[Editor's Note: The incidents in this story took place before April 27th.]

Edi was visiting her mom for the weekend, so I was doing what geeks do when their loved ones go out of town: watching George Romero's cut of the original Dawn of the Dead on my PC DVD while simultaneously watching Dario Argento's cut on the TV DVD, and sorting my recent comic book purchases on one side of the floor. The phone ringing interrupted all this, and it took some doing pausing both movies, moving the unsorted comics off my lap, and getting to the phone before the caller went into voicemail.

"Jeff? Jeff Lester?" It was a man's voice, unrecognizable but instantly familiar, possessing that cheerful "It's after midnight and I couldn't be more awake" tone to it, the tone you usually hear with loud chatter and a live band in the background. Except there was no chatter and no band, just the man's pleased voice.

"Uhhhh, yes?" Who could it be? Brian Bendis? Spooky? Ben Hibbs with a new voice filter?

"I know you're wondering who this is." Professor Xavier? Nate Summers? Saturn Girl on steroids? "Jeff, this is Tom Cruise."

I looked over around my room. "I'm sorry?"  And he said, "I know, it's not like we've spoken before, buddy. Listen, have you got a minute or two? I need to talk with you."

"Uhhhh…" It did sound like Tom Cruise; it was either Tom Cruise or Ben Hibbs disguising his voice to sound like Tom Cruise and that was very, very unlikely. Just the other day, Hibbs had told me he wouldn't let Ben watch any movies with Cruise in them until Ben was 18. "So Ben doesn't decide to become a scientologist?" I asked and Hibbs made a face and said, "So Ben doesn't decide to become a total tool. Tom Cruise is the tooliest tool that ever tooled a tool. If Tom Cruise was a children's book, he'd be The Phantom Toolbooth. If he was a Star Trek character, he'd be Hikaru Toolu. If he was a failed Sid & Marty Kroftt musical group, he'd be Captain Tool and the Kongs. Or maybe Pink Lady & Jeff. Whichever one, no way am I taking a chance on that happening to my son."

"Jeff? Hey, man, my cell phone only holds so much of a charge, you know?" My attempt to escape into a flashback had failed and I was still talking on the phone with someone who very well could be Tom Cruise.

"Huh? Sorry, uh, Tom. What can I, uh, help you with?"

"Well, Jeff, let me be candid here--straight-shooting, down to earth honest here. I, uh—Heh!—I need a girlfriend."

I was literally speechless and he continued. "Like I said, I'm being utterly candid, here. I've got a big movie, War of the Worlds—a very big movie, one of the biggest movies of the summer—and there's a lot riding on it. And normally—well, normally—I'd start dating one of my female co-stars and there'd be a lot of buzz and we could count on a very big opening weekend. But my female co-star in this—Heh! Heh!—is Dakota Fanning and she's…well, she's eleven, Jeff. And not a Scientologist. Plus, she plays my daughter. She's incredibly talented, just remarkable, a remarkable person, but I don't think that would really play right with the press. Publicity, sure, there'd be publicity. But would it be the right kind of publicity? And I think we all pretty much agreed it wouldn't. It wouldn't be the right kind of publicity, Jeff, and it really wouldn't do justice to what we were trying to accomplish, which is promoting this very brilliant—this, this, this amazing movie my good friend Steven Spielberg had directed. Amazing movie. And so I'm calling you, because I thought you could help me with this. I'm having a girlfriend problem and I thought you, Jeff, you could help me."

I looked at one of the paused DVDs: a zombie was staring blankly through a shopping mall window, but I could swear even it, with its blank expression, was thinking: What the fuck? "Well, Tom, gee. Most of my female friends are married these days, you know how it goes—"

"No," Tom Cruise sounded a bit put out. "Jeff. Buddy. No. I'm calling—I'm here calling you—I'm calling you—Heh!—I'm calling you, to ask you to be my girlfriend."

"Uhhh…"

"Listen to me here, buddy. I've just finished interviewing some of the most beautiful women in Hollywood—gorgeous women, and absolutely talented, just incredible—in the interest of finding a girlfriend. I interviewed Jennifer Garner, Scarlett Johansson, Kate Bosworth and Jessica Alba. I actually interviewed Jessica Alba twice, Jeff—she's an absolutely incredible woman. Now, you do see what all those women have in common, don't you?"

"They're twenty years younger than you?"

There was a loud, almost Horshack like laugh. It was Tom Cruise. "No! Not even! Jennifer Garner is only nine years younger than me! Come on! I was told you were an intelligent guy—think!"

"They're all up and coming actresses?"

There was a bit of a pause and when Tom spoke, his voice was a little lower, and a lot more serious. "No. Now, think. I've been told you're a smart guy. Think about it. What do those women have in common?"

I looked around the room, trying to figure out what those women might have in common with each other and, somehow, me. I looked from one DVD zombie to the other, then at the floor, then at the phone, then back to the floor. "They were all in movies based on comics."

"Yes! YES! Exactly, Jeff! I can't begin to tell you how relieved I am that you figured that out, buddy."

"Although Kate Bosworth is in a movie, Superman Returns, that's currently filming."

"Well, I didn't know that at the time.  I basically did it because she used to date Orlando Bloom, and I hate Orlando Bloom.  Hate. Him.  Orlando Bloom…Orlando Bloom is the biggest, the biggest…he's the biggest tool in Hollywood, to be frank.  Orlando Bloom is a tool.  If Orlando Bloom was a children's book, he'd be…a big book with a tool in it. I'm basically an old school Marvel fan, anyway. Elektra; Sue Storm. I would've interviewed Kristen Dunst but I always thought she would make a better Gwen Stacy than a Mary Jane Watson."

