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Betty Brant had heard the ruckus and had walked over to see what was happening. She looked in astonishment at Peter, who had never displayed this sort of violent behavior before. “Peter, are you guys okay?”

  Feeling his world slipping away from him, Eddie said with a forced chuckle, “We’re fine. Just horsing around.” He tried to push Peter away but couldn’t budge him. Parker may have looked slight, but he had muscles of iron. “Please, please, I’m begging you,” Eddie said in a desperate whisper. “If this gets out, there’s not a paper in town that’ll hire me. I’ll lose everything.” “You should’ve thought of that earlier.” Drawn over by Betty’s concerned inquiry, Robbie Robertson was now standing directly behind her. If Betty was suprised at Peter’s display of aggression, Robbie was positively incredulous. “What are you doing, Peter?” Peter stepped back, releasing his hold on Eddie. Brock sagged, gasping, and Parker picked up the envelope that he’d tossed onto Brock’s desk. Turning away from Brock, he walked past Robertson, slowing only to shove the envelope at him with such force that Robbie was actually staggered half a step. Parker didn’t even bother facing Robertson, but called back to him as he walked away, “Show this to your editor. Tell him to check out his sources.”

  Peter disappeared down the hallway. Robbie and Betty watched him go and then, in unison, shifted their gaze back to Eddie. Robertson held up the envelope and said quietly, “You want to tell me what this is about, Eddie?”

  “Hey, how should I know?” said Brock, trying to bluff it through. He shrugged. “Dude’s crazy.” “Is he.”

  Without another word, Robertson headed to Jameson’s office. Betty lingered a moment more, barely veiled contempt in her eyes. Then she too walked away, and Eddie Brock glanced at his watch, wondering how long it would take to receive The Summons.

  Nine minutes.

  Nine minutes before he was standing in Jameson’s office, all the strength drained out of his legs.

  Betty Brant had not been thrilled when Eddie Brock had shown up at the Bugle with that incriminating photograph of Spider-Man, for any number of reasons. She hadn’t believed that Spider-Man was a crook; she had hated to see Eddie Brock take the photography job away from Peter; Jonah Jameson was never more insufferable than when he felt vindicated about something.

  But when she saw Eddie Brock shoved around… something was seriously wrong for Peter Parker to be driven to such violence. This wasn’t simply anger at being outdone by another photographer. Peter was morally outraged, and she didn’t doubt for a second that his anger was righteous.

  So when she was told to summon Eddie Brock to Jonah’s office, she made certain to leave the door open so she could see as well as hear everything.

  Jonah was on the other side of the desk, holding up the documents that had been in the envelope. There were copies of what looked to be several photos, and what appeared to be a detailed written analysis of the two. Robertson was just putting the phone down, ending a call, and he said to Jameson, “Empire State photographic department confirms it.”

  Fixing a gaze of pure disgust upon Brock, Jameson I said, “Pack your things. Get out of my building.” “I was just trying to—” “You’re fired!” Jameson thundered. For a split second, Betty thought that Brock was going to burst into tears. Instead he squared his shoulders and hurried out of the office as quickly as he could. He cast a glance at Betty, as if looking for sympathy. He found none in her eyes and kept going.

  He’d faked the photo. That had to be it. He’d faked the photo, probably using one of Peter’s old shots, and Peter had caught him. No wonder he’d been so angry. If it had been Betty, she’d probably have kneed Brock where it hurt. All things considered, she thought Peter Parker had been remarkably restrained. Good riddance.

  “You know we’re going to have to print a retraction,” a grim Robertson said.

  “I haven’t printed a retraction in twenty years!” snarled Jameson, which wasn’t technically true. The Bugle printed minor corrections all the time. But that was a far cry from having to admit that a front-page headline was based on a fabrication. “Now on account of this little pipsqueak—!” Betty saw Jameson’s face going purple and was instantly on her feet and in his office. She carried a small sculpture that looked like a miniature gazebo. Four narrow, tinkling chimes were hanging from it, bumped up against each other as she moved. Their pleasant sound was intended to be soothing. “Boss, boss, remember what your wife said. Don’t get angry.” She placed the sculpture in front of Jameson like an offering before a wrathful god. “Ring the Chimes of Serenity.”

