“This is why I work alone,” Selina thought sourly.
It didn’t occur to her that she was working with both
Batman and Superman at the moment. She was thinking only of her supposed
alliance with Lex Luthor, not the real one with the world’s finest heroes.
And her pose of a partnership with Luthor was beginning to grate.
This time, the note summoning her to a meeting had come
through Raven. “Some horribly butch woman” had intercepted her on her way
to the washroom and “been really rude about it.” The note had once again
led Catwoman to a rendezvous with a Hummer limo, and that again brought her
to the heliport. This time, it was a different airstrip and a different
chartered plane. This time, Luthor was not onboard, only a stewardess who
was entirely too bright-eyed and cheerful to be a Luthor employee. She
undoubtedly came with the charter. She offered drinks, snacks, movies to
pass the time, but precious little information. The flight would be a
little over six hours, she said, which is the point Catwoman began her
silent mantra about working alone. People were fine as people, but as
working partners, they were an endless series of inconveniences and
annoyance. Six hours on a plane to Bast-knows-where, only Luthor!
The plane flew west, give or take, and finally landed
at a good-sized airstrip in what had to be Oregon or Washington State.
There was a glow of a city in the distance, but Selina couldn’t see anything
identifiable. A glow on the horizon could be Portland, could be Tacoma or
Seattle. Considering they were dealing with Luthor, it could even be a
military base in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Naturally, there was another damn Hummer waiting, the
usual size Hummer this time. The driver, in striking contrast to the
too-chipper stewardess, seemed to have no emotions or personality
whatsoever. Indeed, he didn’t seem to have the basic motor mechanisms to
produce any variations in his voice or facial features. Selina would not
have been surprised to learn he was a robot, if he didn’t have some kind of
bite marks on his hand, clumsily covered with a Band-Aid.
The Hummer took her through the kind of dense forest
associated with fairy tales, and into a dark opening in a side of a mountain
that turned out to be an abandoned mine. She was taken down a rickety
cage-door elevator, through a shaft that became abruptly more modern after
thirty feet. At the bottom, the door opened onto a high tech installation that
might have been a bit small for the Bond villain effect, but was otherwise
pure Luthor.
Rather than look around and express wondering
admiration, Catwoman regarded her host coldly.
“Lex, seriously, consider the telephone.”
First, Joker mentioned “mummy.” He did it twice in
less than a week, which would have smelled fishy to anyone that wasn’t a
psychiatrist with a sentimental weakness for Freud. But Bartholomew’s hopes
had soared, just as Harley knew they would. Then, she herself baited that
little hook about cliff diving, leading him to think he’d found a chink in
her devotion to her beloved Mistah J. That blossomed into a full
reemergence of Dr. Quinzel once her Puddin’ was put into isolation after
that Roland Jaer nonsense. And now, now she had him having her make “little
suggestions” for all his Rogue patients.
Little suggestions that, in her wild enthusiasm for the
task, she was structuring as complete therapy roadmaps, some for patients
that weren’t even in residence at the moment. Why, when she was finished,
Dr. Bart would have a brilliantly insightful plan to lead Calendar Man,
Catman, Clayface, Cluemaster, Firefly, Killer Croc, Killer Moth, Mad Hatter,
Mr. Freeze, Ratcatcher, Riddler, Roxy Rocket, Scarecrow, Hugo Strange,
Ventriloquist and Maxie Zeus back to sanity.
The length of the list was no accident. For Harley
wasn’t just constructing a therapy plan for individual Rogues, but a…
TEMPLATE
ROADMAP to ROGUE WELLNESS
Harley giggled with delight as she wrote the heading in
bold block letters. Then she went on to explain her intention: since only
she had the inside knowledge of the Rogue mind borne of living among them,
and since this was not a viable method of training future therapists, she
would not only devise these therapy roadmaps but do so in a precise fashion
that documented her process and could therefore be mimicked later by those
not so fortunate as to have the benefit of her experience.
