Paperback Trade

It amazed Peter how beautiful Mary Jane could be. Not just how pretty she was, but the different kinds of beauty she shifted between as easily as he’d change his shirt. He didn’t know if it was make-up, some kind of acting technique, or an alchemy coming out of just what kind of beautiful her boundless self-confidence was feeling at the moment.

Sometimes, she was like some awe-inspiring rock formation or body of water, a transcendent look of aesthetic perfection that almost precluded lust. Sometimes, there was just something cute about her, a kittenish adorability that amplified all the affection he felt toward her until he could barely stand not to wrap his arms around her and bury his face in her hair, just smell her and feel her warmth and be touching her. Then there was how she looked when she wanted a man to desire her: raw sex, the way she moved, the way she talked, just the way you could feel her looking at you. You could believe—often rightly, in Peter’s experience—that she was thinking up some kinky way of passing the time that you’d never dream of in a million years.

And the way she shifted between them! There she’d be, looking like some oil painting by a Renaissance master, and then she’d smile and instantly be as cute as a baby bird. And just when you were getting used to that, the smile would get a little more sultry, she’d look over at you a little more intently, and all of a sudden you’d be reminding yourself about birth control.

Peter wondered if people could guess that the ‘empty-headed sexpot’ (a much hated review Mary Jane hated so much she had to dredge it up once a week) had sides to just being a sexpot that they’d never seen. And they say I have a secret identity.

Right now, Mary Jane was bounding up to him, looking as cute as a baby ocelot, with a grin and a bounce in her step like she was going to throw herself in his arms and Eskimo kiss him or something. It was adorable. “Hey Pete, need a favor.”

“Hit me,” Peter said, and got a bopping blow on his upper arm reminiscent of a bunny rabbit.

He was sitting at their apartment’s kitchen nook at the moment, looking through their bills. He was convinced that the mechanism of the universe in charge of sending those things was busted, because he got no time between paying one and getting another. You’d think there’d be a little time slotted for him to actually be able to see money going into his bank account, but no, it seemed to go straight from Jolly Jonah’s hot little hands to his creditors, without Peter even getting to smell it.

But, it was hard to worry about that with Mary Jane sitting down next to him, cute as a button, so cute he could almost ignore the average, everyday sex appeal of Mary Jane in a tight blouse and tightish jeans—the bagginess intriguing because he could make out the shape of her legs, but not the actual outline. 

“I’m meeting with someone on Craigslist to get a book and I need someone—“ She prodded his ankle with her foot. “To come with me and make sure I don’t get murdered. Or at least that I don’t die alone, like some loser.”

“Sure thing.” Peter dropped the bill on the pile. It could wait a little bit. And with the way trouble (sorry, ‘excitement’) seemed to cling to Mary Jane, he gave it a fifty/fifty chance that this would all lead to him fighting good ol’ Doc Doom. Which would mean pictures for Jameson, which would mean he could start worrying about the next bill instead of this one. “Let me get my jacket.”

“Actually,” Mary Jane said, favoring him with a beguiling look. “I was thinking you could put on the costume. You look so good in it…”

“Coming from you, that’s high praise,” Peter commented. “But come on, who are you buying this book from, Galactus?”

“No, just some guy,” Mary Jane said. “But he could be six foot five, or a mutant, who knows? Even an Inhuman, they’re a thing. And even if he’s just an average guy, you’re—“

“I’m…?” Peter asked leadingly.

Mary Jane petted his shoulder. “You’re not the most intimidating person. Which is good! Means your secret identity is working! But I don’t need mild-mannered Clark Kent right now. I need Superman.”

Peter pried her hand off his shoulder. “Yeah, but I’m always Superman. I don’t stop being Kryptonian just because I put on glasses. Metaphor. If he starts something, I’ll still be able to throw him over the Empire State Building.”

“Yeeeeah,” Mary Jane drawled out. “But then there’s your secret, and how anxious you get about anyone finding out you’re a superhero, and honestly, if he pulled a knife, you’d probably just act really scared and hand over my purse so he doesn’t think you’re Spider-Man. You’d probably hand over your purse too.”

“I don’t have a purse,” Peter asserted. “It’s a very small duffel bag. Anyway, even if I didn’t knock him out just for touching your purse without asking, I’d just change into Spider-Man, hunt him down, get our stuff back. Boom, problem solved.”

“Unless—“ Mary Jane countered, “you get distracted by some big emergency, let him get away with all our stuff, and then I have to make you sleep on the couch just because of the principle of the thing.” And now Mary Jane shifted effortlessly from general peak human attractiveness to outright Jessica Rabbit singing Madonna hot, leaning on the table to show how low her shirt was cut and giving him a hot-eyed gaze that made Peter feel like the back of his neck was having a nuclear meltdown. “I don’t want that. I like cuddling with you. Don’t you like cuddling with me?”

Peter gulped. “MJ, Spider-Man does not put in personal appearances. He just doesn’t.”

