▸ Column · Modern noir Gotham — an advice column Selina Kyle reads between galas and second-story jobs, with Batman cutting in from the dark.
CATWOMAN replies.
The letter
Eight months ago my oldest friend Delphine made me her maid of honor, and since then the bills have not stopped coming. A bachelorette weekend, a dress ordered from some boutique two cities away, two rounds of alterations, shoes dyed to one exact shade of dusty rose, and a bridal shower I co-hosted at a wine bar — where the per-head price quietly doubled after Delphine's mother slid fourteen extra names onto the list the week before. That's somewhere north of $2,300. I teach art to middle schoolers and some of this is already sitting on a credit card I'm still paying off. Now she's emailed the whole party a link to a hair-and-makeup artist at $380 a head and called covering it ourselves our "gift" to her for the honor of standing up there. I love her. The wedding is two weeks out. Is there any way to say no to this last one without detonating fifteen years of friendship?
Catwoman replies
Sugar, let's find who's holding the keys, because that's the whole story. It isn't you. Delphine keeps padding the tab because every time the number climbs, you reach for the card. Her mother dropped fourteen strangers on a wine-bar tab and walked off whistling. They've learned you'll pay. And that word — "gift" — that's the tell. Nobody bills you $380 and calls it a present unless they're counting on you being too polite to read the receipt.
So read it. You've already handed over twenty-three hundred you didn't have. You're an art teacher with a credit card bleeding interest — you're the one the world stepped on here, not the bride with the Montreal dress. The last charge is where you stop. Not with a speech. With a sentence. "I'm thrilled to be there, and I'm doing my own hair." Everybody's got a price, handsome. Yours just turned out to be no.
If fifteen years can't survive you keeping your own wallet, it was never fifteen years of friendship — it was a standing invoice with history. Ivy's robbed banks at my side and never once handed me a bill for it. That's the test. Pay her the truth. Keep the rest.
— Catwoman
Batman weighs in
Selina tells you to trust the friend. Trust is not a plan. It is a hope with nice lighting.
The leak started eight months ago, when you paid the first charge without a ceiling. You never set one. That was the mistake.
Document it. Every line. The dress. The doubled tab. The "gift." Put the total in front of Delphine in writing, and name your cap. No speeches. A ledger.
And watch the mother. She added fourteen guests and disappeared. People who spend other people's money and leave no fingerprints do it twice.
A friendship that holds only while you keep paying is not a friendship. It is a toll. Stop feeding it.
— Batman
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