She read the sentence back. Something seemed wrong
about it—other than its length and having a big ol’ stick up its butt. That
was necessary to seem all academicy Dr. Quinzelishlike. But something else
didn’t quite…
Oh, of course. Given her readers’ bias, that should be
“not so un-fortunate…”
She made the correction, giggled with glee, and
continued.
…so unfortunate as to have the benefit of her
experience. As such, she would want to write the first section—and
indeed, the first paragraph—for each Rogue before going on to the
second. Then do the second for each before the third. Only in that way
would an actual methodology emerge.
Again, Harley giggled at her cleverness.
She counted up the Rogues on her list, worked out how
long it would take to finish two paragraphs or three on each. Introductions
never said much, but they would take some time to compose… Even so, she
added Crazy Quilt, Doctor Death, Kite Man, and Cornelius Stirk to the list,
just for a safety margin. It would be days into the composition before she
had to reveal anything useful about anyone.
Luthor had had enough of Catwoman’s badinage.
“I’m just saying, you have overlooked the potential of
the telephone as a means of communication. Ten numbers, that’s all it
takes, Lex. You dial ‘em, and even though we are three thousand miles
apart, we can still have a conversation without going to all this trouble
every time.”
“Most amusing,” he said acidly. “Now if you will come
this way, please. I will show you what the plans you took in Gotham have
wrought.”
He scrutinized her reaction when she saw the
transporters for the first time. If she had known what the plans were for,
she wasn’t giving anything away. She inspected the transporter tubes with
interest, and spoke unguardedly about the time she infiltrated the
Watchtower with a press junket, disguised as Cat Grant.
“They brought us up in shuttles. We saw the teleport
tubes as part of the tour, but they didn’t let us get this close. It
certainly looks right.”
For the first time, she seemed duly impressed with
Luthor and his achievements.
“And it works?” she asked brightly.
“That is what you are here to determine,” he said
coldly.
She looked up suspiciously, only to see Luthor step in
close as if forming an imposing physical barrier between her and the rest of
the room.
“If you please,” he said menacingly, opening the
nearest tube.
Catwoman could hold her own against Batman, one of the
best martial artists in the world. There was no doubt that she could lay
Luthor flat on his ass if it came to a fight, but instead, she offered a
light smile of acquiescence, the way one does when cornered by some definite
threat that cannot be ignored.
“As you wish,” she said, stepping into the chamber with
her hands raised as if he held a gun on her.
He nodded, satisfied with his victory, and stepped
behind the control panel.
“There’s a bit of a smell in here,” she said casually.
“Disinfectant,” Luthor grimaced. “The last test
subject was less hygienic than one could wish. Do you have a desired target
destination?”
Catwoman restrained her smile at the mental picture
which presented itself.
“Did he bite?”
“Yes,” Luthor spat. “Do you have a desired target
destination?”
“Lex… it was a monkey, wasn’t it?”
“Do you have a desired target?”
“You had a monkey that pee’d in the transport tube.”
Luthor sighed and began to repeat “Do you have a…”
“I ask because I’ve seen The Fly, Lex. I want
to make absolutely sure that you got all of it out of the tube before we go
any further. Not keen on the idea of my molecules being disassembled here
and reassembled elsewhere with a few extras from your simian pal.”
“Catwoman, do you have a desired target or shall I pick
one at random and risk your materializing in a fallout shelter in Beijing?”
She laughed wickedly.
“Of course I do. I want the Batcave.”
“Catwoman, really,” Luthor winced. “Popping into the
Alien's fortress is one thing, but you don't invade the Batcave unless
you're bringing World War III with you.”
“I can handle it. C’mon, Lex… for Kitty?”
“Very well,” he sighed. “It’s your funeral. Will ten
minutes be sufficient?”
“Meow.”
He selected the destination, and the chamber lit up as
always. Then it flashed brighter than usual, and Catwoman disappeared from
Chamber A, just like the penny, the spider, and the monkey before her.
