Last time: Batgirl entered the scene. Well, not Batgirl yet, but we all know where this is going. There are only two chicks in this movie, and one is called Poison Ivy, and that seems like probably the chick who was covered in plants and shit. Then we’ve got the frozen broad, but she’s frozen, so I think we’re all pretty spoiler-free in assuming this is Batgirl, especially what with all the marketing and so on showing Batgirl in the classic domino mask, which makes identification pretty easy for all but the crime-iest of criminals.
The girl’s name was Barbara Wilson, and a little later, as they showed her around the Wayne estate’s magnificent gardens, adorned with signs from actual concentration camps arcing over the entrances to various sections (rich people collect weird shit, what can I say? I mean, Dachau signs are pretty out there, but having The Elephant Man’s skeleton just chilling in your house is maybe weirder?), Alfred explained it all. Of course, Bruce used his “Alfred Off The Clock” pocket timer to track every second of the doddering old man’s speech, making it extremely clear that this was time for which Alfred wouldn’t be paid. Bruce made sure to punctuate every minute or so by swinging the timer from its diamond-encrusted chain.
“She isn’t really my niece,” Alfred told Bruce and Dick, who could hardly take his eyes off the girl, what with her girth occupying most of his field of vision and all. “She’s Margaret Clark’s daughter.”
Bruce sighed and rubbed his eyes. The old fool was always pulling this shit, just tossing a name out there like he should know who the fuck Margaret Clark was. It was like talking to a child. Sometimes the name Alfred tossed out would be a first lady or something, and Bruce would feel like an idiot for not knowing, but other times it was like someone whose son used to deliver newspapers to Wayne Manor for like six weeks in 1974. “Remember her, Bruce?” the old man would say.
Alfred’s world was so tiny and pathetic that it was sometimes hard to tell whether he was just doddering or whether this was a clever gaslighting campaign on Alfred’s part.
Alfred had fallen in love with Margaret while he’d been visiting Metropolis many years earlier. That’s right, namechecking METROPOLIS, City of Apples!
But she was twenty years younger than he. When he realized the age difference would be unfair to her, but not SO unfair that he couldn’t pass it up, he returned to Gotham. After one last bang, of course. One last week of banging. Okay, three months of wild sex and kinda draining her bank account to buy hard drugs and some re-sellable home items.
Margaret had married a young physician on the rebound, a gynecologist who was caring for Margaret, who was positively tore up after getting the old “Pennyworth Special,” as Alfred insisted on calling it. The doctor wasn’t thrilled by the aftermath, but he had to admire the handywork and DID appreciate the opportunity to really test his skills. It was the first recorded instance of a blown load ACTUALLY denting the insides of a woman. Well, the first-through-seventeenth documented case, all wrapped up in one.
Barbara was the daughter of this wrecked husk of a woman and her rebound doctor.
It was kind of a miracle that Margaret was able to give birth. The doctor’s stated medical opinion was that, “It looked like someone had stuck an M80 in an Arby’s roast beef sandwich down there.”
The quartet walked up a flight of stone steps flanked by dazzling blooms, past a pool where a small fountain stolen from some shithole country burbled. Lots of people died bringing that fountain to Wayne Manor, and they were all memorialized by being in a mass grave, very, very deep beneath the very fountain they gave their lives to bring to America.
“Is your mother here too?” Dick asked — and knew immediately he shouldn’t have, by the looks on the others’ faces and from Bruce saying, “Jesus Christ, ixnay on the ee-way-thray, dumbass-ay. Too soon, too soon!”
“My parents were killed in an auto accident ten years ago,” Barbara sad sadly. People always thought it was antiquated and cute that she said “auto” instead of “car” accident, but the truth was that she was hiding that her parents died in an autoEROTIC, mutual masturbation scenario. It just made it easier if she said “auto” and left out the rest, and it also kind of made her feel like she wasn’t totally lying about the cirCUMstances of her parents’ death.
I mean, haha, we’ve all done it, but there are certain things you don’t want to imagine your parents doing. Bringing themselves to the edge of death in order to have an explosive orgasm is near the top of the list.
Barbara cheered up almost at once as she squeezed Alfred’s arm. “Alfred has been supporting me ever since.”
Bruce was surprised and shocked and immediately took out a notepad and started scribbling notes about pay reduction for Alfred. “You have, Alfred? Financially?”
The old man smiled wryly, “Secrets are a virtual prerequisite in this house, don’t you think, sir?” Alfred nodded and indicated a spot near the rose bushes where he’d helped an adolescent Bruce Wayne bury the corpse of a horse he’d decapitated with a chainsaw because he thought seeing the light go out of those huge horse eyes would be just the sort of thing to pop him out of a summer of ennui.
They followed the path that curved across the lawns and led to the garages by the side of the house.
Barbara lived in England, where she was a computer science major at the ancient Oxbridge Academy for Girls Pretending They Weren’t Being Trollops In Their Schoolgirl Outfits. She was telling them how she’d had a sudden whim to visit Alfred during her term break when she stopped, staring. Dick followed her gaze to the motorcycle that sat gleaming in the afternoon sunshine.
“What is it? she asked, “It’s…beautiful.”
“It’s a motorcycle, dummy,” Dick told her. Alfred gave him a look, and Bruce gave him the signal for "tone it down, you’re blowing it,” which was him saying those words out loud so everyone could hear.
“Er, I mean, it’s a competition racer I’ve been fixing up,” Dick told her. “Maybe one day I’ll show you how to ride it.”
“You certainly will not,” Alfred said sternly, proving once again he was about the worst wingman ever. He was the opposite of a wingman. He was the guy who cut wings off of chickens for Buffalo Wild Wings.
Barbara agreed: “Oh, no, those things frighten me. Besides, I’m sure there’s a weight limit.”
Dick couldn’t be sure, but he thought she didn’t sound a hundred percent sincere about her fears.
“I hope you’ll be staying with us,” Bruce invited, assuming she would immediately turn down the offer because it’s INSANE to show up to where your uncle works as a butler and plan to just hang out. That’d be like showing up at the hotel where your sister is a maid and planning to just chill in the honeymoon suite for the weekend. No, she’d decline and end up staying in a hotel that Alfred would be paying for. In more ways than one.”
“All this luxury isn’t really my style,” Barbara admitted, reminding us all just how fictional this narrative is, what with a 20 year old girl being disinterested in spending time in a mansion because she’s so “of the people” or whatever. She gazed at the bike. “But I’d love to stay.”
Alfred looked unsure. “Oh, but Master Bruce,” he protested. “So much goes on —”
“Don’t be silly, Alfred,” Bruce said airily. “After all. She’s family.”