The Further Adventures of The Joker

by Martin H. Greenberg

  “Our next competitor is . . . Mr. Bruce!” The crowd clapped. Bruce and I exchanged looks. His was enigmatic. He touched my arm with those iron fingers and then stepped into the spotlight. He blinked a couple times, I guess adjusting to the glare. He glanced at the Joker, then turned fully to the crowd.

  “If any of you have heard me in the clubs, you know what kind of material I use. ‘Hey, being a filthy rich kid isn’t all it’s cracked up to be . . . I remember how other kids brought their lunch boxes to school. I had caterers from Maxim’s come to the cafeteria every day.’ Not too funny, right?”

  Right, I thought. Not too funny. Not then and not now.

  Bruce paused a moment. A long moment. “I’ve been thinking a lot,” he said, “about something my friend, Pete Tulley, told me.” He shrugged. “I started thinking about some things I’d vowed never to think of again.” I heard something in his voice. As little as I knew Bruce, I could still hear the keen of pain. “Let me tell you about someone I used to know.”

  I sneaked a look at the Joker. He was frowning, angular chin propped on one startlingly white palm, fingers curled up around his mouth like spider legs.

  “This was when I was a student in the fourth grade,” said Bruce. Huh? I thought. Richie Rich’s childhood anecdotes? “A new school-year had just started and I was in my homeroom class for the first time. It was right after lunch and I was logy. You know, feeling about like an anaconda that’s just eaten a goat. I could tell the teacher was, too.”

  Good delivery, I thought. He’s picking up steam. The crowd could sense it. I saw some of the folks in the front starting to sit back in their seats instead of leaning forward anxiously.

  “We looked like a perfectly good class, maybe thirty kids, all pink and scrubbed and full of enthusiasm. But as I said, we were all ready for an afternoon nap, and I think the new teacher was, too. Here he was, facing us all, and I think that for a moment, all he could do was to stare at us.” Bruce shook his head and smiled. “I think he decided to try something new. He figured he’d stall us for a bit, make conversation while he was picking which way he wanted to take the class.”

  Hey, I tried to warn him telepathically, you’re starting to wander, just a little. Get back on track.

  “Finally—it was only a few seconds, but it seemed like an hour in my mind—he started with the first student at the near end of the far left row, a boy. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘I’d like to find out a little bit about each of you. I want to ask about your families. Tell me something now, tell me what your father does.’

  “So then the first boy said, ‘My dad’s a fire fighter.’ And he told him about what his father did. I guess that worked out so well, the teacher went on to the next student, a girl. ‘And what’s your father do?’ he asked. ‘He’s in the Army,’ came the answer. ‘He fights people.’ And so it went,” said Bruce. “On down the ranks of students, row by row, until he got to a young boy sitting right in back, in the very center.”

  I was trying to think, did I know this joke? It was new to me. I wondered where Bruce had dug up some new material. Or maybe he was spinning the truth, maybe this really was something that had happened to him back—I still couldn’t quite believe it—when he was a fourth-grader.

  “This little boy was short and dark—dark hair, dark eyes. He was quiet and very, very serious,” said Bruce. “You could tell just by looking at him that he was lonely.” There was the touch of something I couldn’t immediately identify in Bruce’s voice. Then it came to me—it was the sound of someone who wanted to cry, but couldn’t. Just that tiniest of cracks.

  “I was that little boy.”

  There was an odd tone in the way Bruce said it. I felt like I should hold my breath and stay very, very still.

  “So then the teacher looked at the little boy and asked, ‘Son, what does your father do?’ I didn’t answer, but just stared back at him. I think he suddenly knew that he ought to drop it then and there, but he didn’t.”

  Bruce coughed and offered the crowd an apologetic half-smile. “But then it was for him about like it is for me now. He just kept on going, bulled right on ahead. He tried to get through what he thought was my shyness and said, ‘It’s okay, son, you can talk to me. Tell me what your dad does.’

