I was just wondering how you and Harvey 'Twoface' Dent became such good friends?

Dear Harvey, he’s such a sweetie.  The thing you must understand about Harvey Dent is that he was never in his element with the rogues.  Magna cum laud at Stanford, Political Science, then Harvard Law.  By contrast, Hugo’s hobby at that time was trying to hypnotize the Iceberg waitresses with the glint off the goldfoil on beer bottles – no really, he had a thing going with Crane that if he succeeded they would make her afraid of bottlecaps.  So Harvey just didn’t have much in common with the Iceberg crowd, if you know what I mean. 

We’d seen each other a few times, here and there, but just to nod, say Hi, nothing memorable.  One night he was at the Berg, grumbling into his drink about something or other.  He’d been talking to Jervis and it wasn’t going well. 

Jervis was saying something about a tempest in a teapot jangling the Jabberwock.  When he walked off, Harvey made a joke, said it was no way to spend an evening but it was better than sitting home alone, wasting away like the heroine of an 18th century poem. “And we sure as hell aren’t the fucking lady of shallot.”   I heard, I laughed and that seemed to surprise him.  We got to talking.  For the Berg, he seemed like a nice lonely guy, different from other rogues – like I was myself – the connection was pretty natural.

He said he didn’t expect anybody in that godforsaken hellhole to recognize the allusion, he didn’t know what pleased him more, that someone had or that she was wearing leather.   I was used to it from rogues, I explained the rules like always, and when he got mouthy I pointed out the scorch marks on Jonathan’s hat.  Anyway, we concluded that while the Iceberg certainly wasn’t the Algonquin Roundtable, you could never expect to get a really cold Igloo in a plastic Penguin glass there.

Personally, I don’t think it had anything to do with having read a book or wearing purple leather.  I think what Harvey really needed was someone who didn’t judge him for sharing his body and psyche with a criminal, and yet wasn’t a homicidal psychotic or a cheap henchwench.  I’m not exactly “normal” but by Iceberg standards, I’m as close to the normal life he’d lost as he was going to get in that world where he found himself after the acid.

Ciaomeow,as we say in the real neighborhood,
Catwoman

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