  Jameson glared at her balefully, then tipped the sculpture slightly. The chimes sang out their cheerful tune. Jameson switched his burning gaze from Betty to the chimes. He didn’t look any calmer, but before Betty could say anything, Hoffman entered, displaying his customary air of agitation. “You know that campaign you told me not to run? I ran it.”

  Jameson made a strangled noise, and Hoffman quickly held up the chimes, ringing them with intense desperation. “Ah, ah, ah… remember—the Chimes of Serenity.”

  Slowly, carefully, Jameson took the chimes from Hoffman and made a halfhearted attempt to concentrate on their ringing. Betty actually thought they were starting to have a calming effect on him. Then Hoffman made the mistake of saying, “And… we lost money.”

  Jameson’s hand came to a full stop. The chimes ceased their tinkling. “How much?” he said softly, dangerously.

  Hoffman licked his dry lips and leaned forward, whispering an amount in Jameson’s ear. Jameson remained immobilized with fury for a moment, then suddenly he upended the chimes and smashed the entire thing onto the desk. The statue shattered, bits of gazebo going one way, little chimes skidding in the other. Hoffman bolted out of the office, nearly running over Betty in his desire to escape.

  Consequently he didn’t see the surprised expression on Jameson’s face as he surveyed the busted sculpture and declared, “Oh! I do feel better!”

  Gwen Stacy was feeling better.

  The previous day had been a living hell. Although her father had never come out and said he blamed her for the tremendous humiliation of honoring a felon, she couldn’t shake the silent accusation in his eyes. And, boy, did she bear about it at school from students, who were saying tilings like, “So… what’s it like lip-locking a criminal?” me would have sought solace from Peter Parker, but he hadn’t been in class that day.

  So when the Daily Bugle had hit their front porch in its regular morning delivery and they had seen the bold headline—BUGLE ISSUES APOLOGY EXPOSES FRAUD PHOTOGRAPHER—relief had swept over her like a wave at the beach. At first her father had been furious that no one from the Bugle had bothered to call and tell him ahead of time. But his wife, Helen, had reminded him that their failure to do so paled next to the fact that Gwen—and by extension, he—was off the hook for the key-to-the-city ceremony. Clearly they had nothing to be ashamed of; all of the fault lay with the Daily Bugle, and wasn’t that the important thing? George Stacy had reluctantly agreed that she was right.

  Gwen, up in her room, was finishing brushing her hair when she heard her mother down in the kitchen call, “George! There’s someone in the driveway.”

  Casually dressed in sweats and a T-shirt, she trotted down the stairs. Her father, peering out the kitchen window, turned to her and said, “Gwen, come here.” He pointed out the window. “It’s that photographer friend of yours.”

  “What?” Why did Peter come out here to see me? She went to the window, and there was Eddie Brock, slowly walking up the driveway. His camera was slung over his shoulder, and he was carrying a small, ribboned candy box. “Oh, no!”

  “I can summon a unit,” her father said, looking more than happy to do so. “Or I can just go out and shoot him if you’d like. I have a gun, and I haven’t used it for a while.”

  He was just kidding… maybe. Gwen shook her head. “Stay here. I’ll take care of it.”

  Quickly she headed for the front door, fully aware that her father and mo
ther were going to be watching through the window the entire time. She approached Eddie, who had taken up station near her parked car. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “I know you’re having family time, but, what a beautiful day,” he said with such chipperness that she thought maybe he’d had a psychotic break or something. How could he act as if nothing were wrong? “Could we talk? Gosh, you look swell. Going running?”

  “No. Why are you here?”

  “Could I come in for a minute?” He gestured toward the house.

  Gwen had a feeling that if she let him in, he’d never leave short of her father forcing him out at gunpoint. “I’ve told you, Eddie. I don’t want to see you.”

  “Maybe you could use a little break.” He proffered the box. “I brought you some candy. You said you like the cherry centers.”

  “Stop trying to take over my life!”

