I froze. "I know what you're trying to do," I told Grace carefully, containing my anger in front of Sol, "You're trying to make me out to be better than I think I am, just as you made Bats out to be worse than he thinks he is. But the problem is, the problem is, that I really am nuts enough to cut off my nose to spite my face—."

'Is that what happened to your face? You were going for your nose and the knife slipped?' she riposted.

"Will you let me finish? If you call me on this one, if you push too hard, I will kill Sol and Bernice. Oh, I'll do it. I will. But the inconvenience of consequently having to find another tailor as good will put me in a truly foul mood. The only way of cheering myself up, I've found, is to go out and set fire to lots of stuff and blow some things up and kill a whole bunch of other people indiscriminately. While we're still just getting to know one another, I know you well enough all ready to know you would feel just horrible about that. You can read my mind. Read it now. Am I joking?"

'No." she said after a careful moment.

"So you can either retract your, uh, little challenge, and we never speak of this again, or you can press it, in which case there will be blood on the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. I'm going to leave this one for you to call. What'll it be?"

'I retract the challenge." she said, hastily.

"Good girl."

"The tea is ready!" Bernice announced.

"And so is Mister Jay." Sol replied, opening the curtain with a flourish.

"Damn!" I said, because in the mirror in front of me, I could see Grace's reflection, and she looked…

She looked great, actually.

Grace had changed, literally and figuratively, never mind how. From being a fairly anonymous ghostly presence, back in Arkham, she had gone to being a person, and now to being a very attractive woman who you really couldn't tell was dead. This outfit put something out there for a man to look at—arms, legs, a hint of cleavage. What's more, she had good dress sense. Only women who don't know how to dress are afraid of color.

Speaking of color, there was her skin. She was milky pale, yes, but not peaches and cream. She was more like milky tea, not entirely Caucasian. Maybe not Caucasian at all. There were genes somewhere in her family tree that hailed from somewhere far more interesting than Gotham City. Her face, though, was still a mystery. I could see her chin, the curve of her cheek, and that was it. But it made her more enticing.

It's a shame I can only look and not touch, I thought, but my carnal wanderings were interrupted by Sol, who asked anxiously, "Is something wrong? Did I leave a pin in?"

"Uh, no. I just remembered something I should have said to my assistant Grace. That's all."

"Your assistant? You have an assistant in your act now?" Bernice asked, bringing out the tea tray.

"No, she's my personal assistant. She makes appointments for me, keeps track of my schedule, generally nags and bosses me around."

'Like hell I'm your personal assistant.' the girl in question said.

"Is she a young lady or a middle-aged one?" Bernice asked.

"Bernice, he's a kid yet!" Sol protested. "Don't go poking at him."

"It's all right. She's young, mid-twenties," I continued. "She did such a good job during the filming that I decided to keep her on after the shoot was over."

"Filming?" Sol asked. "You've been making a movie or something while you were away?"

"No, nothing like that. An hour-long comedy special for HBO," I adlibbed.

"HBO." Sol repeated, waving me to a seat. "That's one of those cable channels, isn't it? They show all the trashy things they can't put on regular television—and that's trashy enough, these days! I suppose you use bad language, I mean really foul words, don't you?"

"Yes, I'm afraid I do. That's what they seem to want."

"That's a shame." Sol shook his head. "Sure, people will laugh when you use the f-word and the c-words and the s-word, but that isn't real humor. It's just potty-mouthing."

"It's a start, though!" Bernice said, seeing the bright side of things. "Once you get your foot in the door, you'll start getting the offers."

"Hollywood isn't what it used to be. 1963, that was the year that ruined it. Sex and nudity, blood and guts and gore—it was better in the old days, when they couldn't show such things." Sol was off and running now. "They had to get creative. A murder would happen off screen, and all you would see was shadows on the wall. You had to use your imagination."

"But I am attracting some attention now out there. I'm up for a role in a horror movie about a girl who's murdered by a psychopath. She comes back to haunt him for what he's done, but the problem is, he's so crazy he hardly notices."

Grace made a scoffing sound.

"That sounds almost like a comedy." Sol said. "What part would you be playing?"

"The killer."

"Phh, no." Bernice sounded almost like Grace. "You?"

"So?" Sol leapt in. "Lots of great actors got their start playing heavies. Boris Karloff, he didn't have a career before Frankenstein. That role made him for life. The reason why that and The Bride of Frankenstein are classics is because you feel for the monster. You've got to have that sympathy, or it's just a freak show. And that takes real acting."

"Oh, now he's gone and gotten started." Bernice shook her head. "Have another couple of cookies. You've just got to let him wind down is all."

"Lon Chaney senior, rest his soul, one of the greatest actors who ever lived, he created his monsters from the skin outward. The Phantom of the Opera! The Hunchback of Notre Dame! London After Midnight! That guy, oh, the makeup he came up just chilled the blood. These days, he'd be just some schmoe behind the scenes who does the monster makeup, all that star quality wasted. That's what I see you doing."

It took a while before they let me leave, and when I did it was with three garment bags, a small suitcase, and an attaché case I'd left with them last time. The attaché case had fifty thousand in cash inside, completely untouched. I knew neither of them would dream of opening it. Suckers…

'I liked them.' Grace put in, quietly.

Glancing around, I saw no reflective surfaces. "Let's not go there again, shall we? I like your new outfit. Where'd you get the change of duds?"

'I thought them up.' she replied. 'So you could see them, too? What color were my shoes?' She sounded excited, just like a live girl who's been shopping.

"Pink like nothing I've ever seen in nature. No, wait, I take that back. I've seen bougainvillea that color. What about getting your hair out of your face, can you do that?"

'Nope. And I tried. Where are we going now?'

"To my secret hideout, where else?"

'How is it you can walk down the street without people screaming and running and calling the cops?' she asked.

"In this area of town, nobody sees anything. They mind their own business. Now, to get back to something you said earlier, if people aren't fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, what are they?"

'The best I can come up with is that they're fundamentally people. Look, we're born not knowing who we are, why we're here or what we're supposed to do, we spend most of our lives blundering around trying to find out the answers, ninety percent of the decisions we make can be chalked up to "It seemed like a good idea at the time", good sex never lasts long enough, and then we die. If we're really lucky, we have what Sol and Bernice back there have, but it's a gift we don't to keep forever. Just for a while. That's all I've got right now.'

"So you're saying all of human existence is a great big old chaotic mess. I can deal with that. It's what I've been saying all along."

She sighed. 'How I wish you'd listen to what I'm saying, and not just to what you want to hear.'