Chapter 2: A Visitor in the Lair
The knock was wrong. It was too timid, too structured—three polite taps that had no place in the neon hum of her fortress. Bruce, kneeling on a rug of mangled fur that might have once been a bear, felt Harley’s foot shift from his back. She’d been using his shoulder as an ottoman while she flicked through a tablet, the glow painting her smirk in pale blue.
“Huh,” she said, the sound less surprised than assessing. “Company.”
The piano in the corner scraped out a few discordant notes, a sensor-triggered melody for the intrusion. She didn’t get up. “See who it is, puppy. But don’t open it.”
He rose smoothly, the muscles in his legs complying without conscious thought. The marble was cold under his bare feet. He padded to the reinforced door, peering through the fisheye lens. The hallway warped a man’s face into a bulbous, sweaty moon. Mid-forties, cheap suit straining at the buttons. Eyes darting like startled fish.
“It’s a man, Majesty,” Bruce said, his voice a low monotone. “Alone. Nervous.”
“Skip,” Harley breathed, a whisper of genuine amusement. “Oh, this is precious. Let him in. Then resume.”
Bruce unlocked the door and pulled it open, stepping back into the shadow of a looming, sequined mannequin. He didn’t look at the guest. He returned to the center of the room, lowered himself to his knees, and then folded forward, placing his forehead on the rug between his hands. The position was one of deep rest, of non-threat. He heard the soft click of the door closing, the hesitant shuffle of shoes on marble.
“Your, uh, your highness?” The man’s voice was wheedling, oiled with false charm. “Harley. You look… incredible. This place is something else.”
“Skip. You’re interrupting my devotional time.” Harley’s voice was a slow, sweet poison. “This better be the social call of the century.”
Bruce kept his breathing even. He watched the grain of the fur under his nose, each hair coarse and synthetic. From his periphery, he saw Skip’s scuffed brown shoes approach, then stop a safe distance from Harley’s throne-like velvet chair.
“It’s business. Good business. The shipment from the Keystone pipeline. The one with the… the added chemistries. There’s a problem.”
“Problems are for people who don’t know how to solve them, Skip. You’re telling me you’re a person?”
“No! No, I can solve it. It’s just… the rival crew. They’re muscling in. They say the route is theirs. They’re asking for a forty percent tribute.” Skip’s words tumbled out. “I need your… your authority. A show of force. Just your name, maybe a couple of your boys.”
Harley was silent for a long moment. Bruce heard the click of her lighter, the slow inhale. The smell of clove cigarette smoke cut through the room’s usual perfume.
“My name,” she said finally. “You want to borrow my crown because you can’t handle some street-corner toughs. See, Skip, that feels like you’re depreciating my brand value.”
“I’ll make it worth your while! Sixty-thirty split. Seventy-thirty!”
Harley chuckled. It was a cold, precise sound. She placed her boot on the back of Bruce’s head, not stamping down, just resting it there, a casual statement. He didn’t flinch. The pressure was familiar, a grounding point.
“You see my dog, Skip?”
“I… I didn’t want to mention. Is that…?”
“He’s very well-trained. Obedient. Doesn’t talk back. Doesn’t bring me problems. He just serves. It’s a beautiful relationship.” She took another drag. “You, on the other hand, you bring me a headache. You want my power but you don’t want to understand the price of it.”
She increased the pressure on Bruce’s head slightly. “Slave. Look at our guest.”
Bruce lifted his head, turning it to face Skip without raising his body. The man was staring, his mouth slightly open. Recognition was a slow, dreadful sunrise across his face. The unkempt hair, the hollow blue eyes. The physique that no amount of kneeling could fully disguise.
“No,” Skip whispered.
“Oh, yes,” Harley crooned. “The big, bad Bat. My little house pet. He used to have opinions on operations like yours, Skip. Real strong ones. Now? Ask him what he thinks.”
She removed her foot. “Go on. Ask him.”
Skip’s throat worked. “What… what do you think?”
Bruce looked at Harley. She gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
“I think you should give Majesty everything she wants,” Bruce said, his voice empty of inflection.
“See?” Harley said. “Wisdom. Now, slave. Show Skip how you ask for things you really want.”
A filament of something—old wiring, long thought dead—twitched in Bruce’s gut. It was gone before it became a feeling. He lowered his head again, then let his mouth fall open, his tongue loll slightly. He made a soft, pathetic sound in the back of his throat. A whine.
“Louder.”
He barked. A short, sharp, doglike bark that echoed off the high ceilings.
Skip jumped back a step, hitting the edge of a pedestal holding a taxidermied hyena with a Joker grin.
Harley laughed, a real one this time, bright and shocking as broken glass. “Good dog! Such a good boy.” She looked at Skip, her mirth vanishing instantly, replaced by glacial command. “Ninety-ten. You keep the ten for running the errand. And you handle the rival crew. Permanently. Use your imagination. You fail, you join my rug collection. Understood?”
Skip was pale, sweating. He couldn’t tear his eyes from Bruce, who had returned to his placid, forehead-down position. The ultimate proof of power wasn’t violence; it was this absolute, willing annihilation. It broke the calculus of the world Skip knew.
“Understood. Yes. Majesty. Thank you.”
“Get out. You’re stinking up my air.”
Skip practically ran, the door clicking shut behind him with finality. The piano tinkled a sour farewell.
Silence returned, thicker now. Harley stubbed out her cigarette on the arm of her chair. She picked up the half-eaten plate of food from the side table—steak fries, congealing grease, a smear of ketchup.
“You did very well,” she said, her voice conversational. “You scared the hell out of him. That’s useful.”
She nudged his side with her toe. “Sit up.”
He did, settling back on his heels. She held the plate down at his eye level. With her other hand, she scooped up a cold fry and a glob of ketchup.
“Open.”
He obeyed. She placed the food on his tongue. The fry was soggy, the ketchup overly sweet. He chewed slowly, swallowed.
“Good,” she murmured, feeding him another. “This is your reward. This is what you earn. Not medals. Not keys to the city.” She used her thumb to wipe a spot of ketchup from his lower lip, then pushed that thumb back into his mouth. He sucked it clean, the taste of salt and nicotine and her skin layered over the food.
“The world out there,” she said, nodding toward the window where the bat-signal’s cloudy shape occasionally bloomed against the night, “it thinks it needs a hero. It’s wrong. It needs a queen. And a queen needs a loyal beast.”
She fed him the last scrap, a piece of fat she’d trimmed from her own meal hours ago. He took it without hesitation.
“The visitor was a test. You passed.” She placed the empty plate on his head, balancing it. “Now, keep it there. If it falls, you go hungry tomorrow.”
She stood, stretching, and walked towards her bedroom, leaving him in the center of the glittering, chaotic room. “The piano’s going to play for another twenty minutes. Don’t let the noise distract you.”
Bruce knelt, the plate a trivial weight on his skull, his gaze fixed on nothing. The off-key notes jarred the air. Somewhere, in a city below, a signal was shining into empty clouds, calling for a ghost.
Here, the ghost was being fed scraps from a paper plate. And for now, that was the only thing that was real.