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“He’s back,” Stephanie hissed. It was the summer of 1997, the hottest on record in LA, and her crop top was sticking to her skin; her shorts cut a tight, uncomfortable line across her stomach. Michael paused at the foot of the stairs. He’d been looking forward to getting home and out of his sweat-soaked shirt, but there was always something about the way Stephanie waited for him to get back from work, polishing her stories until they gleamed—
“Who?” he asked. He already knew, but this was the script. Stephanie grinned at him.
“Tony Stark.”
The first time he was sighted, three years previously, Stephanie had run up the six flights of stairs to Michael’s apartment at a full sprint and pounded on his door. When he opened it, she’d been too out of breath to say anything except, “Stark…here…” and by the time she’d regained the power of speech, he was long gone.
Of course, Yvonne disputed this. She always said that Stark visited for the first time six months before that, and that no one ever listened to her.
The reason no one ever listened to Yvonne, at least about that particular topic, was that she was one of those people who saw a celebrity on every street corner. Even Gladys admitted that.
“I saw Tony Stark on the stairs,” Yvonne had said, in October of 1993, far prior to Stephanie’s sighting in April 1994.
Gladys looked up from the casserole she was making. It was a bad casserole, invariably, but Yvonne always said she loved it. You did crazy things to keep the people you cared about happy, including eating bad casserole every week for forty years.
“That’s nice, honey,” she said.
“He was being incognito,” Yvonne responded, sighing dreamily. Despite their circumstances, Yvonne sometimes still had an eye for men. Gladys didn’t mind; after all, she knew that Yvonne would always come home and eat her casserole. “Sunglasses. One of those hats the young people wear.”
“You saw a young man wearing a hat and sunglasses?”
“I saw Tony Stark,” Yvonne insisted. “I know what he looks like. You always see him on the covers of those magazines at the checkout.”
Gladys sniffed. “Well, I can’t say I approve. Always cavorting around like that. And the weapons. Though I suppose he’s too young to remember Vietnam.”
Yvonne ignored this. “I wonder what he’s doing here. You think he’s taken up with one of the young ladies?”
“I hope not,” Gladys said. “There’s not one person in this building deserves to get their heart broken like that.”
“Not even Abigail Byrd?”
“Well,” Gladys sniffed. She rarely kept grudges, but Abigail Byrd was a special case. The kind of girl who acted like she was slumming it in her perfectly lovely apartment, insulting everything from the plants outside to the water pressure in her shower. Always complaining. Sometimes you could just tell when a girl had grown up with parents who indulged her every whim, Gladys was always saying. “It might do her good to get off that high horse of hers, but heaven knows Tony Stark’s more punishment than even a girl like that deserves.”
“I don’t think he’s so bad,” said Yvonne, who fancied herself able to read the inner thoughts of the people she saw on the covers of magazines. “He’s got very expressive eyes, you know. Even when he’s smiling, you’ve just got to look at his eyes.”
“And what do you suppose he has to be sad about?” Gladys asked good-naturedly, digging through the drawer for a corkscrew. It was a Wednesday; they would share a bottle of reasonably priced red wine and watch a nature documentary (for Gladys) and an episode of Law & Order (for Yvonne) before going to bed.
“His parents died a few years back,” Yvonne said.
“Ah, well, in that case,” Gladys replied. From the floor above them, there came the sound of laughter, loud and then quickly stifled. None of the walls, floors, or ceilings in the building could boast of being thick.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Yvonne said. “I was beginning to worry that boy upstairs had no friends at all.”
“He only moved in a few weeks ago,” Gladys reminded her. “I’m sure he was busy unpacking. Did you find out his name yet?”
“I asked Mrs. Taylor,” Yvonne replied, referring to the retired small business owner who ran the Tenants Association. “She said his name is James.”
By the time Stephanie saw Tony Stark, Yvonne had already developed something of a fixation. She was only recently retired, and her days had taken on something of a predictable quality: the chance to find out what a big-name East Coast celebrity was doing in their neck of the woods, therefore, was simply too much to pass up.
She took a lot of walks down to the lobby, claiming that she was only stretching her legs (her doctor, who had been recommending more physical exercise for years to no avail, might reasonably have disputed this); she dropped his name into conversations with unsuspecting younger women in the building, trying to figure out if any of them had slept with him, and she scoured gossip magazines that previously never would have made it into the house (because though Yvonne may have been an amateur celebrity-spotter, she was largely opposed to those who made money off her hobby).
But Stephanie, who wrote articles about fashion in the lobby all day, and who had never broken a hip, was undeniably better positioned for a sighting.
The reason Stephanie knew of Tony Stark was that he had a habit of turning up in both the best- and worst-dressed sections of the magazines she favored, often in the same week. He was a man who made bold choices with what he wore, and there was a part of her that couldn’t help but respect that—even if half the things he wore out in public could generously be categorized as an eyesore. She felt a slight, distant kinship with him; after all, she was only just out of an animal print phase that had lasted the better part of a year, and her wardrobe still looked as if it belonged to the world’s most successful poacher. If Tony Stark wanted to wear yellow jeans sometimes, then at least he followed them up with silky shirts in berry tones and tight dress pants that played up his assets nicely.
Her awareness of his actual job was peripheral. She knew Stark Industries was into technology and weapons in the same way she knew that Enron was—something to do with electricity? It just wasn’t her area.
So her excitement upon seeing him took her entirely by surprise. She wasn’t prepared for the way it would feel to spot someone who had previously only existed behind the fuzz of a TV screen or the sticky gloss of a magazine page.
He was in jeans and a Nirvana t-shirt, that first time. Stephanie, who had seen roughly a hundred white guys in their 20s wearing Nirvana t-shirts that day alone (the news of Kurt Cobain’s death being barely a week old), almost overlooked him. He had sunglasses on—not unreasonable given the LA sunshine—and a baseball cap. The thing that made her look twice was the cap: you didn’t see a ton of support for the Red Sox over on this coast. From there she frowned, squinted, and her throat closed into a shocked wheeze of recognition.
It was bad enough when she thought he was just passing by, but then he paused, his hand closing around the bar of the glass double doors, and Stephanie could only gasp, jump up, and begin her dash toward Michael’s apartment. In doing so she abandoned her laptop, her keys, and her wallet.
He wasn’t her first celebrity sighting. No one lived in LA without seeing a few famous people per month. But, until then, she’d mostly seen middling TV actors, comedians who were just beginning to make it, and social climbers whose names were always just on the tip of her tongue. She hadn’t ever seen anyone who was front-page material. It was like being swept up in a wave of pure adrenaline.
Once that adrenaline faded, she found her own actions mildly ridiculous, a little embarrassing. But—her hours writing in the lobby got a bit longer, her breaks for lunch a bit shorter. She began to make sure she was always facing those glass double doors.
