Friday, October 30. 9:30ish.
I say “9:30ish”, but really I knew it was 9:23 pm, just like it was the last time I pushed back the gauntlet on my glove to check my watch. The TV above the bar said 9:27. God – David was such a flake.
I nursed the ice-water remainders in the tumbler on the bartop before me. It was the last of my third, which was really more than I liked to drink by myself. But I didn’t have anything else to do while I waited. Beside, I was agitated, and I really needed to relax. I didn’t want to waste the scene around me.
I turned away from the bar to look out over the darkened room. Captain America, Wolverine (claws retracted, thankfully), and someone who I think was supposed to be The Maxx were flirting with a pair of Wonder Women just a few feet away. About a half-dozen X-men, mostly with the new movie costumes, were lining up so Spiderman could get a group picture. There was another Spiderman holding hands with Black Cat (Mary Jane would be pissed!) over by the phones, and the Joker and Aquaman seemed to have struck up a friendly conversation on the other side of the bar.
Since it was the annual Comsplay-get together (Comics … Cosplay … Get it? All right, I know, but I didn’t make it up), and tickets were expensive enough that a couple hundred of us together closed out the Gracchus room at Caesar’s Palace, the costumes were really pretty good. I probably knew half of the people there – at least by their alts on the comsplay board – but I didn’t recognize anyone. Most of the costumes had masks, and hell if even Joker’s facepaint didn’t make him impossible for me to recognize.
As much as I liked costumes, there was something about masks that made me uneasy – something about not being able to recognize someone else when they might recognize you. Call it a quirk, but my favorite time of year made me a wallflower. By myself, alone inside my costume, I was shy and bashful. Now if David had been there – just having that one other safe person to make introductions, to share jokes instead of to be the joke…
He wasn’t answering his cellphone, either. Damnit.
I glanced up from my phone at the clack-clacking of high-heels on the wooden floor. Catwoman was walking up to the bar; she brushed by me and slid into a stool around the corner from mine. Of course, there were probably four or five Catwomen out in the crowd (thankfully, none of the Patience Phillips variety), but this one was the real deal, in my book. Her costume was great – a little interpretive, but without breaking canon.
Obviously she had the coiled up black bullwhip. Beneath arm-length gloves and thigh-high boots of soft black leather, she wore a purple catsuit – probably lycra, I think – and she filled it out beautifully. She wasn’t the tall, lean, statuesque type, though her boots did give her an extra three or four inches, but she could have been a model in the 50’s, back when reasonable men liked their women curvy. Let me just say that she was ‘voluptuous’. But the suit looked like it was made to fit her – the spread of her shoulders, the volume of her ass and thighs were sculpted by the suit, but not squeezed. She had the matching purple cowl with cat ears, and long, wavy black hair flowing out the back.
She was black, with heavy-lidded eyes darkened by black makeup, and full lips covered with a deep, wet-looking red. Of course, I couldn’t recognize her.
I realized I was staring when I saw her staring back at me. But she was smiling, looking me over. Costume parties tend to encourage an appreciative stare.
I was thinking over the last month’s posts to remember if anyone had said they were coming as Catwoman, to see if I could put a screen name to a face, when she spoke. “Buy a girrl a drink, Boy Wonder?” Her voice was surprisingly deep, yet still very feminine. She was playing up her part and purring her ‘r’s.
After what was probably an awkward pause, I came to life and nodded. “Yeah. Sure.” I beckoned to a bartender.
He approached our corner of the bar and smiled. A Las Vegas bartender doubtlessly saw many strange things, but he seemed amused by the league of superheroes. “What will it be?”
I glanced over to Catwoman, who wanted a, “White Rrrussian.” I decided then that her voice was incredibly sexy. Her words weren’t slow, but they were deliberately enunciated – clearly formed in her luscious mouth.
“Another Jack and Coke for me.”
“Right.” It only took him a few moments to produce the drinks, but that was enough time for Catwoman and I to make eye contact again. My eyes hurriedly flicked away, but when I glanced back, hers hadn’t. After two or three seconds, we were in a staring match, and after ten, I was grinning stupidly. Her smile was somewhat more feral – a little more competitive. She intended to win. I focused on one eye, than another, willing myself not to slip down to her lips. She was cheating, moistening them with the tip of her pink tongue. I blinked away as the bartender slapped down his little square napkins and placed the drinks. “A White Russian – err, Cream for the Catwoman; Jack and Coke – so, Birdseed… for Robin. Twelve dollars.”
I fished my Visa out of the yellow pocket on my utility belt and handed it over to the bartender, who disappeared around the island.
“So that’s what you keep in your utility belt.” Catwoman smirked at me, probably still enjoying her victory. “I always wondered. Do you mind if I take a look?” I shrugged and slid off the stool, but she remained seated and beckoned with a crooked finger. I noticed that the fingertips of her gloves were fitted with hard, sharpened points, and thought to commend her on the detail.