  “I finally looked him straight in the eye and said in a low voice, ‘Sorry, sir, he doesn’t do anything. My father’s dead.’ ”

  Somebody in the audience gasped. I swallowed. This was weird. There was something about Bruce’s delivery.

  “He knew right then,” said Bruce, “that he ought to get out of this any way he could. He should go on to the next student. He was entering some kind of Vietnam of primary education.” He shook his head sadly. “He couldn’t. God knows why, but he looked back at the little dark-haired boy—me—and said, ‘It’s all right, son, go ahead and tell me . . . what did your daddy do before he died?’ ”

  Bruce paused so momentarily that I thought I was maybe the only person catching him swallowing.

  “I looked back at him, still straight in the eye, and said, ‘Well, he went cckcckccckkkccckkk!’ ” Bruce grabbed his own throat and mugged the visual image to go with the strangling sounds.

  The crowd was stone silent.

  It was like they didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to react.

  Then it began. A laugh somewhere in the balcony. A titter to stage-left in the loge. People giggled, groaned, started to guffaw. The laughter spread like the Philippine flu. So far as I could see, about the only people not absolutely breaking up were the thugs with machine guns.

  Then the applause began to overwhelm the laughter. As best I could see Bruce’s features from the side, he looked overwhelmed, too. He bowed slightly.

  Above the roar of the audience rose a cackling from the stage. I turned my head and saw the Joker on the floor. Literally. He was holding his sides and roaring with laughter, that terrible hyena bray I first heard at the Carob the night George Marlin blew his top.

  I looked back at Bruce as he stared out over that ocean of reacting human beings. In his eyes I saw the shine of tears. What did this mean? I wondered. What had it cost?

  The next one up was Winnie Morales. It was pretty obvious she didn’t relish having a turn in the barrel right after Bruce’s bravura performance. She stared out over the crowd, obviously swallowed, then said, “Okay, so there were these three clergy-guys walking down the street. There was a Jewish rabbi, a Baptist preacher-fella, and an Irish bishop. They were on their way to play golf, when suddenly Saint Peter . . .”

  And the next one up was me.

  Well, I figured I could beat Winnie Morales. Maybe.

  I knew I couldn’t beat Bruce, but hey, I didn’t want to. I just wanted to save my own hide. At least that’s what I thought until I actually stood out there, bathed in a bloody red gel-light from the follow spots. I know it’s a cliché, but time slowed for me.

  Bruce’s routine replayed in my head. Something came to me with all the subtlety of getting whupped up alongside the head with a flying mallet. I felt the shock of the brilliant white light, you know?

  That tired old poor-little-rich-kid routine of Bruce’s had somehow evolved to what he’d performed tonight. I was pretty sure it hadn’t come easily. I still couldn’t quite see all the cross-connections—it really was hard to see Bruce as a little boy in the fourth grade. But somehow he knew something about parents and death and had formed it into an awful-yet-effective story that had destroyed an entire theater.

  It came to me. Yeah, he’d learned from me, all right. He’d listened to what I’d said back when he and Boonie and I’d been talking. Then he did the things I’d never done. He’d faced up. He’d gone real.

  Just like I claimed to do, but didn’t.

  Hey, nothing like making myself feel like shit just when I was supposed to spend the most important five minutes of my life making people laugh.

  The voice grated into my consciousness. “Oh, Mr. Tulley, are you going to perform or not? Ha
s the cat got your tongue?”

  Shit. I focused and saw the Joker smiling easily just a few yards away. Things snapped together inside. I hoped.

  I nodded and took a deep breath. “Hey, how many of you out there realize I’m not really black?” That got a few titters. “Nope, truly I’m not. I’m black Irish.”

  “Oh, yeah?” That was maybe the first heckler of the night. Good, I thought. Then I squinted and realized I’d been needled by one of the Joker’s goon squad.

  So “Yeah,” I said. “The name on my driver’s license is O’Rio.” The thug looked bewildered. Nobody out beyond the lights laughed, so I used exaggerated cheerleading gestures to spell out the name I said. This time there was a ripple of laughter.

