Secrets in the Park

Bruce swore up and down I’d enjoy myself. The smell of stale cigarettes wafted through the half empty Irish bar as we hunched over the table on the third floor. The place was never full, but had three stories, each with their own schtick. The first floor was a dive bar, a grimy low lit space with nothing but guys belonging to bro past and bro present. The next level represented a music venue, with a 10x10 foot stage crammed on your first left up the stairs. The bar was on the right, and it was only slightly better than it’s first floor cousin. But if there was a band playing, you couldn’t scream over the amps, making it worse than it’s first floor cousin. On the third, where we sat, the space transformed into a hipster’s idea of a classy cocktail spot. Think a speakeasy without a secret code or illegal beverages. The bartenders here shot you a glare of contempt if you ordered anything with more than two ingredients, and the menu was largely a list of $50+ pours of brown. I never came here alone. I’m an editor at a content mill. But if Bruce invites you somewhere, you go. He always pays. 

“What if you just came with me once?” he said, still leaning over with his right hand curled around his glass of neat Kentucky Owl. His grip was so tight, choking the cheap glassware, I glanced at it every few seconds for fear it would shatter. 

“You say this every time we get together Bruce-y,” I playfully responded. “But, I have no idea what I’d be coming with you to do. You’re so secretive.” 

And he was. The man was a mystery, an enigma. He rarely spoke of his business and said even less about his personal life. I knew he dated models and drove Ferraris, when he got behind the wheel himself that is. Outside of his public persona I knew little. Our relationship had always been like this. I was a drinking buddy from college, a less successful person that could help ease his mind from the burden that was a public life. Tabloids couldn’t get enough of him. Women clamored for selfies and his elusive numbers. And everyone asked him for advice. A business question here, an investment tip there. Once, while walking out of Knight’s Stadium, a college kid with wide-brim glasses, freckles and curly red hair breached his convoy of security and handed him his resume, unsolicited, in a manilla folder. To his credit, Bruce leafed through the pages in the back of his Bentley while dropping me at my apartment. I think that guy works in accounting for him now. Bruce is great after a few glasses of bourbon. He’s joyful and full of life, but it takes real work to break down the wall. I don’t blame him for having his guard up. If I were him, I might never leave my mansion. 

“Look, you’re always asking me how I unwind. Well, let me show you tomorrow night, huh? I could use a good man to help,” he said assuredly. He’d never pressured me to join him for anything. I assume he has phones and phones filled with contacts he could call, people in Hollywood or even astronauts on the moon. For some reason, he desired my company tomorrow. Why didn’t matter. Bruce and I went way back. Before the bullshit after college. Before his private life littered entertainment magazines and provided endless material for hot takes and opinion pieces in the Gazette and Planet. If Bruce wanted me to join in on something, I would. I’ve been there for him since the mess with his parents. Why stop now? 

“It’s safe right? And it’s not illegal or anything?” I said earnestly. The nervous look in his eyes when I said illegal was a surprise. 

“Illegal? Well, define illegal?” he said with a degree of serious I thought was long gone after half a night of drinking. 

“Ya know, like you’re not robbing a bank or anything, right? Not that you would need to.” I realized how stupid this was as I said it. 

“No. In fact, it’s basically the opposite. We’re going to help people.”

“Oh, do you volunteer somewhere? Are you seriously making a humble brag?”

“No, not at all. You’ll have fun. It will be fun. I love it.”

With that I agreed to meet him in Robinson Park near the Finger River at 9 p.m., to which he said, “You’ll love it. It’ll be a whole new hobby for you.” 

***

8:48 p.m. 

When I arrive at the park, it’s dark and I’m nervous. I have no idea what kind of activity to expect in the area at this time of night. I rarely venture to the park after sunset, as there are constant reports of crime in the area. I figured Bruce would show early like me, because he was always early. When I shoot him a text letting him know I’m in the park, he says he’ll be there in ten. This meant I had to wait. I plant myself on a wooden bench facing the river. The view is captivating, powered by the flickering lights of city windows and neon signs. This metropolis has its ups and downs, but remains beautiful as a whole. On the right corner, you'll see starving artists on corners, singing operatic melodies and painting caricatures of little boys and girls, with big noses and pointy teeth. Sometimes, I wish I could quit my job and become an artist. A man who lives off the splendor of his creations. I’ve written a resignation email 47 times, and all 47 times it’s sat in my drafts folder in my work email. One day, when I leave and the upper management retakes the account, they’ll laugh at all my half-hearted attempts to leave. 

8:55 p.m. 

After scrolling through Twitter on my phone, I hear a strange ruffling noise from behind me. Before turning my head toward the direction, I check my texts to see if Bruce sent anything. When I do finally turn, I see a dark figure by a tree and as I get up to approach the shadow, I lose it in the darkness. 

“Hey!” 

Nothing. No noise, not even the sound of footsteps. My own feet are loud and obstruct my hearing. Each foot lands like a concrete block crashing toward pavement. My heart is beating as quickly as a sprinter torques his legs. When I finally get to where the man was standing, I sense nothing. My arms reach out instinctively to touch, but I grasp only the night’s air. 

“Behind you.” 

I don’t turn immediately. I’m too afraid of what I’ll find. A mugger perhaps. Or worse, a murderer. A madman wrapped in a halloween costume with a pickaxe in one hand and a black trash bag in the other. 

“Turn around pal.”

I turn quickly and as my feet plant in the soil, my fists fly up in position to fight. I’m no expert martial artist, but I am familiar with throwing exercise punches to lose calories. When my head jerks up to locate the target, I’m face to face with a God. I didn’t believe he existed. No matter how many tweets I saw or headlines I read, I never believed this person was real. My mugger and murderer was Gotham’s most feared individual: The Batman. 