By the winter of ’94, Tony Stark had been seen in and around the building a total of fourteen times. Yvonne had been the one to see him three of those times; Stephanie, with her prime position, could boast (and frequently did) eight of them. Michael had seen him once, at the same time as Stephanie. The remaining three sightings were dubious, in that Yvonne didn’t consider anyone else as dedicated to the cause as she and Stephanie were, particularly John Halford from 2C.
But they were noted down on the whiteboard all the same.
Jennifer North, who lived on the second floor and tutored to supplement her teaching income, objected to her whiteboard being used for this service—but Stephanie had helped to hide the fact of Jennifer owning a cat from the landlord, a service that couldn’t be overlooked.
“Over fifty people live in this building,” Jennifer pointed out. “Seven floors, four apartments on each floor. The apartments are equally split between one- and two-bedroom. At least fifty, probably more.”
Jennifer had a habit of speaking like a teacher, even when among other adults.
“But he’s never been sighted above the second floor,” Stephanie pointed out.
“Because you always see him in the lobby, and Yvonne sees him on the flight of stairs between the first and second floors,” Jennifer said. For someone who had pledged not to get involved in any of this nonsense, she was enjoying herself an awful lot. Perhaps it had something to do with the bottles of red wine Yvonne and Gladys had brought over.
“But when José saw him he said it looked like he was heading up toward the third floor. Right, José?” said Stephanie.
José, whose shift as the second AD on an independent movie set started in four hours, took a fortifying bite of a pizza slice that had long ago gone cold. “He was drunk,” he said, shrugging. “Could’ve been lost.”
“You never told me he was drunk,” Stephanie said. Her eyes lit up. “Did he say anything?”
“Nah,” José said. “He just held his finger up to his lips, like—” He made the gesture. Everyone else stared at him, enraptured.
“This was eleven at night?”
José shifted. “Maybe more like twelve. Or one.”
Stephanie jumped out of her seat and erased the ‘11PM’ that had been written next to José’s name and the date on which he had seen Tony Stark (October 5). She replaced it with ‘MIDNIGHT OR LATER’ in very small, cramped writing. They were running out of space on the board.
“Thanks, José,” she said.
“Can I go now?” he asked.
“Of course,” said Jennifer, frowning. “This isn’t compulsory.”
Stephanie, who had paid José ten dollars to attend the meeting, looked studiously at the floor. José left.
“He spoke to me,” said Yvonne. She’d been sitting on this news all week, waiting for the moment when the largest number of people were assembled. In particular, she waited to say it in the presence of Stephanie. They weren’t competing, not in so many words, but Stephanie had drawn a little star next to her name on the whiteboard and she still wasn’t admitting that Yvonne had seen him first.
Jennifer, who now had full-color pictures of Tony Stark on her wall like a serial killer who’d been peer-pressured into it, leaned forward.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“He said that he’s seen me around before, hasn’t he?” Yvonne reported proudly. “And I said, so you have, and he said, pretty girl like you, I’ve just got to get your name.”
“He didn’t,” said Stephanie. She’d thought of trying to talk to him on one of those occasions where he passed by her in the lobby. She was an attractive girl, after all, maybe not as ostentatiously gorgeous as the starlets and models Stark usually surrounded himself with, but pretty enough. She’d won a beauty pageant back in Georgia. Only a small, regional one, but still.
“He did,” said Yvonne, glowing with it. She wasn’t often flirted with by men thirty-five years her junior, not even jokingly. Gladys slapped her lightly on the thigh. “I told him I was Yvonne, and he asked if he could help me with the groceries—I was carrying groceries—and I said, why thank you, it’s not often you meet such polite young men in this city, and he came up to my door and met Gladys, too.”
Stephanie glared at Gladys, who was surely too peripheral to the entire operation to deserve this.
“He was…very charming,” Gladys admitted. “Offered to put all our things away, too, but I said he must have somewhere to be.”
Yvonne shook her head. “We could have offered him coffee, made him stay longer,” she said mournfully. “Not turned him away in the doorway.”
“He said it was fine, he could keep Rhodey waiting, but he wouldn’t impose on us lovely girls a second longer than we wanted him.”
“Rhodey?” Stephanie asked.
“I don’t know!” cried Yvonne, who had been cradling this mystery close to her chest for the better part of a week and was about ready to break out the red string. “I asked Mrs. Taylor, and she says we don’t have a Rhodey here. Not that she knows of.”
“It’s probably a nickname,” Stephanie said.
“Well, yes, dear, I had gathered that much,” said Yvonne.
“What about James?” asked Jennifer.
“The new guy?” Stephanie said.
“He’s been here almost a year,” Jennifer said. “And the timing adds up. He moves in, Stark starts visiting. Isn’t James right above Yvonne and Gladys?”
“He is,” Yvonne breathed. She thought over a year of sounds coming from above, of movies with explosions and bursts of laughter and muffled conversations that went on for hours. “Oh my goodness gracious me,” she said.
Michael grimaced. “It’s a good thing I never got around to inviting him to one of these things.”
The next morning, Yvonne marched up to James Rhodes’ apartment with a cherry pie tucked under her arm. Gladys had made it under duress; her pies, at least, were better than her casserole.
“Good morning!” she said when James opened the door, looking tired and perplexed.
It wasn’t their first meeting; they’d exchanged pleasantries on the stairs, nodded to each other in the lobby, caught eyes at the Tenants Association meetings. But Yvonne realized, standing in front of him, that she had never formally introduced herself. Whether or not he knew her name was a mystery.
“Hi,” said James Rhodes. “Yvonne, right?”
“Right,” Yvonne beamed. “My roommate made pie, and we’re just about swimming in dessert down there, so I thought I’d bring you some.”
“That’s an entire pie,” James said.
“I wasn’t sure whether or not you had someone to share it with,” Yvonne said. He stared her down, and she relented. “To be entirely honest with you, dear, it’s just that I realized I’ve been a bad downstairs neighbor. All this time, and I never even invited you down for tea! I do hope you’ll forgive me.”
“That’s…fine,” James said. “Thanks for the pie.”
“He wasn’t wearing a shirt,” Yvonne reported, at the next meeting of the Unofficial Tony Stark Fan Club. “I think he’d only just gotten out of bed.”
“Did you ask him about Tony?” Stephanie asked eagerly.
“We should probably stick to calling Tony Stark by his full name,” Jennifer said. As a teacher, she perhaps considered the forename more sanctified than the average person. “We don’t actually know him.”
“I do,” Yvonne said proudly. “I’m sure I can call him Tony.”
It was John Halford from 2C who ratted them out to Mrs. Taylor.
“I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him,” Yvonne said. Mrs. Taylor had confronted her on the stairs, saying she needed to stop this nonsense at once. Yvonne had immediately called a meeting of the Unofficial Tony Stark Fan Club.