Unlike those earlier test subjects, she did not immediately rematerialize in
Chamber B…
THURSDAY! That meant breakfast at Arkham would
consist of bran flakes, orange juice, raisin bread and butter (which was
rather high carb and low protein for starting off the day, and Harley
wondered if she shouldn’t shoot off a memo to that effect before
continuing). Thursday also meant it was time to use her run-of-the-asylum
status to get some credentials.
They would be Lisa White’s credentials. Harley always
thought Lisa would look better as a blonde anyway. She just had to wait
until the senior staff meeting was going on; Lisa never wore her jacket to
senior staff. It was draped over the back of her office chair, right where
Harley knew it would be. She unclipped the ID card, took it out of its
plastic sleeve, and made a quick photocopy. She returned the original to
Lisa’s office and, while she was there, looked up a certain item on the
Internet.
Harley sighed, happily. It was just PERFECT! She
printed out the coveted information from the website, folded the pages
carefully, and slid them into a special envelope for inmate mail. She
carefully copied Lisa White’s ID code from the identification card,
indicating that the contents of the envelope had been examined and was
approved for delivery to Patient J. She slid it into the outbox, under a
check requisition and a couple file folders that presumably needed to be
refiled. Lisa wouldn’t notice a thing when she got back, and by the end of
the day, Puddin’ would be fully prepped.
Harley didn’t want to risk any more time in Lisa
White’s office, and the identification number from her ID could be used on
any Arkham computer. So Harley went back to her cell… by way of the staff
lounge to find out who was out sick today.
Nurse Chin was, but that was no help. Chin worked in
the infirmary.
Melanie Fontana was sick too. Harley didn’t recognize
the name. Turned out, she was a new girl in the regular wing. She had no
contact with the high-risk patients in the high security wing. She’d have
no clearance to get the kind of information Harley wanted. But she had an
office. An office meant walls and a computer, and that’s really all that
Harley needed. With that, Lisa White’s ID code would open the files she
wanted.
Now all Harley had to do was find out where the heck
this Melanie whatsherface had her office.
The transporter tube flashed, and Catwoman found
herself standing in the Batcave. Batman was at the controls, and Robin was
waiting on the platform with a purple cell phone and her old, skirted
costume from the display case.
“Quick, get changed into this,” Robin said urgently.
Then he made a show of closing his eyes and turning his back, and Selina
couldn’t hold back her smile. Robins were just so cute. The first
twenty times he’d seen her in costume, Tim’s eyes had riveted on her breasts
and didn’t budge throughout the whole dreary discussion of museum skylights
and jewels that didn’t belong to her. Now, you’d think he was embarrassed
to be in the same cave as the notorious Catwoman.
Selina turned her attention from the back of Robin’s
cape to the one he’d handed her.
“Scorch marks?” she said, noting the streaks of charred
black on the fabric.
“Yeah, you really trashed the place. Oracle and I
already loaded that phone with the pictures.”
“That they had far too much fun creating,” Batman added
disapprovingly.
Selina turned her attention to him, still standing
behind the control panel exhibiting all the detached professionalism of a
crimefighter on duty. She flashed him, and he hurriedly tilted his head
down towards the panel to pretend he hadn’t seen. She celebrated the
victory with a wide Cheshire grin, which she held for a full ten seconds
before tactfully changing the subject.
“You’re not telling me that Lex actually has the
ability to beam in here,” she asked, wrapping the green cape around her
shoulders—and noting it was ripped as well as scorched.
“No,” Batman said flatly. “The transponder in your arm
caused Luthor’s system to emit a supersonic squelch when he activated the
tube you were in. That, in turn, activated this console, and I was able to
pull you off his pad.”
“Sweet,” she said, slipping on the low ankle boots she
preferred with the skirted costume. She went on to silently adjust her
cowl, her gloves, and finally she told Tim he could turn around.
