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  Apparently Peter had made a worthy enough effort, because Norman nodded approvingly and released his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Harry tells me you’re quite the science whiz.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that …”

  Quickly, Harry said, “He’s being modest. I told you, Dad, he’s won all the prizes.”

  With a touch of reproach, Norman said, “Anyone who can get Harry to pass chemistry shouldn’t be modest.”

  “Harry’s really smart. He didn’t really need my help.”

  “We have to go, Dad,” Harry said.

  But Norman obviously found conversation with Peter too engaging to end it quickly. “I’m something of a scientist myself, you know,” Norman said with genuine enthusiasm.

  “I know,” Peter said immediately. “I know all about OsCorp. You guys are designing the guidance and reentry systems for the first shuttle mission to Mars. Really brilliant.”

  Norman blinked in surprise at Peter’s obvious and total knowledge of everything that his corporation was up to. “Impressive. Your parents must be proud.”

  Sounding slightly apologetic, Peter said, “I live with my aunt and uncle. They’re proud.”

  The girls were now moving away from the Bentley at the urging of Mr. Sullivan, who was trying to herd them up the steps into the building.

  “What about your folks?”

  Harry wanted to say something to get Peter off the hook. But Peter took a deep breath and said, “My parents died when I was little.”

  Norman seemed a bit taken aback by this, and when he spoke again, he sounded sympathetic. “I lost my parents as a young boy, as well.”

  Harry, sounding a bit more sarcastic than he would have liked, said, “Which no doubt strengthened your iron will to succeed, huh, Dad?”

  From the door at the top of the steps, Mr. Sullivan—looking on the verge of apoplexy—called down, “Hey, you two, I’m closing the door!”

  Norman released his grip on Harry’s shoulder, and it was all he could do not to sag in relief. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Osborn,” Peter said.

  “See you again,” Norman assured him before sliding back into the Bentley.

  Mary Jane was standing near Flash but watching the Bentley as it pulled away. She shifted her gaze to Harry, and suddenly Harry felt a lot more … more powerful, really … than he had before. Radiating confidence in a manner that would have made his father proud, Harry said, “Hi.”

  She smiled back. That alone was enough to put some additional spring in his step, and then she moved away, Flash blocking her from view.

  The class was standing in a corridor with arched ceilings, lined with neatly framed portraits of various scientists, or reproductions of noted scientific documents. Sunlight filtered in through a series of skylights, and the acoustics were terrific as far as the kids were concerned … and a horror show as far as Mr. Sullivan and the other chaperones were concerned. As their voices reverberated up and down the hallway the frantic “shushing” from the adults only made things worse.

  “He doesn’t seem so bad,” Peter said, standing at Harry’s right shoulder.

  Harry looked at him in confusion, not entirely certain who “he” was. Then he realized that Peter was talking about his father, and it was all he could do to suppress a laugh. “Not if you’re a genius,” he said ruefully. “I think he wants to adopt you.”

  Then Harry noticed that Peter was looking beyond him, and turned to see that his friend was staring at Mary Jane. Flash had drifted away—apparently a rendering of Da Vinci’s famed drawing of man was one of the most hilarious things he’d ever seen, and he was laughing it up with his friends. Mary Jane, for her part, was about two feet away from Peter, studying a portrait of Isaac Newton.

  As intrigued as Harry was with Mary Jane, he knew two things beyond question: First, that Peter had been interested in her far longer, and second, that any guy who tried to take her away from Flash Thompson would probably get himself killed. Still, it might be worth the risk … provided M. J. was actually interested in breaking it off with Thompson, the Id that Walked Like a Man. Better for his long-term health, Harry realized, if Peter were used for the litmus test of M. J.’s availability, rather than Harry himself. Not that Harry had any intention of sending his friend into danger. Certainly if push came to shove—particularly shove-through-the-wall—Harry could intercede and charm—i.e., bribe—Flash out of it.

  Harry snapped his fingers in front of Peter’s face to catch his attention. “Hey,” he whispered, and, nodding toward Mary Jane, said, “Say something.”