“From now on, we should probably keep it to the five of us,” said Jennifer. She wasn’t sure exactly when she’d started including herself in the group; perhaps it was when she’d run into Tony Stark on her way back from Art Day with her class the week before. She’d been covered in paint, and glitter, and there had been pipe cleaners in her hair. Tony Stark had smiled at her. He’d asked if she was the sole survivor of an exploding paint factory. She’d giggled. The last time she could remember giggling was when she was eleven years old, but she’d felt guilty and giddy and she hadn’t ever spoken to a celebrity before. Sometimes, she thought, exceptions to dignity had to be made.
The first person she’d told about it had been Gladys, who’d picked up the phone when Jennifer attempted to call Yvonne.
“My dear,” Gladys had said, “you mustn’t let him—get to you like that.”
“Oh, no,” Jennifer laughed. “I’ve never been much interested in men. And besides, I’m not completely stupid. He was only being nice. It was just a bit like meeting the tooth fairy, that’s all.”
There took place in Gladys a tectonic shift upon hearing those words, although she would never be able to admit it aloud. She had never been able to say, so casually, to someone she hardly knew, that she didn’t like men. Even after forty-nine years.
It had come to her attention in 1945, the day the Allies triumphed over Germany and the pretty girl who lived across the road came running outside and flung her arms around Gladys in the middle of the street, pressing a jubilant kiss to her cheek. For a long time, Gladys had tried to put the way butterflies swarmed through her chest down to the adrenaline of (almost) winning the war, of knowing that someday soon her older brother would return home. Then, five years later, she met Yvonne.
Jennifer had noticed when a boy had taken her to watch The Hunger on a first (and last) date. It was 1983; she was eighteen. Catherine Deneuve had kissed Susan Sarandon, and that had been that.
The two women had gone quiet, only the sound of their breathing on the phone. They had been living two doors down from each other for four years, and never had it occurred to them that they might have anything in common. “Oh,” said Gladys, “well. I suppose you’re safe, then.”
When Jennifer said, “It’s only James from upstairs who isn’t,” she meant it as a joke.
“You’d think they’d hang out in that fancy house of his,” Michael said. He didn’t often contribute during meetings, because his interest in rich white guys had never been huge—he just liked the atmosphere. He thought this was maybe why people liked to meet up and talk about how the moon landing was fake.
“Maybe James doesn’t like it there,” said Jennifer.
“What kind of guy doesn’t like a beach house?” asked Michael.
“Maybe Tony doesn’t like it there,” suggested Yvonne.
“I heard he was having a new place built,” Stephanie said. “I guess he’s done staying in his dad’s holiday home.”
“And done with New York,” said Yvonne, to cheers from the group.
“He’s designing it himself,” Jennifer said. This she had picked up from an issue of Technology Review, as opposed to People, so it was okay. “It’s supposed to be some sort of engineering miracle.”
“If it works,” Michael pointed out.
“It’ll work,” said Yvonne, whose previous career as a Beverly Hills hairstylist had never come into the slightest contact with engineering. “Anyway, I suppose they’re like any other friends. Going back and forth between each other’s homes.”
“Do you think he stays over? When he’s here,” Stephanie asked thoughtfully.
“That’s against the rules,” Jennifer said.
Stephanie looked pointedly at Jennifer’s cat, who was having a grand time clawing Yvonne’s fuchsia scarf to ribbons.
“Okay, but no overnight guests is a big one,” Jennifer said.
“No pets is a big one, too.”
“If James is above us, doesn’t he have that extra bedroom?” Gladys asked. She and Yvonne lived in a two-bedroom apartment to keep up appearances, and also because both of them snored.
“No, they’re alternating. Maybe Tony sleeps on the couch,” Jennifer said, having relented on the issue of using Tony Stark’s first name after the paint incident.
“Maybe he doesn’t stay over at all,” Michael pointed out reasonably.
“Maybe they share the bed,” Stephanie pointed out salaciously.
“Yeah, I doubt Tony Stark is gay,” Michael said.
“I never said he was gay!” Stephanie replied. “People share beds sometimes.”
Michael and Stephanie argued this point for a further ten minutes, during which Yvonne, Gladys, and Jennifer said nothing.
“I heard you guys were interested in Tony Stark,” said Ben Yang, stood in Jennifer’s doorway.
“Depends who’s asking,” Yvonne said, narrowing her eyes.
“I live next door to Rhodes,” Ben said.
“Come in,” said Stephanie.
Ben was a video game developer who worked from home and tried not to listen in on his neighbor’s conversations. His objection had not been to James Rhodes and his friend making a lot of noise during the evening or night, which was when Ben went into his office (the converted second bedroom), put his headphones on, and coded until the sun came up. He’d been forced to intervene when he was awoken at ten in the morning, just two hours after he’d drifted to sleep, to the soundtrack of an argument over who the best James Bond was.
Ben was a polite person, but he had never hesitated to complain in restaurants or stores if something was wrong. He believed society worked better when people were honest about their expectations and annoyances. So he had pulled on jeans and a Mortal Kombat hoodie, and he’d banged on James Rhodes’ door.
Tony Stark answered.
“I thought I was still sleeping at first,” Ben explained to the Unofficial Tony Stark Fan Club. “I mean, I’d heard the rumors. But I thought you guys were—” He stopped, awkwardly.
“Nutjobs,” Stephanie suggested.
“Weirdos,” said Michael.
“Off our rockers,” added Yvonne.
“Yeah,” said Ben. “It just doesn’t really seem like his scene, you know?”
“You’ll learn not to make snap judgments about him like that,” Yvonne said kindly. “Would you like something to drink? We’ve got tea and coffee. And wine.”
“Any beer?”
“Oh, sorry, we’re not that kind of club,” Yvonne said. She poured him a glass of wine.
Over the course of an hour, with numerous interruptions, Ben recounted how Tony Stark had invited him in on ‘Rhodey’s’ behalf, noticed Ben’s hoodie, and engaged him in a meandering conversation about the future of virtual reality.
“I always thought he was one of those jerkoffs who didn’t actually know what they were talking about,” Ben said. “And I know, I know, I shouldn’t have made assumptions about your idol. But he does actually know his shit.”
Gladys, who had old-fashioned beliefs about swearing, frowned.
“What about Rhodes?” Michael asked.
“He just sort of watched,” Ben said. “Didn’t seem to mind, though. I guess he’s used to Stark being a bit—well, odd.”
None of the Unofficial Tony Stark Fan Club disputed this. Tony Stark being a bit odd was, honestly, part of his appeal.
“This was ten in the morning, you said?” Yvonne asked. The exact time was necessary for the whiteboard.
“Yeah. I guess Stark stayed over? Neither of them were really dressed.”
