Author's note: As much as I would love to claim credit for the chat up
lines in this chapter, I cannot. A Mr Johnny Bravo, of Warner Brothers
originally spoke them - If any big wigs from WB happen to be reading please
bear in mind I am not making any profit from this so please do not sue me.
And so it came to pass that we found ourselves nursing a pint of beer, idly stirring it with a straw in the Iceberg Lounge. All face masks were gone now - it was just Twoface, he of coin tossing fame and famous gangster, that sat at the bar, thoroughly depressed. I was certain that at least one of the women we had tried would be interested - but it seemed that neither of our personalities are particularly appealing to the opposite sex.
We stared deep down into our beer glass, but that didn't offer any advice to us either. Wondering if Norm from Cheers ever had moments like this, we were shaken from our musings by an excited giggle.
We turned. A girl had her hand clamped to her mouth apparently in excitement. As we looked at her she smiled a huge beaming grin.
"OhmyGod OhmyGod - you're Twoface aren't you!" she said.
We were about to answer that unfortunately yes we are, when a thought struck both of us. This woman was interested in us. Indeed, she seemed excited to be in our company.
We took her hand in ours, and lightly kissed it, looking soulfully into her eyes.
It seems that on our own, Twoface and I are hopeless at this kind of stuff, but together we're a force to be reckoned with. As much as either of hates to admit it.
"Why yes my dear, we are he. And who might you be?"
The woman was Roxy Rocket, who at the time we had not met. However, after talking to her for a good few hours, we realised that she simply wasn't for us.
Oh sure, she was attractive, funny, intelligent - in fact, at some point in the future we may well consider seeing her.
But back then, she was hopelessly star struck. Don't think we are being arrogant about this, but we do see this kind of thing all the time.
You know the type. Our entire conversation consisted of her asking how we had felt whilst committing X crime (she knew all of our crimes, including dates and times - a most disconcerting experience) and then, when we responded, "that was so cool". Even Twoface got bored of subtly staring at her breasts, so after a few hours of inane chatter, we made our excuses and left.
*******************
"This is hopeless!" I whined. "Between us we've tried three different methods with three different women, and none of them have worked!"
"Oh for fuck's sake Harv, shut up!" he responded tartly. "No-one said this was going to be easy. But you're more experienced in this than us - you managed to hold down a marriage after all. How did you used to attract women back in the day?"
We thought hard about that actually. It had been a long time since Harvey Dent had strutted his funky stuff. . .
We suddenly remembered. Oh no.
We tried to conceal the memory from Twoface, but found it a little difficult, what with sharing the same mind and all.
His side of our face grinned maliciously.
"Oh no. No no no. Not that buddy. There's no way!" we said, feeling like we were being painted into a corner. We panicked and stuttered, "I don't even know where all that stuff is!"
"Oh yes you do." He snarled gleefully. "You were wearing that junk when you first met Gilda. You're a melancholic old bastard Harv - you'd never throw out something that caused you so much pain to look at out of sheer masochism!"
The fiend had a point, and he knew it. Contrary to what he says, I am not a masochist, no matter how it may appear from the outside - what was slowly beginning to dawn on me however was that I had indeed kept all my old gear. And I knew exactly where it all was.
"Besides Harv," he began, grinning wickedly again, "By our calculations, between us we've tried three different methods of attracting the opposite sex. Now, correct us if we're wrong, but three isn't very easily divisible by two is it?"
We sighed.
This wouldn't end well.
*****************************************************************
Reaching deep into one of the pockets of our dirty old trench coat, we handed over a twenty to the cab driver and told him to keep the change.
He took the money without looking at it, still trying to get a glimpse at our face, which we had kept jealously hidden behind the large lapels of the coat.
"What?" we asked, spitting the words out as if they burnt our tongue.
"Nothing mister." The taxi driver said, still staring at us. "Nothing at all, it's just. . . are those sequins?!"
We followed his eyes and realised that the coat was revealing a little too much of our trouser leg for our liking. We sighed, and handed over another ten.
