Six months later…
When Dr. Irene Smith, MD, joined the midtown Manhattan branch of New York Health Practitioners, she didn’t have the thickest sheaf of glowing letters of recommendation, but those she did have were impressive, and from some of the most respected professionals in the field of medicine. Dr. Smith herself was quiet, soft-spoken, and demure, but very self-possessed. She didn’t suffer from a lack of confidence but she wasn’t from the if-you’ve-got-it-flaunt-it school of demeanor, which probably accounted for her rather surprising patient list. Some were VIPs, some had a whiff of notoriety about them, and some were actually a little scary. But obviously they all trusted Dr. Smith, who seemed above reproach.
Dr. Smith had come to Manhattan from Gotham City, which surprised her colleagues until she explained she was from Brooklyn and she was actually coming back to her home town, if not her home borough. That made more sense—everyone knew Gotham City was one of those places unto itself. People from out of town seldom felt completely at home there, while people from Gotham were never at home anywhere else. They might travel far and wide but they always went back, no matter how long they’d been away. It was just something about the place—why else would a billionaire like Bruce Wayne live there? He’d been all over the world and he could probably buy his own country, but he called Gotham City home.
Hell, even criminals couldn’t stay away. The Joker could have fled to some country that had no extradition treaty with the US and lived happily ever out-of-reach. But he always went straight back to Gotham City—if he ever actually left. And then there was that institution—Arkham Asylum. It had a pretty lurid history. What did Dr. Smith think about that, Dr. Eileen Thibodeau asked one night over drinks after work during a shameless attempt to pump her for information about Batman.
Dr. Thibodeau told Dr. Smith she saw Batman as the key to “that whole Gotham thing.” She thought he had some kind of animal magnetism, maybe from something in the air or water that reacted with his biochemistry. It wasn’t such a ridiculous idea—there were meta-humans with powers far more unlikely than the ability to fascinate and influence an entire city.
Dr. Smith only smiled and said her time in Gotham had been rather uneventful. She’d been part of a family practice and the most exciting thing she’d ever done was give flu shots to the offspring of the wealthy at Gotham Academy and Prep, and only to fill in for the school doctor who had gone down with the flu herself.
As for Batman’s hypothetical charisma, Dr. Smith had no opinion. In the whole time she’d lived in Gotham City, she had never seen the hometown hero in person, only on the news or patched into funny cat videos on YouTube. Ditto Gotham’s most flamboyant super-villains, who certainly seemed to be as crazy as everyone said—media-crazy. A lot of them had publicists as well as lawyers; reality TV had changed the world.
Gotham did have its own ambience, Dr. Smith said. How much Batman really had to do with it, however, was debatable. It could have been the other way around. Local historians said the area had always been a different kind of place, sui generis, even before the advent of the leotard.
Dr. Thibodeau would have pursued the subject further but Dr. Smith suddenly had a lot of appointments outside standard office hours and wasn’t available for Happy Hour chitchat about Gotham City.
Then NYHP received a request from a wealthy businessman returning to New York after many years abroad, who wanted a personal physician. No one was surprised when management gave it to Irene Smith; she was already NYHP’s fairest fair-haired girl.
* * *
A car service took Dr. Smith to the Battery Park Esplanade, where there was a motorboat waiting at a slip to take her out to a yacht. “We’ve got a ways to go,” said the woman who helped her on board with her large medical case. “I suggested picking you up at a pier in South Brooklyn but the boss wouldn’t hear of it. I don’t know what he’s got against Brooklyn.”
Dr. Smith smiled as she settled down on a cushioned seat. “You know what they say—the rich are different.”
“Ain’t they just,” the woman said. “I hope you don’t get seasick?”
“Not at all,” Dr. Smith assured her. “I could live at sea.”
“Good thing,” the woman said, stuffing her curly brown hair into a woollen watch cap. “From what I understand, you’ll be doing just that for a while. A couple weeks at least, maybe more. Comfy?”