Yvonne glanced at Gladys, who glanced at Jennifer. The three of them, who had the benefit of knowing there were options that fell between straight and gay, were developing suspicions best not shared with the group.
Stephanie rang in the New Year of 1996 helping James Rhodes drag Tony Stark up four flights of stairs.
“He just drank a bit too much,” James said, sounding a bit unsteady himself. Stephanie was hosting her own party, but she’d come downstairs to smoke. Even though she didn’t smoke. So maybe she’d come downstairs to stare at the smoggy sky and think about the girl Michael had brought as his date, who was pretty, and tall, and white.
When she’d gotten outside, Tony Stark had appeared at the end of the street, draped across James Rhodes, singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at the top of his lungs.
“Hello,” Stephanie said when he was close enough to hear her.
“Hello,” said Tony Stark. “I like your dress.”
“I like my dress too,” Stephanie said. She’d spent too much money on it, in all its sequinned glory. It was worth it, she decided.
“You’d kiss me at midnight, right?” Tony Stark asked, only sounding mildly suggestive about it. “Some people are refusing to do it, even though they also dragged me away from a party filled with people who would sell their vital organs to make out with me.”
“I don’t know,” said Stephanie. “Would you mind doing it in front of someone in particular?”
Tony Stark beamed at her. “I love making people jealous. Don’t I, Rhodey?”
James stumbled under Tony Stark’s weight.
“C’mere,” Stephanie said, “I’ll help.”
James looked like he was about to say something useless and chivalrous.
“Let the lady help!” Tony said. When Stephanie’s arm was around his waist, he said, “I see you watching me in the lobby. You are not very sneaky.”
“You’re not very sneaky, either,” Stephanie responded. “People can still recognize you when you wear a hat.”
“Point.”
All three of them had imbibed various amounts of alcohol over the course of the evening, and so it was slow progress up the stairs.
“You know what’s funny?” Tony Stark asked, when all three of them were sat down in the stairwell getting their breath back. “I’m gonna be fine tomorrow. But Rhodey gets the worst hangovers.”
“I do not,” said Rhodey.
“And he gets blackouts.”
“I do not.”
Tony smiled. “He always pretends he remembers. One time I told him he’d broken into the White House and he believed me.”
“That’s not—”
“We weren’t even in DC,” Tony finished, his head falling onto Rhodey’s shoulder.
Stephanie didn’t know whether he was telling the truth or not, but she found herself laughing all the same. Michael felt very far away.
“Come on, you two, get up,” she said, standing and kicking each of them in the leg with her bare foot (her stilettos having been lost some indeterminate number of steps ago). “I need to pee.”
“You heard the woman,” said Tony, holding out his arms like a child asking to be picked up. Rhodey and Stephanie each took one of them and hauled him to his feet. “You’re strong,” Tony commented, addressing neither of them in particular.
He was an unhelpful drunk, but he eventually remembered to be charming, asking Stephanie for her name and about her career.
“You don’t care about this,” she accused, while dragging him through Rhodey’s door.
“No, I love fashion,” Tony insisted. “And the…writing about thereof.”
“It’s not some fancy national magazine,” Stephanie said. “My editor says our readership is twelve Black women in Central LA.”
“You could have one white guy in Malibu if you’d tell me the name.”
Stephanie told him the name. It wasn’t like he was going to remember.
The next morning, she barely remembered. The whole thing had the nebulous quality of a dream, although she vaguely remembered depositing Tony onto Rhodey’s bed while Rhodey went to the kitchen and started pouring water into every glass he owned. (“Ten shots,” he’d said, “so ten glasses of water. That’s the way it works, right?”). And Stephanie had blurted out a question about whether Rhodey was going to sleep on the couch, because she really did want to settle that argument with Michael. Who she hadn’t been thinking about.
She thought that the answer might have been yes. But that could mean anything.
Tony Stark built his impossible mansion on the side of a cliff, and he stopped coming around so often. The meetings of the Unofficial Tony Stark Fan Club did not go down in frequency. They simply broadened their topics.
Yvonne spoke about the rich ladies from Beverly Hills whose hair she’d made beautiful until the arthritis in her fingers forced her into retirement. Stephanie shared a story about sewing her own prom dress because her parents, while well off, were strict Christians who sought to discourage excess. Jennifer confessed that she longed for children of her own, but didn’t think she’d be able to have them. Ben didn’t much like sharing his feelings, so he told them the plots of the video games he was working on in long, rambling monologues. Often, tucked inside his descriptions were hints of how he was feeling. Gladys told them that her brother had never been the same after he came home from the war. He’d been cold and distant to his wife, then cold and distant to his children, and then finally he’d been cold and distant in a grave, his heart failing him at fifty-three. And Michael admitted that he hated his job, that he changed into his suit and tie every day only to go in and deny loans to a whole lot of people, but often people who looked like him.
They all drank a lot of wine, and ate a lot of Gladys’ cooking, and spoiled Jennifer’s cat rotten. It was an escape from their real lives, packing into Jennifer’s sitting room with their Tony Stark conspiracy board and gossip until John Halford from 2C banged on the wall and they all had to go home.
In April, Stephanie got a call from her editor.
“You’re not going to believe this,” said Di. “Well, first off, you’re getting a raise.”
“What?” Stephanie said. Only last month, Di had asked her to get ready for cuts. She’d been searching for other jobs, applying everywhere her pride would allow. Rejection letters were flooding her mail slot.
“Tony Stark bought the magazine.”
“What the fuck,” Stephanie said, sinking down on the cold floor of her kitchen. She held the phone’s wire between her teeth to keep from yelling. “So he’s, like, my boss now?”
“I guess?” Di said. “Mostly I spoke with his lawyers, and they said it was something to do with Stark Industries diversifying. Getting their name out for more than weapons. Which, you’d think, would involve more of those cellphones and technological nonsense, but everyone always says he’s eccentric, don’t they? He said he doesn’t care what we do with the money. He said, even if only twelve people are reading it, that’s worth something.”
“How much is it worth?”
“A hundred million,” Di said.
“What the fuck,” Stephanie moaned.
“Are you alright?” Di asked.
“I told him the name of the magazine,” Stephanie said weakly. “I thought he’d forget.”
Di paused. “Stephanie, are you sleeping with Tony Stark?”
“No,” Stephanie said. “And I don’t think you’re allowed to ask me that.”
“If he bought the magazine for you—”
“He’s eccentric!” Stephanie said. “Eccentric people do eccentric things!”
“Is he a hundred million dollars’ worth of eccentric?” Di asked.
“You know what,” said Stephanie, “yes.”
James Rhodes wasn’t home, so Stephanie sat outside his door. She forgot to bring a book or magazine, but once she was sitting there she felt like she had to commit to the whole thing, so she started at a wall for six hours.