  Peter squared his shoulders, which struck Harry as rather funny. Peter couldn’t have looked more serious if he’d been preparing to enter a ring with a maddened bull, armed with only a dish towel. He approached Mary Jane, who saw him coming, turned and smiled that million-watt smile at him. No wonder, Harry mused, that her last name was Watson. She looked expectantly from Peter to Harry and then back to Peter, and Harry waited for his friend to say something.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  The moment morphed from energy-charged to awkward. Mary Jane tilted her head slightly, expectantly, like a dog trying to pick up a high-pitched noise. Desperate to have matters progress, Harry stepped forward and said to M. J., “Hi. How ya doing?”

  Mary Jane smiled in return. “Hey,” she said conversationally, and waited once more for Peter to say something. It was difficult for Harry to get a read off her. It could be she was just being friendly … or there might be some interest. He needed Peter to keep it going in order to tell for sure.

  Peter’s jaw twitched once, twice more, which was good since it indicated that he was, in fact, alive. Then he walked away as quickly as he could. M. J. looked to Harry quizzically, and he made a vague noise in his throat and hurried off after Peter. The moment he drew alongside him he asked in annoyance, “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I was about to,” Peter said defensively. “It … wasn’t the right moment.” Looking around for some sort of exit, he ducked into the nearby men’s room, leaving Harry shaking his head.

  Suddenly a large shadow was cast over Harry. He turned and looked up, and up, at Flash, and for a moment wondered if there might be a problem, wondered if Flash had figured out what he was up to.

  But Flash quickly disabused him of that notion. The jock was obviously only capable of figuring something out if it involved tormenting someone smaller than he. “Explain me something, Osborn,” he said.

  I’m not sure I know enough small words, he thought, but said gamely, “Sure, Flash. What?”

  “You and Parker. I mean, he’s such a loser, and you’re Mister Megarich Dad and riding around in a Rolls Royce …”

  “That was a Bentley.”

  “Whatever,” Flash said impatiently. “The point is, why do you bother hanging around with the guy? What’s the big attraction? You and Parker ain’t … uh …” and he flipped one hand forward and down in a decidedly limp-wristed manner.

  “Huh? No!” said Harry with extreme vehemence. “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s … look, you really wanna know?”

  “I asked, didn’t I?” Flash’s disposition wasn’t improving.

  Harry glanced right and left to make sure no one was paying attention, and was sufficiently satisfied with Mr. Sullivan’s fruitless endeavors to get everyone to pay attention. He was reasonably sure they could chat undisturbed for a few moments. “Okay, look … my previous schools, all the best, preppy, private schools there were … I got bounced out of them, okay? I couldn’t cut it scholastically. In point of fact, I didn’t even want to.”

  Flash let out a whistle. “I wondered how you wound up at our dump of a school.”

  “Yeah, well, if I’d been left on my own, I’d probably have flunked out of yours, too.” He leaned against the wall, shifting uncomfortably, as if his shoes were suddenly too tight. “I’d been at Midtown for about two weeks, and I had this biology report due. I didn’t have a clue how
to approach it. So I figured I’d do what I always do when I run into a problem: throw money at it. I track down Parker, the biggest brain in school, and offer to buy a biology paper off him. He writes it, I sign my name, pay him off, everybody’s happy.”

  “I get it! So you’re Parker’s meal ticket!” Flash grinned broadly, as if pleased to learn that Peter Parker’s feet were as made of clay as any other guy’s.

  But Harry shook his head vehemently. “No. No, not at all. Because Peter wouldn’t do it. He says it’s wrong. He says it won’t accomplish anything. I double the offer. Two hundred bucks, I offered him. He still won’t take it. I say, ‘What? Don’t you need the money?’ He says, ‘More than you know. But that would be wrong,’ he says to me. Instead he says to me, ‘Look … I’ll help you do it yourself. Help you pick a topic, show you how to research it, the whole nine yards. And I’ll proofread the paper for you once you’ve written it. Make sure all the facts are right. That way, it’s really your paper and it’s all aboveboard.’ I ask him, ‘How much will that run me?’ And he says, ‘Nothing.’ I say, ‘So why would you do this for me?’ He says, ‘Because you look like you need the help. And that would be right.’