"You didn't see anything. . . you got that?" we snarled.
"Uh yeah sure thing bub." He said, still staring in confusion at our trousers, perhaps wondering if he had picked up Benny or Bjorn, "But are you sure you wanna get off here? The Iceberg is kind of a rough place to hang out. . ."
"Don't we know it." We said, sighing heavily. We opened the door of the cab and got out, anxious all the while that we didn't reveal too much to the Cabbie - tonight was going to be embarrassing enough for us without the cops turning up to compound our shame. We shut the door with a slam and watched as the cab drove off into the distance.
We stood in the rain outside the Iceberg, frankly unsure of what to do next.
"Well Twoface," we muttered softly as the rain spattered down onto our purple platform boots, "This is another fine mess you've got us into!"
**************** "Hey there foxy Magpie lady." We said, throwing off the trench coat with aplomb.
Judging from the look on the poor girl's face, Magpie didn't know what to make of us.
Oswald did. The minute he saw us, he clucked more like a hen then a penguin and clapped his hands together delightedly.
"Oh Harvey. . . I knew you and my Magpie, the prettiest of my flock, were destined to be together. And look at your clothes - so fetching, so glamorous - so seventies!"
He had a point actually. We had unfortunately been correct, and had kept the clothes we had been wearing when we met Gilda for the first time.
As such this meant that we wore purple platform boots and tight white trousers with sequins running down the seam. Needless to say, the trousers were flared, the flares themselves also covered in sequins. We wore a white waistcoat, and a black shirt, which had flared sleeves and frilled around the neckline, and also exposed a large quantity of our (now slightly balding) manly chest.
Kittlemeier had outdone himself on the facial mask this time - we looked a good twenty years younger. He had even managed to style our slightly receding hairline so that it had a miniature coif at the fringe! The old goat had even gone to the trouble of adding expansive sideburns the exact shade of our natural hair.
The picture was completed by small round Lennonesque purple glasses that balanced precariously on the bridge of our nose and a medallion that looked suspiciously like a large silver dollar. . .
"Well," continued the Penguin, "I was going to save the unveiling of this for a special occasion, but I'm so proud of my pretty little Magpie I can't resist any longer. . ."
Oswald waddled over to the bar, snapped briefly at the hapless Sly, who handed over a remote control. It was snatched by a webbed hand. Cackling, Penguin pressed a button.
With a whirring noise, a panel in the very centre of the roof of The Iceberg Lounge drew back. From the newly exposed chasm dropped a spinning glittering disco ball suspended by a cable. Penguin pressed another button, and the Lounge suddenly became bathed in darkness, save for alternately flashing red, orange and yellow lights, accompanied of course by the multiple lights from the glittering disco ball.
We covered our eyes with our hand as if we had a migraine coming on, not truly believing what we were seeing. We sneaked a peak at Magpie. She seemed equally, if not more confused.
"Well?" asked Cobblepot, a proud smile on his face. "What do you think? I was going to save the surprise for that seventies theme night we have coming up next week. . . but seeing you love birds together, I just couldn't resist it!"
A solitary tear, of some kind of bizarre pride we presumed, trickled down from the Penguin's monocle.
In this environment, Disco Dent (as Twoface was maliciously referring to us) should have been in his element. But that was years ago. Twenty odd to be precise.
We felt distinctly uncomfortable. Fighting the urge to run and never show either of our faces in this bar again, we strutted over to the terrified Magpie as only a Disco King such as we can do.
Making a point of standing so that our crotch angled forward, showing off our groin even further in the tight white trousers, we winked at her. We took her hand and kissed her knuckles, gazing soulfully into her eyes before delivering the killer chat up line.
"Wanna do the monkey with me?" we said, still looking soulfully into her eyes.
Let it never be said that Twoface does things in halves. And there's no hidden double entendre thing in there either - the monkey was a popular dance when we were at college. OK?
Seemingly not.
"Look, Harv, you're a really nice guy and all, but like I told ya last time you were here - I gotta boyfriend already!"