“You!” she yelled, the moment Rhodey appeared at the end of the hall.
Rhodey glanced, with an expression of panic, from side to side.
“He bought my magazine!” Stephanie shouted.
“Oh,” Rhodey said, “this is a Tony thing.”
“Is this how he flirts?” Stephanie demanded. “Did he spend a hundred million dollars to get in my pants?”
“No, he wouldn’t do that,” Rhodey said. He sounded certain enough about it that Stephanie relaxed minutely. “My guess? He read your magazine. He liked it. He made an impulse purchase. Kind of like how you or I would buy a pack of gum at the checkout.”
“A hundred-million-dollar pack of gum,” said Stephanie.
Rhodey shrugged. “You’re aware of his net worth, right?”
“I don’t—” Stephanie said. “I don’t know how to thank him. Or even how to find him. Unless I start hanging out in this hallway all the time, I guess.”
“Yeah, don’t thank him,” Rhodey suggested. “He gets weird about that. Just act like it’s normal.”
“It’s not normal,” Stephanie hissed. She felt like every emotion known to the human race was battling it out in her brain.
Rhodey sighed and opened his door. “He’s not normal. You either accept him that way or you don’t.”
“And you accept him,” Stephanie said.
Rhodey’s head dipped; he half-hid his smile. “Something like that, yeah.”
Even Yvonne couldn’t dispute that Stephanie deserved the star next to her name on the whiteboard after that.
“Have you seen him since?” Jennifer asked.
“No,” Stephanie moaned, flopping forward into a cushion. “It’s like having a Fairy God-billionaire, and now he’s just vanished in a puff of smoke.”
“That might be for the best,” Gladys said. Despite Stephanie sharing Rhodey’s explanation with them, she still suspected Tony Stark of nefarious intentions.
“Oh, shush, you,” Yvonne said. “I think it’s lovely. We could all pitch together to get him something to say thank you.”
The other occupants of the room looked blankly at her.
“He’s a billionaire,” Michael said, redundantly.
“I rather think that billionaires still like receiving gifts when they’re from the heart,” Yvonne responded. “It’s not like I was saying we should buy him a yacht. He’d probably like some nice homemade cupcakes just as much.”
“I mean,” said Michael, “I’d probably prefer the yacht.”
Stephanie wasn’t used to making men’s clothes. She wasn’t used to making clothes at all, really—it had been a hobby as a teenager, but then she’d shifted her efforts into writing about fashion, which suited her better.
Gladys and Yvonne were, true to their word, baking cupcakes. Jennifer was having the kids in her class pitch in with the construction of the card. And Stephanie was dusting off the sewing machine in her closet and making a truly horrific t-shirt.
It was tie-dye. It was going to be just slightly too short for him, because she’d run out of fabric. And it said, in sequinned letters of varying sizes, “I spent $100 million on a magazine and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
She thought it might be the kind of thing he’d find funny, if their brief encounter on New Year’s Eve was anything to go by.
This time, when James Rhodes opened his door, he was fully clothed and alert; Yvonne had waited until three in the afternoon on a Sunday to be sure of it. She was holding a card comprised primarily of glitter, a tie-dye t-shirt, and cupcakes iced pink and purple.
“I hope he’s not got old-fashioned ideas about masculinity,” was Yvonne’s opening, “because once we started making the cupcakes we realized those were the only food colorings we had to hand.”
“I’m sorry,” James Rhodes said. “What?”
“Oh, dear, I’m getting ahead of myself,” Yvonne said. “Stephanie told us about what Mr. Stark did for her, and I’m afraid I just about insisted we get him something in return. My roommate made the cakes, Jennifer—have you met Jennifer?—was in charge of the card, and Stephanie sewed the t-shirt, which I’m sure you’ll agree is rather marvelous.”
“Rhodey?” said a second voice. “Who’s—? Oh. It’s you.”
Tony Stark was shirtless, which just went to show that even if you waited until three pm on a Sunday you couldn’t rely on the youth of the day to be fully clothed. He was holding a cup of coffee, and smiling in a way that made Yvonne feel like she was a photographer at some glitzy event.
“Sorry to intrude!” she squeaked.
“Don’t worry about it, Yvonne,” Tony said. Rhodey whipped around to look at him askance. “You want to come in? That looks like too many cupcakes for just me and Rhodey.”
“Speak for yourself,” muttered Rhodey, but he opened the door wider and Yvonne made her halting way inside.
Rhodey’s apartment was clean, tidy, with pale-colored furniture and appliances that still had the shine of recent acquisition. The only detail that belied military precision were the post-it notes stuck to everything from the walls to the table lamp to the ceiling. Some of them, in what Yvonne quickly deduced was Rhodey’s handwriting, were reminders and scribbled-off thoughts, things like ‘buy milk’ and ‘ask G about shipments to P – wise???’ The others were written in a more cursive hand, and seemed to consist entirely of phrases ripped from self-help books. The one pointing out from the coffee table’s leg read: ‘SMILE MORE: the world is happy when you are’ with spiky biro illustrations surrounding it of hearts, rainbows, and a unicorn. It was undoubtedly mocking, but Yvonne couldn’t help but find it rather sweet.
While she looked around, Tony relieved her of the gifts she’d come bearing, choosing first to put on the shirt.
It was as Stephanie had predicted—the hem only just reached below his belly button, leaving a rather indecent amount of skin between the top and his sweatpants. Yvonne bit down on a laugh.
“Excellent,” said Tony, examining himself in the mirror. “Hey, Rhodey, you reckon I should wear this to that charity thing tonight?”
“Stane would kill you,” Rhodey replied. He was over at the kitchen counter, distributing the cupcakes from their Tupperware container onto a plate. “Can I get you anything to drink, Yvonne?”
“Some tea would be lovely,” she said.
“Children made this,” Tony commented, studying the card.
“Oh, well, yes,” Yvonne said, suddenly embarrassed about the idea (which had been hers). There was a lot of glitter on the card, and some of it was fluttering onto Tony’s hands. “I don’t think Jennifer told them exactly who it was for, just that it was a person who’d done a nice thing. So don’t worry about your—privacy.”
“I never do,” Tony replied, winking. “This is extremely cute. I—thanks.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Yvonne said. “The others told me there was nothing you could get for a billionaire, and I told them that’s a very silly way to look at the world. As if everything’s about money.”
Tony gave her an odd look, mouth parted, brows furrowed. It took him a few seconds to respond. “Not a lot of people see it that way,” he said.
“I don’t,” Rhodey said, placing the plate of cupcakes down the coffee table. “You only had to do this once. I’ve been on the hook every birthday and Christmas for the last ten years. And I can’t bake.”
“You get me the nicest things, dear,” Tony responded, before mouthing ‘he does not’ in Yvonne’s direction.
