V: a forgery, PART II
He'd done as he promised and gotten them into the mansion. He'd had to help her through the streets, a human crutch.
Then Selena's nail was like a blade against his throat.
"He can keep the painting," she said, as she triggered the silent alarm. Even in the dark, the biographer could see her smiling. A reunion with Batman. Like the old days, when her crimes were a kind of personal bat signal. She began to reminisce. She grew up very poor, she said, with nothing. Her only possessions scraps of jewelry she sometimes saw in the street, wearing them like she was a queen. Later, she learned she could sell herself to men who wanted her, could make good money too.
They'd met after an overly aggressive customer wouldn't leave her alone. Batman had saved her, thought she was some silly damsel in distress. "Stay out of the alleys," he cautioned her, and even though it was obvious advice, something about the way he said it felt very, very genuine, she remembered. Even now, she wasn't sure why it had stuck with her. She couldn't quite remember.
She'd listened but not exactly. She'd worked her way out of the alleys, into one apartment and then another. She could get more and give so much less.
As she spoke, the biographer didn't know if he was a hostage or a witness.
She'd expected her rival, her lover, to at least visit once she'd been released from Arkham, to at least check on her. But the only person who visited was Roland Daggett, the sleazy chemical manufacturer she'd once helped Batman lock away for spreading a virus in Gotham. He was the developer of the Renew-U cream that could change appearances, that was a kind of faux-skin. The cream that had created Clay-Face. Once a man who soothed wrinkles, who administered Botox, later Daggett was a surgeon in a jar. But Renew-U had been banned after the disaster with Clayface, who'd once been a charming actor named Matt Hagan. Still, he said he could get it for her if she'd try his newest creation. If she'd be his guinea pig, he'd help fix her leg, rebuild the muscle, the bone. Get her out of her apartment, a homemade cell.
"Whatever it was, I started forgetting things. But he wouldn't give me the Renew-U unless I took more and more."
Selina had long since released the biographer's throat.
"I knew it was a kind of revenge, but I didn't care. There were things I wanted to forget. You see, it's true I knew who Batman was. But I think that's why he didn't visit me. I took something I couldn't give back. I think that's why I was caught in the first place. With his help. His secret locked up in Arkham. So, I decided to forget it. Let things go back to how they were before I spoiled everything."
The biographer could hear sirens, and then Selina crying. It didn't appear as though Batman was coming.
She began slathering herself in handfulls of the cream. The biographer knew his time was running out.
"Please. Do you remember anything about him?"
"Stay out of the alley. Stay out!" she shouted, like she'd gone insane.
Someone pounded on the door.
"He's here," Selina said, dropping Daggett's container.
The biographer panicked. Could it be? If it was Batman, he was too close, the biographer a sniper forced into hand to hand combat. What was it one of the very first notes had said? If you go to the bat, if you give up that easily, I'll take their thumbs. You want bats? You'll get little wings for your kiddies.
But it was a police officer who walked through the door.
The biographer always thought of himself on the "right" side but he had to admit he was now in a shapeless thing. He cycled through stories, excuses.
Was he her defense attorney, trying to reason with her?
Housesitting for his friend?
A good samaritan who saw her from the street?
Was he just himself?
He thought of his children, of fingerless hands, of how useless to them he'd be in a cell. Selina was at the door, her brain soft with cream.
"Well, well. If it isn't Catwoman," said the officer, turning on the lights. "Up to your old tricks, I see."
The biographer spoke. "I'm Vincent Vertas, a friend of Marvin. This is his house. I caught Ms. Kyle trying to get her hands on the art."
She sat down, as if transfixed by the large paintings along the wall.
The officer placed a hand on her inner thigh. "From what I understand, you used to turn other tricks, too."
"Why didn't he show up?" Selina asked plaintively, to no one in particular.
"I'll close up shop here," the biographer said, as the officer took her away.
Furious, he rubbed the cream into his temples, all that was left. He'd learned nothing about Batman, certainly nothing he needed to remember, least of all what he'd done.
When he woke up, he was sitting beside the painting of Gotham he'd originally intended to take. Where was Selina? The painting was massacred with scratch marks, as if some lunatic had tried to get inside, revisiting some obscure past.
GOTHAM HERALD: Catwoman Uses Up Ninth Life
Selina Kyle AKA Catwoman has been recommitted to Arkham after a psychotic episode. She can barely even remember her own name, a source inside the mental institution told the Herald. Kyle was arrested after a botched robbery inside the home of Marvin Atsby, curator of the Gotham House of Art. A friend of Atsby triggered the silent alarm, saving all but one of the paintings.