  “Good, you got it. Am I going too fast for you? Hey, let’s go. You think it’s easy being an Oreo in the inner city, man? I mean, you should have heard me playing the dozens with tough dudes on the corner. I mean, they got to serve first—

  “ ‘Hey, man, yo mama wears combat boots when she gives it away in the alley.’

  “So I snap back with, ‘She ain’t givin’ it away, man. She’s in the alley pickin’ aluminum cans outta the Dumpster to pay for my Harvard education, man.’ ”

  More laughter. Thank God.

  “No, I mean it—the other dudes from the block were like Fast Eddie Teck, you know? Carried switchblades. Me . . .” I slipped my hand into my hip pocket and pretended to snap something out. “One time this homeboy from the Night Vultures jumps me, and so I go for my calculator . . .”

  A little more laughter. And so it goes.

  When all of us were done, the Joker had the house lights brought up. The eighteen of us pretty much looked like the condemned, about to be shot as examples by some military junta in a soccer stadium.

  “Well—” said the Joker. “That was quite a round of performances. I’m impressed that many of you, if you should survive this evening, might actually have a future in comedy—especially now that you’ll have a great new experience to draw upon. Think of me as your agent of change; but remember, if you use any material pertaining to yours truly, to give me due acknowledgment. Otherwise I’ll have to track you down and extract my fifteen percent.” He giggled. “And I’ll wager that, for most of you, fifteen percent is a great deal more than a mere pound of flesh.” He looked contemplative, as though imagining harvesting his fee.

  Then his voice changed mercurially. “Ah, yes, the matter of the incognito Bat-comic. I rather unwisely predicted I would have to make final disposition of the least funny of you.” He ambled toward us. “Unfortunately that reflects badly on you.” The Joker raised his cane and lightly touched it to Winnie Morales’s chest. “Don’t worry, my dear, you seem too much the mammal to be mistaken for my nemesis in a clever plastic disguise. Still—” he mused. There was fear in Winnie’s expression. “—I really ought to be consistent in my declarations.” Then he shook his head. “No, Ms. Morales, I won’t slaughter you where you stand. The memory of your performance is punishment enough.”

  He stalked away, spun on his heel, walked back. “I have an idea. It had occurred to me that if the least funny of you weren’t the Batman, what I might do is to follow the maxim of my old mercenary friends and simply kill you all and let God sort you out.” I knew I was looking death in the distorted, grinning face.

  “No,” said the Joker. “One more chance. I must be mellowing.” He chuckled, a horrible sound like a gerbil being pulled under the water and gargling as it drowned. “Yes, a chance. I’m going to extinguish the lights. When I bring them up again, I expect to see a clear sign that one of you is the Batman. I realize there is no phone booth—” He smirked. “Oh, yes, that’s our other good friend. But you get the point.” The Joker raised his hand. “All right, are you ready?” All of us sort of looked at each other. “If anyone tries anything funny, so to speak, my men will rake both the stage and the theater auditorium with automatic fire.” I wondered if we’d all remembered our twine-bound, butcher paper-wrapped parcels.

  “Now,” said the Joker.

  The lights went out.

  Did you ever see Spartacus? There’s that great scene where the Romans order the rebellious slave army to give up their leader and then first one, then another, and eventually every slave there proclaims, “I am Spartacus.”

  I thought of that when the lights came up.

  You see, we were all—all eighteen of us—the Batman.

  I’d worn the costume from the package Bruce had given us under my clothing, as I guessed the rest had, too. In the sudden darkness, I’d struggled out of my street clothes, unfurled the thin cape from under my collar, and pulled the cowl over my head. I had donned the rest of the gear.

  So here we were in the glare of the house lights. Eighteen Batpersons: white, black, brown, yellow, male, female, fit, paunchy, young, middle-aged. We were a sight.

  The Joker stared at us. With some satisfaction, I saw there was genuine surprise on his face. Then he began to laugh.

  I don’t think it was wholly because we were all dressed in Bat-attire. It may have had something to do with the fact that all of us wore Groucho glasses, the heavy black-rimmed kind with the attached big rubber noses and bushy moustaches.