Dr. Smith nodded. “And I went before I left.”
Laughing, the woman nodded at a man on the slip to cast off. He tossed the rope to her and she coiled it and stuffed it under the seat in the stern before she started the motor and steered the boat out toward open water.
* * *
Dr. Irene Smith took her tablet out of her bag and brought up the notes on her new patient. The combination of motor noise and wind made conversation impossible and she was pleased that her aquatic chauffeur didn’t feel the need to try. She wanted to use the time to collect her thoughts before she met her eccentric, Brooklyn-averse patient.
She’d been told she’d be arriving in the middle of the patient’s welcome-home party, which had made the news days ahead of time as the party of the year; anyone who was anyone would be there, and if you didn’t get an invitation you were officially no one. Some claimed to have seen the guest list and said it was a mix of the usual suspects—Denzel, Krysten, Carrie-Ann, Keanu, Dwayne, Swoozie, and Pedro—along with some unusual suspects who were so important no one knew who they were. There were also a few Senators (but no Congressmen), two or three governors, and some representatives of the Mothers And Fathers Italian Association, all of them law-abiding children of law-abiding immigrants who had come to the US with nothing and made a fortune via hard work and ambition.
Dr. Irene Smith had never been to such a fancy shindig, nor had her alter ego, Harley Quinn. But neither persona felt particularly intimidated—a party was a party was a party. Harley figured it was too much to hope that the bar would be extensive enough to include grape soda. They’d probably have Orange Crush and Dr. Brown’s Celery Soda, and all the fixings for egg creams so the guests could feel like they were having a taste of New York back in the day.
* * *
Dr. Irene Smith, MD, had appeared right after Harleen Quinzel had disappeared following her discharge from Arkham Asylum. Dr. Joan Leland herself had pronounced her sane and healthy, and yet, scant minutes before Quinzel was supposed to have entered a halfway house to begin the next stage of her recovery, she had encountered the criminal who had abused her and ruined her life. The sight of him in a ghastly purple limo had obviously triggered violent emotions; Quinzel had jacked the car and driven off without him. Not that the Joker had pressed charges.
Harleen Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn, vanished and became a folk hero, legend, and role model to aspiring young female criminals everywhere—the days when the best a girl could hope for was being a gun moll or some made guy’s goomar were definitely over. (Poison Ivy’s assertion that they should already have learned this from her never got any play on network news.)
* * *
Dr. Irene Smith was perfect in every way. She did nothing to attract attention to herself or to make anyone ask questions. But as a doctor, she could access all sorts of sensitive information. Hospitals were teeming with it; all she had to do was put on a white coat and hang a stethoscope around her neck and she was practically invisible. And free to do as she liked.
The Joker’s greatest desire was to be seen by everyone everywhere, all the time. But he was totally clueless. He’d never understood that you were most powerful when you went unnoticed.
What would Dr. Leland have made of that? She might have agreed but it was more likely she’d have asked Harley what did “power” mean to her, why was it so important, and did it really have to be? Which was missing the point, but Dr. Leland wasn’t a criminal.
Batman would get it, though. He was a criminal, walking the fine line between fame and obscurity. In all the years—decades—he’d been Gotham City’s favorite outlaw-hero, he had become a household name without ever being doxxed. To Harley, that was solid proof he was super-rich. For a while, she thought he might be several super-rich guys taking turns in the costume. But even if a group of men could have maintained the persona so consistently, Harley doubted they could have kept such a big secret for so long.
No matter how rich or well-paid they might have been, money was never enough. Harley was pretty sure that sooner or later, one of them would have gotten drunk in a bar and said, Yeah, I’m Batman, baby, wanna ride in my Batmobile?
Either way, it was crazy. And in Harley Quinn’s professional opinion as an expert in human craziness, the Joker and Batman were two sides of the same crazy coin. Someday they would finally get a room and they’d never come out. What would become of Gotham City then?
Harley didn’t know and didn’t care.