There was a large chance, The Unofficial Tony Stark Fan Club acknowledged, that Tony Stark knew about their existence. Besides the fact that they had clearly coordinated on the gifts, their group was an open secret in the building, and the chances of Rhodey having heard nothing about it were slim.
Still, Tony Stark didn’t seem to mind. He greeted the people he recognized when he saw them, often with little more than a jaunty salute or a peace sign. Occasionally he lingered, including in the lobby to ask Stephanie how things were going with the magazine and the guy she’d wanted to make jealous.
“Good and bad,” Stephanie responded. “Well, not bad, but it’s—you know when you’re into someone so you try and get close to them, but then it’s too late and you’re really close friends and you don’t want to risk that?”
Tony Stark’s eyebrows went up. “Stephanie I-never-caught-your-last-name, I think you just described my life story.”
“Shut up, I did not,” Stephanie said. “I’ve seen you—you go around breaking girls’ hearts. You don’t get yours broken.”
“Au contraire, mon amie,” Tony responded liltingly. He was probably, Stephanie thought, a little drunk. “My heart is a very breakable thing.”
“Yeah,” Stephanie sighed. “So’s mine.”
That sweltering summer in 1997, Michael sat down across from Stephanie as she began to describe the day’s Tony sighting.
“It was earlier than he’s ever been here before,” Stephanie said, standing up so as better to convey the gravitas of the situation. Michael just tilted his head back to watch. “I’d only been down here for a few minutes when he showed up.”
“Maybe he and Rhodes were going to get breakfast,” Michael suggested.
“No, I’m talking—you know how I like to watch the sunrise?”
“Okay, wow, that’s early,” Michael said. “Must’ve been just before six, right?”
He had left the building at half five, because he liked to visit his grandmother in her care home before he went to work, and the sun had risen while he was sitting in that perennial LA traffic.
“Yeah, around then. But it was so weird—it was like he didn’t even see me,” Stephanie continued. “He just hauled ass to the stairs, started taking them two at a time.”
“You think there was some sort of emergency?” Michael asked.
“And neither of them have come down,” Stephanie said, disregarding his question. “I didn’t even go out for lunch. God, I’m starving.”
“Here,” Michael said, pulling an energy bar out of his bag. Stephanie latched onto it gratefully.
“It was just so weird,” she said in between bites. “These last few months he’s been so friendly, there’s no reason he’d be suddenly pretending I don’t exist.”
“What if he was drunk?” Michael asked. “Or high?”
“When he’s drunk he’s even friendlier,” Stephanie said. Michael’s spine straightened. “I don’t know what it was that had him so focused, but he didn’t seem wasted at all. Like I said, he was taking the stairs really quick. Last time he tried to take them drunk, it took like half an hour.”
“Last time?”
“Did I not tell you about New Year’s?” Stephanie asked, though of course she hadn’t. She’d told the group about it on one of the days Michael had to work late. “The one before last, when I had that party at mine. Me and Rhodey had to drag him up the stairs, just about.”
“I always wondered where you got to,” Michael said.
“You noticed?” Stephanie asked before she could help herself. Maybe the hunger was throwing off her judgment.
“Steph,” Michael said. He was the only one who called her that; she would’ve bitten the head off anyone else who tried. “Of course I noticed.”
Stephanie finished off the energy bar, not trusting herself to respond.
“The point is,” she said, “something’s going on up there. I think I’m just going to wait here until he leaves.”
“Yeah, no way,” Michael said. “You’re coming with me, and I’m making you something to eat. You like stir-fry?”
“Um,” said Stephanie, torn between her heart and her duties to the Unofficial Tony Stark Fan Club, “yes?”
“Good,” Michael said.
Meanwhile, Yvonne and Gladys had called Jennifer over to their apartment the second she’d gotten back from work.
“I think they’re taking a break,” Yvonne said weakly. “It’s probably for the best. They’ve been at it all day.”
“At what?” asked Jennifer. She’d heard a vague sort of commotion when she was stepping out of the shower that morning, but hadn’t thought to investigate. Now, based on Yvonne and Gladys’ expressions, she felt as though she was missing something important.
“You know how we thought they might be sleeping together?” Yvonne asked. They’d never expressed their suspicions aloud before, but plenty could be communicated through pointed looks and raised eyebrows.
“Yes,” said Jennifer, who could confidently state that she’d spent the last year considerably more interested in James Rhodes’ love life than her own.
“Well, they weren’t,” Gladys said.
Jennifer’s stomach knotted itself in disappointment. Just last month she’d encountered James and Tony in the lobby, arguing in a teasing way about which restaurant they should get dinner at. She’d been called in as a tiebreaker and had somewhat haltingly suggested the kitschy diner her best friend waited tables at. 'The servers are all on rollerblades,' she’d said after giving them directions, watching Tony Stark’s eyes light up. 'Excellent,' he’d replied, and grabbed James by the wrist to tug him outside.
Friends could do those sorts of things, she supposed—could touch with easy proprietorship and call each other pet names and look at each other like the secrets of the cosmos were contained within each other’s eyes. There was nothing inherently romantic in bickering like a married couple over an evening destination.
Maybe she just wanted there to be. Maybe she just thought they might be happy together.
“How do you know they’re not?” she asked now, trying not to sound too put out.
“We know they weren’t,” Yvonne said, “because this morning we got woken up to Tony Stark yelling to high heaven about how he was sober and ready to play video games.”
Jennifer tried to make sense of this. “Right?”
“Putting aside that sobriety is not generally a condition of playing video games,” Gladys said, “and how he was shouting about having ‘supplies’…”
“They started having sex around midmorning,” Yvonne said. “And they only just stopped.”
Jennifer’s mouth dropped open. “That’s—” She blinked. “What, eight hours?”
“I’m not sure how they had the stamina,” Yvonne said. “Maybe they took a break around lunch—Gladys insisted we go out—”
“You were about to start holding a cup up to the ceiling,” Gladys groused.
“But other than that!” Yvonne continued. “Well. It sounds like they’re having fun.”
Jennifer sank down onto the couch. “How much could you hear?”
“Gladys turned the TV—”
“To give them some privacy!”
“—but they weren’t holding anything back up there.”
“Oh, god,” Jennifer said. “And you’re sure this was the first time?”
“Absolutely,” Yvonne said, without revealing the source of her certainty. “Listen, maybe it’s inappropriate, but I feel as though this calls for some wine.”
“You think every situation calls for wine,” Gladys said fondly.
“I think we’ve got some champagne at the back of the cupboard,” Yvonne continued.
“Oh, go on then,” said Gladys.
The occupants of the apartment above started up again before the bottle was half empty.
“Oh,” said Jennifer, going rather pink.
It wasn’t so explicit as she’d worried: the sound was muffled enough that only a few stray shouts or groans were truly audible. And the thumping of the bed against the wall, naturally.
