The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem Page A

Rachel Ebdus grabbed one of the comic books and looked at the cover. “Jack Kirby’s a god,” she said.
    “Oh, yeah, you’re into this stuff? You know the Silver Surfer?”
    “Everyone’s got Peter Max posters but I think Jack Kirby’s about ten times more psychedelic.”
    A Rachel word.
    “Yeah, sure,” said Croft. “But who do you like? Silver Surfer? Thor? What about Kirby’s DC stuff? You know Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth ?”
    Dylan’s gaze scattered against the comic-book covers. A man of stone, a man of fire, a man of rubber, a man of iron, a brown dog the size of a hippopotamus, wearing a mask. That was all Dylan saw before his sight blurred in the sun and shadow and the figures were liquefied into blobs like Abraham Ebdus’s abstractions.
    “Black Bolt,” said Rachel, tapping to point out a figure on the cover of one of the comic books. “You know, the Inhumans. The leader of the Inhumans.” Rachel seemed tangled in herself, seemed bewildered as Dylan to find herself in this conversation. The force of Dylan and his mother’s arrival at Isabel Vendle’s, the arrow of Rachel’s intention flying down the block, had been captured and utterly redirected by Croft and his comic books.
    “Sure, the strong silent type,” said Croft, grinning. “I get it.”
    “Croft, you are in irresponsible man,” said Isabel Vendle with weary affection.
    “Sweet Aunt Petunia,” said Croft obscurely.
    “Yes you are,” Isabel went on. “And now an irresponsible boy has brought his mother here to tell me he doesn’t want to visit me anymore on Saturdays. We know this because the boy isn’t interested in your comic books, Croft. He’s staring at me, isn’t he?” She flapped her newspaper so it bowed over her hands, then glared over the tented top. “Do you find me evil, Dylan? Or boring?”
    I find you psychedelic , Dylan wanted to say.
    “You know there probably isn’t any difference, Aunt Isabel. Not to the kid.”
    “You knew he wanted to quit, Isabel,” said Rachel, faintly recalling her purpose. “He tried to tell you.” She half stood in her chair to work her cigarettes out of her front pocket, then offered one to Croft, who shook his head.
    “Oh, I felt him working up to it,” said Isabel. “I’d imagined I might get another few weeks out of him.”
    “It’s a coming-of-age thing,” said Croft. “Running away from scary old ladies. I had to do it myself.”
    “Shut up, Croft.”
    That was the end of the discussion and the end of Dylan’s working for Vendlemachine. Croft went into the kitchen and returned with more glasses and they sat in the mottled sunlight squeezing lemon into Coca-Cola and turning the pages of his comic books, Dylan and Rachel and Croft, while Isabel Vendle stained her fingertips nearly to black with the ink of the Times . The Human Torch was the Invisible Girl’s younger brother, and the Invisible Girl was married to Mr. Fantastic, and Ben Grimm was The Thing and Alicia was his blind girlfriend, a sculptress who could honestly appreciate his hideous but monumental body, and the Silver Surfer was Galactus’s emissary and Galactus ate planets but the Silver Surfer had helped the Fantastic Four protect Earth, and Black Bolt couldn’t open his mouth because a single syllable of his speech was so powerful it might crack the world apart—Croft and his mother explained it all to Dylan, word balloons in the bright panels on the pale yellow paper, while Vendlemachine moved her lips silently and eventually dozed in her chair, and the late-October Sunday afternoon collapsed to evening, Abraham in his studio darkening squares of celluloid with brushstrokes, the nudes in the parlor below with no light to make them glow, the backyard window boxes and fire escapes black against the ruddy streaked sky, the street too dark to judge a throw properly so the spaldeen hit a kid in the face and anyway it was time for dinner. Dylan fell asleep in his chair for just a minute and for