We saw our chance and took it like the merciless hunter we are. Limbering up into a full Saturday Night Fever pose with an accompanying "Hya!", we looked straight into her beautiful eyes and said,
"Well, you look like the kinda girl that could use two! Hya!"
******************
It's true what they say about Mace you know. It really does hurt the eyes, as we suppose it is meant to.
We thought it was a little mean of her to take advantage of the fact that our glasses were slightly down our nose so that we could look into her eyes.
We thought it was even meaner of Oswald to accuse us of bringing his bar into disrepute and barring us for a week. It's The Iceberg Lounge for fuck's sake! Its very existence brings it into disrepute!
We had a little more luck at Harley's house - We had heard on the Rogue grapevine that Puddin' was still in Arkham (which must be a record for him), so we knocked on the front door confident in the fact that we wouldn't have to face his wrath at trying to move in on his girl.
After we had knocked, we stood on the doorstep, the same Saturday Night fever pose as before. After five minutes (in which judging from the assorted banging and clanging she was looking for a key) Harley answered the door. As it opened, and she saw how we were dressed, her usual annoyingly chirpy face froze into an expression of complete bewilderment.
Taking this to be a good sign, we pressed the advantage home.
Stepping forward, we took one long theatrical sniff of Harley ("Mm. . . strawberries!" Twoface mentally remarked) and said with a patented grin,
"Hey there Harley. You smell pretty - wanna smell me?"
We winked and looked longingly into her baby blue eyes. She looked at us, stunned. We looked at her. She looked at us, still unsure what to make of it all. We grinned at her. Our grin fell as she fell backwards back into her hallway laughing hysterically.
*******************
"Hey there Roxy, pretty lady, am I as studly as the statue of David or what? Oh forget it. We'll mace ourselves on the way out."
*******************
Feeling completely dejected, we spent the rest of the week in our dressing gown watching daytime T.V with a bowl of Lucky Charms in ice cold milk at our side.
Do you know why Daytime T.V is allowed to exist? Most people are at work, and so don't know just how awful it is.
The one thought that drove us on during that terrible time was that in a week's time we would be back in our beloved Iceberg Lounge with our supportive friend Eddie Nigma.
And so it came to pass that we found ourselves nursing a pint of beer, idly stirring it with a straw in the Iceberg Lounge. All face masks were gone now - it was just Twoface, he of coin tossing fame and famous gangster, that sat at the bar, thoroughly depressed. I was certain that at least one of the women we had tried would be interested - but it seemed that neither of our personalities are particularly appealing to the opposite sex.
We stared deep down into our beer glass, but that didn't offer any advice to us either. Wondering if Norm from Cheers ever had moments like this, we were shaken from our musings by an excited giggle.
We turned. A girl had her hand clamped to her mouth apparently in excitement. As we looked at her she smiled a huge beaming grin.
"OhmyGod OhmyGod - you're Twoface aren't you!" she said.
We were about to answer that unfortunately yes we are, when a thought struck both of us. This woman was interested in us. Indeed, she seemed excited to be in our company.
We took her hand in ours, and lightly kissed it, looking soulfully into her eyes.
It seems that on our own, Twoface and I are hopeless at this kind of stuff, but together we're a force to be reckoned with. As much as either of hates to admit it.
"Why yes my dear, we are he. And who might you be?"
The woman was Roxy Rocket, who at the time we had not met. However, after talking to her for a good few hours, we realised that she simply wasn't for us.
Oh sure, she was attractive, funny, intelligent - in fact, at some point in the future we may well consider seeing her.
But back then, she was hopelessly star struck. Don't think we are being arrogant about this, but we do see this kind of thing all the time.
You know the type. Our entire conversation consisted of her asking how we had felt whilst committing X crime (she knew all of our crimes, including dates and times - a most disconcerting experience) and then, when we responded, "that was so cool". Even Twoface got bored of subtly staring at her breasts, so after a few hours of inane chatter, we made our excuses and left.
*******************
"This is hopeless!" I whined. "Between us we've tried three different methods with three different women, and none of them have worked!"
