Two Birds
He heard her before he saw her and the voice was wrong for the room. Bright, confident, aimed at a man who ate confidence for breakfast.
"I type seventy words a minute," MJ said. "I can answer phones and I don't cry when people yell at me. My last boss was my father, so the bar for workplace hostility is basically underground."
Peter was standing in the doorway of the Daily Bugle with his camera bag on his shoulder and his ribs mostly healed and Mary Jane Watson sitting across from J. Jonah Jameson's desk in a green blouse he'd never seen, her hair pulled back, a resume on good paper in her lap.
Betty was behind her desk with a coffee mug, watching.
"Parker." Jameson didn't look up from the resume. "You know this girl?"
MJ turned in the chair. Green eyes. The corner of her mouth moving before the rest of her face decided to follow.
"Hey, Tiger. Small world."
"What are you doing here?"
"Applying for a job." She held up the resume. "Weekend receptionist. There was a card in the window."
Peter looked at Betty. Betty's face said she hadn't known either. She went back to her coffee.
"You two know each other," Jameson said.
"Neighbors," Peter said.
"Neighbors," MJ said. Same time. Same word. Same tone.
Betty set her coffee down.
Jameson turned the resume over. Looked at the blank back. "No references."
"I'm sixteen. My references are my English teacher and the lady at the bodega who lets me use the phone."
"Why do you need the job?"
MJ's chin went up. A millimeter. "Because I'd rather work than not."
Peter knew why she needed money that didn't come through the house. He'd heard the voice through the wall. The lie was hers and he let it sit.
Jameson looked at Betty. "Brant?"
Betty looked at MJ for a long time. Peter watched her see it. Betty Brant knew what a girl who needed a job and wouldn't say why looked like. She'd been that girl three years ago, standing in this same office with a resume that was mostly blank and a need she couldn't explain. She'd told Peter that once, late, while he was waiting for prints. She hadn't told him the details.
"She'll be fine," Betty said. "I can train her Saturday."
"Saturday. Eight sharp." Jameson dropped the resume. "You're late, I dock you. You answer my phone wrong, I fire you. You cry, I fire you."
"Do you provide the tissues or do I bring my own?"
Jameson looked up. MJ was smiling. The full one. The performance.
"Eight sharp," he said. A corner of his mouth went up and settled back.
MJ smoothed the green blouse as she stood. She'd ironed it. Peter knew because he'd seen the ironing board through her kitchen window from the driveway. First time he'd seen her iron anything.
"Tiger." She was standing near Betty's desk now and the two of them were in the same room for the first time and his attention divided between them and didn't know how to come back together. "You work here."
"Freelance. Photos."
"Photos." She looked around the Bugle. The cluttered desks, the glass-walled office, the darkroom in the back with the red light showing under the door. "So this is where you disappear to."
"I don't disappear."
"Tiger." The word was light. Monday was underneath it. The fence, the bruise, the screen door closing. Betty was right there and Peter kept his face still.
"I have photos to develop," he said, because his mouth found the nearest exit.
Betty watched him go. Betty watched everyone but she watched Peter with a specific attention and right now she was watching him walk away from Mary Jane Watson's green eyes and he didn't look back to check.
The darkroom was warm. Red safelight on from Jameson's morning batch. Developer bath, fixer, the acetic acid smell that stuck to his forearms. He rolled his sleeves up and loaded the first roll and watched the image come up through the chemistry.
He was watching an image surface in the developer bath when she appeared in the doorway.
Arms crossed. Leaning against the frame. The red light turned her hair darker, auburn instead of orange-red, and her green blouse was black in the safelight and her skin was warm red and her eyes were on his hands. She didn't say anything.
He timed it by the developer clock on the wall. Not because he was counting but because when someone watches you work you notice clocks, and this clock had a second hand that was loud in the quiet room. He lifted a print with the tongs, held it to drip, watched the excess developer slide off the glossy paper. Clipped it to the drying line. The print was a rooftop shot, water tower against a grey sky. A test frame for the shutter rig. Nothing worth keeping but the exposure was good.
He loaded the next sheet. The image surfaced through the chemistry. Construction site, the chain hanging from the crane arm, web anchor points visible as discoloration on the steel if you knew what to look for. Evidence of Saturday night in a developer bath. He pulled it and hung it.
