DC – I am Batman

The café on Tenth Street was closed. Lights off, chairs on tables, a BACK AT 2 sign in the window that looked like it had been there longer than the café. A cat was sitting on the ledge inside, watching the street with the expression of an animal that had given up on customer service. He stood on the sidewalk with the address Sofia had given him and the address was wrong.

His phone buzzed.

Two blocks east. 714. Third floor. Come alone, which I know you are, but I'm saying it anyway.

He walked. The neighborhood was Falcone-adjacent, close enough that the cars were newer than the buildings and the storefronts had a scrubbed look that meant somebody paid for the scrubbing. A man on the corner was walking a dog that was too well-trained to be a pet. The man had an earpiece. He watched the sidewalk for a living. A woman came out of a deli with a paper bag and crossed the street without looking because the traffic in this neighborhood knew when to stop.

714 was a brownstone. Clean steps, iron railing, a buzzer panel with no names on it. He pressed three. The door clicked without a voice on the intercom.

Third floor. The hallway smelled like floor polish and cooking from downstairs and the door at the end was open two inches.

Sofia was leaning against the frame.

Her hair was down. He'd never seen it down. Dark, straight, past her shoulders. She was wearing a black sweater and black pants, no jewelry, and the plainness of the clothes was expensive enough to be deliberate. Her arms were crossed. Her eyes had been on him since the stairwell.

"You grew up."

Flat. Her eyes tracked across his shoulders, his jaw, the width of him filling the hallway.

"Come in before someone sees a Wayne at a Falcone's door."

The apartment was small and clean. A couch, a table, two chairs. A kitchen with a gas stove and copper pots on a rack above it. Books on a shelf, mostly Italian. A copy of The Prince on the table with a cracked spine and a pen marking a page. No photographs on the walls. The window showed a brick wall and a fire escape and, if you leaned, a piece of the East River.

She had her own place. Away from the Falcone house. Three locks on the door. The deadbolt was new. The bookshelves were organized by language. The kitchen was stocked for someone who cooked alone. The couch had one indentation.

She went to the kitchen and took down a bottle and two glasses without asking. Whiskey. She poured both, the pours even, and held his out.

He took it. Their fingers overlapped on the crystal. Her index finger against his thumb. Her skin was cool and her nails were short and clean. Neither of them moved for a few seconds. The crystal was cold between their hands.

Her eyes were on the glass. His were on her hand. The same hand that had wrapped pastries in napkins at a charity gala when she was seven with folds so even that a machine couldn't have matched them.

She pulled away first. Took a sip. Walked to the window.

"Sit," she said.

He sat. The cushions were firm. She didn't sit. She stood by the window with her glass and watched a pigeon settle on the fire escape railing.

"The arrangement is set for September. Vittorio Maroni. Twenty-six. Runs their construction front." She sipped. "Smart enough that my father respects him. Stupid enough that my father thinks he can manage him through me."

She didn't turn from the window.

"He brought flowers last month. Roses, from the place on Mercer Street. Expensive ones." Her mouth moved a fraction. "He brought them to the house and my father invited him for dinner and they sat in the dining room and talked about me like I was a property listing. Square footage. Amenities. Move-in date."

"What did you do?"

"Ate my pasta. Thanked him for the flowers. Put them in a vase in the kitchen." She paused. "When he left I put them in the garbage. My father doesn't check the kitchen garbage."

The pigeon flew off the railing.

"Vittorio's polite. He held my chair. He asked about my degree and listened to the answer and his eyes only went to my chest twice, which for a Maroni is practically chivalry." She turned the glass in her hand. "He's not a bad man. That's the problem. If he were a bad man I could hate him and that would make it simple. He's a man my father chose because my father thinks I'll be taken care of. My father's version of care includes territory and revenue and a house in Midtown with a view of the park and none of that includes asking me if I want any of it."

"Does your father know you called me?"

"My father knows I had espresso with a friend. He doesn't know which friend. He doesn't need to." She looked at him over her shoulder. "You're not a friend my father would approve of. Not because you're a Wayne. Because you'd tell me what he doesn't want me to hear."

"Which is?"

"That I have options."

"Do you?"