“Not even—“ Mary Jane leaned over further. “For his very loving wife, who puts up with so much, and loves him so much, and is so hot.”

“There probably won’t even be any trouble,” Peter insisted. “How many Craigslist deals can possibly end in violence? Less than one percent, easy. Otherwise, what would the business model even be?”

“Are you kidding me?” Mary Jane asked, putting both hands on his cheeks. “This city has about a hundred superheroes in it and the crime rate is still worse than Detroit. I’m surprised we haven’t had a home invasion while we’ve been having this conversation. Put on the suit.”

“But… but… it’s an important aspect of my totemic…”

“I know you did not just bring up that totem stuff,” Mary Jane interrupted. “C’mon, Pete. We could already be on the way there. And the sooner we’re there, the sooner we’re home. And the sooner we’re home, the sooner I can cuddle up with a good book and my husband who I love so, so much, and am so grateful to—“ She began massaging Peter’s scalp, scratching her fingernails along it. 

Peter didn’t know how it was possible that in his teen years, he’d been so obsessed with blowjobs and anal and the usual buzzwords any thirteen-year-old boy was drawn to when they discovered internet pornography. Why had no one told him of the simple pleasures of having his hand scratched by a woman with a premium manicure? He wouldn’t say it was better than sex, but God, it beat the heck out of scratching his own head.

“Think of it, Peter,” Mary Jane whispered, smoldering. “You can lie down on the couch with your head in my lap. I’ll give you a scratch with one hand and read my rare Species tie-in novel with the other…”

“Species?” Peter asked.

“It’s empowering.”

“Is it?”

“Peter, costume, now. I refuse to believe that you’ll drop everything and Spider-Man because you saw a car do an illegal U-turn, but not when I ask you to.” 

She didn’t sound sexy anymore. She sounded frustrated and incensed and Peter hated to be the cause of that.

“What about,” Peter began to suggest, “a compromise?”

***

As agreed, they met in the parking lot of a McDonald’s. He—Barry442—was in the driver’s seat of a Caddy, wearing the uniform of the Home Depot he had to get to. After her brisk walk from the nearest subway station, Mary Jane envied him the ride and the Happy Meal he was chomping down on. Models didn’t eat fast food and Manhattanites didn’t own cars.

“You’re Barry442?” she called to him, standing close to the restaurant’s Ronald McDonaldified drive-thru speaker.

“Maybe,” he replied. “Who’s asking?”

Mary Jane walked across the drive-thru lane. “I e-mailed you about buying a book. You’ve got it?”

“Yeah. You’ve got the money?”

“Uh-huh.” Mary Jane suddenly pointed over to the roof of a nearby IHOP. “Oh, look, it’s Daredevil.”

Up on the rooftop, and feeling remarkably unfashionable in a skintight one-piece that was all the same color, Peter didn’t look up from his phone. He’d long since learned that things were less embarrassing without eye contact. “Hey guys, don’t mind me, just happen to be taking a breather here. Just have a stitch in my side—resting it. Play nice.”

Mary Jane flashed a wad of small bills at Barry442. “Well, that’s New York for you. Can I get my book now?”

***

Peter was expecting this to come up the next time he saw Matt. He wasn’t expecting the next time he saw Matt to be when he got into the elevator at the Daily Bugle and someone immediately pressed the emergency stop.

“You know, it’s really rude to deny people an elevator this way,” Peter said. “We’re basically forcing them to use the stairs. Even Richard Simmons doesn’t go that far.”

“What was Daredevil doing on top of an IHOP in Soho?”

“Well,” Peter said, “I heard he was just sitting down for a moment and not doing anything objectionable.”

“There are pictures. People have been making memes. Do you know how hard it is to fight crime when you’re a meme?”

Peter’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How would you know what people are saying online? Can you touch the internet now? Because if you can, I really was born too early.”

“Foggy’s been quoting them to me. And Karen. And Nat.”

“Well see, you have something to talk about with your friends. That just sounds like a winner who’s good at social interaction to me.”

The elevator’s phone started to ring. Matt sighed and released the emergency stop. The elevator car jolted into motion.

“I suppose since Matt Murdock was in court at the time, this just might prove to someone that there’s no way he could be Daredevil,” Matt said unconvincingly.

“See? There ya go.”

“But I could just as easily have been fighting Bullseye, and if that were the case, seeing two Daredevils at the same time could’ve made someone go back and double-check another of our little roleplays.”

“Please don’t call them that.”

“Cosplay.”

“No.”

“Swaps.”

“Well, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it—“ 

Matt scowled at him. “Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t! I only did it this time for Mary Jane, I swear.”

The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. Thankfully, no one was there.

“God knows I root for you two,” Matt said, “Which makes all this a little better. At least one of us is getting some.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, thinking of Mary Jane’s long nails as the scratched down his hairline and along the back of his neck, then just his back. It had felt like his skin was doing lines of coke. “I tapped that.”