“Aunt Maud,” Jervis intoned
proudly, “This is my fiancée, Alice Rocket.” And he pronounced it ro-KAY.
The older woman eyed Roxy as though
through a monocle.
“Sit down with me, young woman,” she commanded. Roxy did so. “And
tell me about yourself. How old are
you?”
“I’m not going to answer
that,” Roxy objected.
“Then how did you meet my
nephew?”
“26,” Roxy answered.
Aunt Maud glared.
Jervis stepped in. In his
panic, he blurted the truth:
“We met through work.”
“You did not work at this club,
surely?” Aunt Maud sniffed. “This is only a barely acceptable situation for
a man,” she paused to glare mercilessly at Jervis before continuing, “Let
alone….”
“Oh no, my old job,” Jervis
adjusted the story, “We met at my old job, when I was an editor.
Roxy is, ah, a librarian.”
Roxy’s eyes bulged slightly.
“Indeed,” Aunt Maud nodded
approvingly, “a most respectable profession.
What it lacks in social cache, it makes up for in refinement. I like a well read girl.
Tell me, Miss Roquet, which is your favorite Bronte sister?”
Roxy swallowed.
Behind her, the Rogues within earshot began whispering: “Roxy hasn’t read a book since high school,” “She goes into Barnes and Noble
for calendars and coffee,” “$50 she makes up a name,” “$100 she says ‘the quiet
one,’” “‘with the bangs.’”
“What are those
ill-bred people
whispering about in that rude fashion?” Aunt Maud wondered audibly, and the
most notorious representatives of the Gotham underworld hung their heads like
truant schoolboys.
“Actually,” Roxy tried to
extricate herself from the most objectionable lie so far, “that was just when
we met. I haven’t worked in a library for years.”
Now it
was Jervis’s turn to swallow…
“And what do you do now?” Maud
was asking.
Why oh why did he get Roxy for this?
He knew educated women. Harley
Quinn was a psychiatrist (speaking of which, where was Harley these days?)
Poison Ivy was a botanist. But
Roxy, Roxy was a lovely girl and not stupid, but not book smart, not the kind you bring home to meet Mother.
Before turning to crime she had been…
“…in the
movies,” Roxy was
saying.
“Yes. She used to be a stunt
woman,” Jervis cut in, glaring at Roxy, “but that was just temporary.”
“A TEMPORARY stunt job?” Roxy
glared back.
“In a
very important art film,” Jervis went on, “…and actually now she’s… she… she
works at—”
At this moment Selina Kyle entered
the dining room with Bruce—
“Wayne!—Wayne Foundation—She works at the Wayne Foundation!”
Dearest,
Dearest Barbara,
I’m so very
pleased to be able to offer this bracelet as your ‘Something Borrowed.’
It was my
‘Something New’ when Clark and I got married, a gift from Papa Kent.
I would have
brought it to the shower next week, except I’m not yet sure I’ll be able
to attend.
A story developing in Pango Pango might keep me away.
But you
know I’ll be
there in spirit.
Lois
“It’s beautiful,” Dinah remarked, handing back the note and picking up
the bracelet of tiny seed pearls.
“Yes,” Barbara agreed, “I admired it at her wedding, and she
remembered, isn’t that sweet.”
“Reporters,”
Dinah grumbled, “may log everything that’s said to them, but that doesn’t
mean they’re sweet, caring or in any way sensitive to their fellow human
beings.”
Barbara raised an eyebrow, and Dinah
stood down.
”Okay, that was my thing.”
“Still sore about the Ra’s al
Ghul stories?” Barbara guessed.
“One does not forget being labeled
a living demon’s love slave,” Dinah declared adamantly.
“But that wasn’t the Daily
Planet’s doing and it certainly wasn’t Lois Lane’s.”
“No, but come
on Barbara, what kind of
friend is this: I’ll be at your shower if I’m not busy breaking some
story in Pango Pango?”
Barbara
laughed.
“Dinah,
don’t be a featherhead.
Pango Pango is Diana.”
Dinah blinked, so Barbara explained.
“Lois’s spies in the JLA have
not yet told her if Diana is coming to the shower.
If she is, big story in Pango Pango keeps Lois away.
If she’s not, ‘oh look, I’m free after all.’”
“Are you telling me Lois and Diana
avoid each other?”
Barbara nodded.
“One Superman-Wonder Woman rumor too many, in my opinion.”
“But
Lois can’t think there’s
anything in that! I mean, boy scout: Truth, Justice, and cheating on his wife?
