“Where do you want to go for dinner? I don’t know very many places. I’ve only been in Gotham a few weeks. I know a nice little Italian restaurant, but it gets crowded. Is that a problem? People might overhear us talking. Do you think we should worry about people listening—I mean, if we’re going to be breaking into someone’s place? Maybe we should do take-out instead. Or I could cook—“
“Wait.” Selina found her voice. “Who said anything about breaking into anything?”
“Well, you picked the lock, didn’t you? I mean, I’m not from Kansas. I already tried wiggling it, and it didn’t open for me. I know you didn’t just wiggle it, but I didn’t see what you did do. So you must be good. And how else would you know about this guy we’re going after, right? He’s not a friend of yours, or even the friend of a friend, right? So—should we go to the restaurant or do take-out? What do you think?”
“Take-out,” Selina said meekly, and followed the still-chattering woman out the door.
Chapter Eleven
Bruce Wayne sat in his family mansion’s library surrounded by open books in several languages, none of them less than forty years old. There was also a stack of newspapers, many proclaiming a new world order that looked remarkably like the older one, and the Gotham City telephone directory.
According to the Bible, mankind spoke a common language until the descendents of Noah assaulted the ramparts of heaven with the Tower of Babel. The visitors were not welcome. The tower was smashed, and the next morning the survivors had lost the ability to understand each other. Although premeditated murder had appeared much earlier in the book, warfare, strife, and intolerance grew in the ruins of Babel. If the story were taken literally, then the Tower of Babel was a ruined ziggurat in Babylon, now known as Iraq, where warfare, strife, and intolerance were still going strong. If, on the other hand, the story was a metaphor, then the Tower could have been built in many different places, including Bessarabia.
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