I.
It had been the coldest winter in living memory, and the St. Lawrence River had frozen over by All Saints Day. Anyone who could, put their skates on or went on sleigh rides just outside Trois-Rivières, but in rue St. Denis, the road seemed permanently frozen, lifeless, bleak. Cécile had stopped painting on the glassy windows with her fingers and steamy breath. She'd just gotten home from mass at Nôtre-Dame des sept allegresses and now had a large mug of coffee, sitting beside her on the listless window ledge. Her father was in the workshop and she, manning the front door to both tailor shop and house, listened for snow.
They kept the door unlocked, so she didn't jump when she heard it open. As she got up, someone at the threshold scraped heavy shoes, caked with snow, against the doormat. When she saw who it was, the "Bonjour" died on her lips. She stared and nodded toward the door to her father's workshop. She moved quickly without saying anything and took her father by the elbow. In normal circumstances, he would stare into her eyes to enquire who or what she was dragging him toward. But he didn't have to.
Her father came in the front room and held out his hands, almost a welcoming gesture, almost a warding-off. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged.
There was snow melting slowly in his greenish hair. She wondered if he was going to shake it out like a wet dog—it had happened before. "Mr. Blandine," he said. "Marie-Cécile." Involuntarily Cécile's lips drew back. No one called her that, no one in Trois-Rivières, and his American accent was so grating it sounded like a snarl, a mockery. Yet she was not wholly sure he did not understand French, even Québecquois, which was, an English-speaker had once told her, unintelligible in French or English. The snow was melting the edges of his makeup—a weeping Pierrot she thought, though sure he didn't deserve such poetic irony.
Her father tapped her on the shoulder. She looked. Then she stepped forward, interpreting. " 'E says, 'you're early.'"
The Joker stepped toward her, wet footprints trailing on the tile, the red of his plastered smile melting in the white, smearing as he moved his lips. "Never early, never late." He held up a purple-gloved hand. "Always on time."
Cécile noticed he'd left the front door open, and she muttered a curse, brushing past him and closing the door. "You could 'ave closed it," she snapped.
He ignored her, looking at her father. She moved protectively to the old man. The Joker shrugged off his purple coat and held it out. "I met with a little, ah, accident. Nothing serious," he said, as if either of them had expressed concern. Cécile's father took the coat and examined a 4-centimeter gash in the shoulder. The Joker grimaced. "Yeah, a couple of accidents." Cécile's father was grim, finding more holes in his handiwork. He looked at Cécile. She looked at the Joker.
"You want it repaired?"
"That would just waste everybody's time," he said. "I want another one."
Blandine's eyebrows furrowed.
"A whole new set, in fact," said the Joker, opening his arms expressively. Cécile looked more closely. The top of the left shoulder of his green vest had been completely split, and the shirt underneath was dark with what looked like blood. The cuffs of his trousers were ragged, pooling in the snow. An accident, indeed.
Blandine tapped her again. Others envied the way she could read her father's mind just by his looks. She would shrug and say, "C'est normale."
"You want it right away?" she asked, bored. Although Blandine's had always had a dedicated following for making tailored suits, their business had slacked off recently. Cécile didn't want to give the Joker the impression they needed him.
"Yes," he said tersely, frowning. "You think I want to stand around Montreal in my underwear? Cold's no good for the joints." He cracked his knuckles. Something shiny flashed in his fingers and was gone—a knife, she assumed.
"You could just buy a suit, you know, from a department store or something?"
"Do I look like the kinda guy who frequents department stores?" He grinned widely, grotesquely with the Cheshire smile he was wearing. "You're insulting me here, Marie-Cécile." She set her shoulders, galled by his sarcasm, but she noticed he was actually shivering.
Blandine cleared his throat, and Cécile looked at him. "Can you come back for it Friday?" she asked, as her father mouthed the words.
The Joker tapped his foot irritatedly. "Do I look like I've got the time to sit around twiddling my thumbs--?"
Blandine touched Cécile's shoulder. "By Wednesday Papa could do it." She couldn't help a small tremor in her voice: it was her final offer.
"See, this is why I love you guys," said the Joker, suddenly beaming. He clasped his gloved hands together. "And they say the French have no work ethic."
Cécile swallowed loudly as her father gripped her arm. " 'E's got your measurements," she said, her throat suddenly parched. She handed the coat back. "We'll 'ave to get started right away." Coolly she turned her back on him and moved to follow her father through the door to the workshop.