"Oh for fuck's sake Harv, shut up!" he responded tartly. "No-one said this was going to be easy. But you're more experienced in this than us - you managed to hold down a marriage after all. How did you used to attract women back in the day?"
We thought hard about that actually. It had been a long time since Harvey Dent had strutted his funky stuff. . .
We suddenly remembered. Oh no.
We tried to conceal the memory from Twoface, but found it a little difficult, what with sharing the same mind and all.
His side of our face grinned maliciously.
"Oh no. No no no. Not that buddy. There's no way!" we said, feeling like we were being painted into a corner. We panicked and stuttered, "I don't even know where all that stuff is!"
"Oh yes you do." He snarled gleefully. "You were wearing that junk when you first met Gilda. You're a melancholic old bastard Harv - you'd never throw out something that caused you so much pain to look at out of sheer masochism!"
The fiend had a point, and he knew it. Contrary to what he says, I am not a masochist, no matter how it may appear from the outside - what was slowly beginning to dawn on me however was that I had indeed kept all my old gear. And I knew exactly where it all was.
"Besides Harv," he began, grinning wickedly again, "By our calculations, between us we've tried three different methods of attracting the opposite sex. Now, correct us if we're wrong, but three isn't very easily divisible by two is it?"
We sighed.
This wouldn't end well.
*****************************************************************
Reaching deep into one of the pockets of our dirty old trench coat, we handed over a twenty to the cab driver and told him to keep the change.
He took the money without looking at it, still trying to get a glimpse at our face, which we had kept jealously hidden behind the large lapels of the coat.
"What?" we asked, spitting the words out as if they burnt our tongue.
"Nothing mister." The taxi driver said, still staring at us. "Nothing at all, it's just. . . are those sequins?!"
We followed his eyes and realised that the coat was revealing a little too much of our trouser leg for our liking. We sighed, and handed over another ten.
"You didn't see anything. . . you got that?" we snarled.
"Uh yeah sure thing bub." He said, still staring in confusion at our trousers, perhaps wondering if he had picked up Benny or Bjorn, "But are you sure you wanna get off here? The Iceberg is kind of a rough place to hang out. . ."
"Don't we know it." We said, sighing heavily. We opened the door of the cab and got out, anxious all the while that we didn't reveal too much to the Cabbie - tonight was going to be embarrassing enough for us without the cops turning up to compound our shame. We shut the door with a slam and watched as the cab drove off into the distance.
We stood in the rain outside the Iceberg, frankly unsure of what to do next.
"Well Twoface," we muttered softly as the rain spattered down onto our purple platform boots, "This is another fine mess you've got us into!"
**************** "Hey there foxy Magpie lady." We said, throwing off the trench coat with aplomb.
Judging from the look on the poor girl's face, Magpie didn't know what to make of us.
Oswald did. The minute he saw us, he clucked more like a hen then a penguin and clapped his hands together delightedly.
"Oh Harvey. . . I knew you and my Magpie, the prettiest of my flock, were destined to be together. And look at your clothes - so fetching, so glamorous - so seventies!"
He had a point actually. We had unfortunately been correct, and had kept the clothes we had been wearing when we met Gilda for the first time.
As such this meant that we wore purple platform boots and tight white trousers with sequins running down the seam. Needless to say, the trousers were flared, the flares themselves also covered in sequins. We wore a white waistcoat, and a black shirt, which had flared sleeves and frilled around the neckline, and also exposed a large quantity of our (now slightly balding) manly chest.
Kittlemeier had outdone himself on the facial mask this time - we looked a good twenty years younger. He had even managed to style our slightly receding hairline so that it had a miniature coif at the fringe! The old goat had even gone to the trouble of adding expansive sideburns the exact shade of our natural hair.
The picture was completed by small round Lennonesque purple glasses that balanced precariously on the bridge of our nose and a medallion that looked suspiciously like a large silver dollar. . .
"Well," continued the Penguin, "I was going to save the unveiling of this for a special occasion, but I'm so proud of my pretty little Magpie I can't resist any longer. . ."
