Inside Joke

Alfred moved about the console, fingers dancing across the keys. He’d gotten behind and only had a few days to plan this particular performance. Despite all that, things were falling into place. Everything would be ready soon as long as nothing else got in the way.

There was a soft tap at the door, and a man stepped into the room, distinguished more by his sharp sense of style than the years behind him.

“You look busy,” the man said as he dragged a purple scarf from his shoulders and shrugged off his coat.

“Cesar! Did you memorize your lines?” Alfred asked, eyes back on the screen.

“I did. Not that it matters. These things never go as planned.”

“As long as you get the idea you should have enough to work with.”

“Al, I’ve been doing this for twenty-three years. I can work with anything. Don’t forget, I started in improv.” 

“Is that what you call it?” Al laughed.

Cesar crossed the room to his makeup table. He ran a finger along one edge, triggering the switch that would halo the table’s large mirror in soft, even light. He didn’t bother sitting, draping his coat and scarf over the back of the chair, then lifting his dark emerald hat from his silvered hair and placing atop the table. 

“The turn-around on this one was quick. What’s the rush?” He said as he dragged his supplies center. Though he’d changed his look up slightly over the years, his was a carefully practiced routine that he executed with unconscious precision.

“His cousin got caught up in a protest that broke out into a riot. Ended up in the hospital. She’s fine, fractured wrist but otherwise mostly minor injuries. But it got him antsy. He needs to get out.”

“For some ‘justice?’” Cesar said, chuckling as he leaned into the mirror, wiping down his face with a wet cloth. “How would you even find the culprit? There must have been hundreds of people there.”

“He won’t.”

“I have one guess as to whom you pinned it on.”

“Well, you do have the script, Cesar. But it’s been too long anyway. He just needs to get out.”

“Ever think about encouraging him to try some normal, healthy recreation? Dancing? A book club?” He turned and sat against the table, unscrewing the wide lid of a fat jar. “Hey, maybe he could take up boxing and actually learn to fight one of these days.”

“He knows how to fight.”

“Sure, and he can bench five hundred pounds, too.” 

Alfred’s eyes flicked towards the pile of dummy weights stacked in the corner. Most were still in boxes, though some spilled out of the one he’d opened—discarded props from a wrapped film shoot years ago. The few he’d put to use were on a bench at home. They had fifty and hundreds embossed on them, though in reality they were each only about a third of their indicated weight. 

Cesar scooped a gob of white foundation cream and spread it onto his face. His expression soured at the touch. “I hate this stuff,” he said, turning to lean once again into the mirror. “It’s the smell. Clogs up your sinuses and gets caught in your throat.”

“Why don’t you get something better?”

“This is the better. White face cream is not the most in-demand product in the world. Turns out most people don’t consider morbidly pale to be their look.”

“Never bothered you before.” 

“Of course it bothered me. Contentment and desperation are not the same thing.”

He wrinkled his nose as he painted the cream into the bristles of his impeccably groomed mustache.

“That needs to go, C.”

“The ‘stache? No can do.”

“It would make your preparation a bit more pleasant.”

“Nothing would make this pleasant. Just less horrible. Either way, the mustache stays. I’ve got a career—a life—outside this little fantasy you’ve cooked up. And this is a vital part of my brand.”

“I believe it’s something we cooked up. You’ve been indispensable in this whole thing from the beginning.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.”

“Making a boy happy?”

Cesar paused from spreading the cream, leaving patches of his cheeks bare in a garish contrast to the sterile white that coated the rest of his face. He scowled at Alfred, one eye naked and piercing, the other pale and featureless—robbed of its humanity. “This isn’t happiness, Al. This is avoidance. Delusion. Gas-lighting of the worst kind, no matter how well-intentioned.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Alfred said, turning back to his computer. He typed out the last of a memo. James, his contact at the police department, would block off the staging area for “construction,” a convenience bought through frequent donations to GPD as a whole, with a small portion to James himself. The stuntmen were on their way, wardrobe would meet them there. They’d have about an hour to practice before showtime. He hit enter with a final, resolute tap and stood straight. Everything was in place. He turned to find Cesar watching him. His face fully white now, his stare just as sharp as the paint.

“You’ve cooked up a mirage to keep a sad boy from growing into a man,” Cesar said. “Maybe it’s time to let him step out of the footy pajamas and into the real world.”

“It isn’t. Not yet.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know him.”

“You know only what you made him. He could have been something more. Millions of children have gone through tragedy. They cry through the pain, then dry the tears and become something from it. Sometimes bad, sometimes better. But don’t you think he should have a chance to grow into his own destiny, whatever that may be?” 

Al held Cesar’s gaze, but made no reply.

“Don’t you think his parents would have wanted something more for him?”

“They wanted him to be happy,” Alfred finally said.

“Not like this.”

“Yes, like this!”

“When he was a kid, Al.” Cesar’s voice boomed, then died instantly in the soundproofing insulation stuck to the walls of the room. His gaze cut to the floor, more comfortable staring at it than the kindled fury in Al’s eyes. “Tom was my friend, too,” Cesar added, his voice now barely louder than a breath. 

After a few moments of thick silence, the kind that sat heavy in your ears, like cotton on the drums, Cesar turned back to the mirror. The only noise was the jostle of eyeliner pencils and the scratch of dark lead against Cesar’s thick eyebrows. Once they were full on his pale mask, he carefully drew a dark line around his eyes’ lids. Alfred never looked away as Cesar pinned a garish green wig into his famously white hair. He stepped back from the mirror to examine his work, and sighed.

“I should have never taken this job,” Cesar said.

“It made you rich,” Alfred offered.

“What happens when he figures out who I am? My face is on display at almost any cinema. I’m not just a clown at some rich kid’s party anymore.”

“That’s precisely what you are,” Al said, walking across the room to stand directly in front of him. “And thanks to us, he really doesn’t have much time for movies.” 

Despite standing a few inches shorter than Cesar, there was something in Alfred that always made Cesar feel like he was smaller. Ever since the masters of his house were gunned down in an ally, leaving him with everything they ever loved—one young broken boy above all else—there was something in the aging butler’s dark eyes that put his hairs on end. A question that Cesar, despite his fame, despite his fortune, despite his career as one of Hollywood’s elite, was afraid to know the answer to. A darkness he sometimes forgot about—until Alfred reminded him. 

Alfred reached across him, making Cesar flinch away ever so slightly, and grabbed a tube of red lipstick from the table. It made a funny sort of popping sounds as he unsheathed it, one that sat in ill contrast to the tension. He carefully twisted the bottom, extending the crimson bullet from the tube. Then he dragged it across Cesar’s pale mouth. It left a bright red grin from ear to ear, like he tore the lips from his face.

He grabbed Cesar by the shoulders and held him back to examine his work. “There he is.” Alfred said, drawing the words out, long and slow—greeting an old friend as if Cesar hadn’t been there all along. “Now why don’t you get out there. We wouldn’t want to disappoint Master Bruce, would we?”