"It's very well done," the director assured her, picking up the stack again. "Very compelling. Something should certainly be done about this man. But I don't see where we're the ones---"
"If we're not the ones, Tim, then who is? Where do I send these pictures? I have to find someone who'll take matters into his---or her---own hands. Does somebody have to break into this apartment and do what's got to be done?"
The director gave Bonnie a sidelong glance and began tapping the paper rhythmically against his palm. "That could only result in negative publicity," he mumbled. "We could lose money. Can't do that." He tapped the papers a few more times before coming to a conclusion he was not about to share with Bonnie---at least not yet. "Can I keep these?" he asked; she nodded. "I've got a friend. An old friend; we haven't talked in years, but he might be able to do something with this. Hang tight, Bonnie. Let me see what I can do here."
He left the reception area, still bouncing the photos in his hands and muttering to himself. Bonnie uncrossed her folded fingers. They tingled painfully as blood flowed back to her white, numb fingertips.
So Tim had "an old friend" who might be able to help; she had a new friend who could break into any apartment. In an instant she had a warm, fairy-tale vision of a Gotham City where almost everybody knew somebody (or was somebody) who wasn't what they seemed to be, and everybody who knew a secret, kept that secret the way she'd keep Selina Kyle's Catwoman secret.
Selina had to be Catwoman. They were the same size and build. Their eyes were the same color. Their voice was the same and they shared many gestures and expressions. It was easier to believe that Selina and Catwoman were one and the same person than it was to believe there were two completely different people who had so much in common. Bonnie would keep Selina's secret because secrets were mysterious and exciting and Selina was the most exciting, mysterious person Bonnie could imagine.
There were other reasons for keeping Selina's secret---not the least of which was that neither Selina nor Catwoman had put in an appearance since the adventure in Eddie Lobb's apartment. All weekend while she developed the film and made the prints, she had been distracted by day with the hope that a dark-haired woman in decrepit, thrift-shop clothes would knock on her door. By night, Bonnie listened for the sound of steel claws on the window glass.
Bonnie's disappointment was a palpable weight in her stomach. She knew the world wasn't a fairy tale. She regularly surrendered her illusions when the harsh light of reality revealed them to be fantasies. But she didn't like doing it. She was prepared to accept that Selina would never show up again, just as she was already preparing herself to accept that Tim would hand her back the photos and his regrets that his old friend couldn't do anything about Eddie Lobb. But they would be bitter pills to swallow, and she'd put it off as long as she could.
All day she waited for the director to appear with a big grin on his face, or for Selina to scowl into the security camera. The director left early, without saying a word. Everyone else left at five, and shortly after six Bonnie got ready to leave herself. Feeling as lonely and miserable as she'd felt since she'd waved good-bye to her parents, she gathered up her "Warriors"-emblazoned coffee thermos and ecologically correct reusable lunch sack and stowed them in a matching paper, refolded to expose the completed-in-ink crossword puzzle. The extra set of photographs---the set she'd hoped to give to Selina---had never gotten out of the bag.
The weight in Bonnie's stomach began a nauseous decomposition. She sat down heavily in her chair, chiding herself for this sudden plunge into misery.
It's not like we had anything in common, she told herself. Selina dresses like she lives in an attic, and Catwoman's really just a criminal. She had me breaking and entering. Me! I could've been caught. My life would have been ruined. It's better I never see either of her again. We had an adventure together, that's all.
The prep talk didn't work; the heartache and disappointment were too fresh. But they'd work eventually, and, confident of that, Bonnie hung the canvas bag over her shoulder. Locking the Wilderness Warriors' door each night was Bonnie's responsibility, and she did it with great care, double-checking everything before she permitted herself to turn around and look at the sidewalk.
"You really should pay more attention to what's going on around you."
"Omygod." Utterly startled, Bonnie staggered away from the door and the voice. Her eyes said "Selina" but the rest of her was caught up in terror. "Omygod." The bag slipped from her shoulder. The straps tangled around her feet and she wound up sprawled on her rump against the garbage cans.
Selina held out her hand. "You're a smart lady, but you sure don't belong here in Gotham City." She easily pulled Bonnie to her feet, then hung the bag back on her shoulder. "You've got a nice home, nice family in Indiana. Why on earth did you ever come to Gotham City?"
"Why does anyone come to Gotham City?" Bonnie replied rhetorically as she brushed herself off. "This is where the excitement is. With all that niceness, Indiana's terminally boring."
Selina had nothing to say. She had Bonnie didn't actually come from different worlds. In all the little towns like the one Bonnie was from, there was a downwind neighborhood where the children of the town's losers grew up to become the next generation of losers. Selina came from such a neighborhood. Bonnie, on the other hand, lived on the hill with the respected folks. The only time respected folks saw the losers was before Christmas when a church delivered a twenty-pound ham with all the trimmings to the Kyle family's ramshackle front porch.
Selina still hated ham. She wanted to hate Bonnie, but the fire wouldn't catch.
"Did you get the pictures developed?" she asked with just a trace of hostility.
"I developed all the film and printed the pictures myself over the weekend. There were too many to be effective---that always happen---but you don't know which ones will work until you've actually got the prints in your hands. I thought about it a lot, and waited a lot hoping you'd come by, but finally, last night I picked out fifteen---"
"So you've given the pictures to your boss. Are the Wilderness Warriors going to do something, or are we S-O-L."
"S-O-L?"
"Shit outta luck."
Bonnie gulped air and nodded. "We're not S-O-L yet. Tim said he had an old friend who might be able to do something. An old friend."
The extra emphasis triggered nothing in Selina's mind, and it was her turn to be confused. "I don't like getting other people involved. Can't you think of something else we could be doing?"
"We could be having dinner. I'm starving." She started walking down the side street toward the busier avenues. Selina followed. "And I suppose we could think of something else. Fallback plans. Contingency plans. Television! All the stations here have muckrakers. They'd love to get their teeth in a story like this. If Tim can't do anything, we could take the photos to one of the TV stations. It'd be great on TV. Of course, we'd have to break in again---with the camcorder. You've got to have tape---"