Percival Everett, "The Fix"

fitted sheets & Gotham City rooftops

“‘Well, it works now.’”

The only superheroes who have ever meant anything to me (Michael Keaton’s Batman, Jim Carrey’s The Mask) appeared in my life, not coincidentally, before I turned thirteen. Only when you’re as powerless as a young child does the notion of a secret superpower possess a special, almost carnal, thrill. What if you didn’t just control your bedtime — what if you controlled the laws of physics? 

Adults (many of whom would be delighted if someone came along and forced them to go to sleep at 8:30) need subtler stuff. They crave the power to have the car take itself in to be inspected, the power to fold a fitted sheet. Grownups don’t need the Marvel Cinematic Universe; they need Percival Everett’s “The Fix.”

Percival Everett is the Carol-Oates-ishly productive author of more novels than a book-jacket can comfortably list — including Erasure (which became American Fiction) and James, a Jim-centric retelling of Huckleberry Finn. In the time that most novelists take to write their first tentative journal entries about a project (What about something set in New Mexico…?), Everett has written the book and moved on to the sequel. 

“The Fix” — his ingenious superhero story — opens with a man named Douglas witnessing the brutal beating of a stranger in a Washington, D.C. alley. Douglas, who owns a sandwich shop next to the alley, goes out and fires a gun in the air, sending the assailants running. The hapless victim, Sherman, staggers inside for a pastrami on rye and a glass of milk.  

As they sit recuperating in the quiet sandwich shop, the refrigerator motor kicks on.

“Your compressor is a little shot,” Sherman said.

Douglas looked at him, not knowing what he was talking about.

“Your fridge. The compressor is bad.”

“Oh, yes,” Douglas said. “It’s loud.”

“I can fix it.” 

Douglas just looked at him.

“You want me to fix it?”

 Sherman takes a piece of bubblegum, fiddles around under the machine for a few seconds, and steps back — the fridge now hums like new. He is, it turns out, one of those people who can fix anything — and the business of the story is going to be exploring just how far that anything extends. But before Everett can make us appreciate the poignancy and complexity of being a super-repairer (can Sherman fix bodies? should he?) he needs to show us the fun of it. This is the part of the movie in which the newly spider-bitten Peter Parker dodges a bully’s fists with balletic ease and climbs a brick wall with his fingertips. And it’s in this power-proving stretch that the story’s greatness lies. 

Douglas offers Sherman lodging in the grim little apartment above his shop — Sherman will fix anything that happens to break, and in exchange he’ll get free room and sandwiches.

Douglas gets home (he lives a short drive from the shop) and tells his wife Sheila about the arrangement and she, sensibly enough, isn’t thrilled. What if Sherman robs them? What if he tries cooking for himself and burns the place down?

So off Douglas and Sheila drive in the middle of the night, sheepish and outraged, respectively, to tell Sherman that he needs to move along.

… Sherman came walking down the stairs in his trousers and sleeveless undershirt. He was rubbing his eyes, trying to adjust to the bright light.

“Sherman,” Douglas said, “it’s me, Douglas.”

“Douglas? What are you doing back?” He stood in front of them in his stocking feet. “By the way, I fixed the toilet and also that funny massager thing.”

“You mean, my foot massager?” Sheila asked.  

It turns out that Sheila — who spends hours a day on her feet in the shop — has a beloved and expensive foot massager that has long since stopped working.

“The man at the store said my foot massager couldn’t be repaired,” Sheila said.

Sherman shrugged. “Well, it works now.”

That last line of dialogue — Well, it works now — sends a shiver of joy down my spine no less powerful than what I felt when I first saw Batman swoop into an alley to interrupt a mugging. The brilliance of it is in the nonchalance, the almost apologetic delivery, the way that it resembles so closely the the verbal packaging for a disappointment. 

Well, I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. This is the sound of the weary airline desk agent (for whom you’ve been waiting for an hour) telling you that there are no more flights today. The Closed sign in the pharmacy window. The insurance rate doubling for no reason at all. You may fuss and you may plead, the tone says, but there’s nothing that I can or will do to help you.

Which of course makes the actual contents of the message — that the cherished machine has been restored to full functionality and that, by extension, everything will be — all the more delicious. Sheila isn’t going to let Sherman go now. She, and we, are standing on a Gotham City rooftop, tingling with the sense that the entire chaotic and infuriating and uncontrollable city below has finally met its match. Nothing could go wrong.