No way.”
“Of course not.
But look, Lois is in the rumor mill business. It’s not like she can pretend she doesn’t hear that
nonsense, and she gets tired of it. Says
Diana doesn’t do anything to discourage it - which is true enough.”
“Staying ‘above it all,’”
Dinah hazarded.
“I suppose,” Barbara answered. “Worked okay for you.”
“What did?
Head down and wait for it all to pass?
Yeah, technically it’s over, I guess.
The papers went on to write about something else - but a lot of people
still think that I was in love with that slimy, creepy, icky, evil…”
“Cadaver?” Barbara prompted.
“YES!” Dinah cheered,
“Cadaver. Perfect term. Thank
you.”
“You’ll have to thank Catwoman
for that one. It’s what the
rogues call him.”
“Catwoman,” Dinah repeated. “Now THAT was a solution: Get yourself on stage, sell
tickets, and tell it like it really is.”
“Maybe a TV show,” Barbara
giggled, “It’d have to be cable-access, I guess, but it’s not like
there’s any shortage of material. When
they got done smearing Catwoman, they did you and Ra’s, then Joker was
supposed to be dead. There’s even a story now that Bruce Wayne is supposed to
have killed somebody, there’s no end to it.”
Dinah beamed a smile of almost
sexual excitement: “Let’s do
it, Barbara, you and me. You’ve got
the equipment here to make up some holodeck character—”
“Holographic.”
“Whatever, to appear as the
host. Let’s do it!”
“You can’t be serious!”
“Why not?
Barbara, why not? I’m so sick
of this bullshit. And I’m sick of
these mindless lemmings thinking whatever those scandal sheets tell them to…
about all of us!”
Barbara just smiled, not unkindly.
Then Dinah smiled too.
“Okay, was a silly idea. Done
now.”
“Good.
So tell me who’s coming to my shower.”
One thing Selina Kyle knew, her
friends and enemies would have to agree, was how to enter a room with
distinction.
She did so now, surveying the table
at which Jervis Tetch, Roxy Rocket and an unknown large woman sat…
“A foundation,” the large woman cooed, “That is most respectable.”
…the many clusters of Rogues
watching the show…
“The nerve of the guy,” Hugo Strange muttered, eyeing Bruce contemptuously.
“Oh give that a rest,” Penguin retorted.
“Look at her, my Roxy, pretending to be with Jervis Tetch.”
“Your Roxy, oh please, she hasn’t spoken to you since the Christmas
party, has she?”
“Hasn’t even looked at me,” Penguin admitted.
…and Harvey Dent at the bar…
Normally either Harvey or Eddie would be her first stop in a room full of
rogues. They were her preferred
informants for whatever was going on beneath the surface…
Except Eddie was still in Arkham. And
Harvey was nursing his wounds after their last meeting.
She sighed, glanced at Bruce,
and then,
as if by mutual consent, they went up to greet Jervis and Roxy.
“You’re not in costume!” were
Jervis’s first words, uttered far too loudly considering the whole club was
straining to hear every syllable uttered at that table.
Selina didn’t react at first, and
Jervis, in a near panic at the waves of disapproval he felt coming from Aunt
Maud, turned to her companion and said: “Or you either, Bruce!”
There was a guffaw from Hugo
Strange, but the room was otherwise silent.
“It’s Viva la Difference Night,
did you forget?” Jervis prompted.
“…Is…
it… Viva la Difference
Night already?” Selina managed slowly, “Where does the time go?”
Meanwhile, while everyone watched
Selina, Bruce took a heavy plate from the table and tossed it like a Batarang into
Hugo Strange’s head.
“Aunt Maud, despite the
nondescript clothing, I know you won’t mind being introduced to Bruce Wayne,
of the Wayne Foundation.”
Bruce shook Maud’s hand, but eyed
Jervis warily. That was an unusual
introduction.
“And this is Selina Kyle, she’s
in… acquisitions.”
There was a guffaw from Roxy
this time,
and Selina very sweetly batted her on the head with her tiny hardcase handbag.
“Hand slipped,”
Selina cooed sweetly,
“Sorry, Roxy.”
“Roxy?” Aunt Maud raised her
eyebrow.
“Oh, that’s a nickname she
picked up… in college… rocks! Alice studied geology before she went
into library science… so they called her Rock-sy and Selina still calls
her that because… they were sorority sisters.”
