(no subject)
Somehow, her mind just works better when she's listening to Daniel Johnston.
At about ten o' clock on Sunday morning she rolls out of bed, starts some coffee, and plunks down to look at the old blueprints of the Gotham Museum of Art. Assuming that they haven't moved the permanent collection since she's been out of town, this shouldn't be too hard. Letsee, the Moreau's probably about here, and the loading docks are about here...
It's a general, working idea, but it's not enough. She's going to have to see it.
So she grabs her coat and heads out into the street, the chill and the noise and the bustle. She could take the train, but she's going to walk. Get re-acquainted with the city at the level that it matters, on the concrete. Moving through the hunkered-down crowd, watching the steam rising from the manholes, catching in the cold clear morning light, it dawns on her how much she missed this place. The tangle of streets and alleyways comes back to her easy as breathing, the remnants of muscle memory established a long time ago. There's only so much you can change about a town.
The museum is just the way she remembered it, yellow marble and echoes and maybe just a little bit smaller. Everything in its proper place, exactly the way she left it. (At least the permanent collection, which is all that matters.)
The Moreau is heartbreakingly beautiful, the colors vivid and searing, and she feels her breath catch for a moment. (If that kid does pull a Red Dragon, she'll beat the snot out of him.) She'd seen Phaeton, in the Louvre, but this is just as exquisite.
She pokes around the antiquites for a good half-hour, and admires the traveling exhibition-- a collection of Monet's later works. It's a pleasant enough diversion while she's noting every camera, every laser housing, every possible tripwire and ventilation shaft, working out a route from the Impressionist room (though Moreau's not Impressionist, not quite, but that's a minor quibble, semantics, no matter) to the loading docks.
The sunlight is slanted and syrupy and golden when she leaves, and she takes the train back this time.
When she gets off at her station, there's a flash of flat-copper red and dirty silver-- Joan, from back in the bad old days. Selina can feel her face light up, her chest tighten, but she just waves and chokes back the girlish squeal of glee. Joan's on the clock, after all. So she keeps it quick.
"What are you doing next Sunday?"
"Having coffee with you, dummy." Her silver-capped incisor catches the light, dull as old nickles. "Say, five o' clock? Trotsky's?"
"It's a date, darling. Be safe."
A scoff, and she's clicking away on those too-high heels, off to her next 'date,' probably in some penthouse suite somewhere. She started out as a streetwalker and worked her way up, an unusual story in Gotham. Usually it's the other way around. Selina almost whistles on her way back to her place, step considerably lighter.
...The next time she sees the painting, it's through infrared goggles, squeaking soft in leather and hanging upside down from a nylon rope.
The next time, it's when she's wrenching it out of a packing crate, in the post-dawn light of Tuesday morning, somewhere just north of Rootsville Park.
Guess she's got a phone call to make.
At about ten o' clock on Sunday morning she rolls out of bed, starts some coffee, and plunks down to look at the old blueprints of the Gotham Museum of Art. Assuming that they haven't moved the permanent collection since she's been out of town, this shouldn't be too hard. Letsee, the Moreau's probably about here, and the loading docks are about here...
It's a general, working idea, but it's not enough. She's going to have to see it.
So she grabs her coat and heads out into the street, the chill and the noise and the bustle. She could take the train, but she's going to walk. Get re-acquainted with the city at the level that it matters, on the concrete. Moving through the hunkered-down crowd, watching the steam rising from the manholes, catching in the cold clear morning light, it dawns on her how much she missed this place. The tangle of streets and alleyways comes back to her easy as breathing, the remnants of muscle memory established a long time ago. There's only so much you can change about a town.
The museum is just the way she remembered it, yellow marble and echoes and maybe just a little bit smaller. Everything in its proper place, exactly the way she left it. (At least the permanent collection, which is all that matters.)
The Moreau is heartbreakingly beautiful, the colors vivid and searing, and she feels her breath catch for a moment. (If that kid does pull a Red Dragon, she'll beat the snot out of him.) She'd seen Phaeton, in the Louvre, but this is just as exquisite.
She pokes around the antiquites for a good half-hour, and admires the traveling exhibition-- a collection of Monet's later works. It's a pleasant enough diversion while she's noting every camera, every laser housing, every possible tripwire and ventilation shaft, working out a route from the Impressionist room (though Moreau's not Impressionist, not quite, but that's a minor quibble, semantics, no matter) to the loading docks.
The sunlight is slanted and syrupy and golden when she leaves, and she takes the train back this time.
When she gets off at her station, there's a flash of flat-copper red and dirty silver-- Joan, from back in the bad old days. Selina can feel her face light up, her chest tighten, but she just waves and chokes back the girlish squeal of glee. Joan's on the clock, after all. So she keeps it quick.
"What are you doing next Sunday?"
"Having coffee with you, dummy." Her silver-capped incisor catches the light, dull as old nickles. "Say, five o' clock? Trotsky's?"
"It's a date, darling. Be safe."
A scoff, and she's clicking away on those too-high heels, off to her next 'date,' probably in some penthouse suite somewhere. She started out as a streetwalker and worked her way up, an unusual story in Gotham. Usually it's the other way around. Selina almost whistles on her way back to her place, step considerably lighter.
...The next time she sees the painting, it's through infrared goggles, squeaking soft in leather and hanging upside down from a nylon rope.
The next time, it's when she's wrenching it out of a packing crate, in the post-dawn light of Tuesday morning, somewhere just north of Rootsville Park.
Guess she's got a phone call to make.