid. I liked the idea of a hero who spent as much time helping people as he did punching the bad guys. That’s what got me into art in the first place. I wanted to tell my own stories. I had a little knack for drawing and a lot of time to practice. Well, I had a lot of time for doing my homework, but I used it for practicing.”
“I hear that,” Seelie said. “I can’t draw, but I wrote fan fiction in middle school.”
“Fan fiction for what?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“After everything you’ve been through,” Tyler said, “I’m not going to laugh about your fan fiction. What’d you write about?”
“My Little Pony.”
Tyler pursed his lips. Slow, eyes darting to one side, his cheeks taut. A giggle burst out as she lightly punched his arm.
“Dick,” she said, but her smile mirrored his.
“Sorry, sorry.” He paused, sly. “I mean, there’s nothing to laugh about. The magic of friendship is serious business.”
“Last time I tell you anything. I will remain a mysterious enigma from this point forward. So how does an artist end up working for a newspaper instead of…you know, arting?”
There was something wistful in his eyes now, a haze of mingled regrets.
“Not much support for the arts in my house, growing up. My old man was a teamster, and he didn’t have a lot of respect for anybody who didn’t make a living with their muscles. My mom…well, she agreed with whatever Dad said. Survival mechanism. Then I met the love of my life, and her folks told me there was no way in hell I’d ever marry their daughter if I didn’t have a stable career.”
“Like they could stop you?”
Tyler shrugged. “No, but…you get enough people in your life telling you that you’re crazy for chasing a dream, it’s hard not to start thinking they might be right. It’s easy to just take that dream and put it aside for a while. Just a while, until you find your footing in the world.”
He left the rest unspoken, but Seelie heard it in the silence. “A while” had a way of turning into forever. A small photograph stood framed on the television stand. Tyler hugging a beaming woman from behind, his younger, tighter face nestled in her flow of curls. The woman cradled an infant in her arms.
“Is that her?” Seelie asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
This was a one-bedroom apartment, no space for a kid, no sign of the woman in the photograph. She didn’t ask for details, the story of what went wrong, and he didn’t offer. She took the blanket and pillow from his arms.
“You know,” she said, nodding to the comic pages, “it’s never too late to make a change.”
He didn’t have an answer. She wasn’t sure if he didn’t have one for her, or if he didn’t have one for himself. He made a vague gesture toward the couch.
“We should get some sleep,” he said, “maybe get an early start in the morning.”
“Yeah.” She watched him pad to the bedroom door. “Hey, Tyler?”
He turned in the doorway.
“Thanks,” she said. “For letting me crash tonight.”
“Sleep good,” he said.
The bedroom door glided shut. Seelie spread the blanket out on the sofa and kicked off her shoes.
It wasn’t until she was reaching for the lamp, clicking it off to plunge the living room into darkness, that she noticed the spot on the television stand was empty.
* * *
Tyler slipped into