  Their next-door neighbor was busy putting his sprinkler out on his lawn, but he stopped to listen in. Great. That’s all I need.

  “I’m not trying to take over your life. You’re important to me! Don’t act as if we’ve never met. We stood on that porch”—he pointed, his finger trembling—“you let me kiss you there. You said you cared for me. That you loved me!”

  What? “I never said I loved you!” she protested. Becoming increasingly angry, Gwen railed, “How could anybody love you after you tried to disgrace someone who is as noble and principled as Spider-Man by deceiving the public with that phony picture you made up?!”

  Eddie couldn’t have looked more grief-stricken if he’d been standing at his mother’s funeral. “Don’t you understand there’s a reason for everything? I know you talk to Parker about me. Why can’t you talk to me, get my side of the story? Things aren’t always what they seem to be, y’know.” He reached out, took hold of her arm. “I need a friend right now.”

  Gwen tried to pull free, but he wasn’t releasing her. “Let go of me, Eddie!”

  She was certain that she still was in control of the situation, but clearly her parents didn’t share that opinion. She heard the hurried sound of running feet and turned to see her father and mother approaching. “Take your hand off her, boy!” Captain Stacy warned him.

  “Let her go!” said Helen.

  Brock instantly let Gwen loose. His entire body looked shaky, as if his joints were being held together by little more than rubber bands. “How are you, Captain Stacy?” he said with false joviality. He actually had the nerve to put out a hand for a handshake. “Edward Brock, sir. Daily Bugle.”

  George Stacy looked at the outstretched hand as if it belonged to a leper. Worse: he’d probably have been more inclined to shake a leper’s hand. “I know who you are. I want you to leave here.”

  Eddie lifted up his camera, trying to keep it steady as he peered through the viewfinder. He was so wobbly that Gwen was starting to wonder if he was either drunk or hungover. And he kept up with the random and bizarre attempts at flattery: “For my album, sir. If I could get the family? You have a beautiful house. Is this plastic siding?”

  Captain Stacy took a step forward. “Mr. Brock, get off this property or I will arrest you. Is that clear?”

  That silenced Eddie. He stared hopelessly, helplessly at the Stacy family, and something in the pure despair of his look made even George Stacy take a measure of pity on him. “Go on, son,” he said as gently as he could. “Go home.”

  Brock looked at Gwen like a man who had just been strapped into the electric chair and was gazing at the life he would never have. Then he forced a smile that was all the more unsettling for its inappropriateness. He turned away from her, walked sadly to the sidewalk, then bizarrely did a little hop/skip/heel-kick motion that looked like something out of a music video.

  The Stacys watched in silence as Brock went, and then Gwen’s father said to her in a low voice, “Sometimes, Gwen, you can go too far encouraging these young men.”

  Gwen turned and looked at him incredulously. “What did I do? People like me. That isn’t my fault. I didn’t ask him here.”

  “All I’m saying,” her father told her with great patience, “is maybe in a way you did. Maybe you made him hink somehow that you cared. He’s a man. And you’re… a very attractive young woman.”

  She bristled at the idea. She understood what her dad was saying, but she had to believe that it was more along the lines of what her grandmother always used to say: when you get near pigs, sooner or later you’re going to wind up with some mud on you.

  The mud down by the East River stirred.

  A copy of that day’s Daily Bugle floated past a dark, muddy stain that was bobbing in the moonlit water. The floating pile of mud was carried along by the current and then, surprisingly, started to move against it. Anyone observing it would have thought that perhaps it was not mud at all, but a strange type of jellyfish or other sea life that had wandered into the river. As that was happening, Peter Parker was back in his apartment, having removed the black suit. He had settled Eddie Brock’s hash, and it was a beautiful thing. But he’d seen the concern in Betty Brant’s eyes, the surprise in Robbie Robertson’s. His anger toward Brock was completely justified, and yet it made him feel extremely uncomfortable. He decided it would probably be best to divest himself of the outfit as soon as possible. This he managed to do with minimal effort, for this time around the suit wasn’t adhering to his skin with quite such an air of desperation. In Peter’s imaginings, he fancied that the suit didn’t feel the need to be quite so “clingy”—because it knew it had him. If he’d voluntarily put it back on once, he would do so again and again, done deal. So Peter decided to put it back in the trunk and lock it up, just to show it who was boss.