MJ was still in the doorway. She hadn't moved. She hadn't spoken. She was watching his hands move through the process and the red light was on her face and her lips were slightly parted and she was biting the lower one at the left corner, which she did when she was thinking about what to say and hadn't decided yet.
"You have good hands."
He dropped the print in the bath. It went in crooked, one corner folding under. He fished it out with the tongs and straightened it and kept his eyes on the developer because if he looked at her right now he was going to say what he was thinking and what he was thinking had no business being said in an office with four other people in it.
In the edge of his vision, her mouth shifted in the red light. The small smile. The one that didn't perform.
"I'm not going to break your darkroom, Tiger."
"I'm very calm."
"You dropped a photo."
"Slippery tongs."
She watched him work for another minute. He loaded a second sheet and the image came up. Rooftop, Queens skyline, a pigeon on a ledge he'd been using as a rest stop between swings. He pulled it and hung it.
"You do this a lot," MJ said. "Come here after school."
"Most days."
"And you develop photos in the dark and your boss yells at you and you go home."
"That's the job."
"And you disappear sometimes."
He looked at her. The red light was on her face. She was still leaning in the doorway. Her arms were still crossed. But the banter was done and the question was real.
"I take photos in the field," he said. "That's the 'disappearing' part."
"Okay." She held his eyes for two beats. "Okay, Tiger."
"Mhm." She pushed off the frame and walked back to the office. The smell of her stayed in the doorway for a few seconds. Laundry detergent and warmth, skin warmth, the kind the chemical air couldn't quite cover.
He developed three more prints. Two were overexposed because he'd left them in the bath too long thinking about her hands comment instead of the timer. He tossed the bad ones and hung the good one and his forearms smelled like developer fluid and his stomach had the same twist it had Monday at the fence when her palm was warm on his skin.
He didn't see the moment it happened. He was hanging the last print when he heard Betty's voice near the filing cabinets and MJ's voice answering, low, and then neither of them was talking.
He came out. They were standing six feet apart. Betty was holding a scheduling binder. MJ was leaning against the filing cabinet with her arms crossed, facing the darkroom doorway. She'd been watching him through the doorway again.
Betty had walked past and found her there. Had seen what MJ was looking at through the doorway. Had seen the lip between MJ's teeth. The half-smile.
Their eyes met.
Betty blushed. It started at the collar of her cardigan and climbed to her cheeks, fast, the kind that doesn't stop once it starts. Her fingers went white on the scheduling binder.
MJ didn't blush. She held the eye contact. Calm. Aware.
Betty looked away first. Went to her desk. MJ straightened up and walked toward the front and she left without saying goodbye to Peter.
The office was quiet. Jameson was on the phone in the glass office. The ventilation hummed. A car honked outside.
"She watches you," Betty said.
She was looking at her filing system. Her voice was flat. Professional. The voice she used when she was reading dispatch times off a report. But her mouth was pressed thin and a muscle in her jaw went tight. A millimeter of jaw. You'd miss it.
"MJ?" he said, because saying her name was safer than silence.
"She's your neighbor."
"Yeah."
Betty started typing. Her fingers were loud on the keys. She didn't say anything else. The typing was louder than typing needs to be and she kept her eyes on the screen.
Peter stood there with his prints and the developer smell on his forearms and neither of them looking at him.
He put the prints on Jameson's desk. Jameson held one up, squinted, said "These are garbage. I'll take four." Peter said "Thanks, J.J." and Jameson said "Don't call me that" and Peter left.
The elevator was slow. A delivery guy was in it with a hand truck. "You work here?" "Sort of." "The guy who runs this place called me an imbecile over the phone. Is he always like that?" "Usually worse." The guy laughed and Peter laughed and the elevator was the easiest conversation he'd had all afternoon because it was with a stranger about Jameson and nobody in the elevator was watching him or pressing their mouth thin or biting their lip in red light.
The elevator opened. Peter walked out onto 39th Street.
October afternoon. His ribs barely hurt anymore. The bruise was yellow-green at the edges, shrinking. His body was fixing the Vulture damage faster than it should have been.
A woman across the street was trying to get a stroller through a door that was too narrow. Third try. She made it.
His forearms smelled like developer fluid. His stomach still had the darkroom twist, MJ's voice and the red light and her eyes on his hands. And Betty's typing had been louder than it needed to be. Loud enough to hear through the wall. She'd wanted him to hear it and he had no idea what to do with that.
He walked home.