The bartender came back with the receipt just as I made it around the corner, so while I signed the bill and worked out the tip, Catwoman poked through my belt.
“It’s good quality.” She opened and closed the magnetic snaps, rifled through the stash in each, ran her claws along the seams. “Good fit. Did you make it yourself?”
“I put the belt together, but not the suit.” I nodded my thanks to the bartender.
“It’s good. Sit herrre.” She slid the bullwhip off the barstool next to her and stroked the cushion with her claws. While I sat, she eyed me and took a long sip from her sweaty tumbler.
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you. I don’t have one of your spiffy belts. You don’t want to know where I have to keep my card.”
“Maybe I do…”
“Ah!” She raised a hand to her chest in mock affront while her eyes twinkled. “What kind of manners has Bats been teaching you? Well, I suppose they’re not that bad, if you’ll buy a drink for a thirsty lady.”
I cleared my throat, filled my voice with my most earnest Dick Grayson impersonation. “I must, confess, Catwoman, that my motives were not entirely chivalrous. You see, as long as you’re here drinking with me, I know you’re not out burgling the priceless funerary statue of Bast, or a fleet of black Catillacs. I’m fighting crime.”
“Not very well, Boy Wonder. I’ve already stolen something from you.” She flashed a wicked grin, and produced my driver’s license.
“Hey…” It was a weak protest on my part. My license had been in the same belt pocket as my credit cards. They were still in place. Right? I felt to be sure.
“Don’t worry, Dick Grrrayson. Your secret identity is safe with me. Though I should probably write down the address for Wayne Manor.”
I took a quick drink to stifle my anxiety over her handling the ID. I told myself to calm down. It was probably harmless enough. “Since you know my identity now, what’s yours?”
“Oh – but didn’t Bats tell you? I’m Selina Kyle.” She flashed me a wide smile, and her eyes scanned over my license. “Not so much a ‘Boy’ Wonder, I see. A Young Man Wonder. A Legal Wonder. But you still look cute in tights.” She pinched a fold in the green spandex on my hip and let it snap back. “Do you have to shave to wear these?”
“No… I already waxed for swim training.”
“Ahh… how delightful. I’d love to see that.”
“Swim training?”
“No… your bare legs.”
I blinked the conversation into a dead end before I thought of a reply. We both sipped our drinks for a minute before she began again.
“So why are you sitting here, Rrrobin, instead of out mingling with the Teen Titans?”
“Actually, I’m waiting for Batman.”
She smirked.
“He should have been here a few hours ago. I don’t know what’s keeping him.” I had forgotten about David.
“You’ve tried the batphone, I suppose?”
“No answer. The worst part of it all is that he reserved our room for tonight. Being Halloween in Las Vegas, I’m probably going to have to drive all the way to State Line to find an another vacancy.”
“For what it’s worth, I’ve always found Batman to be downright unrrreliable.”
“What about you? Are you waiting for Batman, too?”
“Batgirl, actually. But she seems to have found something more interesting under Supergirl’s skirt. Out of the closet and into the cave, you know.”
“So I heard.”
“So that puts me back out on the hunt again.”
“I see.”
She placed a gloved hand on my arm, on the bare skin above my elbow. “And, lucky for me, I’ve found an unsuspecting little birdy.”
God! She had been teasing me ever since she arrived at the bar, but I was uncomfortably aroused now. Tights and Underoos aren’t the most freeing environment. Or the most discrete.
“You, know, Dick – I hope you don’t mind if I call you ‘Dick’.” She had caught my hand with her other, and was lightly stroking the soft flesh inside my elbow with the tips of her claws. “I once asked myself, ‘Do cats eat bats? Or do bats eat cats?’ Of course, that’s a silly question, since the answer is clearly that cats eat bats. After all, bats are simply rats with wings. But I’m asking myself tonight why I’d want to eat a dirty little rat when I could just have a delicious little birdy instead? What do you think?”
Gaahhh, is what I thought, while I watched her tongue slicker over bright white teeth, and I tried to shift my hips to give my erection some breathing room. It was going to be a real embarrassment if I moved out from beneath the bar now. Fortunately, my brain still had some blood, and it produced a comprehensible response. “…Sounds like a dilemma.”
“Oh, no. Not at all. The answer is very easy. You see, Rrrobin – I can solve both of our problems. Since Batman has abandoned you to my evil clutches, I’ll just drag you back home with me. You’ll have a birdcage for the night, and I’ll have something to play with. Isn’t it just perrrfect?”
I had to admit that it was, but she continued. “Give me your hands.”
I held them out to her, and in one quick move she pulled a ziptie from the top of her boot and flicked it around my gloved wrists, expertly threading it and pulling it just tight enough to keep it in place, but clearly loose enough that I could wriggle a hand free if I wished. Another followed around my thumbs. “Of course, since Rrrobin is good and upright, he couldn’t just saunter back to Catwoman’s lair. He has to be compelled. So you just give me a wink while the Justice League here isn’t looking, and we can do this properly.”
I winked.