Batman took it as a cue.
“Close your eyes and hold your breath,” he ordered,
taking an atomizer and a fire extinguisher from behind the control panel and
subjecting her to a spritzing with liquid smoke, followed by short bursts of
dry baking soda and C02 fog.
“You guys are sick,” she coughed.
In reply, Batman lifted part of her cape, blasted it
solid with two shots from a freeze ray, and shattered the lower third with a
well-placed blow.
“I’m supposed to explain all this when I go back?” she
asked.
“Your choice,” Batman said offhandedly, “Luthor won’t
believe anything you tell him. He’ll assume it’s something you’re making up
to conceal the real details of what happened here.”
“Ah.”
“Ready to go back?”
“Almost,” she breathed. Then she stretched up, kissed
his cheek, and said, “For luck,” giving the cheek a nasty scratch as she
spoke.
He bore it stoically, until she twiddled the tips of
her claws at him.
“Fresh blood, little detail you left out of the master
plan. Lucky you have me to catch those things. Ciaomeow, Dark Knight.”
And with that, she stepped back into the transporter,
and in seconds, had vanished in a blue-gray flash.
NOW things were happening. In the privacy of Melanie
Fontana’s office, Harley used Lisa White’s ID to get access to the Arkham
network. She found out that Puddin’s next session with Dr. Bartholomew was
tomorrow at four. She also looked through the staff calendar and found
that tomorrow was Simone O’Roarke’s wedding anniversary. So she logged out
of the network and hopped back onto the Internet to have a dozen red roses…
no, three dozen red roses… delivered to Simone’s office first thing
in the morning.
No plants would ever be delivered to a patient in the
high security wing, especially when Red was in residence, but the staff was
another story. If some dolt of a husband didn’t know the rules and sent his
wife flowers on their anniversary, they would make it through.
Now, twenty or thirty dollars slipped into Saul Vics’s
hand would make sure Puddin’ was taken to his session past Simone O’Roarke’s
open door and SQUEEEEEE! Harley hugged herself. This was going to be great!
Luthor’s excitement at seeing Catwoman actually
disappear from Chamber A without instantly reappearing in Chamber B was
nothing compared to his giddy delight ten minutes later when Chamber A
erupted into a wash of light again at his command and… yes… yes… there was a
definite purple shape materializing within the light! He had—paraphrasing
the Apollo challenge—sent a Catwoman to the Batman’s cave and returned her
safely to Earth.
“WHEW! What a rush!” Selina exclaimed, doing her best
Roxy Rocket impersonation. “Goddamn, that was fun, Lex.” Then she giggled,
high on adrenaline.
Luthor’s exhilaration was tainted somewhat by surprise,
and he stared openmouthed the top of her thigh. It’s not that it wasn’t a
very shapely thigh; it was merely that the bare leg hadn’t been visible when
she disappeared.
“That’s not the costume you were wearing before,” he
said dully.
“No,” she purred. “I found this in the bastard’s
trophy room, can you believe that? A costume of mine in with his
trophies! So I played a little prank or three.”
She handed over her cell phone triumphantly, and
meowed.
Luthor opened it cautiously… and saw a picture of a
giant playing card bisecting a Lucite case that displayed a (similarly
bisected and somewhat crushed) green velvet hat… an enormous projection
screen pierced by a Riddler cane… a computer console consumed in flames… and
what appeared to be a natural history museum simulacrum of a tyrannosaurus
eating Robin. (Although the last, on closer inspection, was only the cape
of a Robin costume draped over the dinosaur’s teeth, the rest of the costume
being visible in another picture of a shattered display case.)
“Most amusing,” he said, handing back the phone. “Now,
if you will excuse me, I have a number of similar, albeit more discreet,
trials to conduct before the system can be used for a fullscale assault.”
He set the controls, stepped into Chamber A,
experienced the blinding wash of blue-gray light firsthand, and then… found
himself standing one tube to the left in Chamber B.