  “So I take him up on it, because I figure I can still talk him into it. The thing is, thanks to him, I really started getting into it. As I found out stuff in my research, I really did get excited about the idea of seeing it through, for maybe the first time in my life. So I did, and I got a B+, and it was the sweetest grade I ever got, ’cause it was mine. And Peter never took a dime from me.

  “Y’see, Flash, most people are like you. They see me, they see a walking dollar sign. Not Peter. He’s barely got two nickels to rub together, but I realized—thanks to hanging out with him—that some things, like integrity, are beyond price.” He put a hand on Flash’s upper arm, and cringed slightly as he felt the rock-solid muscle beneath the shirtsleeve. “You hear what I’m telling you, Flash? Does that tell you something about Peter Parker?”

  “Yeah,” said Flash with a snort. “Parker’s even dumber than I thought. Walking away from two hundred bucks! He probably would’ve enjoyed writing the stupid paper. And he could’ve had you as a customer for the rest of high school. What a jerk!”

  Harry moaned, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “Noooo, Flash … I think you kind of missed the point …”

  “The only point that matters is the one on top of Puny Parker’s pointed head. What a maroon! What a ta-ra-ra goon-de-ay.”

  Harry stopped talking, realizing that nothing he was going to say would change Flash’s mind about Peter. Indeed it was possible that nothing in existence would do that, short of Peter caving in Flash’s face. But as Flash swaggered over to Mary Jane, draping an arm around her as if she were a side of beef, Harry realized that the odds of Peter ever laying out Flash were very, very slim indeed.

  The Ascot Club, situated in a neatly adorned brownstone on Lexington Avenue, was one of those men’s clubs that seemed hopelessly out-of-date. That, of course, was exactly what its uniformly male membership enjoyed about the place. All one had to do was walk in and take a deep breath. It was easy to detect, with just one whiff, the history, pipes, fine cigars, and testosterone that filled the atmosphere. There was a sense of gravitas in the air, and a serene quiet. In a number of rooms, discussion was banned entirely, allowing blissful silence to hold sway.

  Norman Osborn wasn’t especially in the mood to talk, but all the truly comfortable chairs in the silent areas were taken. So he had opted to settle into an overstuffed easy chair in the far corner of one of the conversational rooms and bury his face behind a newspaper in hopes of being left on his own. This hope proved to be futile, although at least it made a perverse sort of sense when he was interrupted.

  “At least you’re reading my newspaper, Norman. I appreciate the show of solidarity.”

  Osborn folded the Daily Bugle in half and looked with surprise at the person who had addressed him. “Jonah!” he exclaimed. “A bit early in the morning for you, isn’t it?”

  J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of the Daily Bugle, didn’t need the excuse of his club to puff away on a cigar. He did so whenever and wherever he was inclined, ignoring everything from prohibitive signs to city laws. But he’d been heard to say that, at his club at least, he could smoke without having to worry about getting dirty looks.

  Jameson’s face had a lived-in look. He had a habit of walking with his chin thrust out, like a boxer daring people to take their best shots. Jonah Jameson also had said on any number of occasions that he led a life without apology. It had been observed by others that he didn’t need to apologize; that’s what he had a staff for.

  In contrast to the impeccable designer suit that Osborn was sporting, Jameson was attired in one of his customary ill-fitting gray off-the-rack things that looked like he’d slept in it for two days. Since he seemed to spend every waking hour either in the office or at the club, he might very well have been sleeping in it. It was a total mystery to Osborn how anyone with as much money as Jameson had could pay so little attention to personal appearance.

  Mustache bristling, Jameson dropped into a chair opposite Osborn. “Early for you as well, Norman. Me, I just walked out of a meeting with my idiot accountants.”

