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“One last kiss?” she asked. “To save a life?”
The final panel of the page depicted Ranger lowering his head over Axel’s, their lips barely touching, a golden, lifesaving light flowing from one man’s mouth into another, while Earth glowed like a jewel in the black sky above them.
“This is obscene,” said Walter.
“I think it’s beautiful,” said Charles. “Ranger got to speak with his lost love again. That love helped to save his friend.”
“You can try to bamboozle me with your mumbo jumbo, Ambrose, but all I see is Captain Kismet kissing a boy. And it sickens me.”
“He wasn’t really kissing him!” protested Charles. “He was kissing her!”
“I don’t care,” Walter said, his patience waning like the cigarette in his hand. “I am not putting this filth in my magazine.”
“All right,” said Charles. “Give me and the writer a little more time, and we can come up with an alternate ending. Something less…controversial.” He had known, of course, that Walter would almost certainly hate this final issue, that even with the pretext of Sura’s ghost and Ranger’s sweetheart Penny standing mere steps away, the image of Ranger cradling Axel would be too much. But when Iris had told him how the story ended, how Captain Kismet’s truest and greatest strength was his love, Charles had been so excited that he’d insisted they at least try.
So often an act of creation was an act of dilution, of compromise: grabbing at the soft purity of an idea, squeezing it so hard to hold it still that it became dented and bruised beyond all recognition. Every early sketch felt like a crude blasphemy, a child’s mural daubed on a temple wall. In this story, Iris had captured exactly what she wanted to say, and his drawings had brought that to life, given it meaning. He could not have been prouder if the pages had come to life and called him “Father.”
“You’re not hearing me, Charles,” said Walter. “When I say that I will not publish this filth, I am also referring to you.”
“Me?”
“You and your kind.” Walter stubbed out his cigarette, any goodwill he had been feigning toward Charles evaporating along with the smoke. “This is a family business, Charles. My son comes in here and helps out after school. Did you really expect that I would allow you to keep on coming around?”
Charles was so horrified by Walter’s implication that he could not formulate a response, which Walter seemed to interpret as confirmation that his suspicions were correct.
“I want you out of my office and out of my magazine, Charles,” he said. “Now.”
“Fine,” said Charles, the rage finally coming. “We’ll take Captain Kismet elsewhere. People love him, not your cheap rag, Walter. The readers will follow their hero.” His cheeks spiked with red heat, and he could only imagine he was glowing scarlet like Axel.
“That’s where you’re wrong again.” Walter lit another cigarette. “The adventures of Captain Kismet and his assorted companions will very much continue, here at Wonder Magazine.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you read your contract?”
“My contract?”
“I own Captain Kismet.” Walter blew smoke across his desk, directly into Charles’s eyes. “I always have.”
Charles could tell with a sick certainty that Walter was not bluffing. He and Iris had both been so swept up in the thrill of the story they were telling and the money they were being paid to do so that they had taken Walter at his word. What utter fools they were.
“But he is not your invention,” he said, weakly. “You’re stealing him.”
“This is America,” said Walter, shrugging. “It’s not stealing if we both signed that piece of paper.”
“It’s not right.” To his own indignant fury, Charles’s eyes were watering from the smoke. “We’ll…we’ll take you to court.”
“This is America,” Walter repeated. “I don’t think either of you are going to want to draw any more attention to yourselves than you already have, do you?”
The threat wasn’t even veiled. Walter could report Charles and Iris as any number of things. Pornographers. Predators. Communists. And he would be believed.
Charles wanted to tell Walter Haywood so much. That Captain Kismet’s costume was as inspired by the leather men he saw in the bars as it was by an actual pilot’s uniform. That he’d modeled Sura’s appearance on a working girl he’d known in the war. That Axel was Iris’s tribute to her beloved fey brother. That Penny Haven was almost entirely their old friend Joey, who, much like one of Tolkien’s grand elves, had gone far into the West where Joey could be short for Joanne. That this world they’d created, the world currently making Wonder Magazine such a hit, was built and populated by inverts.
But it didn’t matter. Because this world had its own rules, and Charles and Iris had broken them all.
“Now get out of my office.” Walter grinned, and it was the ugliest sight Charles had ever seen outside of wartime.
* * *