Oswald waddled over to the bar, snapped briefly at the hapless Sly, who handed over a remote control. It was snatched by a webbed hand. Cackling, Penguin pressed a button.
With a whirring noise, a panel in the very centre of the roof of The Iceberg Lounge drew back. From the newly exposed chasm dropped a spinning glittering disco ball suspended by a cable. Penguin pressed another button, and the Lounge suddenly became bathed in darkness, save for alternately flashing red, orange and yellow lights, accompanied of course by the multiple lights from the glittering disco ball.
We covered our eyes with our hand as if we had a migraine coming on, not truly believing what we were seeing. We sneaked a peak at Magpie. She seemed equally, if not more confused.
"Well?" asked Cobblepot, a proud smile on his face. "What do you think? I was going to save the surprise for that seventies theme night we have coming up next week. . . but seeing you love birds together, I just couldn't resist it!"
A solitary tear, of some kind of bizarre pride we presumed, trickled down from the Penguin's monocle.
In this environment, Disco Dent (as Twoface was maliciously referring to us) should have been in his element. But that was years ago. Twenty odd to be precise.
We felt distinctly uncomfortable. Fighting the urge to run and never show either of our faces in this bar again, we strutted over to the terrified Magpie as only a Disco King such as we can do.
Making a point of standing so that our crotch angled forward, showing off our groin even further in the tight white trousers, we winked at her. We took her hand and kissed her knuckles, gazing soulfully into her eyes before delivering the killer chat up line.
"Wanna do the monkey with me?" we said, still looking soulfully into her eyes.
Let it never be said that Twoface does things in halves. And there's no hidden double entendre thing in there either - the monkey was a popular dance when we were at college. OK?
Seemingly not.
"Look, Harv, you're a really nice guy and all, but like I told ya last time you were here - I gotta boyfriend already!"
We saw our chance and took it like the merciless hunter we are. Limbering up into a full Saturday Night Fever pose with an accompanying "Hya!", we looked straight into her beautiful eyes and said,
"Well, you look like the kinda girl that could use two! Hya!"
******************
It's true what they say about Mace you know. It really does hurt the eyes, as we suppose it is meant to.
We thought it was a little mean of her to take advantage of the fact that our glasses were slightly down our nose so that we could look into her eyes.
We thought it was even meaner of Oswald to accuse us of bringing his bar into disrepute and barring us for a week. It's The Iceberg Lounge for fuck's sake! Its very existence brings it into disrepute!
We had a little more luck at Harley's house - We had heard on the Rogue grapevine that Puddin' was still in Arkham (which must be a record for him), so we knocked on the front door confident in the fact that we wouldn't have to face his wrath at trying to move in on his girl.
After we had knocked, we stood on the doorstep, the same Saturday Night fever pose as before. After five minutes (in which judging from the assorted banging and clanging she was looking for a key) Harley answered the door. As it opened, and she saw how we were dressed, her usual annoyingly chirpy face froze into an expression of complete bewilderment.
Taking this to be a good sign, we pressed the advantage home.
Stepping forward, we took one long theatrical sniff of Harley ("Mm. . . strawberries!" Twoface mentally remarked) and said with a patented grin,
"Hey there Harley. You smell pretty - wanna smell me?"
We winked and looked longingly into her baby blue eyes. She looked at us, stunned. We looked at her. She looked at us, still unsure what to make of it all. We grinned at her. Our grin fell as she fell backwards back into her hallway laughing hysterically.
*******************
"Hey there Roxy, pretty lady, am I as studly as the statue of David or what? Oh forget it. We'll mace ourselves on the way out."
*******************
Feeling completely dejected, we spent the rest of the week in our dressing gown watching daytime T.V with a bowl of Lucky Charms in ice cold milk at our side.
Do you know why Daytime T.V is allowed to exist? Most people are at work, and so don't know just how awful it is.
The one thought that drove us on during that terrible time was that in a week's time we would be back in our beloved Iceberg Lounge with our supportive friend Eddie Nigma.