“NO!” he wailed, racing out, resetting the controls,
and stepping into Chamber B. Like the penny, the spider, and the monkey
before him, he dematerialized from B, and instantly rematerialized in C.
He raced out of the teleport tube again and grabbed
Catwoman roughly by the arm. She was still giggling as she scrolled through
the pictures on her phone, he noted. In the face of these inexplicable
irregularities with the transporter—crux of their master plan—she was
giggling at the photos on her phone. He shuddered at his assumption that
she different from other costumed lunatics, and flung her into the nearest
tube, which again happened to be B.
Before she could object, he hit the controls, blinding
her with that wash of light. Just as before, she vanished from the tube she
was in without reappearing in the next tube over.
Except…
The tube flashed again and, on the very spot where
Catwoman had stood was… was… a cat cowl, a bullwhip and a purple cell phone
lying on a shapeless heap of purple and green fabric.
Leland Bartholomew felt buoyant, positively buoyant,
ever since Harleen stopped by his office first thing in the morning just to
say hello. She had been working on a surprise for him all week, she said, a
surprise that would open his eyes “and the world’s” on the delicate problem
of Rogue reform. She was two-thirds of the way through the introductions
for her “roadmaps” and she enthused about these in detail, going so far as
to show him drafts for several patients—which she needed back, she hastened
to tell him. This was just a preview.
Bartholomew was somewhat skeptical that Harleen’s
efforts would really mean a revolutionary step forward in the treatment of
criminal personality disorders, but his hopes for Harley’s own recovery had
never shone brighter. Her ferocious ambition and wide-eyed naiveté was so
much like the Harleen Quinzel that first joined the Arkham staff. Never had
she seemed so much like her former self.
The day flew by after such a hopeful beginning.
Patients Cobblepot and Lynns in the morning, Isley and Baker in the
afternoon. Before he knew it, it was time to review his notes for the final
appointment of the day.
The subject was a depressing one, testing Bartholomew’s
good spirits as nothing else had. For the notes discussed Patient J’s
appalling talent for creating bloody mayhem, of which Roland Jaer’s murder
was only the latest tragic example.
The biggest factor seemed to be that when Patient J
didn’t have his preferred “SmileX” to work with, he tended to go for the
head: noses, ears, throats, and so on. Blood above the neck being on route
to the brain, it did tend to be very thin and thus didn’t clot very well.
It also tended to be oxygen rich, and hence very, very red. Q.E.D. when
there was a Joker attack in Arkham’s halls, not only was there a large
quantity of blood left at the scene, it was very bright. Definitely made
for a ghoulish moment of discovery, even on those occasions when Patient J
didn’t help matters along by painting smiles and HA-HAs on the wall in some
poor corpse’s O-negative.
Bartholomew looked up sharply, thinking—no,
knowing—that he’d heard a voice. It was too distant to make out words, but
there was no mistaking the cadence. Even if it wasn’t cackling, Bartholomew
knew that voice better than he knew his own: Patient J.
He checked the clock, thinking perhaps he’d lost track
of the time as he reviewed his notes. It was a little early for
Patient J to be arriving for his session, but not intolerably so.
Bartholomew rose from his chair. Perez and Martinez were assigned to escort
Patient J to his office today. They were good men, but if Joker was
talking to them, Bartholomew felt he should go out to the hall himself
and personally take charge of the situation.
He opened his door—and clutched at the doorframe as the
first wave of shock hit.
Red.
In light of his pre-session reading, it is
understandable that he processed the trail of bright red leading down the
hallway and reacted with horror before realizing anything more.
Perez and Martinez—and indeed Joker—were nowhere to be
seen, but there was a bright line of red leading down the hallway to… Rose
petals. Bartholomew’s brain caught up with his vision at last, and he
realized that the vivid streak of red was not blood after all, but rose
petals.
