People wear disguises for many reasons. Heroes wear them so they cannot be recognized. Villains wear them as part of their façade. Regular citizens might wear them just to experience what it would be like to be someone else because that life is always better than their own. This may simply be because people are insane within their own mind, always wanting more and more to get a feeling of superiority. There is but one problem with this, with the way we see people.
“Genius is one of the many forms of insanity.” – Cesare Lombroso
* * *
“Rose… Rose? Rose!”
I jumped and turned my head back toward the window that gave a view to the kitchen. Feeling the mark left behind by my left hand resting on my chin, I blinked and stared at Joe. He was the manager and baker at a small coffee shop on one of the many streets of Gotham City. He was holding a fresh plate of small donuts that were still steaming and an order in his hand. “Table four,” he said, before I could make up an excuse for dozing off against the counter again.
“Oh,” was all I could say, grabbing the order in both of my hands. “Thanks, Joe.”
I walked it over to the table and put it down by a young, well-dressed man with a laptop. That was the most frequent type of person we got in here. Of course, there were about a million things I would have rather been doing than working today. Nevertheless, I put on a fake smile and proceeded on for the next few hours without complaint. In the middle of the afternoon, several police cars zoomed by the doors along the street toward the bank. I sighed. That was only to be expected, and of course everyone was interested. People threw money on the tables, picked up their personal computers, and left right away. I went around gathering it all and throwing dishes into a bin. “It was only a matter of time before things started happening during the day,” I called to anyone who would listen.
“Well Batman has to have a day job. People probably think this is the safest time to do it,” chuckled Joe from the kitchen. “Listen, why don’t you head home early, Rose? I’ll make Jenny lock up. I can’t have a waitress falling asleep during her shift anyway.”
I sighed, feeling bad that I would have to let the new waitress, Jenny, lock up on her own that evening. However, I did not argue. I wanted to go home. So I threw the apron up on the hook that had my name engraved above it on a plaque on the wall in the kitchen and walked out the door. It was an elegant place, despite its small size. So I wore a black skirt, shorter than I would have preferred, with a black blouse that had a few buttons undone. Heels were essential, of course, and my hair was tucked back in a bun. I walked every day down and up several streets (in the opposite direction of the bank) to get to and from my job. It provided me with exercise, and as much as I wished to take my heels off halfway, it would not be a good idea to walk barefoot on the streets of Gotham.
I could still hear the sirens as I made my way across the street and down the sidewalk, away from them. While at an intersection, I passed two school buses stopped there. One was full of screaming kids that were happy to be done with school. However, the other one, stopped in front of the first, was empty it seemed. I furrowed my brow at it, searching for signs of kids in the rows as I approached the front of it. There was a driver, obviously, but what I saw only made me more confused. He wore make up, war paint. He looked like a Halloween character that fell into a puddle. I would have laughed if I had not realized that something strange was going on with him. However at that moment, he turned toward me. I immediately looked away and pretended to be toying with the bun in my hair, taking it out as an excuse for standing there. I did not look back, but I could feel his eyes on me. I shook out my dark brown hair so it fell down my shoulders in waves and started walking again once the signal to let me came on. When I heard the engine of the bus rev and speed up, I walked quicker, disappearing into a crowd of people the first chance I got.