"W-w-w-w-wait," said the Joker, running up behind Cécile. "I want more pockets inside the coat this time." He showed his teeth. "Aren't you gonna ask what for?"
Cécile glared. "I can imagine." She nodded to her father, who gave a half-dubious, half-curious look over his shoulder, and went through the saloon doors into his workshop.
"Cécile." His voice had lost that sing-songy quality. She turned slowly around. "I need more of that stuff. That, you know, fabulous, wonderful, dare I say magnifique s-s-s-stuffff—"
She held up her hand. "Yes, all right, it's just to get rid of make up stains. It's not a miracle. You can get it anywhere." She sighed and was annoyed to be leading him for the—combien, cette fois?—time in to the side of the house where she lived, as she took the bottle from her own medicine cabinet.
"And you would know so much about miracles," he derided, staring up at the Virgin Mary in her alcove on the bathroom wall.
She handed over the bottle and crossed her arms. "You want the 'air dye too?"
He was admiring himself in the mirror behind her. Maybe "admire" wasn't the right word—he was gurning and glaring and making faces. "Cécile, so perfunctory," he tut-tutted. "I'd almost think you weren't happy to see me."
She shrugged. It wasn't worth rising to the bait. He ran his fingers through his stringy hair, still preening for his reflection. His teeth were chattering now, and she thought with a sigh of her own coffee getting cold in the other room. "If you're finished . . ." she prompted.
His reflection eyed her, then he took a deck of cards from his vest pocket and shuffled them back and forth. "D'you wanna see a card trick? One joker to a deck—"
"And 'e's standing right in front of me, yes, I know," said Cécile tiredly. "I know you take the joker cards out of all the decks. God knows what you do with the rest of the cards." She opened another cabinet and took out a plastic-wrapped Bicycle deck. She threw it at him.
He caught it and put it in his back pocket. He continued shuffling the old deck, glowering, before spilling the cards all over the bathroom. Cécile clutched at her forehead and muttered, " 'la vache!" She bent down to pick them up, raking them in with her hands. "Your English may be improving," he remanded, "but your sense of humor isn't."
She muttered something with the words "merde" and "nom d'un chien," among them and threw down the cards, leaving the bathroom in a huff. With a curious look on his face, he followed her out. He put the bottle of cleaning solution in his pocket and said, "What do I owe you for the niceties?"
"Just give it to my father when you pay for the suit." Cécile was tired.
"You're so anxious to get rid of me . . ." he said airily. He moved slowly across the front room to the door.
"Nothing personal," she lied.
"Sometimes I just take," he said in a low voice. "Whatever I want. I don't even bother paying for it. The thought has crossed your pretty little Québecquer mind, 'why does 'e pay? And why does 'e come back?'" Cécile shuddered at the high-pitched imitation of her own voice. "You've trotted out all the plausible explanations, but none of them really feel right, do they? And I keep you on your toes, and even you, Marie-Cécile Blandine, you're a little bit afraid of me."
Cécile looked down. He had a hand on the doorknob, testing its resistance. She felt like shoving him into a snowbank, to see if he would melt like in The Wizard of Oz. "Comme vous voulez, hein?"
He burst into laughter, insane, grating laughter, and opened the door. A rush of cold air. He turned the collar of his torn coat up. "Toodles!" And he was gone.
A/N: Everything seems to happen in cycles. I knew I would enjoy The Dark Knight but I didn't realize it would have the same effect on me that Batman Begins had: thinking about it for hours afterwards, unable to sleep, unable to countenance not seeing it again and soon. The first thing I did the next day was go on and see if anyone else felt the same way. Obviously, quite a few people did. This introduced me to the great writing of An Unhealthy Obsession, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Use Your Illusion, for a start. (And Blodeuedd, I'm expecting you to come up with your Crane-fics like you promised!)
Obviously, and perhaps whorishly, my interests have shifted. I'm not discounting the possibility of returning to Crane (I sound like a wayward mistress, ha) but as his trilogy is somewhat neatly tied up, he may have to wait in line as I sink my teeth (!) into writing for the Joker. What can I say about him that hasn't been said already? Hopefully the story communicates what I want to say.
I am of course grateful for the authors of the above fics, especially Kendra for looking over this and giving me helpful hints before I put it online, and Kat whose story is not only phenomenal, she's a lovely person as well. :-D I have a road map of where I want this to go, and thought I had the whole thing done and dusted a few days ago. But now I'm not so sure . . . all good writing runs away with you . . . til next time, gentle readers . . . Hope you enjoyed this.