She shuffles the books on the small shelf, and then shuffles them again. Alphabetize by title. By author's first name. By author's last name. By the first letter of the main color of the book's face. Then she pulls them all down and mixes them all up into a big jumble, and she starts over again.
Michelle King's job isn't anything to be envious of. It's a small bookstore in the slums, where she spends eight hours a day walking between the shelves, shuffling books, dusting, and dusting some more. Her hair is pulled back in a demure bun, a pair of reading glasses with black, round frames low on the bridge of her nose. Her vivid green eyes reflect the low fluorescent lights of the shop, half-lidded in boredom, and she walks between the shelves looking exactly like a librarian. There are only a couple of kids in the shop right now, in the corner and edging towards the magazine rack, their eyes fixed on a shiny new Playboy. They are thwarted, however, by the bookkeeper's stern gaze, the woman herself being only just tall enough to see over the short shelves.
She chases them out, of course, and moves back to shuffling and reshuffling her books. It's boring. It's another boring persona. There aren't many things to do here. James isn't aware of her actual job and it's better that he doesn't know, because she'll have to get another boyfriend if he dumps her over it. Sure, she's a leech and a bloodsucking parasite, but she's also not bothered by that either. Right now, though, she's not the supposedly rich adoptive sister of the very rich entrepreneur. She's the austere bookkeeper at the store that nobody visits.
Her hours pass in dim silence and dust, her only companions being musty old books that she's reorganized in about a thousand different ways, and she leaves the bookstore and drives quickly to her apartment, already pulling her hair out of the librarian's bun and letting it hang down her back, before walking into the bathroom and straight ironing it out to be long and wispy and so that it would billow out behind her like a wedding trail. She drags out tubes of grease paint from a drawer; white, black, and red, before pulling on her vividly-colored costume (adorned with garish rainbows and other splashes of painful colors) and painting her face stark white, before adding a black four-pointed star over each eye (one point of the star ending right below her hairline, one ending level with her upper lip, and two pointing towards the left and right, respectively) and paints her lips a delicate cherry red. Her stage name is Pagliacci. Not one person has gotten the joke yet. They all sort of just think that she's some sort of mime/clown mutation.
It's depressing.
Finished dressing up, Pagliacci drives off to the birthday party scheduled night and spends three hours tying up balloons into various animal shapes, doing boring card tricks that she knows by heart, dancing like a fool for the little bastards' amusements, and playing fool for all the little children. Nobody smiles or laughs when they hear her stage name. She didn't really expect them to get it, since she is a birthday clown in a poor Gotham neighborhood.
The birthday ends, she heads home, and she uses a dirty old rag to wipe off all her makeup before redoing it again in a high-class, elegant look. She's neither James Livingston's girlfriend Michelle King, the nameless bookkeeper in the old bookstore that nobody visits, nor Pagliacci; she's Michelle Anderson, sister to Nathan Anderson, entrepreneur and inheritor of a booming family business specializing in clothing. She's charming, she's polite, and above all, she shuts up and lets Nathan do all the talking. He's the more eloquent one anyway. She changes into a slinky black dress and heels, pulls her hair into a ponytail, licks her thumb and rubs off a stubborn spot of white near her temple, and waits fifteen minutes. A limousine pulls up in front of her apartment, and she's quick to navigate her way out the door in her tall heels, lock the door behind her, and walk down to the limo and get in. She doesn't need to say anything to the driver; he already knows where she needs to go, because Nathan sent the limo himself.
The ride is about a half hour. Michelle lounges in the back and drinks until she's comfortably numb, and spends the rest of the time practicing her smiles in a hand mirror from the small black purse on her shoulder. She wants one that's not too cheesy, but not too veiled and insidious. She can't be a wallflower, or at least, she can't be obvious about being a wallflower, but she's completely stupid when it comes to the things that Nathan's rich acquaintances talk about. So she needs to pretend to know what they're talking about, which, given clues in expressions and body language, shouldn't be too hard. She just needs to smile or frown at the right times, say 'Oh, I know! Wasn't that horrible?' when she needs to, and laugh when everybody else does, even if she doesn't get the joke.
It's easy.
Michelle arrives at Nathan's penthouse, and steps out of the limo with a slight clicking of her heels on the concrete, the night breeze nipping at her shoulders. She shivers slightly, her slinky dress not warm at all, and is quick to hurry inside. She's automatically let inside, since the doorman knows who she is, and on the elevator ride up to the appropriate floor, she breathes deeply to calm herself and prepare. The elevator comes to a stop at the penthouse floor and she puts on another smile as the doors slide open.
