Stephanie pushed ahead of me into the McDonald's, yelling at Kara to punch her in(whatever that meant)and disappearing behind a swinging door that read Employees Only. I followed her nonetheless, until I was detained by a weasly, greasy, red-haired boy who looked even younger than Stephanie, snapping at me to "Get the hell out of my kitchen!". Apparently he was in charge. I was not impressed, proceeded to tell him so, and that's how I ended up sitting in the Playplace area with a box of broken crayons and a My Little Pony coloring book that had half of its pages ripped out. I called Colin once more.
"Help. I'm being held hostage."
"Sounds like fun. Things going well, then?"
Before I could explain the whole story, or even come up with a withering retort, Stephanie emerged from behind the door again, pushing a mop bucket in front of her. She called something insulting over her shoulder to the girl at the cash register, and then started mopping the floor. I told Colin that we'd talk later and discreetly made my way over to her.
"How long is this going to take?" I asked, kneeling on a chair so that she could mop around the bottom. Stephanie shrugged. She looked tired, and I felt guilty-truly guilty, the kind that took up permanent residence in my stomach, gnawing out the bottom like an underfed rat. Her hair was falling out of her messy ponytail in sweaty straggles, and there was a resigned set to her shoulders that didn't fit with the nonstop chipper(and thereby annoying)partner that I knew.
"Mopping? Maybe an hour." she replied. "My shift? No idea." There were bags under her eyes. I reached out a hand to-I don't know, comfort her or something-and she jerked away, too abrupt to be as casual as she tried to play it off as. "Please, just be patient, Dami." she said, moving past me.
I went back to the Playplace. There were no customers in the restaurant, and after a few minutes, Kara brought me a Big Mac, courtesy of the " assistant manager" who'd yelled me out of the kitchen. She said it was an apology; I told her I didn't accept, and I preferred chicken nuggets instead. She brought me a Happy Meal.
Stephanie reached my chair just as I unwrapped the cheesy toy inside-to my amusement, it was a plastic replica of Batman, fully jointed. There was something empowering about jerking around its limbs and making it do suicide jumps off of my Big Gulp-I wondered if there were any Nightwing or Batgirl figurines around.
"Aw, so he is just a kid inside." Stephanie teased as she swabbed around my chair. I drew my legs up, scowled, and threw the wrapper at her. She laughed and threw it back, and when I waved my Batman threateningly at her, she made as if to dump my cup on my head. Kara threw a box of straws at us both, yelling, "If you've got time to play, you've got time to work!"
I filled the straw and napkin dispensers, and then leaned on the counter, practicing my "social skills" with the girl at the register, Rachel. She was extremely nice. She kept giggling and twirling her hair as she talked to me, sometimes slipping in a comment about how cute and smart I was. I wasn't sure about the cute part, but it was nice to have my genius appreciated by someone for once.
"You'd better not be bugging her." Steph warned as she went by on her way to the back. She pushed through the door, and appeared a second later behind the counter, squeezing behind Rachel to wheel the mop and bucket to some back room I wasn't allowed to see, judging by the two large swinging doors she had to go through, which were emblazoned with that irritating Employees Only motif and looked downright sinister.
"I'm behaving perfectly." I retorted when she came out, and Rachel giggled. "He's an angel." she cooed.
Stephanie rolled her eyes. "I'm gonna be sick." She looked it, too.
"Less talking, more cleaning!" Assistant Manager hollered from somewhere in the mysterious Employees Only zone.
Kara came out from around the fryolator, wiping her hands on a paper towel, and informed the assembled company that, "any fresh sandwiches will no longer be available, because our oven just decided to take a dirt nap."
Blank stares greeted this statement. The Assistant Manager poked his head out from the back, his expression one of horrified shock. Stephanie looked downright tragic, seeing as it was just the breakdown of a second-rate microwave oven that had probably been on its last legs when it was new. Kara threw up her hand. "I don't know what happened-it just went kaput!"
"This will cost a fortune." the AM moaned. "I'll call the repair crew."
"It's just an oven." I pointed out the obvious. "Why can't any of you fix it?"
It was my turn to be greeted with clueless looks. Apparently no one knew how to fix an oven. I shook my head. "Morons." I muttered, unable to contain my disgust. I went through the first Employees Only door, slid easily past Stephanie, Rachel, and Kara, and went to inspect the oven. I really couldn't believe that not a one of them knew how to maintenence a toaster oven, especially when it was so important to the running of the restaurant.
"The waveguide needs to be cleaned." I scoffed, shaking my head again and pointing out the obvious buildup of grease that was caking the conductor. I grabbed the nearest paper towel, making faces as I wiped off the layers of fat that could compete with any archaeological dig. When I was done, however, the microwave sputtered to life when I pushed one of its many confusing buttons. I charged Kara with the remainder of the cleaning, washed my hands, and went back to the Playplace.