"That depends on what you brought." She turned back to the window. "The families need a bridge. My father and Sal Maroni have been circling for three years and it's getting expensive. A marriage ties the money together. Settles things through blood instead of blood." She glanced at him. "The first kind."

"What do you want?"

She turned from the window. Her mouth was flat and her eyes were level.

"I want to not marry a man I don't know to settle a debt between two men who think their daughters are inventory." She finished the whiskey. "What I want doesn't factor into the math they're doing."

"It factors into mine."

Her jaw tightened. Just the muscles along the side, then released.

"Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're going to fix it."

He didn't look away. She didn't either. The radiator in the corner ticked. A car horn went off somewhere below the window.

"I have contacts," he said. "Wayne legal counsel. If the arrangement has a contractual dimension, there are ways to challenge it or delay it. Due diligence on Maroni's business structure that could push the timeline back. September is months away."

She listened. Her glass was still in her hand.

"Delay buys time. What happens with the time?"

"Whatever you decide happens with it."

"And if delay isn't enough?"

"I know someone who can build clean documentation. New identity. New city. Traceable to nobody."

"You're describing running."

"I'm describing a door."

"I don't run."

"I know. That's why I put the door last."

The corner of her mouth moved. Then flat again. She went to the counter. Poured another inch. Stood with her back to him, hands on the counter, shoulders straight and rigid. The copper pots caught the light above her head.

"I've thought about it," she said. "Running. A different name in a different city where nobody knows what Falcone means." She drank. "I thought about it when I was sixteen and again when I was eighteen and every time I think about it I end up back in this kitchen making orecchiette by myself and knowing that if I leave, my father has nobody. Alberto doesn't count. Alberto counts the pastries."

"Sofia."

"He's my father." Flat and controlled, but her fingers were white on the glass. "He's a terrible person who loves me and I love him and he's going to sell me to the Maronis because he thinks it's protection and I can't explain to him why it isn't because in his world it is. In his world, a woman with a Maroni name and Falcone blood is safe. In my world, a woman with a Maroni name and Falcone blood is a hostage."

She turned around. Leaned against the counter.

"My father drove Thomas Wayne to the hospital," she said. "Six hours in the hallway while your father bled on a table. Twenty years of debt from that." Her eyes were steady. "And Thomas Wayne's son threw himself in front of a gun when he was eight and the bullet hit brick and the pearls stayed on Martha's neck. The debt runs both directions. I don't know which way it tips."

"The debt doesn't decide what happens to you."

"Easy to say when your last name opens doors."

She was right. He didn't argue it because arguing would be a lie and Sofia had no patience for lies.

"I'm not fixing it," he said. "I'm giving you doors. You pick."

She looked at him for a while. The radiator ticked. A siren passed on the street below.

"You're a strange man, Bruce Wayne."

"I get that."

"You show up at a Falcone's apartment with legal options and escape routes and you sit on my couch and drink my whiskey and tell me I have choices like that's a normal thing someone does."

"Is it not?"

"In my world, men show up with flowers and contracts. Nobody shows up with doors." She looked at the copper pots above the stove. "You hungry? I have pasta."

"The orecchiette?"

She looked at him. "You remember the orecchiette."

"You mentioned it on the phone. From the cabin."

"You were in a cabin?"

"Appalachia. The food was bad."

"The food is always bad with you." She looked at the cabinet where the pot would be. "I should make you dinner. You look like you eat protein bars and regret."

"I eat fine."

"I doubt that." She didn't move toward the kitchen. She looked at the window, the fire escape, the last of the afternoon light. "Not tonight. You should go before someone notices how long a Wayne has been in a Falcone's apartment." She looked at the pot she hadn't taken down. "But I'm making the orecchiette."

"Okay," he said.

She walked him to the door. The hallway between the living room and the entrance was narrow and she was beside him and close. Close enough that he could smell her perfume. Deliberate. Amber underneath, sandalwood, warm.

"Come back," she said. She said it looking at his chin, then up at his eyes.

"I will."

She opened the door. He went through it and the deadbolt turned behind him and the chain slid into place and the perfume was on his jacket and the whiskey was still warm in his chest.

The man with the dog was gone from the corner. The neighborhood was quiet. He walked west toward home and the Falcone buildings gave way to regular Gotham and the streetlights got worse and the cars got older and he had work to do.