Yvonne laughed into her glass and, after a shocked few moments, the other two women joined in.
At the next meeting of the Unofficial Tony Stark Fan Club, which was delayed by Jennifer until it couldn’t reasonably be put off any further, Ben Yang started off a sentence with, “Did you guys hear…?”, only to be frantically shushed by Yvonne.
“…about Princess Diana?” he finished, lamely.
“Yes,” said Stephanie with a frown. “Everyone heard about Princess Diana.”
“So sad,” Yvonne said, conjuring a tear to her eye.
They had forgotten to account for the person who lived on the other side of James Rhodes’ apartment.
Gladys was returning from a trip to the library, clutching a book about the Industrial Revolution (for her) and a Harlequin romance (for Yvonne), when she heard the grating tone of Abigail Byrd, followed by the chiding reprimands of Mrs. Taylor, head of the Tenants Association.
“I just think people deserve to know,” Abigail was saying, “if something improper is going on.”
“I hardly see why,” Mrs. Taylor said. “It sounds like a nasty rumor to me.”
“You don’t understand,” Abigail insisted, “I heard them.”
“I don’t know what you heard, but I rather doubt it was half as bad as this story you’ve come up with. Honestly! Can’t the people in this building leave the poor man alone?”
Gladys paused.
“What exactly is it you think you heard, Abigail?” she asked.
The girl’s head whipped around. Her ponytail shook with self-righteous outrage.
“You must know!” she said. “You and your group of, of busybodies. You keep tabs on everything Tony Stark does.”
“Do we now,” Gladys said calmly.
“I’m thinking I should go to the press,” Abigail continued. “The price on a story about Tony Stark being a homosexual—”
“That’s quite enough,” Mrs. Taylor snapped. “If the allowance your parents send you isn’t enough, Miss Byrd, feel free to pursue honest work. But if I find you’ve sold a story about a tenant’s guest to the media, I will make personally sure that you are no longer welcome in this building. I will not have this place becoming a den of gossip. More of a den of gossip,” she added, shooting an equally judgmental look in Gladys’ direction.
Abigail’s mouth set, but Gladys felt sure that the scolding would be sufficient to keep the girl from pursuing her half-cocked plan.
For now.
The last time Gladys saw Tony Stark, it was to warn him.
“I’m dreadfully sorry,” she said, “and I’m sure you don’t remember me—”
“No, of course, you’re Yvonne’s—” and he stopped, evidently unsure of whether it was his place to define Gladys and Yvonne’s relationship.
“I’m Yvonne’s,” Gladys confirmed. Tony Stark smiled at her, and Gladys found herself, reluctantly, admitting that it was a very different smile to the one she’d seen in Yvonne’s magazines. This one met his eyes. “And, if I might be so bold, you’re James’.”
Tony Stark’s eyes went warmer still. “Yeah,” he said. “Although you should probably keep that one on the down-low. He doesn’t want people finding out.”
“That’s why I wanted to speak to you,” she admitted. “There’s a girl who lives next to James—”
“Abigail,” Tony said. “She used to try and flirt with me, but now she just glares.” And then, because stories of his genius were presumably not exaggerated: “Oh. You’re trying to tell us to be careful.”
“Yes. She was thinking of selling the story.”
“Well, my lawyers would have a field day with that.” Tony grimaced. “Still. I should probably take your advice.”
“Probably,” Gladys said. She reached out and squeezed Tony Stark’s arm, surprised by how different it was to see him while knowing that he loved someone, and that someone loved him. Nothing tangible had changed, and yet Gladys found herself smiling with an understanding she would not have believed possible as she said, “It’ll only get harder. For you more than anyone, I’d imagine.”
Tony nodded. “I know. But I can’t lose him.”
“Well,” Gladys said, “that’s certainly the right answer.”
The last time Ben saw Tony Stark, it was because a crime was occurring.
“Uh,” he said.
Tony Stark’s head swung around. He adjusted his grip on the fancy-looking lockpick but didn’t rise from his crouch.
“Hey, Ben.”
“What are you doing?”
“Rhodey asked me to water his plants while he’s in—” Stark cut himself off. “It’s classified. Rhymes with—what rhymes with Pakistan?”
“If he asked you, why are you breaking in?”
Stark looked down at the lockpick as if he’d never seen it before.
“I’m not stealing anything from him.” Stark paused. “Well, I am, but nothing he’d miss.”
Ben couldn’t generally claim to be attuned to the feelings of others, but even he couldn’t fail to miss the sharp downturn of Stark’s mouth, the raw wrongness of his voice.
“Hey, man, you don’t have to explain anything to me,” he said, holding his hands up. “But, uh, James actually gave me his spare key. If you want, you can use that.”
“Oh,” Stark said, “yeah, that’s probably more convenient. Thanks.”
The last time Michael saw Tony Stark, it was because James Rhodes was moving out.
There were boxes in the lobby when Michael got back from work, and amidst them stood Tony Stark, tapping away at the buttons on a cellphone that seemed too small by half.
“Your boy moving out?” Michael asked.
Stark’s smile slashed harsh across his face. Michael almost recoiled from it.
“Not my boy,” he said. “I’m just here to say goodbye to my unofficial fan club.”
Michael grinned. “You know about ‘em, huh?”
“Hard not to,” Stark replied. “I’m guessing you’re the guy to ask about where Stephanie is.”
Michael’s smile widened. “Last I saw her, she was in my bed.”
“Nice one,” Stark said. He sounded genuine, though there was still something wrong with his smile. “I was rooting for you kids.”
“I’m the same age as you, man,” Michael reminded him. “You want me to send her down?”
“If you would,” said Stark.
The last time Jennifer saw Tony Stark, it was because he was saving her.
“I know you,” said the semi-robotic voice of Iron Man. “Don’t I?”
Despite the imminent mortal peril, Jennifer blushed. “I lived in James Rhodes’ apartment building.”
“Jennifer!” Iron Man’s voice managed to sound delighted. “And now you’re in New York getting attacked by Doombots. Small world. Hey, how’s my favorite fan club doing?”
“Pretty good, if I make it out of this alive,” Jennifer said.
“Noted,” Iron Man said. “How about I put you up in that big tower up there ‘til this is over?”
“…Avengers Tower?”
“Pep’s holding down the fort, refused to leave for safety,” Iron Man told her, changing his flight course. “Nothing’ll hurt you under her watch, I’ll tell you that.”
Jennifer’s blush deepened at the prospect of meeting Pepper Potts in person.
The Unofficial Tony Stark Club may have spread far and wide, but they still made a point to catch up with one another—and to stay up-to-date on all Tony Stark-related news. When the press had begun to report on Tony Stark’s threeway relationship with the CEO of his company and his best friend, the Unofficial Fan Club had flocked back to LA like a pilgrimage, all of them thrilled by the news. ‘I knew they’d work it out,’ Jennifer had said over her third glass of wine, getting a little teary-eyed. ‘And with Pepper Potts, too. She’s so—pretty.’