  While we stood there waiting for summary execution, the Joker giggled, then chortled, finally whooped with merriment. Tears, or at least something viscous, dripped from his eyes. I thought the ends of his grin would meet around the back of his head.

  When he finally could speak, he said, “Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Better than I’d ever hoped.” He burst into laughter again.

  And then he let us go.

  It was that abrupt. The Joker made some hand motions. Smoke rolled across the stage. Blinding lights flashed. Choking, we fell to our knees. But then the fumes cleared. They weren’t toxic.

  The Joker was gone, along with his men.

  I felt a strong arm help me to my feet. Bruce. He set his hand on my shoulder and steadied me.

  It had been one hell of a show. You might say we’d knocked the audience dead.

  Just kidding.

  I’ve had a lot of time to think about that night. I’m in law school now—no more Burger Biggie, and no more suggestions of seminary from Uncle Louis.

  I still do some stand-up comedy, but there isn’t a hell of a lot of time. In such clubs as I still play, I’ve never again seen Bruce.

  About that night . . . I remember how I always used to think I only came truly alive at night, when I could change into somebody different from who I was in the sunlight, somebody more powerful, someone who could move people to react.

  I mean, I’m no dummy. I can put two and two together. After what I’ve been through, there ain’t nothing that seems unlikely now.

  The newspapers really did a number on what happened at the Aladdin Theater and the joke-off. The writers speculated about why the Joker hadn’t simply triggered a massacre. The consensus seemed to be that the big J must be entering some new phase of his “humor,” something seriously weird, maybe absurdist or the surreal.

  Me, I’ve got a different idea. Maybe somebody just got a little bored. No, check that. Seriously bored. And maybe somebody decided that the lack in his life was his opponent.

  He decided his antagonist had one crucial shortcoming—no sense of humor. Or at least one so rudimentary it needed a little jarring loose to set it in gear.

  A worthy villain needs an equally worthy antagonist.

  Just speculation, folks.

  I keep my theories to myself. See, I figure that one day I’ll return to the night—and when I do, I might just need a friend.

  Double Dribble

  George Alec Effinger

  Police Commissioner Gordon and wealthy philanthropist Bruce Wayne certainly had better things to do on that drizzly afternoon in March. The former was absent from a luncheon with Gotham City’s mayor and several influential civic leaders, and the latter had postponed an important consultation with the Wayne Foundation’s leg
al advisors. Instead, the two men had gathered with members of the news media in a small, overheated meeting room in Gotham Garden, the historic sports and concert arena. They’d all been invited to attend an important press conference called by Joculator, Inc.

  “Were you able to learn anything about this corporation?” asked Wayne.

  Commissioner Gordon shook his head. “Nothing at all. Joculator, Inc. seems to consist of just five names, none of them listed in the police records.”

  Wayne, in his alter ego as the Batman, had made his own investigation, using the extensive crime files stored in the Bat-Computer. He had turned up much the same results—which is to say, none at all. “I would have ignored the invitation completely,” he said, frowning, “except it reminded me too much of certain other invitations I’ve seen in the past.” He didn’t feel it necessary to point out to his old friend that joculator was the Latin word for “joker.”

  “I had the same reaction,” said Gordon grimly.

  Before they could compare notes any further, a short, heavyset man with a perspiring red face appeared from behind the velvet curtains that draped the front of the meeting room. He glanced nervously at the assembled newspaper, radio, and television crews, then went to a wooden podium decorated with the emblem of the Gotham City Knights, the city’s National Basketball Association franchise that played its home games in the Garden.

  The man took out a large pocket handkerchief and mopped his face. “My name is Robert Branford,” he said in a soft, hoarse voice. “I’m the president and CEO of Joculator, Inc. I’d like to thank you all for coming here today. We have an exciting announcement to make, and rather than draw it out any longer, I’d like to get right to it. As of today, Joculator, Inc. is the new corporate owner of the Gotham City Knights.”