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Bruce Wayne and Cat Girl

Jake

I sleep the sleep of the dead, and when I come to, I can’t remember where I am. I’m in a soft bed in a darkened room with bands of brilliant sunlight burning around the edges of the window blinds. As I roll over I get a whiff of a familiar perfume. I’m at Dodi’s.

There was no need to threaten my life if I left the room. I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. I open the door and squint against the sunlight. The clock in the kitchen reads ten, which means last night was the longest I’ve slept in years. I feel…light. Rested. I check my phone: five more missed phone calls from Andrew and several voicemails, which I delete. Nothing from Grant. On the kitchen table is a handwritten note with a key resting on top. Her hand is spiky and dark.

Do whatever you need to do, lock up, and give my key to the neighbor. Don’t be here when I get back.

I have no one to cook a healthy breakfast for, so I pour myself a bowl of sugary cereal. When I open the fridge I can see she wasn’t kidding about the state of affairs. There’s an empty milk carton and half a dozen condiments. I check the mustard out of curiosity: expired. I sit at the table in my boxers, blinking stupidly in the bright light, crunching my dry cereal. On the table in front of me is a pile of hair elastics and a hairbrush. A homework sheet with a teacher’s bouncy writing at the top that says, Please call me. Catriona is telling stories about Hades and Persephone again. A Barbie with her hair shorn off close to her scalp, draped across the chair to my right. On the fridge is a dry-erase calendar crammed full of reminders: Ballet on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Christmas concert this Friday. Pediatrician appointment next Wednesday. It’s fascinating. This is Dodi’s kitchen. This is Dodi’s life.

I put the bowl in the dishwasher when I’m done, and because I’m doing that, I load all the dirty dishes from the sink too, and press start. The bottom of the sink is full of soggy cereal, so I clean it out into the trash, which is overflowing, so I tie that up and set it by the door, where there’s a pile of shoes. Once those are organized, I start picking up Barbies, but then I stop myself. There’s something very deliberate about the way they’ve been laid out. On the kitchen counter is an empty granola bar box, which looks like it was torn open from the side by a dog. I collapse it and stuff it in the recycling. I take care of the empty milk carton too, and a knife with peanut butter on it.

They’re a pair of pigs.

The morning melts by, shrouded in the fine mist of spray cleaner, prismatic in the bright sunlight. A second bag of trash joins the first. After the first hour, the fridge sparkles, the counters gleam, the dishwasher hums. After the second, the floors shine and the dead bugs in the light fixtures have been liberated directly into the trash. The washing machine burbles as it sloshes around Dodi’s dirty laundry from our Las Vegas trip last week—which was left packed in her carry-on in the middle of the bedroom floor, because of course it was. I’m reconstructing the Jonestown Massacre–style arrangement of Barbies as per the photo on my phone after having vacuumed the carpet, when the landline rings. I pick it up without thinking.

“You’re still there,” Dodi says. I look at the clock and realize it’s past noon. I was supposed to leave. I consider hanging up without saying anything, but there’s relief in her voice when she says, “I have a problem.”

“What do you need me to do?”

There’s a pause, like maybe she hadn’t anticipated me offering to help so readily.

“My neighbor two doors down is supposed to pick up Cat from school, but her car’s broken down again—”

“Where and when?”

Again, the surprised pause at the other end of the line. Then she clears her throat, and her voice is crisp and cool.

“Our Lady of Sorrows. There’s a pickup lane. You have to be there by two thirty. I’ll call her to let her know.”

“What does she look like?”

But there’s another voice in the background—several voices—arguing, it sounds like—and then Dodi’s voice, far away, like she dropped her phone into her pocket—

And the call disconnects.

—

I find the car where I left it under the overpass, now engraved with a giant dick on the trunk and EAT The RiCH on the side.

Our Lady of Sorrows is a dour little building with a playground outside and a bruised, gnarly Christ on a cross at the entrance. I went to a school like this, of course, courtesy of Andrew. An awful little school, where the teachers knew who my uncle was and playground bullies ran rampant. A stress headache creeps up the back of my head just thinking about it. I scan the pickup area as I pull in. The school is like an anthill, the children pouring out, milling in every direction. It’s a disaster. Shrieks, horns honking, and every single child wearing the same uniform. I roll along at a crawl looking at the face of every little girl. And then I see a splash of Dodi red.