Bartholomew ran down the hallway, making remarkable
time for a man his age, as Joker’s voice wavered on and on, a terrible
familiarity beginning to take shape in the rhythm of the half-heard
syllables:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”
Bartholomew rounded the corner…
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.”
…to see the trail of roses leading right up to Harley
Quinn’s foot.
“Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,”
How could this happen?
“And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;”
She should be back in her cell.
“And every fair from fair sometime declines,”
Harley squealed in delight.
“By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;”
Joker went on reciting…
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;”
and…
“Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,”
…of course…
“When in
eternal lines to time thou grow'st:”
…delivered the
last, unshredded flower…
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,”
…on the final line.
“So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
“OH PUDDIN’,” came
the inevitable cry. Harley performed a maneuver Bartholomew had witnessed
twice before: throwing her arms around Joker’s neck while pulling herself up
to wrap her legs around his waist. As in the past, it caused him to stumble
backwards against the wall, where she held the pin and engaged the mad clown
in what Bartholomew believed the young people call “a lip lock.”
Unlike those
previous occasions, Joker let her down instead of backhanding her away.
They joined hands, turned to Bartholomew and, moving as one… they bowed.
Then they turned away again, and Joker began “escorting” Harley back to her
cell by her hair.
She stopped
suddenly and turned back to the doctor, a soft “oh yeaah,” barely audible as
she looked him up and down, and then looked back at Joker.
“Puddin, did we
ever come up with a closing zinger?”
“Fool you once,
shame on us,” Joker declaimed, with every bit of the theatrical panache he’d
accorded the Shakespeare. “Fool you twice, shame on rice!
HAHAHAHAHAAAAA!”
“WHAT?” Harley
screeched.
“HAHAHAHAHA! Sheer
genius, isn’t it, Harls? Shame on rice.”
“That was a
placeholder! A filler! Until we came up with something better!”
“No, no, see, there
was the mummy fakeout, that was once, and now—wait a minute. Shame on rice
doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“You were supposed
to come up with something better,” Harley hissed.
“I mean no sense at
all,” Joker said, ignoring her. “Shame on rice, even Dubya couldn’t pull
that off.”
They walked away
down the hall, bickering about whose job it had been to come up with a
better “zinger.” Bartholomew turned back to his office, too despondent to
even sound the alarm. Patient J was freely roaming the halls. Harleen was
lost again, just like it happened before.
He should feel
grateful, he supposed. She could've broken Joker out, like last time, but
what did it really—
“DOC!” Bartholomew
froze at his office door as he heard the footsteps running up behind him.
Patient J. Here it
was. The deathblow.
“I've got it! Doc,
I got it, HAHAHAHA. Are you ready? It’s a killer. Fool me twice
HAAAAAAAAA shame on OHAHAHAHAHA it's too funny… Fool me twice, shame on
RICE! HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!”
Joker clapped
Bartholomew on the shoulder, loving life. Then he returned docilely to his
cell, all the while repeating, “Shame on rice, heh, heh, heh. Gotta
remember to tell Brucie that one.”
Tense minutes passed while Lex Luthor considered and
rejected a thousand hypotheses, each more preposterous than the last. For
the first time in his life, he was completely uncertain how to proceed.
Then, the purple cell phone rang.
Luthor’s mouth dropped open.
It rang again.
He looked at it in horror.
It rang again.
At this point, any new data was worth having.
It rang again.
He answered it.
..::OF ALL THE BLUNDERING, ASININE, THICKSKULLED MORONS
THAT CAN’T TELL A VIABLE IDEA FROM A FEVERDREAM…::..
“Catwoman?” Luthor said hopefully.
..::DAMN NEAR WOUND UP IN BLACKGATE BECAUSE YOU EAT
PEPPERONI BEFORE BEDTIME AND MISTAKE THE RESULT FOR A MASTERPLAN…::..
“Cat—” he repeated.
