IV: a forgery, PART I
All the foam had been clawed out of the couch cushions. Her cat, probably. The biographer had expected luxury, the spoils of Selina's most notorious talent. Rubies, diamonds, paintings as big as she could carry. But the apartment was tiny, a single room crowded by portraits along the walls, the one aspect of his imagination that corresponded to reality. Massive works, some of which, improbably, he recognized.
"All forgeries, of course," said the woman dressed entirely in black.
He'd read up on Selina Kyle, the former cat burglar. Always looking to take things, not always physical things, that's where you had to be careful. Even in Arkham, she'd been full of petty schemes, managing somehow to swindle other inmates of privileges or secrets or prides. He'd done several supplemental interviews to prepare for this one, since it would be in the wild, as it were. It was useful to keep busy, to not think about the other things, his family.
"Not quite myself these days," she said, extending a leg from beneath black silk.
He grimaced at the odd craters in her thigh, the skin dipping inward, all the irregularities more stark in contrast to her beauty. The biographer knew from her file and a former guard that she'd never really recovered from the shattering of her femur. She'd starved herself so thin she squeezed through Arkham's bars, but when she had to jump from a wall fifty feet high, her body couldn't withstand the force. She'd had to lay there and beg a guard to drag her back to the infirmary. But the guard just threw her into the cell without pain relievers or treatment of any kind, her leg left mangled. It had never properly healed.
She kept applying something that looked like makeup to her face, as though one thing could compensate for another.
Eventually, the parole board let her out. She could barely walk so what could she really steal?
At a second glance, he noticed that most of the paintings were torn in places, covered in frenzied scratch marks. Across from him, sunken into the skeletal sofa, Selina petted her cat Isis, soothing some small feline worry, or one of her own.
It had been three months exactly since the biographer had been alone with a woman. He hadn't been able to stay in his wifeless, childless house, so he'd been living out of a hotel. In spite of the general strangeness of meeting a woman who'd once worn a costume and stolen from people like him, he was happy for her company.
She told him about the years of cat and mouse, she and Batman, the long flirtation, a game, on rooftops, in alleyways, sometimes on the same side, sometimes not. He'd saved her life, but she'd saved his too.
For a long time, she said, the nights were her days.
On the telephone, the biographer had asked for an interview, had let her assume he belonged to some obscure periodical. She hadn't probed at all, had told him to come anytime.
"When I lived closer to Gotham Park," she continued, Batman made sure my apartment was along his nightly patrol—to keep an eye on me or—who can say?"
She smiled, a rehearsed beat in a story she'd told many times. Or maybe the thought truly brought her happiness, he didn't know.
"Look, Vincent" — how did she know his name? — "since you're here, and since I don't often have have guests, I'll tell you how our story ended, how different my life could've been."
"I followed him home once late at night and saw where he lived. I presented myself to him, thinking it could be our secret. A life together. The next day, I woke up on the side of a road with bruises up my arms. Didn't remember a thing. He told me what happened later, as a kind of apology. He said I couldn't jeopardize his work."
"His work," she repeated, caught on the word, gesturing facetiously to a faux-Rembrandt behind her.
"But that's probably not what happened. Our game must've felt over to him. All of a sudden, it's merely Selena Kyle who is standing in his house. Catwoman, just a costume discarded on the floor. Just me. Who am I without the game? A young woman who could one day work a corporate job? Who could try real hard to get by?"
She rubbed her arms, left hand consoling right, right left. He'd read this story before, though, in a series online, a Batman message board of sorts he'd come across in his research. The post containing a version of her story had received thousands of upvotes, for its content or suspected veracity. The author was anonymous, the story nearly identical, line for line, only small differences, one month was three, arms instead of neck.
"I loved him, can you believe that?" said Selina.
To the biographer, it was as though she'd said, Look at us, two people who've lost everything. Two people who could not be anymore who they were.
"I heard what happened," Selina said very quietly.
She moved closer, her eyes so dark.
She leant into him slightly as though they were going to slow dance, let her lips lie across his, held them there until he kissed her.
It had been only three months but each day had felt like a lifetime, any shred of affection since appearing as a whole bouquet of emotion. He'd been absolutely alone, waiting for nothing except the strange correspondence that sometimes came in the mail.
Who's the bat? Who? Whoowhoo?
Who came first, the bat or the chicken?
VinnyBoy 1says hello! So does VinnyGirl A!
He drew back from her in horror, sobbing, his tiny infidelity. It hadn't occurred to him that he still had something to lose.
She seemed satisfied, as though an equation had been balanced. Freer now. "You know, even if you find her, she won't just run back into your arms, she won't be the same. She won't be the woman you remember. She'll be smaller, shrunken, closed. She'll blame you."
He knew then that Selina had written the story, that it had come from her, though its truth he doubted, a chapter read without its book a special kind of lie.
"All forgeries, huh," he said, to change the subject, emboldened by his own insight. He had to act, he had to carve out some hope.
"How would you like the real thing?" he asked, indicating a picture of a darkened street, an older Gotham.
Marvin could do with one less painting, he knew. His old friend, the curator of The Gotham House of Art. Did he even appreciate what he had? Always away at some gala. So many paintings stacked up in his mansion by the park.
"It's a perfect forgery," she replied, though they both knew it wasn't, a certain hard limit in the artist, even the best of her underworld acquaintances.
He responded with only silence, let her longing take a shape. Let her crave what she doesn't have, in all its forms. A lawyer, he had long known how to whittle sticks to look like carrots.
"I haven't seen him for years, you know," Selina said.
For a second, he thought she was talking about Marvin, that she somehow had already intuited his plan. But then he realized she was still thinking about Batman, the road in her mind unforked.
"I can get you that painting," the biographer said.
Marvin fancied himself a sort of renaissance man, a man who though he owned treasures, he didn't really need any locks. Marvin's friends all knew the door code. It was an informal salon, his house, a center of culture.
"What do you expect in exchange?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.
"The real story."
GOTHAM HERALD: Selina Kyle aka Catwoman spotted buying groceries at DiNikolos
The stunning ex-con was spotted on 39th and 1st gathering some vegetables. "I almost didn't recognize her," our spy confided. "But she told the counterman her name to place an order, then it hit me!" The woman once known for her exploits as Catwoman was seen limping out of the store by herself. But not before she paid for her groceries, our spy confirmed.