The next day was the worst day of my life.
You'll probably understand when I tell you that I hadn't been sleeping well since that day the Joker first noticed me. But when I got home that night, I was so tired I passed out cold.
I had nightmares.
Now, here's the thing. Ever since my first job in Smallville, most of my nightmares have been about work. My feet get stuck to the floor in the middle of the dinner rush, I forget how to work the cash register, my cook goes deaf and makes me scream the orders again and again, that kind of thing. (More than once, I woke the neighbors demanding, "Waffle, one bacon!") At Lai Lai, I dreamed about the customers more than the job itself, but my nightmares were still work-related.
That's probably why this one threw me. I dreamed a Japanese ghost chased me through an apartment building, turned me into a cat with a can of baked beans, and forced me to help him collect more victims by running wildly back and forth through traffic.
Okay, maybe not all that scary on paper. And after the cat part, I was kind of enjoying myself. But I woke up just before 4:00 A.M., freaked. I lay in bed in the dark for a second or two, then pulled a muscle throwing myself at the light switch. I turned toward Sally's bed, hoping she would be awake, but of course she wasn't there at all.
I knew I wasn't going back to sleep, so I thought I'd take a shower and then read, watch TV, or maybe even get in a little studying in the four hours before my first class.
I always keep my keys hanging from the doorknob. On that key ring I have hand sanitizer, chapstick, my library card, the key to my dorm room, the key to my mailbox, the key to the apartment in Metropolis, and an antique brass key I found lying in the street in Smallville.
And, tonight, one more key. The key to a car.
Pinned to my keychain was a note on purple paper in emerald green ink:
"I don't want my favorite Space Monkey assaulted by shadowy characters in dark alleys anymore. From now on, drive to work. –J"
My door was still locked.
The minute I saw the first rays of sunlight peeking over the horizon, I called Parker, who came over with Dick and Jeph. With the three of them as backup, I was brave enough to venture down to the parking lot.
It wasn't hard to tell which car the Joker had meant for me. The violet convertible parked in the most coveted spot just screamed "crazy clown." And there was a bobblehead on the dashboard—a monkey in a space suit.
My key turned smoothly in the lock. Nothing exploded. There were no poison gasses inside, only new car smell.
The guys went over every inch of that car and found absolutely nothing wrong with it. Somehow, that disturbed me more than a bomb or Joker Venom would have. In the glove compartment, I found a bill of sale with my name on it, insurance papers…all the legal stuff.
Wow.
Parker begged me to go to the police. I declined. I wouldn't know what to say to them.
I have this very bad habit of ignoring problems as long as I possibly can in hopes that they'll just go away. And when I say as long as I possibly can, I mean that if something explodes and horribly maims someone, including me, I'll take it to get fixed only when it explodes a second time. Someday I'm going to die a slow and painful death because I don't feel up to going to the doctor.
I know that's not good, and it's come back to bite me more than once. Knowing is half the battle, but not the half that spurs my lazy self to action.
Parker swore to me that the car was safe, and most of me believed him. Why not? After all, if he was wrong…what a way to go.
I wasn't allowed to take guys up to my dorm room, but they did escort me to the mailbox at the bottom of the stairs, and they waited while I opened the week-old letter from my grandmother (I never have been too diligent about checking my messages) and then Parker held me while I cried.
My Maw-Maw—my mother's mother's mother—had died eleven days before, quietly, in her sleep. I wasn't close enough to my mother's side of the family to have known her very well, but I could remember her from my childhood, from Christmas Past, I guess, and as I read Grandmother's letter, all I could think of was that Maw-Maw had arthritis before I was born, and her hair was brown when she was young, and it had been more than eleven days since I had thought of her.
"What do you say we blow off class today?" Parker said when I had calmed down a little. "We'll go to the Iceberg for lunch. I'll drive."
"Good idea," I said. I wasn't anywhere near ready to get in that car and drive anywhere.
I went upstairs to change clothes and found a note on my door saying that my dad had made a wellness check and I needed to call him immediately, which meant that he must have been trying to call me for a few days and gotten worried when I didn't answer the phone. No matter how many times I tried to explain it to him, the man never understood that I spent most of my time at work or in class. If he called the dorm at the same time every day, he just wasn't going to reach me. And I didn't have time to spend hours on the phone with him every day, anyway. (My dad was as bad as a clingy boyfriend, I swear.)
I pressed the button on my answering machine and discovered that I had eleven new messages, all from Dad, of course. He was the only person who ever called me, and I would have recognized his voice even if he hadn't identified himself exactly the same way in every single message.
"Hey, Francie, this is your dad. Call me back as soon as you get this message. I love you." He sounded tired, as he always did on the phone, like he was trying to hold back his annoyance that I wasn't there to answer.
"I love you, too, Dad," I said, as I always said to his messages, as if he could hear me all the way over there in Metropolis. I wondered why he was calling me. Probably not because of Maw-Maw. He wasn't any closer to my mom's family than I was, and he wouldn't be expecting me to go to her funeral, although I hadn't let on to him that I didn't dare miss work for fear that a customer would be offended and torch the place with everyone inside it if I wasn't there.