"Wow," I said. "Me, too!"

"I know!" Tom Cruise said. "Right? Right? It just made no sense to me! She's not even a real redhead! Anyway, it doesn't matter. Sometime around my second interview with Jessica, I had a cognition, a real…Big Win about the whole thing. I was trying to ask her about how long the Invisible Girl could stay invisible, and she just couldn't tell me, she was shaking her head like I was making fun of her and I suddenly realized: She has no idea how long she can stay invisible! Jeff, I make it a point when I play a role to learn to do everything that character can do. Everything. I learned to pour drinks for Cocktail, race cars for Days of Thunder. I can shoot pool; I can rep sports stars. For Mission Impossible, I spent three weeks in the former Soviet Union killing rogue counter-agents with my own hands. It wasn't fun, Jeff, but that's what you do when you're an actor. You act. But these women, they didn't know—I was so surprised that Jessica Alba hadn't at least read every issue of Fantastic Four. I mean, isn't that the least you can do?"

"Wow," I said, sitting up. "You sound so much like—"

"Heh!  Like a regular guy?"

"Well, if by 'regular guy,' you mean 'nutjob who posts long rants on comic book message boards,' then yes. Yes, I do. You've always had this comic book thing going on?"

"Jeff, always. Ever since I was a little kid. And for the last—gosh, ten years or so—it's been a point of pride with me that the women I've dated have been in movies based on comic books. Heh! Heh!  Really.  That, and my spiritual beliefs, are the most important aspects of my romantic relationships."

"Wait, Nicole Kidman was in a movie based on a comic book?"

"Batman Forever! Remember? She took that movie at my insistence. You know, it's much easier to date actresses now—back then, it was Helen Shaver, Margot Kidder and Eartha Kitt. And Eartha would never return my calls."

"What about Penelope Cruz? She hasn't done any comic book movies."

"No, she did that Captain Corelli movie with Nicholas Cage, remember? Nick is just like me—a huge comic book fan, huge."

"That was based on a comic book?" I turned to my computer and opened a brower window.

"Of course it was. I read that book when I was a kid. I loved it."

"Captain Corelli's Mandolin?"

There was silence on the line. "I believe it's called Captain Corelli, Mandolphin."

"No, it's not."

"Yes, Jeff, it is. Captain Corelli, Mandolphin. He was in the Super-Friends. He was my favorite hero."

"What? No, he wasn't."

"Yes." I could practically hear Tom squint. "He. Was. Captain Corelli, Mandolphin. I don't know why you're having trouble with this. I expected an ARC-X or two, but not this early on."

I thought for a moment or two. "Tom, did you see the movie?"

"The movie isn't the point here, Jeff, your engrams are. You're nattering about my childhood which you weren't even around for, which is really, really Out-Ethics."

The good thing about celebrities is that even if you didn't pay attention to them, you still could know a lot about them. I remembered reading that Cruise had claimed Scientology had cured him of dyslexia—perhaps he had just gotten powerful enough that nobody ever corrected him anymore.

"Well, I apologize, Tom, my, uh, mistake there, although you bring up a good point. I'm not a Scientologist, you know."

"Well, Jeff, I understand. And that's fine, although if we were to start dating, I'd insist on our first date being at the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles. Scientology is a great thing, buddy, a deeply spiritual religion, and I'm sure you'd appreciate it. I mean, you're a comic book fan like me. Do you know what Scientologists believe, Jeff? We believe that Xenu rounded up an over-population of aliens in this sector of the galaxy and executed them on Earth with hydrogen bombs long before humanity existed. And each one of us is an operating Thetan, reincarnated many times over and possessed by conflicted alien spirits which keep us from remembering and using our innate super-powers."

"Oh my God," I said. "That's awesome!"

"I know!" Tom Cruise laughed. "Isn't it? It's like a Steve Gerber comic from the '70s! How anyone can be a fan of comic books and not be a Scientologist? I don't get it. And this is what I was hoping for, dating these actresses who do the comic book movies—a similar understanding of how life works. Things just don't happen to us for no reason, Jeff. Things happen because an alien killed a bunch of Thetans with hydrogen bombs trillions of years ago. Who can't understand that? But actresses, man—actresses. So I thought I might have better luck with someone who shares similar views with me and this person I was chatting to in alt.resources.child.mad.scientists said you would be a perfect match for me. And you know, you've got your newsletter so I figure if we start dating, there'll be a certain amount of publicity to it. And then I'd cast you as Pepper Potts in Iron Man: The Motion Picture and the publicity would only pick up from there."

"Oh my God!" I said. "I always wanted to play Pepper Potts!"

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), Edi came home early and prevented me from fulfilling my life-long goal of breaking into Hollywood movies as Iron Man's girlfriend. She took the phone and talked to Tom and, after a long conversation, gave him Katie Holmes' phone number. Somehow Tom Cruise and I had both forgotten Katie Holmes was going to be in Batman Begins (which, two days after seeing it, I forgot again). You know the rest of the story, and they're even calling themselves "Tomcat" which kinda sounds like a superhero Rob Liefeld would create (although you might have to throw a "Dark" or a "Blood" in there). When Katie Holmes ends up playing Pepper Potts, think of me, dear reader, and shed an engram for what might have been.