All My Friends Are Superheroes
Andrew Kaufman
Language: English
Pages: 140
ISBN: 1552452700
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"One of the saddest, funniest, strangest, and most romantic books. . . . Brilliant!"—The Bookseller (UK)
All Tom's friends really are superheroes. Tom even married a superhero, the Perfectionist. But at their wedding, Perf is hypnotized by her ex-boyfriend, Hypno, to believe Tom is invisible. Nothing he does can make her see him. Six months later, the Perfectionist is sure Tom has abandoned her, so she's moving away. With no idea Tom's beside her, she boards a plane. Tom has until they land to make her see him.
This tenth anniversary edition adds short stories, illustrations, and a foreword to the cult classic that has been a bestseller in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden.
Andrew Kaufman is the author of The Waterproof Bible and The Tiny Wife.
cigarettes out of their packages and made a stack of 600 cigarettes. The Perfectionist started smoking. Six hundred seemed like an incredible number of cigarettes to her. She was sure Tom would return before she smoked the last one. Twelve days later the 600th cigarette was between her nicotine-stained fingers. The plastic pink lighter was slippery in her hand. Her thumb flicked. She pushed the flame into the tip of the cigarette. She inhaled, didn’t cough, and somebody knocked on her door.
how the Perfectionist remembers their relationship. For Hypno, the feelings went much, much deeper. He was still in love with the Perfectionist when he approached her at the wedding reception. The Perfectionist stood still. His timing was perfect; a brawl had broken out by the shrimp table. If he made some sort of scene, nobody would notice. Hypno hugged her. She hugged him back. It was her wedding day. She didn’t need anybody’s permission to do anything. ‘Congratulations,’ he whispered.
it?’ ‘Nope. The whole thing’s broken, and when she breaks like that, there’s nothing anyone can do,’ Ambrose said, wiping the Stewart clean with the cloth from his back pocket. ‘Maybe it’ll mend itself. Sometimes they do.’ Ambrose set the rib bone back into place. He held the hood of Tom’s chest with the tips of his fingers and let it drop. Ambrose packed up his tools. He shook his head, didn’t say a word, and left. FOUR REGULARS ‘All passengers are reminded to present proper identification
with their boarding passes,’ the airline representative announces through the P.A. system. ‘Proper identification must be presented with your boarding pass.’ Tom reaches into his jacket pocket. He has proper I.D. and a boarding pass for flight AC117. His seat, E27, is beside the Perfectionist’s. But he hasn’t shipped his belongings to Vancouver. He’s paid another month on their apartment. His ticket is a return ticket. Tom is so desperate he’s secretly hoping he’s a superhero. He’s never hoped
the Anxiety Monster. ‘What happened?’ he asked her. ‘It left,’ she said. She moved a black nine onto a red ten. ‘It just left?’ ‘There are two ways to get rid of an anxiety monster, my friend – you either have a bath or a nap.’ Tom watches an airplane take off. The Perfectionist has finally boarded. He remembers asking the Amphibian about all the monsters. ‘I don’t remember a single monster before I met you,’ he’d told the Amphibian. ‘Now they seem to be all over the place.’ ‘You mean