"That was pretty cool, back there." Stephanie told me, about three hours later as we finally left the fast food joint. It was just starting to get dark, orange sunlight kissing the pavement we crossed to enter her sunlit car. Stripes of shadows crossed the windshield on our drive home, with total darkness in one window, and the burning light of the setting sun in the other. Watching it, I could see why ancient peoples believed the sun to combust every night, the world to be reborn in fire.
"It was a problem so simple, it was laughable. I didn't even need to think." I replied, eons too late. We'd been driving for long enough that the building of Gotham City had trailed away, replaced with trees and fields and suburban houses. We were on our way to the Manor, I realized. Stephanie was taking us home.
"Still. Nobody even knew what a waveguide was."
"That's simple, as I said. It's the conductor of the heat generated by the capacitor-" I rambled on about how microwaves worked, despite the way Stephanie's eyes glazed over after the first few sentences. I didn't want there to be silence in that car. It gave too much time to think of things like calling my brother, or worse, my father. And, too, it gave me far too much time to think of how wrong things were going between Stephanie and I; and I was sick and tired of thinking about that. I just wanted to be with Steph-why was that so hard? Why did I have to lie and trick and connive my way into her heart, when she was the one who had forcibly dragged me into it in the first place?
It wasn't fair.
"What isn't fair, Dami?" Stephanie asked, and I realized I'd said my last thought aloud.
"The way people spread myths about microwave ovens causing cancer." I lied, badly. "It just isn't fair to those who worked so hard to bring the radiation cooker into being."
"Liar." she called me out, parking beside the Manor. I got out. I was remembering another time that we came home when it was sunset like this, a time when I fearlessly put my arm around her to help her into the house, she was so tired-a time when I didn't think I was in love with her, and when touch was simply a human experience with no feelings attached.
This time, I kept my distance from Stephanie, and she wasn't too tired to make dinner, and by the time we finished our makeshift supper of canned beans and brown bread, she had remembered about Dick.
"Don't call." I blurted out, just as her hand touched the wall phone. Stephanie glanced at me, eyebrows raised.
I slid back my chair, going to her. "Please, Stephanie. You know he'll be back. Please . . . stay." My cheeks were burning. I'd never made myself so ridiculous, so vulnerable, in my life. Steph's voice sounded like how I felt; broken, tenuous, scared. Desperate.
"No. You know I can't."
"You don't sound sure." I was begging pathetically, but this was all I had. I couldn't go through with tricking her. I couldn't just play around with her feelings-it was misguided and wrong and against everything she'd taught me. I didn't want her to take me because there was no other choice or because I'd manipulated her into it; too late, I realized that. Too late, I realized that all along I'd just been hurt because she didn't choose me, didn't want me like I wanted her. I took a step back. "Bruce is due back in a few days. You don't have to stay; I'll be fine. I just . . . want you here."
I left it at that. I mean, there was only so much I could do. I wasn't going to make even more of a fool of myself. I scraped the leftovers of dinner into a container and put them away in the fridge. Stephanie was still standing by the phone, looking shellshocked.
"What's wrong with you? Saw your own reflection?" I asked, insulting by default. She shook her head, as if to clear away smoke, and cleared the table. No mention was made of her staying or leaving, but after we were done cleaning, we sat down in the living room to watch the entire first season of American Horror Story. Stephanie cried during most of the so-called frightening parts, which I found laughable coming from a girl who'd once started a gang war all on her own.
Maybe it was midnight; maybe it was a little before or after that. The TV had gone dark, and quiet, and maybe I had been asleep; but then, maybe I hadn't. There was the rough feel of the couch at my back, and the lightest brush of Stephanie's arm against mine-was she asleep? I put my hand on her knee, intending to find out, and suddenly we were kissing, kissing in the dark, her bare skin sliding against mine-stumbling down the hall, falling into a bed of rumpled clothes and sheets that smelled like laundry detergent; silky hair over my chest and ragged breathing, an awareness of something outside myself.
Kissing in the dark.
Finding the places on Stephanie's body that I normally knew by sight, letting myself just feel without thinking for a second-a feeling that gave me hope that maybe even someone like me could be redeemed, could want to be redeemed-finding a purpose in the salt I licked off of her skin and the feel of her lips, her hands at my back, my shoulders; I was loved. I was loved. It was the most beautiful thing I'd heard, seen, felt, and maybe I cried, tears kissed away by soft lips, wiped away by tired hands, maybe she drew me in and held me so closely I felt for a second like I would never be alone again, like I was loved.
But maybe it was just a dream.