The rogue audience almost applauded
this magnificent whopper, so impressed were they with the effort Jervis was
putting into each syllable. As lies
went, it was an impressive tour de force.
“See, the thing is,” Dinah mugwumped, yet again, about a name Barbara suggested for the guest list,
“I’m not sure I can contact all these people.”
“C’mon, Dinah, we can use our
imaginations here,” Barbara urged, “JLA distribution channels.”
“I can’t actually get in there,
Barbara.”
Barbara stared in
horror.
“Why?”
“Birds of Prey!
Takes up too much of my time and now I’m no longer a
full-member of the League, so
according to Diana, Queen Bee of the Watchtower, my access has to be approved
case-by-case now.”
Barbara rolled her eyes.
Then a solution presented itself.
Oracle was, herself, a full member of the
JLA, but it wouldn’t do to
use the database for her own bridal shower.
But there was another member of the bridal party on the JLA membership
rolls…”
“Selina can get the
list,”
Barbara declared happily.
“CATWOMAN!
Catwoman can use the JLA DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS and I HAVE TO GET APPROVAL
CASE BY CASE!” Dinah fumed. “SHE
HELPED OUT TWICE!”
“Yeah,” Barbara hedged,
“but…well, you know…Batman…. Nobody
was sure what the situation was there and… I guess everybody figured they
weren’t going to be the one to take her name off the computer…”
“Wonderful.”
“You know what I think,” Barbara
chirped, “I think you should co-host the shower with Selina. And once we have everybody
together, we make a point of how nice it is to be able to get together like
this, more socially, and we need to do it more often, so let’s keep the rolls
open for invitations. Have more events like this.
Gosh, somebody shouldn’t have to get married for us all to get
together. From what Selina says, the rogues do it all the time.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do stuff like that…”
“WHORE???” Ivy bellowed.
“SORORITY SISTERS???” Selina yelled.
“LIBRARIAN???” Roxy screamed.
“Mamma’s Boy,” Two-Face taunted.
“Getting into a slap-fight in front of Auntie Maud,” Jervis complained.
“Somebody threw a plate at my head,” Hugo Strange slurred.
The moment Aunt Maud retired to the
ladies room, pandemonium had broken out at the Iceberg Lounge as everybody jostled
for airtime to voice their grievance before she returned.
Only Sly and Bruce Wayne remained
totally calm.
“We don’t actually hire stunt people at the Wayne Foundation,” Bruce told
the bartender, quietly.
“We don’t actually have a Viva la Difference Night,” Sly confided in the
billionaire.
“JER-VIS!” Aunt Maud bellowed,
officially ending Open Share Time by dragging Gina, the washroom attendant, into
the dining room by the ear. “I have learned things,” Maud announced,
red with indignation, “I have learned monstrous
things from this young woman about the goings on in this club and the kind of
people these are with whom you surround yourself!”
Jervis Tetch gulped, looked around
like a startled deer, and then stammered, “But Auntie, whatever do you mean?”
“Mammasboy,” Two-Face coughed;
“Excuse us,” Harvey apologized.
“That man,” Maud pointed
accusingly at the Penguin, “has betrayed your trust.
Not only does he claim to own this establishment—”
“OSWALD!” Jervis turned on the
Penguin with a what-can-I-do shrug as he wailed, “AFTER ALL I’VE DONE
FOR YOU!”
“-he has had an indiscreet
liaison with your fiancée.”
“YOU TROLLOP!” Jervis wheeled on
Roxy.
“Yeah,” Dinah agreed with
Barbara. “It’s a shame we
don’t all get together more.”
“Nonono,” Selina was saying,
holding up a hand to silence the rogues gathered around the Iceberg bar, “I
got in and out of a police evidence locker tonight, I can get through this
without help from any of you.”
She
gestured to Sly, who filled the shot glass sitting before her.
“Jervis
Tetch,” she began, “who is not the Mad Hatter, used to be
an editor at Harper and Row and now runs a nightclub called the Iceberg, which is
not a criminal hangout. He’s
engaged to Roxy, who is called Alice, Rocket, pronounced Roquet, who is not a criminal, but used to be a librarian and now works at the
Wayne Foundation, which is very respectable, even though Bruce isn’t wearing a
costume because he forgot it’s Viva la Difference Night.”
She downed the shot, there was a collective cheer, and money changed
hands.
“I don’t get it,” Killer Croc
said. There was a collective groan
and more money changed hands.
“Next,” Selina called out,
admitting defeat. And Scarecrow
took her place trying to explain the tangle to Croc.
