Once the sunset’s cloaked devils descended behind the apartment building across the street, and it was safe to turn from the window, the prop comic surveyed his living room. It was cluttered with absurd contraptions he must have assembled during his most recent manic fit. For example, he had duct taped a pair of walkie-talkies to the breasts of a mannequin’s torso. The torso was glued to a unicycle. He tried to think of the joke that might have inspired this invention. Booby-talkie? Boobicycle? Post depression he was always baffled. And broke. He sat on the radiator but instantly stood again, startled. He withdrew a joy buzzer from his back pocket.

Later, on the bus, the only joy he could imagine the buzzer generating was at another’s expense. Such is comedy, he thought. At that moment a middle-aged Asian man wearing a Superman t-shirt boarded. A team of meaty fraternity brothers and their slender dates, in back, began to pump their fists and chant, “Soo-per-man.” The Asian man smiled politely and bowed, but after three full minutes of ironic chanting he hung his head. The vengeful prop comic stared down the young people in drunken gunslinger fashion. Then he reached up under the skirt of a gum-snapping blonde, firmly pressed the joy buzzer against her warm crotch, and dashed off the bus. Like a maniac, he suddenly fancied himself some kind of superhero.