Ulysses blinked several times in a nervous kind of way.
“Look,” said Flora. She grabbed The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! off her desk. She pointed at Alfred in his janitor uniform.
“See?” she said. “This is Alfred, and he is an unassuming, nearsighted, stuttering janitor who works cleaning the multifloor offices of the Paxatawket Life Insurance Company. He lives a quiet life in his studio apartment with only his parakeet, Dolores, for company.”
Ulysses looked down at the picture of Alfred and then up at Flora.
“Okay,” said Flora. “So, one day Alfred takes a tour of the Incandesto! cleaning solution factory, and he slips (Alfred T. Slipper — get it?) into a gigantic vat of Incandesto! and it changes him. And so now, when there is a great crisis, when malfeasance is apparent, Alfred turns himself into . . .” Flora flipped through the pages of the comic and stopped at the panel that showed the glowing, powerful Incandesto.
“Incandesto!” she said. “See? Alfred T. Slipper becomes a righteous pillar of light so painfully bright that the most heinous villain trembles before him and confesses!”
Flora realized that she was shouting the tiniest bit.
She looked down at Ulysses. His eyes were enormous in his small face.
Flora tried to sound calm, reasonable. She lowered her voice. “As Incandesto,” she said, “Alfred sheds light into the darkest corners of the universe. He can fly. Also, he visits the elderly. And that’s what a superhero is. And I think you might be one, too. At least, I think you have powers. So far, all we know about you is that you’re really strong.”
Ulysses nodded. He puffed out his chest.
“Flora!” her mother shouted. “Get down here. Dinner is ready.”
“But what else can you do?” said Flora to the squirrel. “And if you truly are a superhero, how will you fight evil?”
Ulysses furrowed his brow.
Flora bent down. She put her face close to his. “Think about it,” she said. “Imagine what we might be able to do.”
“Flora Belle!” her mother shouted. “I can hear you up there talking to yourself. You shouldn’t talk to yourself. People will hear you and think that you’re strange.”
“I’m not talking to myself!” Flora shouted.
“Well, then, with whom are you speaking?”
“A squirrel!”
There was a long silence from down below.
And then her mother shouted, “That’s not funny, Flora Belle. Get down here right now!”
When Flora came back upstairs after dinner, she found Ulysses curled up in a tight little ball, sleeping on her pillow. She put out her hand and touched his forehead with one finger.
His eyes twitched, but they didn’t open.
She picked up the pillow and moved it carefully to the foot of the bed. She changed into her pajamas, lay down, and imagined the words
A SUPERHERO SQUIRREL RESTED AT HER FEET, AND SO SHE WAS NOT LONELY AT ALL
emblazoned on the ceiling above her.
“That’s exactly right,” she said.
Before the divorce, before her father had moved out of the house and into an apartment, he had often sat beside her at night and read aloud to her from The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! It was his favorite comic. It always cheered him up to read about Alfred T. Slipper and Dolores. Her father did an excellent parakeet imitation. “Holy bagumba!” he would say in the voice of Dolores. “Holy unanticipated occurrences!”
“Holy unanticipated occurrences!” was what Dolores would say when something truly unexpected and unbelievable was happening, which was basically all the time. Life was pretty exciting when you were Incandesto’s parakeet.
Flora sat up and looked down at the sleeping squirrel.
“Holy unanticipated occurrences!” she said.
It sounded better when her father said it.
Not that he said it these days. He didn’t say much of anything anymore. Her father had always been a sad, quiet man, but since the divorce, he had become even sadder and quieter. Which was fine with Flora. Really. Cynics don’t like a lot of chatter.
Besides, Alfred T. Slipper was a quiet man, too. For instance, when he was on his tour of the Incandesto! manufacturing facility and had fallen into the vat of Incandesto!, he hadn’t said a single word. Not even “oops.”
Words had appeared above his head, however, and Flora’s father had read those words to her so many times that she could recite them by heart:
HE IS AN UNASSUMING JANITOR. BUT HE WILL DARE TO BATTLE THE DARKNESS OF THE UNIVERSE. DO YOU DOUBT HIM? DO NOT. ALFRED T. SLIPPER WILL LIVE TO FIGHT THE FORCES OF EVIL. HE WILL BECOME KNOWN TO THE WORLD AS INCANDESTO!
Flora lay back down. If the squirrel were in a comic, she thought, what words would have appeared in the space over his head when he was sucked into the vacuum cleaner?
HE IS AN UNASSUMING SQUIRREL.
Yep.
BUT HE WILL SOON CONQUER VILLAINS OF ALL STRIPES. HE WILL DEFEND THE DEFENSELESS AND PROTECT THE WEAK.
That sounded good, too.
HE WILL BECOME KNOWN TO THE WORLD AS ULYSSES!
Holy bagumba! Anything could happen. Together, she and Ulysses could change the world. Or something.
“Do not hope; instead, observe,” Flora whispered to calm herself down. “Just observe the squirrel.”
And then she fell asleep.
He woke in darkness. His heart was beating very fast. Something had happened. What was it?
He couldn’t think.
He was too hungry to think.
He sat up and looked around the room. He was in bed, and Flora’s feet were in his face. She was snoring. He could see the outline of her round head. He loved that head.
But, man, he was hungry.
The door to the bedroom was open. Ulysses got off the pillow and went out of the room. He crept along the dark hallway. He went down the stairs and past the little shepherdess.
The house was dark, but there was a light on in the kitchen.
The kitchen!
That was exactly where he needed to be.
He put his nose up. He sniffed. He smelled something cheesy, wonderful. He ran through the living room and the dining room and into the kitchen. He climbed up on the counter. And there it was! A lone cheese puff, perched on the edge of the red Formica countertop. He ate it. It was delicious.
Maybe there were more cheese puffs.
He opened a cabinet. And, yes, there was a big bag with the beautiful word Cheese-o-mania written in golden script on the front of it.
He ate until the bag was empty. And then he burped softly, gratefully. He looked around the kitchen.
Flora Belle Buckman! Get down here right now!”
“Don’t call me Flora Belle,” Flora muttered. She opened her eyes.
The room was bright with sunlight. She had been dreaming something wonderful. What was it?
She had been dreaming about a squirrel. In her dream, he was flying with his legs straight out in front of him and his tail straight out behind him. He was a squirrel on his way to save someone! He looked supremely, magnificently heroic.
Flora sat up and looked down at her feet. There was Ulysses, sleeping on the pillow. And he did look heroic. In fact, he was glowing. Just like Incandesto! Except oranger. He was extremely orange.
“What the heck?” said Flora.
She leaned over Ulysses and reached out a finger to touch his ear. She held the finger up to the light. Cheese. He was covered in cheese dust.