She checked her watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. 5:40. She had less than twenty minutes to decide whether to go forward or continue to run away.
The decision was made all the more complicated by the news article that was currently viewed on the computer monitor. Most of the overhead lights were extinguished with the departure of the last of her co-workers shortly after the end of the workday at five. She'd stayed behind, now sitting alone in the soft glow of the screen and utilized Wayne-Powers' resources to seek out a little information about the man waiting to have dinner with her. Just dinner, she reminded herself.
The search engine had collected literally thousands of news bites mentioning the name Bruce Wayne. She'd narrowed down the search by eliminating strictly financial news, but she was still daunted by the shear volume written about him, though the frequency had tapered off in the last decade.
There were accounts of his charitable contributions, his new yachts, his golf game, even discussions about the cut of his suit, but without a doubt the greatest interest seemed to be his social life. And an active social life it was. Picture upon picture of women – blondes, brunettes, redheads – draped on his arm arriving at this event or leaving that one. They all shared one important common denominator: they were glamorous, gorgeous, and dazzling beyond imagination. These were women from affluent families and rich gene pools. In comparison Mardi felt pale and dowdy, a lump of coal to their gleaming diamonds.
She'd waded through dozens of reports when she'd finally found the one she'd been staring at for a solid ten minutes. Bruce Wayne Escorts Van Stratton Twins To Brinkstone Gala. In full color he smiled into the camera flanked on each side by identical blondes dressed in form-fitting gowns, one gold and one silver. According to the society gossip Bruce could not possibly choose between the two lovely girls, whose names were Buffy and Muffy, and had conceded to bring them both, which the twins were more than happy to oblige. However, once inside the party, Bruce was reported as not only being unable to tell the two apart, but constantly referred to them as Bitsy and Misty. To add injury to insult, Bruce apparently disappeared for several hours, his whereabouts unaccounted for, though the reporter speculated that he was quite possibly passing time with Selina Kyle, the notorious and beautiful sometime cat burglar, whom he'd been seen in the company of on several previous occasions. By the time he had reappeared, suspiciously mussed, the twins had promptly dumped their drinks over his head and fled the scene with a pair of sympathetic bachelors.
She could not tear her eyes away from the picture. This could not be the same man. The hair was a rich black, the face a little more lean, but the eyes, so blue and direct, were the same and the body, built as if for an Olympic god, was unmistakable. The smile and the easy posture, both seemed alien to the serious and rigid person she thought she knew, although, she reminded herself, she'd seen that smile once before in a not dissimilar situation.
She huffed. Workaholic, my ass, she thought. He was too busy to settle down all right; too busy hopping from woman to woman. The man of character she had believed him to be turned out to actually be a philandering, self-centered reprobate. How could she have misjudged him so badly?
A squeak caught her attention and she peered around the edge of her partitioned wall. The night janitor was making his rounds, collecting trash in a large wheeled bin. She sighed and checked her watch again. 5:45. Five blocks to the restaurant.
"Oh, I didn't know there'd be anyone around." She turned to see the janitor standing behind her.
"I won't be long."
"Take your time. But it's about suppertime. You should go get yourself a bite to eat."
"Yeah," she said wearily. "I'm supposed to be meeting someone at six."
"A date?"
"I suppose it would be," she replied distractedly. The Van Stratton twins looked on from the past, smiling at her like a pair of Barbie dolls.
"Don't you want to go?"
"Hmm?" She looked up. The janitor was still standing there.
"You don't seem too interested in your date. Don't you like the guy?"
"Like? Yeah, I like him. Too much probably."
"And he must like you, if he asked you out, I mean."
"Sure, you could say that."
"Then what are you waiting for?"
She was almost five minutes late. He saw her brush past the maitre d', who gave a shout of protest, and stride defiantly across the main floor towards his semi-private table. Her face was flushed, beads of sweat dotted her forehead causing her hair to curl into damp ringlets, and she was audibly huffing for breath as she flung herself into the chair across from him. Her arrival was a spectacle viewed by many of the restaurant's patrons, but at least she'd arrived.
A nod to the maitre d' sent him back to his post and another brought the waiter, who set plates before them. "I took the liberty of ordering ahead of time," he explained to her.
"A salad?" she asked breathily, looking down at her own plate.
"I wasn't sure what else you'd like. You can have something else…"
"I run five blocks to get here, I'm not eating a lousy salad. Take this back," she pushed the plate at the waiter. "Bring me a porterhouse steak, couple inches thick. Well-done. And don't forget the baked potato."
"Yes ma'am."
As he turned away she called out, "Wait, I'm starving, you'd better make it medium rare." He nodded. "Wait! That'll still take too long. Just tell them to sear it on each side and we'll call it even."
"Very well ma'am," the waiter replied nonplussed. Bruce handed him his own plate with instructions to have it brought back when hers was ready. "Yes, sir," he replied and carried the two plates back to the kitchen.
When Bruce looked back at her, Mardi was gulping down her glass of water, two rivulets trailing down from the corners of her mouth. When the glass was emptied, she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and then gestured to his side of the table. "You going to drink that?"
