“Oh shit,” said the Human Stain as he stared at his laptop.
“What’s going on?” Lara asked, eating a spoon of Nutella while leaning in the doorway.
“I got an email from the Justice Squadron,” the super-hero replied. “Oh, I don’t know if I want to open it.”
“Open it, you chicken,” Lara said. “It could be a yes, or it could just be that they need your mother’s maiden name or something to run a background check.”
“Rejection,” he announced.
“Sorry, man.”
“We had a record number of very strong applicants this year,” the hero read, “but we will keep your information on file.”
“So, you’re kinda waitlisted,” Lara consoled. She held her spoon in her mouth a tapped the hero on both his shoulders.
“Do you think I could’ve been a better hero if I weren’t raised by my parents?”
“I think you’d be more popular if you didn’t name yourself after a Philip Roth novel.”
“All the best heroes, they were raised by their aunts or uncles or butlers or some random farmers. But I had to grow up with my birth parents.”
“Coming from a loving home isn’t a disadvantage, Stain.”
“Look at history, though. It’s always dead parents or absent parents, or what have you. Even all the Greek heroes were the result of some god bed-tricking some poor women and cuckolding her husband.”
“Thor, Beowulf, Gilgamesh, I think they all had good parents. And hey, maybe your uncle is really your dad or something.”