..::…ABSOLUTE DUMBEST EVER, LEX, AND THAT INCLUDES
JOKER TRYING TO COPYRIGHT FISH…::..
“Cat—” he repeated, or started to, but got no further
when the walls started to rumble.
..::…LEAST HAS THE EXCUSE OF BEING A COMPLETE
PSYCHOPATH…::..
Then the ceiling started to tremble.
..::…NOT THAT IT’S DUMB BUT THAT YOU DON’T KNOW IT’S
DUMB! I MEAN WAKE UP AND SMELL THE FAILURE, BALDY! IF YOU DON’T GET IT BY
THIS TIME…::..
The ceiling gave way, and Luthor’s next words fell
silent on his lips when Superman swooped in with the typical “Nice try,
Luthor. But your scheme is over before it’s begun.”
..::…ATCAVE ISN’T MY IDEA OF A GOOD SHOWING IF…::…
The phone screeched on, but Luthor was no longer
listening. He had other problems as Superman bashed the transporter console
with one hand, holding the remains of the ceiling up with the other and
sweeping the teleport tubes with his heat vision.
..::And NAKED!::.. the phone voice added.
“Huh?” Luthor said, instinct whipping his head and his
attention back to the phone.
POW!
Luthor’s head snapped backward as his jaw exploded in
pain.
Alfred’s head snapped backward as the champagne cork
exploded with a much louder pop than expected. Bruce and Selina both
glanced his way, knowing a good vintage wouldn’t make such a noise under
normal conditions. But Clark and Lois seemed delighted, so Bruce met
Alfred’s eyes and nodded. The butler filled the glasses as if no duty he’d
ever performed was so important, and then withdrew, leaving the foursome to
their celebration.
There was a toast to Luthor’s comeuppance. Bruce and
Selina raised their glasses, Clark and Lois clinked theirs, and after the
requisite “mmms,” Lois assumed her professional fact-checking manner.
“So let me get this straight: you didn’t know where
Luthor actually was until the final phone call?”
“No,” Bruce confirmed. “Luthor would be too smart in
going over the plans not to recognize a signal beacon hidden in the
construction. And if he suspected any kind of Trojan horse, it would have
been bad for Selina.”
“Meow,” she said sweetly, taking up the narration.
“And all I knew after that interminable flight was that we’d landed
somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.”
“But after her second transport to the Batcave, we left
him with a cell phone,” Bruce resumed. “A special cell phone that would
traceback even through a shielded bunker. Selina’s ‘frantic’ final call
originated from the cave, so I had an instant trace on. Clark was standing
by as soon as we had the location.”
“Happy endings all around then,” Lois said brightly.
“Not quite,” Selina smiled. “Happy, yes; ending, no.”
“Here it comes,” Bruce graveled knowingly.
“The deal was: Lex would keep the boys busy in
Metropolis to clear the way for me stealing the plans, and then I was to
return the favor when he was ready to attack the Watchtower or whatever.”
“But there’s no need for that now,” Lois noted.
“Oh, but there is,” Selina chanted, glaring with
playful malice at Bruce.
Lois and Clark traded confused glances.
“The transponder is a leash,” Bruce explained. “Hence,
there must be punishment.”
“Ah,” Lois said.
“Ah,” Clark said.
“So, what are you going to do?” Lois asked, wild with
curiosity.
“Oh the usual, kidnap you,” Selina said lightly.
“Wayne One is all fueled up. What would you say to some shoe shopping in
Rome?”
“I LOVE this plan,” Lois cheered.
Clark’s eyes looked as wide as hers, but for a
different reason. He turned appealingly to Bruce as the women left arm in
arm, laughing at how, really, when you looked at it dispassionately, Lex
was right.
“I mean seriously,” Selina was saying. “Force for
force never works against the Justice League. Makes them all depressingly
united.”
“Oh I agree,” Lois nodded vigorously. “And we've seen
that they have an almost limitless capacity for sabotaging themselves when
they're not busy. The damage he could have done as a ‘fly on the wall’
alone… Hey, can we eat at Café Dolce Vita?”
