DC – I am Batman

Three weeks in and the check-ins were dinners.

It just happened. The first Thursday she'd shown up at six and he'd been cooking, or trying to cook, because the hotplate had two settings and neither of them was useful for anything besides boiling water and burning pasta. She'd looked at the pasta. Looked at him.

"That," she said, "is a crime against the French Republic."

She went to the Monoprix on the corner and came back with vegetables and garlic and a lemon and stood in his kitchen and taught him how to make something that wasn't an insult to the country he was living in. She used a paring knife fast, precise, slightly annoyed. The garlic was minced in about four seconds. He watched her hands and didn't say anything about the knife technique because he'd seen the same grip in a Ducard exercise three days earlier and commenting on it would have opened a conversation neither of them was ready for.

The second Thursday she brought wine. The third she brought bread from a bakery near Bastille that was only open on Tuesdays, which meant she'd gone on Tuesday and kept it for two days, which meant she'd been thinking about Thursday on Tuesday.

He didn't mention that either.

She reported to Alfred on Sundays. He knew because she told him, flat. Arm's length. Jaw set.

"I told him you're eating. Training. Not dead."

"That's the whole report?"

"That's what he needs."

It wasn't the whole report. She was building her own file. The questions got more specific each week. She'd stopped asking things Alfred would have asked and started asking things an intelligence officer would ask.

She didn't tell Alfred about the wristlock.

That had been a Tuesday. Metro, Line 1, rush hour. A man in a gray jacket reached into a woman's bag near Châtelet and he'd moved before he thought about it. Modified Kimura, applied standing, the man's arm behind his back and his face against the support pole and the bag back in the woman's hands in about six seconds. He let go when the train stopped. The man got off. The woman said merci without looking at him.

Julia was on the platform at Hôtel de Ville. She'd seen the whole thing through the window.

Thursday's dinner she sat across from him with her wine glass between her hands and said, "The restraint technique you used on Tuesday."

"Yeah."

"That's SIS tradecraft. Modified for field application. Classified."

"I learned it from a book."

"There is no book."

She looked at him. He looked at her. The garlic was browning in the pan and the flat smelled like butter and oil and the window was open because the hotplate made the room too warm and below them on the street someone was arguing about parking in French that was faster than his French could follow.

She didn't put it in the Sunday report. He knew because the next Thursday she said "I didn't tell Alfred about the wristlock" and then she changed the subject.

Ducard's practice knife caught his temple on a Wednesday.

Blunt edge, training blade, but Ducard's wrist was faster than the blade's dullness could compensate for. The cut was small and clean, about an inch above his left eyebrow, and it bled. Ducard handed him a cloth, said "press," and continued the lesson. Two hours later the cloth was dark and his temple was still seeping and he walked home holding the cloth to his head and the woman at the fruit stall on Rue des Francs-Bourgeois looked at him and didn't ask.

Julia knocked at six. He opened the door with the cloth still pressed to his head. The cloth was a dish towel. It had been white.

"Sit down," she said.

He sat at the kitchen table. She put her bag on the counter and took out a first aid kit, compact, military issue, the kind he had in Alfred's trunk. She'd brought her own.

"Tilt."

He tilted his head. Her thumb went to his jaw. Firm, precise. She turned his face toward the window where the light was better. The light was going orange and her face was close.

She smelled like soap and something mineral underneath it. Warm. And leather from the jacket she'd taken off and left on the chair. First time he'd been close enough to notice.

She cleaned the cut with an antiseptic wipe. He didn't flinch. Her eyes moved from the cut to his face and then back to the cut.

"Butterfly strip."

She applied it. Small, precise, the adhesive pressed flat with her thumb. Her other hand was still on his jaw. The thumb had a callous at the pad. The rough edge of it against his skin.

She held the position one breath longer than the wound needed.

His pulse picked up. He felt it in his throat, right where her thumb was resting on the hinge of his jaw, and her thumb pressed fractionally harder. Confirming.

Her eyes moved from the cut to his face. Eight inches. Orange light. Her pupils were wider than the light called for.