  “Ah. So you came out of an unpleasant meeting. Me, I have to head into one. So I figured some quiet time with a good newspaper … and a better brandy … ,” and he held up his brandy, swirling the contents slightly in the glass, “… might be just what the doctor ordered, to help get through it.”

  “Where is it? Your factory out on the Island?”

  Osborn nodded and leaned back in his chair. There was a look of amusement on his face. “Yes, Jonah, it’s my factory out on Long Island, and no, I’m not going to go into details. With an old newshound like you, less is always better to say than more.”

  Jameson didn’t laugh, since Jameson never laughed. The most he ever managed was a sort of gruff bark, which was what he produced now. “Don’t overestimate yourself, Norman. The day-to-day workings of OsCorp aren’t exactly the kind of banner headlines that leave readers begging for more.”

  “Is what readers are begging for of particular concern to you these days, Jonah?”

  Jameson growled this time. Osborn was starting to wonder if the man wasn’t part wolf. “Readership in general is what concerns me. That’s what my meeting was about, if you really want to know—”

  “No, I don’t especially.”

  But it was too late. Jonah was off on a rant. “Blasted accountants, telling me that the newspaper lost a million last year, and will lose another million this year, and very likely another million next year. You know what I told them?”

  “That at this rate, you’d have to shut the paper down in about thirty years?”

  Jameson blinked in surprise. “How did you know?”

  “Because I saw Citizen Kane, Jonah. You lifted the line from a sixty-year-old movie.”

  “I did?” Jonah frowned, and then his eyes went wide. “Son of a gun, I did. Damned good movie, too, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t ask you, but yes, it was.”

  Truth to tell, Osborn enjoyed these rare verbal fencing matches that he indulged in with Jameson. But J.J.J. didn’t seem in the mood to appreciate it all that much this particular day. “Know what’s killing our circulation, Norman? Would you like me to tell you?”

  “Could I stop you?” said Osborn hopefully, attempting to get back to his newspaper.

  “Our readership is dying out, that’s what,” Jonah said, as if Osborn hadn’t spoken. Osborn sighed and put the paper flat in his lap. Jonah continued, “Older readers, who grew up reading newspapers and fully realize and appreciate the depth of news coverage that only a paper can provide, are dying out. And these new kids … they get stuff off television or the Web … when they express any interest in learning about the world around them, that is. They aren’t going to plunk down fifty cents to read intelligent, in-depth reporting when they ca
n get facile news in small, easy-to-digest, bite-sized bytes.”

  “Now that’s a doomsday attitude to have, Jonah.”

  “It’s realistic.” Jonah sounded uncharacteristically self-pitying, even morbid, as he said, “I wonder … when the dinosaurs were sinking into pits, their days of glory at an end … I wonder if they made the same kind of howls of frustration that old-time, ink-under-the-fingernails newsmen make as our medium goes straight down the tubes.”

  “You’re being much too hard on yourself, Jonah. And you’re forgetting something.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Jonah shifted the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other without using his hands. He just rolled it over from left to right, smooth as pudding. “And what might that be?”

  “All you need is one big story. Just one. Something to fire the attention of New Yorkers. If it’s a big enough story, people will seek out information on it anywhere they can get it.”

  “You may be right,” said Jonah. “The question is, what sort of story would be big enough?”

  “I don’t know, Jonah. I’m just a dumb scientist, not a media genius, like you. It’s the oldest commandment of showbiz: Give the people what they want.”

  “What the people want are short, punchy stories with no depth. Black and white, good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains.”

  “So what’s the problem with that?” asked Osborn.

  J. Jonah Jameson laughed contemptuously, settling back into his chair with the air of someone who was very much in his element, both physically and philosophically. “And here I thought, Norman, that you were a man after my own heart. Don’t you know? There are no heroes. Not anymore. If you want greatness, and great men, crack a history book and look at the founding fathers. There were great men. Men of conviction. Men willing to put themselves on the line. They put their names to the Declaration of Independence, knowing that they were signing their death warrants. But they did it because they believed in something. That’s gone now. You know what killed heroism, Norman?”