It’s her, because of course it’s her: a sullen little girl in a crimson peacoat who looks like she should be off haunting an abandoned sanatorium. The reason there were no photos of her at the apartment is probably because she doesn’t photograph. Long, pin-straight dark hair held back with a ribbon headband, she stands with her hands clasped in front of her, her back perfectly straight, staring at something unseen in the distance. Whereas all the other girls her age are wild and bedraggled after a day of play, her tidy hair and neat clothes make it look like she was kept safe pressed between the leaves of a dusty old book. A grimoire.

I come to a halt in front of her and lower the window. “Cat!”

She jerks when she notices me. Her face is a perfect oval, her eyes skeptical and dark like Dodi’s. She takes a few curious steps closer to the car.

“Get in.”

She frowns at me, thinking, and then—“Ow!”

A grubby little blond girl slugs her in the shoulder as she runs past on her way to the car behind me. “Meow!” the blond girl shouts as she goes. I swivel to look, expecting the man at the wheel to do something about it, but he doesn’t. Of course not. He’s probably a bully just like his daughter.

“Why?” Cat asks me, rubbing her shoulder.

It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be resistance or that Cat would do anything other than hop in the car and sit silently with her hands in her lap as I ferried her home. I probably haven’t spoken to a six-year-old since I was one myself.

“Your mom asked me to get you,” I say, reassuring smile engaged full force.

She doesn’t buy it. “That’s what perverts say. Mommy told me.”

The car behind me blasts its horn, and I lunge across the car and open the door.

“Get in the car.”

“Nope.”

The horn blasts again, a sustained wail setting my teeth on edge.

I give Cat a bright, charming smile. “I’ll…I’ll get you a chocolate bar.”

A matronly woman in a reflective orange vest with a permanent groove between her penciled eyebrows approaches. A pickup volunteer. I remember pickup volunteers—nosy, self-important— Is that your dad, Jake? Oh, your uncle…

“Who is this, Catriona?” she asks.

“He said he’ll give me candy if I get in his car.”

“Oh, for fuck’s—” I pinch my mouth shut when the woman’s eyes pop out of her head. “My name is Jake Ripper.”

No dawning recognition. The pickup volunteer stares at me with suspicion. “Am I supposed to know who you are?”

Behind me the driver taps his horn over and over. Honk. Honk. Honk… and my shoulders ratchet higher and higher. I have no idea what Dodi told them about me. Am I a coworker? A friend? And then I remember with a jolt, like I sometimes do about a dozen times a day, that Dodi and I are married.

“I’m Dodi’s husband.” My throat catches on the suddenly strange and awkward word.

“Catriona doesn’t have a stepdad,” she says, raising her voice over the honking, and my brain tweaks. I didn’t say stepdad. That word is even worse. Cat seems to think so too. She stares at me with a disgusted expression.

The woman uses one broad hand to move Cat behind her body, like she’s shielding her from seeing something foul. She edges away with Cat sheltered behind her, but I put my car in reverse and back up two feet alongside her. The car behind me lays on the horn again and I slam the brakes with a few inches to spare between our bumpers.

“Dodi said she’d talk to her teacher about this.”

“I have no idea who Dodi is.”

“Dolores.”

“You keep changing your story. Is it Dodi or Dolores?”

The horn behind me blares again.

“Dodi is her nickname. Do you call your spouse by their full name?”

“I’m not married and neither is she.”

Again the horn blares and I see red. I hold up my ring finger to show her. Her mouth falls open and she actually gasps, and I realize too late it looks like I’m flipping her the bird.

Just then the man behind me sticks his head out of his window and yells, “You going to move the Dickmobile, Bruce Wayne?”

I tap the gas so I can pull forward and closer to the curb so the asshole can pass, but I’m still in reverse. I crunch into the front of his car.

I look up and Cat is staring at the smashed front of the other car with the same malevolently delighted look I’ve seen on Dodi’s face about a half dozen times. Eyes glinting, mouth twitching into a nasty smile at her little nemesis sitting beyond the tinted windows of the back seat. She makes eye contact with me, and I can see one missing tooth in her smile. I’m her champion, and her dramatic exit from her bully’s moment of reckoning awaits. The volunteer lunges at her as she slips from her grasp. Cat dodges and twists around her, effortlessly pops open the ridiculous door handle like she was bred to ride in supercars, and slides into the passenger seat as the pickup volunteer raises the alarm.