Meanwhile across the room, sweat
poured from Jervis’s brow as he spun story after story trying to explain the
latest revelations to Aunt Maud. Finally
he joined the rogues at the bar.
“Selina,” he
whimpered, “come to the flat for a bit with Wayne.
This place is too dangerous, but if I have to take her home - the only
thing she likes there is this painting of a question mark.
She thinks it’s art. I
can’t BS about art. Please help
me!”
Selina looked at him coldly.
Jervis looked to Bruce, who didn’t look any warmer.
“C’mon, guys, I just had to break up with Roxy and fire Oswald.
I’m desperate. HELP ME!”
“C’mon,
Selina,” Harvey urged,
“one good favor deserves another. Or
rather, one bad favor deserves a good one.”
Bruce raised a disapproving eyebrow.
˜˜I’ll want to hear about that
later,˜˜ he signaled in their secret
sign language.
˜˜You’re
bluffing,˜˜ Selina
countered.
He had the same look he
had watching Ra’s Al Ghul on The View. He
was having a ball but wouldn’t admit it.
Which meant (God help us miserable sinners, Selina thought) they were going to the
flat.
“This would be…
a… meditation on
uncertainty, I would say. Taking a
familiar, commonplace image like the question mark and forcing us to… grapple
with the complex… philosophical… abstract… ideas it represents.”
I took a deep breath. The evidence
locker was nothing compared to this. Breaking
into Fort Knox would be nothing compared to this.
Explaining true modern art to non-art lovers who say “my three year old
could do that” is no simple feat, but trying to pass off a piece of Riddler kitsch
as fine art, that requires some heavyduty footwork.
Outthinking Batman
was easy compared
to this—Speaking of which, was I getting any help at all from Mr. Twitch-smile? No, I was not.
It was
RIDDLER’S HIDEOUT they
fixed up! Nobody at the ’berg had mentioned that!
We walked in and there were two walls covered in plants, just barely
obscuring the signature lime green wallpaper.
A third wall was a bookcase full of Harvey Dent’s old law books, and the
fourth was covered in posters from Roxy’s old movies.
There was a book on igloos sitting on the coffee table and a giant oil
painting of a question mark over the mantle.
Tell me who wouldn’t laugh at that?
But
did the guy with a trophy room
full of this shit so much as blink? No
reaction whatsoever.
Thanks, Dark Knight. I owe you one.
Two.
I owe him two, because Jervis decided to play host, offering us drinks
and coffee - when he didn’t have the slightest idea where anything was kept. So Bruce offered to
“help” him.
Any excuse to go snooping around, opening all Eddie’s drawers and
cupboards, no doubt.
Wonderful, Batman finally got his inside peek into a rogue’s private
life other than mine - except it left me alone with Aunt Maud and the
punctuation still-life.
The two of them,
Bruce and Jervis, somehow managed to
make coffee and returned with a tray just as I was running out of
unanswered questions the painting invited us to reflect upon. Like:
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Why am I here? and What’s
taking so long with that damn coffee?
With the arrival of the coffee, I
was officially out of material - and apparently, so was everybody else.
We sipped in awkward silence just long enough that it was almost a relief
when the doorbell rang.
Almost.
There
was the awkward matter of who it could possibly be and what they
could possibly want.
The question
mark painting was looking a mite more profound than I thought, especially when Maud
asked
Jervis if he was going to answer the door or not.
He
did, muttering an obscenity cut short by the sight of Harvey
escorting a sobbing Roxy Rocket.
“Jervis, forgive me, forgive me!”
she cried, throwing herself at his feet.
“Hugo Strange has an Aunt
Gladys,” Harvey explained quietly to me and Bruce, “He is very sympathetic
to Jervis’s situation. He went to
work on Roxy right after you left. ‘Sticking
by our own in time of need’ and all that rot.”
“Jervis, forgive me, please. It
will never happen again, I’ll be good from now on,” Roxy went on, sobbing.
“Isn’t she taking this a little
far,” I asked, somewhat nauseated.
“She’s on a mission,” Harvey
agreed, “Hugo pushed her buttons pretty good.”
“Please Jervis,
please…”
“You know Roxy has a bit of an
inferiority complex,” Harvey continued, “not been among us very long, and being able to help an
old guard criminal like Mad Hatter, I think Hugo put it in terms of ‘earning
her wings,’” Harvey concluded. “-or earning her horns,”
Two-Face corrected.