"Help yourself," he replied and handed her the glass. "Why were you running?"
She downed half the water and placed the glass on the table, licking the corner of her mouth. "I was late getting out. Busy doing research."
"I wasn't aware doing research was part of your job."
"It's not. I wasn't working. I was doing research on you, Mr. Wayne." Bruce sat, his face totally neutral, waiting for the inevitable. If he'd had any illusions that having not been born in Gotham she wouldn't have any preconceived notions about him and he could somehow make a clean start, they were immediately dashed. The bachelor life of Bruce Wayne was the stuff of legends and it was an unavoidable fact that she'd eventually learn all about it.
She was looking at him, hoping for a reaction, but getting none, so she continued. "They say a picture's worth a thousand words, but I think that's a gross underestimation. I don't suppose the names Buffy and Muffy Van Stratton ring a bell. No? I'm not really surprised. They're just a drop in the bucket. One report postulated that you'd dated more than half the eligible female population of Gotham at one point." Her voice had risen, became more strident as she'd spoken, and a few diners were surreptitiously glancing towards the table. "A different woman every night practically. You were quite the Don Juan. I don't know how you even had time to run a company." She paused and looked at him expectantly. "Aren't going to say anything in your own defense? Are you going to just sit there and let me believe all these things I read about you? Tell me that it isn't what it looks like or an alien death ray was controlling you. Anything, just don't let me feel like I'm the latest in a long line of bimbos."
He calmly replied, "Would some excuse change the way you feel?"
Giving the question serious consideration, she replied slowly, "No. It wouldn't." Then she lowered her head to stare at her hands clasped together in her lap.
Bruce felt an overwhelmingly defeated. It was more than the fact that she was the first woman to interest him in over a decade. She did not have the curvaceous charm of Selina, or the exotic sultriness of Talia, or even the fiery innocence of Barbara; she lacked Lois' drive or Andrea's rage; she wasn't a criminal, the daughter of a demonic megalomaniac, or anything else beyond the ordinary; she had no magical tendencies or supernatural abilities. She was not interested in financial gain or world domination. She was the first truly normal woman he hadn't needed to pretend to be something he was not. She saw him, not as the air-headed, rich playboy, not even as the unyielding, dark Bat, but as the person he truly was.
And he had hurt her, not by what he was, but by what he wasn't. How could he explain to her that what she had read about was nothing more than an airbrushed version of himself, a cartoon caricature to deflect any prying eyes from the more dangerous truth?
Now he saw that she was crying. Her head bobbed slowly, her shoulders hitched in sobs. He groaned inwardly. Nothing was worse than a woman crying, except a woman crying because of something he had done. What comfort could he offer, what condolences?
The sobbing became more audible as she raised her head. He saw her eyes were tinged with moisture, her cheeks were more flushed than before and her mouth was stretched into a…huge smile? What he had mistaken for weeping was actually choked laughter, growing stronger by the moment, from soft giggles to full-blown chuckles. She reached up and wiped a stray tear that squeezed from her eyes, mouth open in helpless hilarity. "B-buffy and M-muffy?" she burst out between gasps of breath. "What the hell were you thinking? I've seen more intelligent pairs of pants." The last sent her into an uncontrollable fit the likes he had only seen in victims of the Joker's poison. One hand slammed the table while the other held her stomach, her head thrown back as the laughter shook her. She gasped for breath and seemed to take herself under control, subsiding into weak giggles as the waiter returned with their food.
He set the plates before them, eyeing Mardi much as a rabbit would eye a fox, and then turned to Bruce. "Is there anything else I can get you, sir?"
"A straightjacket for my friend?" Bruce suggested mildly, sending Mardi into further peals of laughter.
The waiter looked aghast at the request, face pale. "Sir?"
"Never mind," Bruce dismissed him. "That will be all." Gratefully the waiter made himself scarce. "Are you going to be alright?"
She nodded vigorously, taking deep, cleansing breaths, and a sip of water to compose herself. Finally she looked up at him, a grin spread on her face. "Well I know one thing for certain."
"What's that?"
"Your taste in women has improved immensely." She took up her fork and knife and dove voraciously into her meal.
"That it has," he quietly agreed.
They ate quietly for a while, and then she placed her utensils on her plate, clasping her hands in front of her. "I said some pretty terrible things to you, back at your house, that I need to apologize for," she started quietly.
"You weren't exactly wrong."
She looked at him curiously, and then continued. "Nonetheless, it wasn't my place. But I need to be brutally honest about one thing. I don't believe a relationship between us has any chance for success. There's the difference in age as well as class." She shook her head.
"Class?" he asked, slightly amused.
"Yeah, class. You know, like you live in a great big mansion that even has its own name and I'm two paychecks away from living in my car."
"And?" he prompted.
"And nothing. I just wanted to get that out in the open so that when this thing blows up in our faces I can have a big I-told-you-so. In the meantime, I suggest we get out of here before I come to my senses and realize I have gone completely insane."
He wasted little time on inner debate. Turning, he raised a finger. "Check please!"