  Yet, curiously, that wasn’t where the suit wound up. Instead it lay draped over a chair, looking partly like cloth and partly like a dark puddle.

  Meantime a genuine dark puddle over on the river had nearly reached the shore. A tendril slowly stretched up from the puddle, groping along the riverbank as it pulled itself to ground and safety. The puddle began to grow as more and more mud oozed up behind it out of the river, and slowly, slowly, the pile of mud and dirt stood upright and began to gain the mass and form of a human being.

  All this while Eddie Brock sat in a bar and drank himself into a stupor, alternating between muttering Gwen Stacy’s name miserably and Peter Parker’s name with hatred and venom.

  * * *

  Chapter Nineteen

  REFLECTIONS

  Peter remembered the days when the Malibu diner was the best that he and Harry could afford. All right, he admitted to himself, the best that he could afford. Harry could probably have bought the whole place with no trouble. But Peter would never have stood for Harry picking up the tab—as Harry could have well afforded—and Harry would never have tolerated Peter spending more money than was good for him. So the Malibu it had been whenever the two of them felt like going out to eat.

  Come to think of it, Peter realized, it wasn’t as if he were all that much better off financially these days either.

  Sitting across from Harry, trying to express the frustration and confusion he was feeling, he brought his friend up to speed about the latest turnaround with MJ. Peter was only having a cup of coffee, while Harry was also having a piece of blueberry pie with his. “Things were fine,” Peter insisted. “Then, suddenly, she says there’s another guy. Gets this thing in her head, says I’m not there for her.”

  “She’s been having a tough time,” Harry said, sounding more sympathetic to Mary Jane than he was to Peter… which, Peter had to admit, annoyed him slightly. “Her career, singing waitress at a jazz club. Not exactly what she had in mind for herself.”

  Peter blinked in confusion, feeling as if he had just missed a section of the conversation. “A singing waitress… ? What about the show?”

  “Well, she was fired,” Harry said matter-of-factly. “Didn’t she tell you?”

  Slumping back in the chair, Peter was totally blindsided. My God, that
explains so much… almost everything… but how could I have known… how could…

  “She got fired?” Peter was unable to grasp it. “She told you, but she didn’t tell me? What’s going on? I don’t get it!” Trying to recapture the high ground of being the victimized half of the couple, Peter said, “You didn’t hear me, Harry! There’s another guy!”

  Harry paused, drumming his fingers on the table. Then, calmly, he said, “That’s why I asked you to have coffee with me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The other guy, Pete…“He waggled his head slightly, then shrugged in a “What can you do?” manner.

  Peter wondered just how many shocks to the system he was supposed to endure in just one outing. “What? Wait a minute. You’re …”

  “She came to me one afternoon.” Harry tried to sound saddened, but a small smile on his face belied whatever his tone might have implied. “Lost. And she was troubled. She needed someone, and I was there for her.” He made certain to emphasize the words Peter had used. “I’ve always loved her, you know that. It just… started.”

  Peter laughed in incredulity. It was as if he were watching some sort of play unfold in which everyone was a stupendously bad actor. “I don’t believe this! I don’t believe you!”

  “I’m sure you don’t,” said Harry, sounding sympathetic but not looking it. “I’m sorry, pal. I’m not here to convince you. I just want you to know.”

  They stared at each other for a few moments, then Peter got up to leave, tossing a few dollars on the table to cover his side of the check. As he did so, the waitress appeared with a pot of coffee. “Can I warm you up?” she asked Harry. At Harry’s nod, she refilled his cup. “How was the pie?”

  “Soooo good.” Harry grinned as Peter walked out.

  Peter was in turmoil. His anger was getting in the way of his making sense of it all. How could Mary Jane do this to him? How could Harry? What sort of friends were they? The notion that Harry would move in, take advantage of Mary Jane if she was in that kind of state… and Mary Jane! That she would rebound from him to Harry… and why? It wasn’t as if they had even officially broken up. It was completely insane…