8:59 p.m.

I awake near the river after Batman splashes me with a handful of water. My body jolts again as I glance up at the Bat peering down on me. Muscular and armored, the hero of the city is larger than life, but there he is at about 6 feet.

“Matty are you ok?” he says. 

Batman doesn’t sound human. The man beneath the mask uses a synthesizer to disguise himself from the loons he’s constantly fighting. 

“How do you know my name? Have you been spying on me?”

“Oh, right,” he says before reaching for his right arm with his left hand. His fingers maneuver like a child’s on an iPad. “How about now bud, do you hear me?”

“Bruce?”

9:03 p.m. 

“Hey,” Bruce says, nudging at my body, which is now laying across the wooden bench where I sat and observed the city earlier. “You fainted again. You gotta stop doing that, if you’re going to join me tonight.”

“Join you?”

“I’m Batman.”

“Yeah, no shit. Wow.” 

I should be more surprised by this revelation, but I’m not. This was an obvious conclusion, like a spouse discovering that their partner was cheating behind their back with a personal trainer or coworker. The evidence is there, all laid out on a table in the form of body language, secrets and absence. I already knew Bruce was larger than life. He was the most abnormal person I’d ever met. Of course he’s Batman. 

“So, this is your hobby? Beating the shit out of criminals.”

“I only beat them up if they resist.” 

“You weren’t kidding about breaking the law.”

“Do you have a problem with it?”

“I don’t know Bruce. One man acting as judge and jury in, like, the heat of the moment.. I don’t know if that’s the best way.”

“It’s the only way.”

“You’re probably right. I’d expect you to know more than me, but I don’t think I can help you here.”

“You sure?”

“I don’t know how to fight at all.”

“But you have that heavy bag in the basement,” he says playfully. 

“Yeah, yeah, I do. But it’s a little different hitting a bag in th--”

Bruce begins to laugh. At first it’s a chuckle, but after a few seconds, a howl. 

“What’s so funny Batman?” I say with a bitchy tone. 

“Do you think I’m out there doing Karate on people?”

“Well, that and other things, yeah.”

“The suit does it.”

“What do you mean the suit?”

“This suit goes into combat mode. All I have to do is press my right thumb into the palm. Then, I become a combination of Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali, with an encyclapedic knowledge of parkour.” 

“I don’t under---”

“Batman isn’t a martial artist in spandex.”

“Well I --”

“No. This guy Lucious at Wayne Corp. built this suit 20-years ago. It’s got nanotechnology in the fibers and is essentially indestructible. It’s perfect.” 

“So,” I say exasperated. “Let me get this straight: Batman is just a normal guy in a high tech suit?” 

“I’m rich, but that’s pretty much it.”

“So, if I wore the suit, I could be Batman?”

“Well, not exactly like me, but in a sense.”

“Ok, what?”

“Why do you think I brought you out here? Lucious just built a new suit. Standing on top of buildings can get lonely.” 

“But how do you find cri--”

“Scanners. Watch,” Bruce taps the top of the left Bat-ear when a woman’s voice rings out: “Scanning all active areas in Gotham.” 

So Bruce is Batman and Batman is a suit. I’m so dizzy I can barely stand. My eyes are shaken from the revelations of the night, and my mind struggles to keep up with the morphing truth. My childhood friend dresses up like a bat in a mechanical suit that obliterates the mouths and backs of criminals across the city. He’s sent countless men and women to jail because of access to an instrument of destruction, all because of affluence. My innocent mind thinks this is wrong and despite my respect for Bruce, as a human I’ve known since his parents were murdered in an alley after a showing of Zoro, I tell him so. 

“Dude, this is messed up. Like, I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything,” he whispered, before sitting next to me on the bench. “God, what a view. I love Gotham.” 

“I know, you show it in a weird way too,” I joke.

“Yeah, but, this is what I was meant to do, you know?”

“I guess, but--” he cut me off again. 

“Listen, just try on the suit I made for you tonight. If you don’t like it, or feel strange, then we’ll just carry on like it was before, yeah?”

“I don’t know man.”

He takes a deep sigh and then again pokes his right forearm with his left hand. In a flash a drone drops a metal case from the sky, before fleeing into night like a comet in reverse. He calmly walks over to the case and enters a code into a keypad on the side. Two latches open, their metal arms lifting toward the air. It’s all so sci-fi, like a briefcase the Predator would carry his spears in. Bruce digs his hands into the case and pulls out a limp silhouette -- a suit. He hands it over. The center bears a red bat insignia and feels like Under Armour, while somehow weighing even less. I begin to put the suit on, disrobing myself of the light blue jeans and white Carly Rae Jepsen shirt I wore to the park. The fit is snug, like a glove, and the mask clamps onto my head like a sock around a foot. Each eye-hole illuminates with red light and tiny text passes before me. The rush is so overpowering it’s nearly enough to make me faint again, but the suit keeps me upright. 

“I guess there’s two Batmans now, “ Bruce said, offering his hand for a shake. “You’re going to love it man. We’re cleaning up this city.”

When I reach out to grab him, I don’t feel like I’m touching a friend. Instead I’m being entrusted with a tremendous power and responsibility; two sensations I’ve never experienced in my life. Unlike my aspirations for art, there’s no way to bury this in my drafts folder.

“Some kind of secret hobby you’ve had, Bruce.” 

He shakes his head. 

“Call me Batman, Batman.”