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surlier look going, if that was possible.
    He wondered for a moment if Nolan was just being nice when he’d promised to contact Jon when something came up.
    No.
    Jon was sure Nolan had been telling the truth. He knew that Nolan felt responsible for the loss of their money, and that sooner or later Nolan would come to Jon with a plan to get them both back on their financial feet again.
    Karen had once suggested to Jon that he was using Nolan as a father substitute, a bullshit idea that embarrassed and irritated Jon; why, he wouldn’t even talk about it, it was such dime-store bullshit psychology. He’d never needed his real parents; why the fuck should he need a fake one? His father was just some guy his mother knew before Jon was born; and his mother was just a fourth-rate saloon singer who was on the road all the time, leaving him to shuttle back and forth between one relative or another, none of them particularly grateful for an extra mouth to feed. A few years ago, his mother had died in an automobile mishap, and he hadn’t even shed a tear; he simply hadn’t known her that well. Early on he’d developed a capacity for amusing himself, for losing himself in the four-color fantasy of the funnies, for being a self-sufficient loner. And, in fact, when he moved to Iowa City to attend the university (briefly, as it turned out), he’d taken a cubbyhole apartment for himself rather than move in with a relative again, even if that relative was Planner, the most pleasant of the lot. Only after the robbery last year, when Nolan had stayed at Planner’s, healing from gunshot wounds, only then had Jon moved in with his uncle. And that was to help his uncle help Nolan.
    His life since meeting Nolan had been hectic but exciting, tragic but exhilarating. Nolan’s reality put the fantasy of Jon’s comic book super-heroes to shame. Reality was harsh—in fantasy, Planner would still be alive, and last year’s bank job wouldn’t have erupted into insanity and blood—but, as Nolan might have said, jerking off is less trouble than screwing but it’s nowhere near as rewarding.
    The Van Cleef poster seemed to be squinting skeptically over at Flash Gordon, as if knowing how ridiculous it was of Jon to equate Nolan with comic book heroes. Ridiculous to think of Nolan as any kind of hero. But Jon did. Even though Nolan was a thief. The way Jon saw it, heroism had nothing to do with morality, or just causes, or politics, or anything else. Heroism had to do with courage; derring- do; a personal code; a steel eye and cool head. And all of these Nolan had. Plenty of.
    Jon thumbed through The Buyer’s Guide (a weekly newspaper of comics-related ads and articles) and saw some photos of a comics convention held out on the West Coast. He wished for a moment he’d gone to Detroit for the convention there this coming weekend; today was Thursday and the start of the con. He’d attended the New York Comic Con several years running, but hadn’t been to too many of the countless other such fandom gatherings. Seemed a pity with a con located here in the Midwest, for a change, that he hadn’t been able to go.
    But this weekend was Karen’s birthday, and he had to be here. She would be justifiably hurt if he chose comics over her. And this would be a traumatic birthday for her: Karen would be turning thirty-one, and the ten-year difference in their ages would be shoved to the front of her awareness. It was something that didn’t bother Jon in the least, but Karen was somewhat paranoid about it. The only thing Jon didn’t like about Karen being older than he was (and divorced) was her ten-year-old freckle-faced brat, Larry, a red-headed refugee from a Keane painting, who was the best argument for birth control Jon could think of.
    Which was something he was very much conscious of when, an hour-and-a-half later, he was having a late lunch with Karen at the Hamburg Inn; now that school was started again, he could enjoy her lunchtime company minus