“You should stay for dinner,” Iron Man continued, once he’d set her down on the landing pad of his tower. “I think it’s Rhodey’s turn to cook, if he doesn’t go and get himself killed by these second-rate robots. Are you a vegetarian?”
“Um. Yes.”
“I’ll let him know.” And Iron Man gave her a salute and stepped backward off the landing pad, turning a loop-the-loop before he shot back toward danger.
The last time Yvonne saw Tony Stark, it was because she was dying.
“Don’t think I don’t know it was you,” she said, her chiding tone petering into a cough. “The private room, all these doctors hanging on my every need. It’s a—nice way to go.”
Tony didn’t deny it. “You should’ve told me. I could’ve come sooner.”
“You didn’t need to come at all, you silly man,” Yvonne said. “How did you even find out I was sick?”
“I asked around when I didn’t get your customary box of baked goods for Christmas.”
“Sorry about that,” Yvonne said.
Tony scoffed. “No one makes ‘em like you.”
“It’s actually Gladys who makes them,” Yvonne said. “I just do the icing.”
“It’s very good icing.” Tony sat down on the chair positioned next to the bed: Gladys’ customary seat. He took her hand. “You never told me how you guys got together.”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything very exciting,” Yvonne said. “She went to college—not exactly usual for a girl back then, so she was rather noticeable. And I was working as a receptionist on campus. She used to sit in the administration building to read, and every so often I’d look over and she’d already be looking at me.”
“So you asked her out?”
“Of course not.” Yvonne laughed, a rasping sound. “I actually had a boyfriend back in those days. A lovely boy, though of course he was obsessed with getting me out of my job and into a home with a few babies. He must have proposed six times that fall. No, it was after months of sharing looks and small talk that I looked up and the poor girl was crying.”
“Why?”
“A lot of reasons,” Yvonne said. “She was homesick, but dreaded going home for Christmas. She wanted to return to the family of her childhood, but the war had put paid to all that. Worse, though, her landlord had told her she needed to leave: she’d become very interested in politics, in civil rights, and he didn’t like the sorts of people she was inviting over. It certainly wasn’t a good time to be going around declaring yourself a socialist, but Gladys was always so quiet and polite—she wasn’t used to getting in trouble.”
Tony smiled. “I never thought she was a rebel.”
“Serves you right for judging on appearances,” Yvonne said primly. “Anyway, I told her right then and there to come and live with me. I didn’t have much to offer: no spare bed, and there were probably rats in the walls, but the landlord was less discerning and you could’ve paid the rent each month by picking up all the pennies you saw on the sidewalk.”
“You started living together? Just like that?”
“And we have been ever since. That winter was a brutal one, and it was colder in the apartment than it was outside, so we did a lot of huddling for warmth.” Yvonne chuckled wryly. “I’m sure you can guess where it went from there.”
“Sixty years,” Tony said wonderingly.
“Ah, yes,” Yvonne said. “I’ve seen all about you and your love life in the papers. They don’t think it’s going to last.”
“I don’t know if it’s going to,” Tony replied. “I kept messing it up with Rhodey when it was just the two of us, and now…”
“One thing I learned, if you’ll take some advice from a dying old woman,” Yvonne said, “is that you can’t know what’s going to work until you try it. I’d never even heard of two gals going steady back in those days. Every day I woke up sure that everything was about to go wrong, and every night I fell asleep in Gladys’ arms. Because somewhere in between, every day, she changed my mind.”
“When did you get so wise?” Tony asked.
“I’ve always been wise,” Yvonne said. “You just never used to listen to your elders.”
For a moment they sat with only the humming and beeping of medical equipment as backing noise.
“Thank you,” Tony said eventually, leaning down to kiss Yvonne’s cheek. “For everything.”
Stephanie didn’t see Tony Stark before he died.
She’d been in that nothing-place, her last memory being of Michael at the stove, making stir-fry, their baby clapping along in her highchair. She and Rhiannon had been the ones erased from existence; Michael had stayed behind.
They came back just as abruptly. She’d cried out her daughter’s name and Michael had come thundering down the stairs, five years older, his wedding ring still on his finger. She couldn’t begin to understand the grief on his face, the way it transmuted into joy. She could only hold him, and their child, in her arms and sob.
Later that day, tears still wet on her face, clutching her tiny, beautiful girl on her lap, she saw news of Tony Stark’s death on the news.
After the upheaval of everything else, it was hard to summon fresh emotion for him. But for a moment she thought of a simpler time, of trying to drag a drunken twenty-something up the stairs. That same man had saved the universe. It was a difficult thought to comprehend.
That weekend, she got a call.
“Hi, Stephanie,” said James Rhodes. “Is this a good time?”
Stephanie was in a line at one of the centers that had been set up to try and reinstate the identities of the people who’d disappeared. It was a line stretching two street blocks.
She adjusted Rhiannon on her hip. “Yeah, I’ve got time. I’m—sorry for your loss.”
James made a sound, like a scoff emptied of humor, into the phone. “Thanks. That’s actually—I’m getting in touch with all of you, from back then. For his funeral. He would’ve wanted you there, I think.”
Stephanie had kept in touch with Tony Stark sporadically; he’d showed up for a couple of her magazine’s board meetings, had taken her to lunch afterward. She’d visited Avengers Tower once, during a trip to New York for Fashion Week, and met the lot of them. If asked, she would have called them friendly acquaintances.
“You’re sure?”
James laughed, again without humor. “He loved you guys. Called you the politest fans he ever had. The—that t-shirt you made him, it stopped fitting years ago but he’s still got it. Still had it. Shit.”
Stephanie wondered if he was crying.
“Hold on,” James said, “I’m going to pass you over to Pepper—she’s—that okay?”
“Of course,” Stephanie said. Her grief about Tony Stark’s death, so neatly folded up in the grief she’d felt over her own missing years, began to unspool. Her throat felt tight.
“Stephanie?” said a female voice on the other end of the line. Pepper Potts.
“I’m here.”
“Thanks for taking our call.” Pepper didn’t sound so much better than Rhodey. “It’ll just be a small ceremony—a way to say goodbye to him. He wasn’t religious, so it’s—next Saturday, there’s a lake outside our home, and we’d love it if you could be there.”
“Are the others coming?” Stephanie asked.
“You were the first we called,” Pepper said. “I can arrange travel for you, if that’s a concern. We know it’s short notice—no, Morgan, sweetie, go sit with Dada—”
“I’ll come,” Stephanie said, a tear falling down her cheek. Rhiannon reached up with a small hand, touching it curiously. “I want to say goodbye.”