CW: This chapter depicts characters discussing their intent to commit suicide.

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1972.

Then Edward heard another voice — a man’s voice, strangely familiar. 

“Excuse me, sir, but do you think you will be much longer? You are not the only one intending to make the leap tonight.”

Edward turned. And there he was, just as he had been seven years before, face-to-face atop the Spirit of Prosperity. 

He wore no long-nosed mask. He carried no fencing foil. But, all the same, Edward recognized Esteban Valentino, the Troubadour, wearing a thin mustache on his deeply tanned face and smiling ironically.

“I do not wish to be rude. This is an important moment for anyone, the very last moment. It is just that… Well, I also do not wish to have my courage fail me, and the longer I wait…”

“Of course,” said Edward. “I can understand your concern.”

“Perhaps it would be possible for me to go out onto our lady’s other arm and commence with my own demise? But I do not wish to disturb yours.”

“That is quite considerate.” 

Esteban gave a deferential nod, “You were here first, after all.”

He didn’t seem to recognize Edward. But how could he? While the Troubadour had his mask removed as the TCPD placed him in handcuffs, the Crimson Wraith had remained disguised.

“How did you get here?” asked Edward.

Esteban grinned, and he reminded Edward of Errol Flynn — so debonair. “I must confess, I slipped a twenty-dollar bill to the night watchman down below. Once it had claimed his attention, I ascended. 

“He did not say that he had admitted any other leapers tonight. I should have offered half as much if I knew I had to wait — not that I need the money, that is, but I do hate to feel that I’ve been overcharged.”

Strangely, Edward felt the beginning of a smile at that. 

“I hid here until after closing,” he said, “in a supply closet.”

“You hid in the closet? Oh, my. It sounds as though you took the advice my abuelita gave when she found me trying on my sister’s make-up.”

“I beg your pardon?” Edward was not prepared to hear the Troubadour comment on his sexuality so brazenly.

But Esteban seemed to see an opportunity in his shock. “Does that offend you? Perhaps you might like to visit some violence upon my person for my being a homosexual. That might even resolve our little scheduling issue. You could, say, throw me over the ledge — rid the world of another dirty queer. 

“And then you could jump off yourself. Or don’t. Maybe killing me will make you feel better about whatever brought you to this point.”

It was a terrible suggestion. Edward felt his heart ache to hear it. Fear of that very thing had kept Edward quietly petrified for so long. 

“Esteban,” he said. “I would never do that to you.”

“Esteban? Say now, where do you get off knowing my name? You aren’t my guardian angel are you? Some Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life, here to show me how much better the world is to have me in it?” Esteban’s eyes narrowed and he drew closer. “Do you know my life then, angel? Do you know what I have been doing with it?”

“Actually,” said Edward, “I do. A fair amount at least. For several years, you wore a costume like a Renaissance theater performer, including a mask with a long pointed nose.”

“The mask of the character Il Capitano from Commedia dell’arte, a swaggering braggart who hides his true nature.” Esteban nodded. “Well done, angel. And you must also know the name I used at that time.”

“The Troubadour.”

Seeing the confusion on his old adversary’s face, Edward felt what he imagined must have been like the pleasure Esteban had taken in his criminal exploits. 

“I have been trying like hell to put that moniker behind me. And yet it won’t stay put. Whatever home and whatever job I take, my time as the Troubadour takes it away from me. Sooner or later, someone finds out, and then it is another boarding house, a different floor to mop.” 

He drew closer to Edward.

“I’ve come here, looking to make it go away forever by accepting the Prosperity’s embrace, and even here the name follows.” 

As they stood almost toe-to-toe, Edward could not suppress the training that told him to brace for a fight. How funny that he could not keep from imagining how to protect himself even after having decided to end his own life.

Yet, the intensity in Esteban’s gaze went right to Edward’s spine. He was being scrutinized, assessed, wondered at, challenged. It had been so long since he had felt anything like it.

With the exaggerated emphasis of Alice’s hookah-smoking caterpillar, Esteban asked, “Who… are… you?”

There was no suppressing Edward’s smile. “Oh, come now, how many of your mysteries have I solved in the past, and now you cannot work out even one of mine?”

“My mysteries? Solved by you?” 

“Oh, yes. I think for many people, your theft of Shakespeare’s First Folio from the Titan City Metropolitan Museum of Art was your most impressive caper. But my favorite had to be when you paralyzed the opening night of Pagliacci with tears by flooding the ventilation ducts with onion juice. It was a long trail to follow from those first produce heists of yours.

Comprehension lit up Esteban’s eyes. “No,” he said. “Oh, no, no, no… It cannot be.”

“Can it not?” said Edward.

Esteban raised his hands to Edward’s face, making the shape of a mask. 

With closed eyes, Edward took in the other man’s touch. The fingers against his skin felt like benediction, and it seemed appropriate in that moment that still may have been his last, to give confession. Perhaps absolution might follow. 

“The Scarlet Stranger,” said Esteban. “El Fantasma Rojo. The Crimson Wraith.”

“My name is Edward Burton Finn.” He felt a tremor in his lower lip as he spoke. “I was adopted by William Finn after he rescued me in the guise of his alter-ego, the Crimson Wraith. As a boy, my father shared tales of his adventures, and I imagined myself fighting beside him. 

“So, I created a character of my own, the Wily Wisp. When I finished school, I joined his mission to fight crime in Titan City. Years later, he was injured, and he passed to me the mantle of the Crimson Wraith, which I have carried ever since.”

Esteban let his fingers slide down Edward’s face, cupping his chin, “You have carried a lot, it seems. And it sounds as if your burdens have increased just recently, what with this book that has people saying such terrible things.”

“It was written by the young man who served as my Wily Wisp. We had a falling out. But I don’t think he meant for people to draw the conclusions they did.”

“I take it he was the one who fought at your side when we last stood on this very spot,” said Esteban. He stepped back, withdrawing his touch, leaving Edward’s cheeks cool and vacant once more. 

“Yes,” said Edward. “That was him.”

“And was any of it true, the things that he wrote? It sounded as though the two of you had quite the passionate love affair.”

“You’ve read it?”

“How could I not? After five years in prison, thinking very hard about what I had meant to do with my art and how, time and time again, you showed up to thwart me, someone said they were going to unmask the Crimson Wraith, and I simply could not resist. I’ve had a lot of time to think about how I felt about the two of us, about the games we played together.”

From the way the former Troubadour gazed at him, Edward felt his heart pound with a mighty thump against the walls of his chest.

“It was true,” said Edward. “He was my lover, some fifteen years younger than me.”

“Well, now. How shocking. People will talk. And I do suppose they have. I wonder what they will say next…” 

Esteban gazed back over his shoulder to the face of the Spirit of Prosperity. 

“She’s a funny one, isn’t she, Edward, this goddess who gives and takes at a whim? You think you know what she’s about just to have her show another face. Believe that she dispenses mother’s milk to the worthy, and she will show you just how cruel she can be. But when you think there is nothing in her but misery and mockery…” He turned his eyes once more to Edward, “It turns out the lady has a sense of humor, maybe even mercy.”

“Maybe so,” said Edward. The night wind swirled around them, masked vigilante and costumed criminal, unexpectedly reunited, with none of Titan City below any wiser. “Tell me, Esteban, would you like to leave here with me? There’s a Starpoint Diner not far from here. Tonight just got a little too interesting to end in the way either of us intended.”

“I do believe I would enjoy that. But you should know I have started going by the Anglo version of my name, and I would ask that you use that to refer to me, please.”

“And what name do you now go by then?”

“You can call me,” he said with a smile, “Stephen.”