Purely for Deedee, who wanted to see it.
At three a.m, it could almost be sinister.
During the day, the place teems with life, with noise, with industrious bustling to and fro. A place of children's laughter, of children's tears, of little plastic models being hurled back and forth. A place where you arrive in desire and hunger and leave sated and thirsty, salt dusting your lips.
The golden arches. Ronnie Mack's. Maccy D's.
At three a.m., it could almost be sinister.
The last work shift ends at two a.m. The kitchen shuts at midnight, but those who draw the short shift straw will be up to their shoulders in the grease-stained, stinking frying vats until two, scrubbing and cleaning to conform to Health Department standards. Those who fear joining the McDonald's food distribution team are generally fearing the wrong thing. The burger-flipping, the defrosting, the wrapping and the frying are jobs from heaven when you're the one who has to go home every night, exhausted, at half two with your hair and skin so full of miscellaneous fats that you will still be able to smell McDonald's after six showers and a Turkish bath.
However, even the vat-scrubbers have to look down on someone, and that someone is the man who has to dress up as Ronald McDonald for the children's parties. It is the loser's job. The job given to any lanky student who will fit the costume (staff have been known to put on up to a hundred pounds in weight to avoid this - as McDonald's provides free food to its workers, this doesn't take as long as you might imagine). Even cleaning the toilets is a better job than putting on the clown white - when masquerading as Ronald McDonald, you have to be prepared for ballistic, semi-masticated food, tiny faery voices shouting at volumes that would out-bellow the engines of a revving 747, surprising puddles of urine, and, in extreme cases, projectile vomit.
No-one really wants to be Ronald McDonald. The red and white inane grin of the happy cholesterol-peddler doesn't appeal to any age group, not anymore. Children either greet your arrival with floods of tears or deep, penetrating scorn: adults regard you with the vague, embarrassed look of someone who is feeling an incalculable sense of shame at being part of the same species as you.
And in the early hours of this Sunday morning, at a small McDonald's just off the ring road circling Gotham, it is a particularly bad time to be Ronald McDonald.
The man wearing the outfit is a freak of nature. This is not in any way discriminatory or insulting to him: it is pure fact. He is almost forty years old, thirty-eight to be precise. He has a naturally receding hairline, something which bothered him ten years ago but is of no consequence to him now, and he is a star.
He has been a star for three years now. Last year he changed his name by deed poll. It wasn't a large leap from Frank McDonald to Ronald McDonald, and Frank had been so enamoured of his new identity as the face of fast food everywhere that it had seemed natural to do so. His face, behind the thick make-up, has appeared in six TV commercials and is on posters all over the world.
He is a freak of nature because he actually enjoys being the McDonald's clown, and it is this odd genetic quirk that has kept him in the restaurant hours after it shut, practicing his clown routine for the party he has to attend at teatime tomorrow.
"Hi kids, it's time to play Ronald's Numbers!"
A pause. Then, in a slightly brighter tone:
"Hey, kids, want to play Ronald's Numbers?"
In the mirror of the men's restroom, Ronald McDonald shakes his red wig at himself. No good. Needs to be…friendlier. He takes a sip of water, spits it delicately into the sink, then tries again.
"Hi, kids…"
His voice falters. Out in the restaurant, echoing slightly in the metal and plastic silence, someone has started playing the harmonica.
They are playing it well, and in a style genre fans would recognise as the Western gunslinger's shoot-out progression. The shrill, at times discordant notes ripple through the empty rooms, ring through the shining vats, and hum pleasantly along the copper pipes of the men's room.
Ronald frowns behind his perpetually smiling face paint, turns away from the mirror, and pushes his way out into the seating area. He knows for a fact that he is the last employee in the building: the duty manager left over an hour ago, leaving Ronald to lock up. But he is not afraid, another genetic quirk which will prove not to be a survivalist feature, and walks out proudly, synthetic red curls bobbing with every step of the ridiculous clown shoes.
There is a man standing leant up against the service counter, a tall, thin, angular man wearing a large purple hat pulled down to shadow his face. The harmonica is gripped in his pale fingers as he plays the familiar notes.
"Hey," says Ronald, amicably enough, "you're not supposed to be in here, buddy. We're closed."
The harmonica player stops, abruptly, and pockets the little instrument casually. Although he remains almost utterly in shadow and his face hidden by the cast of his hat, he projects an aura of amused scrutiny. Tiny points of light gleam, reflections in his eyes.
"Who are you?" Ronald persists. "Seriously. I'm gonna have to call the cops."
The hat is swept off in the next moment, revealing a shock of green hair in the remaining synthetic light. A face as white as Ronald's but with an even bigger grin, looks up and laughs.
"Well, dip me in batter and fry me like a doughnut," says the Joker, delighted, "don't you know me, brother? Ain't'cha my street bro, member of the posse, down with the homies?"
He takes two dancing steps forward and treads deliberately on the toes of the clown shoes in his own patent leathers. "Shoot, baby, I'm the Hamburglar."
It is merely the sudden, lethal proximity that draws Ronald's attention to exactly how much trouble he's in - that and the glimpse of a variety of weaponry hanging from the Joker's belt and coat lining. The Joker beams like a delighted six-year-old. "And I wanna play Ronald's Numbers."