“In Piazza Narvona? Yeah, if he’d gone to almost
anyone else to get those plans, it would have been a very good and very
dangerous plan. His only misstep was the rational but mistaken assumption
that I was on his side. I was thinking someplace less rushed for lunch,
like maybe Alfredo di Roma.”
“You could almost pity him: perfect plan if
he hadn’t gone and asked Batman’s girlfriend. Alfredo like the
fettuccini?”
“The original place that came up with the fettuccini.
That’s where the name comes from.”
“Sold. Armani, Gucci, then lunch. Then Prada,
Valentino and Versace.”
“Meow.”
“And how.”
Back in the study, Bruce nonchalantly sipped his
champagne as Clark’s super-hearing tracked the women approaching the door to
the garage.
“Bruce?” Clark looked pleadingly at his friend, images
of a credit card bill the size of a third world country’s Gross National
Product flickering in his mind’s eye.
“It’s okay, I’ve got it covered,” Bruce assured him
evenly. “There’s a certain justice in paying for their little excursion
with some of the windfall from the LexCorp subsidiaries that Wayne
Enterprises absorbed.”
“Well, in that case, I hope Lois takes full advantage.”
Clark took another sip of his champagne, relaxing a
little in his chair. He and Bruce sat in silence for a moment longer, until
he heard the telltale growl of the Lamborghini accelerating as it turned out
of the manor drive and onto the open street.
Setting his champagne flute down on the end table
beside his chair, Clark leaned forward, lacing his fingers together on the
edge of his knees.
“And the real Holce Concepts-Allman Freely-WraitheMatCo
project is safe. Even Selina doesn’t know what the original plans were
for?”
Bruce shook his head.
“No. The secret is safe. For now.”
Harvey Dent enjoyed running his own errands. He could
have had his dry cleaning delivered, of course. In Gotham, he could have
everything from a leather loveseat to a dime bag of Kona Gold delivered.
But he liked being out in the world, performing all those little tasks that
were such a trial in his Two-Face days. It still happened occasionally:
some clerk would recognize him and have a little seizure trying to avoid eye
contact without being obvious. Now that those encounters were rarities,
Harvey could be kind about it. When it was day-in/day-out, everywhere he
went his face went with him, it really used to get on his nerves. Of
course, it didn’t help that Two-Face always noticed and suggested something
unpleasant in retaliation, forcing Harvey to take the opposite position and
defend the obnoxious nobody.
But those days were over, and now he could run all over
the Upper East Side, picking up his dry cleaning, picking up some photos he
had developed, picking up some kung pao chicken, and even picking up a cute
little blonde from Hudson U, and never encounter a single averted gaze.
Harvey juggled his packages as he neared his building,
but seeing that Nick, the doorman, was occupied with one of the older women
in the building, Harvey figured he’d manage on his own. He almost enjoyed
his bungling into the elevator. It was real life. What a fool he’d been,
staying in that old theatre all that time, a place he’d only bought for a
Two-Face hideout. He should have come back to this, to real life, as soon
as Face was gone. An ordinary (if rather upscale) apartment in an ordinary
(if fiercely upscale) neighborhood, living like an ordinary (if slightly the
worse for wear) person.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened, but
something didn’t seem right as Harvey jostled his packages anew. Then he
saw it: a spray of tulips, not daffodils, on the little table in front of
the gilded mirror in the hall opposite the elevator. Every floor had that
table in that position, every floor had the mirror above it, but on every
floor, the flowers varied. He’d pressed the wrong button, and he was on the
wrong floor.
It was a silly mistake, the kind that everyone makes,
and Harvey readjusted his packages and pushed the correct button without
ever noticing—or caring—that the wrong button he unconsciously pushed by
mistake was 2.
© 2008
Next
Sooner or later, everyone has to face the past
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