"Hey, Fran, this is your dad. Give me a call. I need to talk to you."
"If you'd stop talking, I'd call you back now." Except I wouldn't; Parker was waiting for me. But after lunch, before work, I decided I was going to call my dad. And then my grandmother. And then, if I had time, Nana—my other grandmother—just to talk.
"Hey, Frances, this is your dad. I need you to call me back. I love you."
Eight messages to go, and I was already dressed and ready to leave.
"I love you, too, Dad." I left, letting the messages play for no one.
The only way he could have really caught my attention would be to call me Space Monkey.
I went downstairs and Parker did a wolf whistle, which made me feel even more ridiculous in that slutty dress I only bought in the first place for the look on my dad's face (it was priceless.)
Jeph and Dick were gone, so it was just the two of us—a date-type encounter. We had been dancing around the subject of being More Than Just Friends for a while, so I wasn't taken completely by surprise, but the circumstances were a little weird, you know? Still, I didn't mind.
He drove, of course. I've got this thing about cars. I love riding, but I hate driving. I don't know why. I just take after my grandmother that way. We both tend to have panic attacks at the very thought of driving. (Grandmother had a meltdown behind the wheel before I was born and didn't drive again until I was thirteen. I'm more than willing to try to break her record someday.)
But even though Parker drives like a Russian maniac, riding with him didn't stress me out at all.
We only really spoke once during the drive.
"Hey, Space Monkey?"
"Yeah?" I said, still at a loss for a good nickname for him.
"Don't ever let your customers see you cry."
"What?"
"You know what happened when they saw you smile. Just don't let them see you cry."
Food for thought.
When we got to the Iceberg, the first person I saw was Two-Face, with a girl on each arm. I would have turned around and left right then, but Parker kept an arm around me and insisted that we go inside. Two-Face didn't see me, so that was all good.
The requisite snooty French maitre d' looked at us like he'd never seen a couple of college kids before.
"Do you have reservations?"
"Only about the veal," Parker said, and did a cheesy rimshot. The man raised an eyebrow, and I seriously considered hiding my face in shame. "Yes, we have reservations," he said, disappointed when nobody laughed.
"And what is the name?"
"Space Monkey."
"Parker!" I did cover my eyes with my hand this time, half expecting the entire criminal population of Gotham to swoop down from the vaulted ceilings and demand entertainment.
"Right this way, then."
We followed him to a table right next to a massive fountain, where perfectly adorable little penguins and seals played among the miniature icebergs. I had a few minutes of girliness watching the animals frolic, and then I realized that we also had a perfect view of an even more interesting scene.
I saw quite a few of my regulars there, but most of them weren't there to eat.
Parker and I spent most of the meal watching the trickle of commerce between the side entrance and Mr. Cobblepot's office, pointing out the people we recognized and trying to guess the identities of the ones we didn't. It was kind of fun to watch them when I wasn't afraid for my life.
I was still giggling over the fact that Firefly and Mr. Freeze had bumped into each other and nearly caused a Major Scene, and Parker was trying to force me to order dessert when the office door opened and the portly Penguin himself stepped out. I nearly died when I realized he was coming right for us. I just couldn't get away from these guys! For crying out loud, why had I agreed to let Parker take me to this stupid place, I wondered as I watched him waddle toward us with a truly bizarre, penguin-like gait.
He stopped at our table to bid us a good morning, and…you know, for the life of me, I can't remember exactly what he said to us. I found myself utterly fascinated by the sound of his speech—the alliteration, the constant bird puns, the waughs that almost sounded like a form of punctuation. He may well have had the oddest speech patterns I've ever heard, and I can't replicate it no matter how I try.
He flirted with me, and so help me, I was flattered. He's not at all what you would call attractive (and I can write the honest truth even if I would never say it in his hearing.) He was short and rotund with a nose like a dagger (okay, okay, like a beak), he smelled like fish and cigarettes, and he quacked. But the man was surrounded by beautiful, scantily clad henchgirls, and he flirted with me and made me blush. He called me a charming chickadee, which freaked me out a little (Chickadee was my Aunt Sadie's nickname for me when I was a little girl—just coincidence, I hoped! Now, if any of them started calling me Sweet Pea or Chicken Leg—my mom and dad's names for me, respectively—I was going to run away screaming and never come back But Chickadee, I could deal with. For now.)
I was so flustered by the flirting, I ended up telling him about work and how all his fellow rogues were congregating around me. So what did he do but offer to buy the restaurant. Um…yeah. That was a little weird, yes? I told him he would have to talk to my boss about that. But it did sound like rather a nice solution. I mean, surely they wouldn't go around destroying each other's property. Not when there was the whole rest of Gotham to take first.
I also told him to feel free to eat at Lai Lai any time. What can I say, he seemed sane. Relatively.
Parker and I left, eventually. He wasn't jealous. He was a good guy.
On the way back to the dorm, he put a straw in his mouth like the Penguin's cigarette holder and waughed perfectly, and then he kissed me.
I made him promise never to do his remarkably accurate Penguin impersonation in public. Only for me.
He didn't make any promises about the kissing. Squee.
I didn't make my phone calls.