See what I mean about brains? My girl ain't slow. "Exactly. Ezekiel told me that the African spider-god Anansi was originally a tribesman who had acquired spiderlike powers. Sort of the original Spider-Man. That he got himself involved with gods and was elevated to godhood."
"Actual gods?" Mary Jane asked, her tone skeptical.
"Hey," I said. "I ate hot dogs with Loki a few months ago. And I saw Thor flying down Wall Street last week."
She laughed. "Good point. You aiming for a promotion?"
"Not if I can help it," I said. "But think about it. Say, for example, something really odd happened and I joined up with the Avengers. All of a sudden, I'm running around with a new crowd, gone from home a lot, hanging around with Thor, all that kind of thing. If it was two thousand years ago, it sure would look like I'd been accepted by beings with incredible powers, whisked off to their world and welcomed into their ranks."
She nodded. Then asked me, "Would that be so odd? For you to join a team like that?"
"Captain America doesn't think I'd be a team player," I told her. "We've talked about it in the past. And there was that whole thing where I wanted to join the Fantastic Four, but when they found out I was looking for a salary they got all skeptical about me."
"You thought the FF
paid?"
Mary Jane asked.
"I was about sixteen," I said. "I thought a lot of stupid things."
She smiled, shook her head, and started dishing up the omelets. "Eat up, Mister Parker. Get some food in you."
I took the plate from her and set it on the table. "Anyway. I didn't make a sterling first impression on the superhero community. And I've had all that bad press, courtesy of the
Bugle.
So there's always been a little distance between me and Cap and most of the other team players."
"It just seems…" She paused, toying with her fork. "You know. If you were part of a team, it might be safer."
"It might," I said. "But on the other hand, the Avengers are pretty upscale when it comes to villainy. They take on alien empires, aggressive nations, superdimensional evil entities, that kind of thing. I mostly do muggers. Guys robbing a grocery. Car thieves. You know—here, New York, with real people. There's no friendly neighborhood Thunder God."
"Did you call them up, at least?" she asked.
"Answering service," I said. "Who knows where they are this week? I left a message on their bulletin board system, but I don't know if they'll get in touch anytime soon since, you know. They mostly don't know who I am." I paused. "The secret identity thing probably hasn't helped endear me to my fellow good guys, thinking about it."
"What about Reed Richards?" she asked.
"Called Mister Fantastic's lab at six A.M.," I said. "He'd been there for an hour already. He said he'd see what he could find out, but he didn't sound optimistic. And he has to take Franklin to the dentist later. He said he'd get word to me by this afternoon, but…"
"But he's a scientist," she said. "Like you. He doesn't like the whole magic thing, either."
"It isn't that he doesn't like it. It's that he likes things to make sense.
Science makes sense. Some of it can be pretty complex, but it makes sense if you know what you're dealing with. It's solid, reliable."
"Predictable?"
'Well," I said. "Yes."
"You don't like things you can't predict," Mary Jane said. "Things you can't control. You don't know the magical stuff, and it doesn't seem to lend itself to being predicted or controlled—so you don't like it."
"So now I'm a control freak?" I asked.
She looked at me for a second. Then she said, "Peter. You've spent your entire adult life fighting crime, protecting people from bad guys of every description and otherwise putting yourself in danger for someone else's sake—while wearing brightly colored tights with a big black spider on the chest. I think it's safe to say you have issues."
"With great power…" I began.
She held up a hand and said, "I agree, God knows. But an abstract principle isn't why you do it. You do it because of what a robber did to Uncle Ben. You could have controlled that if you were there, but you weren't and you didn't. So now you've got to control every bad guy you possibly can. Be there for everyone you possibly can. That's control freaky. Constructively so."
I frowned down at my eggs. "I haven't really thought of it that way before."
"That's right," she said, deadpan. "You're a man."
I glanced up at her and smiled. "I'm glad you remembered."
She blushed a little. She does it much more pret-tily than I do. MJ leaned across our little table and kissed my nose. "Eat your breakfast, tiger."
The door to our little apartment opened, and Felicia stepped in, dressed in a dark gray business suitskirt that showed an intriguing amount of leg. She wore horn-rimmed glasses and had her silver blonde hair pulled back into a bun. "Pete, we're screwed. Hi, MJ."
I was still in my shorts, and MJ hadn't gotten dressed yet, either. I sat there with a bite of omelet halfway to my mouth. "Oh. Uh, Felicia, hey."
Mary Jane gave Felicia a glance and murmured to me, "Was the door unlocked?"
"No." I sighed.
Felicia closed the door behind her and peered out the peephole. "Sorry. I didn't want to stand around in your hallway and get spotted." She looked back at us and gave me an appreciative glance. "Well, hello there."
Mary Jane gave Felicia the very calm look that comes to people's faces only seconds before they load a deer rifle and go looking for a bell tower. She stood up, and I stood up with her, taking her arm firmly. "Uh, Felicia, give us a second to get dressed, okay?"
"You bet," Felicia said. She tilted her head, sniffing. "Mmmm. That omelet smells good. Are you guys going to eat that?"
"Why don't you have mine," Mary Jane said sweetly.
"Come on," I said, and walked Mary Jane out of the room. We got into the bedroom and shut the door.
"Are you sure she isn't evil anymore?" Mary Jane asked.
"Felicia wasn't ever really evil. Just… eviltolerant. And really, really indifferent to property rights."
Mary Jane scowled. "But if she was evil," she said, "you could beat her up and leave her hanging upside down from a streetlight outside the police station. And I would like that."
I tried hard not to laugh and kissed her cheek, then put the uniform on under a gray sweat suit and stuffed my mask into a pocket. Mary Jane went with jeans and a T-shirt, in which she looked genuine and gorgeous.
"She's not that bad," I said as we dressed.
"You know that."
"Maybe," she admitted.
"I think maybe you're having a bad day," I said. "I think that she's mostly a convenient target."
"Of course you'd say that," she snapped. Then she forced herself to stop, the harshness in her voice easing, barely. "Because you're insightful and sensitive. And because you're probably right."
"Yeah," I said. "That's hardly fair to you."
She lifted her hand in a gesture of appeasement. "Peter, I do my best to be rational and reasonable about everything I can. But I think maybe I'm running low on rationality where Felicia is concerned."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because she gets to help you when I can't," Mary Jane said. "Because you used to date her. Because she doesn't respect such banal conventions as marriage and probably wouldn't hesitate to rip off her clothes and make eyes at you, given half an excuse."
"MJ. She wouldn't do that."
"Oh? Then why is she dressed like some kind of corporate prostitute?"
I sat down next to my wife, put my hands on her shoulders, and said, "She wouldn't do that. And it wouldn't matter if she did. I'm with you, Red."
"I know," she said, frustrated. "I know. It's just…"