Therapy Talk

I’d like to say it was all about prioritizing the long run, she’d be super helpful with Poison Ivy, I was sure…but frankly I also didn’t want to joke with her. And, I may have been a bit afraid of pushing that way. Joker thought he was funny, playing that role felt…bad. And dangerous. I was building him up too much in my head, but I couldn’t help it. I remembered everything he’d done. The impossible escapes. Coming back from certain ****. The murders. The tortures. The bombings and gassings and…

I **** my mind off that, I was done with Harley for now. I wouldn’t need to deal with her until next week, when she was back in the library. Or so I thought. Wrongly, but that was a problem for later and I didn’t know about it yet.

For now, the problem was Penelope. I was dolled up some, wearing the suit and the watch Diamond had given me, expensive. Too expensive, but I doubted Penelope would notice that, and if she did, I could always say it was a loaner from the Jackson’s so I wouldn’t stand out.

Penelope did not live in a place nearly as nice as Jasmine, Diamond, or even fucking Rapetoy, but then again, she was a lot younger and though she was a doctor, the city didn’t pay anyone that well, except in the opportunity to collect bribes. It was still a lot nicer than my place, but thoroughly middle class. When she let me in and I complimented it, she said that if it weren’t for her scholarships paying her student loans, she’d be down in the slums…by which she meant the district I’d always lived. She clearly had no idea what the actual slums of Gotham were like. Her fucking arrogance was the same as always and I masked my annoyance easily, with praise of her place, which she eagerly gave me a tour of.

My brain heard scholarships and wondered how much of that was Scarecrow’s work. I was pretty sure he was her mysterious, absent, ‘boyfriend’ given what we’d learned so far. I let my eyes wander over her place, looking for some signs, but it’s not like she had any pictures of the two of them together up on the walls. There were a few pictures from college, her diploma and a full ‘I love me’ wall I could see through the open door to her bedroom, it was full of awards and diplomas and pictures of herself.

The tour ended in her dining room, where we sat down. “Okay, doc, tell me what you have to do at the fundraiser?”

“I’ve got to give a five minute introduction for Dr. Sinner’s speech, and I’ve got to ‘network’ with the donors.” +1 SP (Penelope: +14)

“Okay, which of those worries you more?”

Damn forgot the instruction, so no points as she told me that the the speech worried her more as she could embarrass herself in front of everyone, rather than one at a time. But on the other hand, she could prepare for that.

“Well then, let’s start there. Run through the introduction for me.”

She nodded and ran out, coming back with four typed, single space pages and began to read directly from them, so fast I got maybe one word in five. The basics seemed to be about how much progress Arkham had made, full of numbers and medical jargon. It was…totally incomprehensible.

I only made it two minutes in before I held up a hand. “Stop.”

She ground to a stop and glared at me. “What? You said I should run through it!” +2 SP (Penelope: +16)

”Doc, you’re talking way too fast. This ain’t some sort of debate, it’s an introduction.”

She sneered at me. “What would you know about it?”

“I know that I can’t track what you’re saying. Here, give me that,” I held out a hand for the papers.

She stared at me grumpily, then slowly passed them over. +1 SP (Penelope: +17). I took a look, Jesus, 4 pages, single space, in what sure wasn’t standard font size. Guess her eyes were good, I could barely read it. There was a sea of numbers and besides a few ‘ands’ ‘as’ and ‘thes’ I barely saw any words shorter than ten letters.

“Okay, look, tell me what you’re trying to say.”

Thirty seconds of nonsensical bullshit later, I gave her a flat look. She sighed heavily, muttered something insulting and visibly ratcheted down the science and math talk. “Doctor Sinner done good. Arkham done good. Escapes down. Injuries down. Costs up though. Need more money.” the caveman imitation seemed a bit excessive to me, but I **** a laugh.

“Okay, so shove the Sinner bit to the end, that can be the intro, right? ‘And now, the woman responsible for all this, Doctor Alyce Sinner.’”

“Duh, that’s already in there, I’m not dumb!”

“But you’re missing the mirroring bit.”

“What?”

“You never introduce yourself!”

She stared at me, then grabbed the papers out of my hand and scanned through them. I didn’t know what was in the later moments, but the time to introduce her was the start and she sure as fuck hadn’t done that.

She flushed. “I--”

“Get me some notecards. Let’s boil this down. You’re making this way too complicated for these bozos.” I added that last bit when I saw her bridle at the command. After a moment, she went and got some 3 by 5 cards. Hadn’t seen those since I was a kid helping my dad prep for career day at school…they were almost nostalgic. Less nostalgic was the +5 SP (Penelope: +22) that came from that simple request.

On the first card, I wrote ‘Introduce self.’ on the second ‘Escapes declined,’ then ‘injuries declined,’ ‘treatments progressing,’ finally ‘this all costs money though, which is why Arkham, the city, and our director all rely on you. Now, our director, the woman responsible for all this, Doctor Alyce Sinner.’

She walked around and read over my shoulder. “You can’t just leave it that bare bones! I need--”

“What was the decline in escapes this year?”

“12% over the last six months.”

I cocked my head in confusion, that hadn’t been what I asked.

“It’s about flat over the year, but down 12% over the last six months.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised they were gaming the numbers, but some stupid part of me was. I’d wanted there to be big improvements, implicitly caused by me. I mean, I hadn’t been there a year, so theoretically that was still possible, but knowing they were cooking the books took all the fun out of it for me. I **** a smile. “See, you know the numbers. And if you don’t, just say ‘are down'. This isn’t an academic presentation, or debate, no one’s going to ask questions, or demand to know exact percentages. Well, not unless I decide to fuck with you,” I added with a smirk.

She flinched at that, giving me a surprisingly fearful look.

“Relax. Look, you might not have done this before, but I’m sure you’ve been to a lot of these, or seen them on TV. Have you ever seen anyone ask the introducing speaker any questions? It’s a speech, not a press conference!”

She did not relax.

I took a guess, “Look, is the director pushing this stuff?”

Penelope shook her head. “That’s it,” she said confusingly, given her head was shaking.

“Huh?”

“That’s what makes me nervous…I--she won’t say what the goal is! I’m sure I can do whatever it is she needs, but she won’t tell me what she’s looking for. She won’t even talk about this event. She says it doesn’t matter, but that doesn’t make any sense! If we can raise new money, we can do a lot of good for Arkham and the patients!”

I considered that rant…and what I knew, was it possible she actually cared about the ‘patients’ and was working with Scarecrow? Probably, people could be complicated, as I had reason to know. I tried to talk her down, to get her to relax, which took the rest of our time. We never even got to practicing networking…