Then disaster
struck. There was a jiggling sound from the door, it opened, and Edward Nigma
walked in. He looked around the room,
and you could read the thoughts clearly on his face: Selina.
What are you doing here? And
Jervis. Harvey.
Bruce Wayne. Large woman
-Who are you? …and WHAT HAPPENED TO MY WALLS?
It
wasn’t necessary to read that
last part on his face, because he said it out loud.
And I have to hand it to Jervis, who
I would have written off as a flyweight a few hours earlier, but now recognized as
the most creative and courageous improvisational liar of my acquaintance.
“This is my decorator,” he
declared without a moment’s hesitation, “Edward Nigma, he goes by Enigma.”
Eddie just blinked.
“My stuff,” he stammered.
“Mr. Nigma, this is my Aunt
Maud.”
“My
stuff,” Eddie repeated. “That wall - and that one - and that one.”
“You know how temperamental they
are when they’ve put so much of themselves into a design.
Eddie, not all the stuff worked out, so I’m sure you can get a FULL
REFUND, OK?”
Hearing
the magic word
“refund,” Eddie nodded.
If Jervis is half this impressive in the field, without the added
indignity of a bawling Roxy Rocket clinging to his pant leg, I have no idea how
Batman can deal with him—
“Jervis, please forgive me,” the
dialogue from below resumed.
And that’s when it got weird.
“Alice, do stop that,” Jervis
muttered, “I forgive you, just go over there and be quiet.”
“Roxy, what are you doing here?”
Eddie asked, looking down.
Roxy rose from her knees, an actress
whose scene was completed, and - in an inspired touch - she gave Jervis a light
kiss on the cheek.
Now Eddie, it should be remembered,
is particularly sensitive about mind control issues right now.
He saw Roxy: on her knees, answering to “Alice,” and being submissive to
Jervis. He jumped to the not-entirely-fantastic
conclusion that she’d been hatted. So far, so good.
He jumped to the conclusion that
she’d been hatted for some romantic rather than criminal purpose.
Well, considering: Hatter, Kiss,
“Alice” …Again, I say: So
far, so good. Not completely
through
the looking glass, as logic jumps go.
But!
Then Eddie wheeled on me!
“And you just stand here and look at this like it’s nothing?”
He
turned to Bruce!
“I can’t believe you approve of this.”
Maud
assumed he was talking about
the desecration of his decorating scheme, and she agreed that the plants were way
too much but at least they obscured that hideous wallpaper, and the only object
of real beauty in the room was that painting of a question mark.
Eddie wavered for a
second.
“That’s true,” he brightened, “so few people really
appreciate the cache of an unanswered question.”
For a second, I thought that was the
end of it. Eddie wandered into a
corner, then turned back, bewildered.
“Where’s my futon?”
Roxy gestured for him to join her on
a window seat and, before long, he was searching her helmet and goggles for the
mind control chip he was certain was there.
I know because I heard her whisper “Stop pulling my hair” and Eddie
answered “It’s for your own good.”
“She’s letting the decorator
take liberties now,” Maud observed.
And where was Bruce during all of
this? Standing there. Like it was
a video of Ra’s Al Ghul on national television covered in papier-mâché with a
yapping dog on his lap…
The phone rang.
Things had gone so far at that point we all just looked at each other, everyone too stunned,
panicked or overwhelmed to move to answer it.
It rang again, again, then there was
a click.
“Riddle me this,” Eddie’s disembodied voice intoned, “What do you get
when you cross a hive-dwelling insect with a yellow marshmallow Easter treat:
BEEP.”
Jervis looked around frantically,
but couldn’t find the phone.
::Hiya Eddie,:: a second voice cut
in, ::It’s your HA-HA-HAR-LEY! ::
Now Eddie too joined the wild search
for the phone.
:: Didja get my postcard? Paris was so fun, but they talk funny and you can’t
understand a word they say! Anyway,
I just wanted to say, I heard you had trouble with Puddin’ over the video we made…
::
Jervis and Eddie collided with each
other before a small cabinet. Bruce
casually opened the cabinet, picked up the receiver and spoke in his foppiest
drawl:
“Hello…
Yes… Yes…
France. Aha.
Yes. Puddin.
Mhm. Mhm… Okay, I’ll
tell them. Goodbye.::
He hung up, looked at Eddie, at
Jervis, and then at me. When he
spoke, it was a magnificent deadpan.
“She went to Paris and the Riviera with a French count.
She’s back now. Don’t tell Puddin.”
To
be continued…
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