The aroma of food hits her at once, a sweet sort of wave that makes her stomach growl horribly, and Michelle walks out to mingle with the rich folk. They mainly ignore her, actually, which is very good; she only has to let on to Nathan that she's fitting in well enough, and that's it. Speaking of Nathan, she should be finding him soon enough to let him know that she arrived safely. He's not expecting anything else, but it's probably a good idea to let him know she's here anyway. She is stopped by a person or two on the way, people that comment on how nice she looks tonight, people that she doesn't know at all but for all you could tell, they were old friends. She stops at the banquet table and then spots her brother chatting with a group of men, though there aren't women too far away as well.
"Nathan," She calls, walking towards him, clicks ghosting her with every step, though for all the noise in the room, they might as well have been silent. He glances over to her and smiles in a warm and fatherly sort of manner, wearing a very nice (and expensive) suit, short brunette hair pressed out of his relatively young appearing face (he's only in his mid thirties, after all).
"Michelle," He says her name as well, as she moves to stand beside him, and though it doesn't surprise anybody at the party, they don't show any sort of affection towards one another and after the initial notice of one another, completely ignore each other's presence. She stands by his side for a moment, listening to whatever they're talking about (she can't really understand it, but then again, she probably wouldn't be interested if she could) before looking up to Nathan again.
"Nathan, I'm going to go…mingle," She gives the small sign that she's here to keep up appearances and he smiles and nods, though there isn't any warmth in his eyes as he speaks to her. "Good, good; have fun then, Michelle."
It's not that they hate each other. They don't. Nathan just doesn't think that Michelle deserves anything of his parent's fortune since she's not blood related, and already gives her enough to keep her off the streets. Michelle never really cared for the rich life anyway, and so she's fine with her multiple personae that she can switch between on the fly.
She's fine with staying out of his life. He's happy to keep out of hers. But they do need to come together sometimes for appearance's sake.
Michelle spends the next two hours hobnobbing with the rich and influential, eating off of the banquet table when she feels like it, and listening in on all the gossip. Mainly it was just about the normal things in Gotham; politics, Batman, fashion, more politics, someone's tall tale about meeting Batman in person, who happened to be the whore of the week (according to the best gossipers), and chatter about a terrorist of some sort or something. Nobody was really bothered about the terrorist, and so they didn't talk about him much, and Michelle herself was starting to chase down some of the waiters carrying around the wine so the rest of the talk was mostly forgotten.
She doesn't get drunk. That would be idiotic. Instead, she gets tipsy. And she waits for the party to wind down. She's exhausted, her feet hurt, she's getting a migraine from the constant buzz of conversation all around her, and her masquerade is starting to slip.
Thankfully, the party ends soon enough. Nathan calls her over again, and tells her that in a few days, there's going to be a big party for the new DA, and he wants her to be there.
"Bring that boyfriend of yours, Michelle," He tells her, a wine glass at his lips, and she nods.
"James, you mean? But you know that we're-"
"What your relationship is, Michelle, doesn't matter. It won't look good if you show up alone, without someone you've been dating for a month or so."
"Three weeks."
"Forgive me," He sounds just a bit annoyed at this moment in time, when nobody is around them, letting that tone slip into his voice before muffling it again behind kindness, "Three weeks. In any case, bring him along. Wring every little last drop out of the boy before you drop him like the others."
She raises an eyebrow, steadying herself against the table at their backs but trying not to look obvious that she's swaying slightly. "You remember why I do it, don't you?" She asks, and Nathan leans against the table gently as well, ignoring the women watching him from across the room.
"Necessity. Excitement. Fun. You're a vampire in any case."
Michelle closes her eyes a moment, before nodding to herself. "Fine, I'll be there if you get us those invitations," She begins to walk towards the door again, knowing that there's going to be another limo outside preparing to take her home again.
"Goodbye, Michelle. I'll be expecting you there," Nathan calls to her, and she waves over her shoulder. She's going to go home, go to bed, and prepare for another couple busy work days, planning ahead to take off the day that she'd be going to this other party. She was so sick of parties.
She walks into the elevator and turns around, a few other people leaving as well, and watches without interest as the doors slide shut in front of her and a man vomits in the corner.