The hotplate was off. The flat was quiet. Below them, someone was dragging a metal chair across a sidewalk and the scraping sound came up through the open window.

She pulled back. Packed the kit fast. Wipe in the bag. Adhesive backing in the bag. Kit zipped. Bag on the counter. Her hands were steady.

"Keep it dry tonight," she said.

"Yeah."

She cooked. He sat at the table with the butterfly strip on his temple and the orange light fading and she made the vegetable thing with the garlic and the lemon.

The auction was a Friday.

Ducard gave him an invitation and a brief: art and antiquities, mostly legitimate, some laundered through a gallery in the sixteenth arrondissement. Watch the room. Identify which buyers were buying art and which were buying paper trails. Report on Monday.

He wore black tie. His own tuxedo, packed in Alfred's trunk because Alfred packed for contingencies. It fit. The Wayne name was on the guest list because Wayne money bought art sometimes and a sixteen-year-old heir browsing Parisian auction houses was eccentric but not impossible.

Best covers required no acting.

The room was tall-ceilinged, gold-lit, crowded with the specific density of people who had money and wanted more of it. He got a glass of champagne he didn't drink and stood near a Modigliani he didn't look at and watched the room.

Julia was at the far end.

Black dress. Hair down.

He'd never seen her hair down. It had been pulled back and tied off every time, tight, professional. Tonight it was down past her shoulders and it changed her face. Softened the angles.

She was working. Her champagne glass was full and her eyes were doing the room. She saw him. He saw her see him. He didn't react. She didn't either.

Ten minutes later they were both at the bar. He'd come from the left, she'd come from the right. The bar had a mirror behind the bottles and you could see the entire room in it if you stood in the right spot. They stood in the right spot.

"Third row," he said. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the mirror. "Man in the blue suit. He's bid on three lots and won none. He's not buying. He's establishing presence."

"Woman in green near the Degas," she said. She wasn't looking at him. "Second time tonight she's checked her phone and looked at the exit. She's waiting for someone who's late."

They traded observations. A waiter came between them and they both ordered without turning their heads. He got water. She got another champagne she wouldn't drink.

His hand was on the bar. Her hand was on the bar. About two inches apart. Warmth came off her skin without contact. He didn't move his hand. She didn't move hers. The two inches stayed two inches.

She left first. He left twenty minutes later. Separate exits.

Midnight. Pont des Arts, or what was left of it after they'd replaced the love locks with glass panels. The Seine was black and the streetlights on the embankment put orange circles on the water that didn't move. She was leaning on the railing when he got there. She'd changed out of the dress. Jacket, jeans, boots. Hair still down.

"Blue suit was Henri Moreau," she said. "Retired investment banker. Your assessment was right. He's building a reputation before he starts bidding real money. Probably next quarter."

"Green dress?"

"Didn't get a name. She left at nine-forty with a man who came through the service entrance."

They walked. The bridge emptied onto the Left Bank and the streets were quiet and their footsteps were the loudest thing for about a block. A cat sat on a windowsill above a closed bookshop and watched them pass with the patient contempt cats reserved for people who walked at night.

"What are you really doing, Bruce?"

No professional structure. No report cadence. Her hair was still down.

"Getting ready."

"For what?"

He didn't answer. The streetlights put their circles on the water and the cat on the windowsill was gone.

She didn't push. Three blocks of comfortable silence. Their footsteps and the river and a motorbike somewhere a few streets over that revved and faded.

"Same time Thursday?" she said.

"Thursday works."

She turned left. He turned right. Her footsteps faded first because she walked faster than him in a straight line, which was true and which she would have denied if he'd said it.

The flat was cold. He'd left the window open. Gérard was growling at something on the ground floor, a slow persistent rumble that came up through the pipes like plumbing with opinions.

He opened the journal. The pen was on the desk where he'd left it.

Year One. Month five. Julia doesn't report everything to Alfred anymore.

He closed the journal. The butterfly strip on his temple itched. Soap and leather and the callous on her thumb. He left the window open and went to bed.