▸ Column · Modern Gotham high society — the syndicate-era underworld dressed up in galas, club memberships, and the Iceberg Lounge social circuit
THE PENGUIN replies.
Replied to by The Penguin, with a rebuttal from Catwoman.
The letter
I run with the same six since our university days — every New Year's gala, every weekend at the lake house, every birthday supper, six years running. Last month I learned the rest of them had quietly spun up a private correspondence that did not include me. I only caught it because Marcus fumbled and posted a photograph from Rosario's wine bar to the old channel by mistake — the whole set of them, glasses raised, without me. I asked Priya outright; she waved it off as "just for logistics." Since then: not a single invitation, while their feeds brim with precisely the evenings I used to belong to. I have replayed the whole year and can find no quarrel — no eruption, no unpaid debt, nothing. Just a slow fade that ended in a tidy little reorganization that left me off the roster. Is there a way to raise it directly without looking desperate, or do I simply accept that a circle can collectively and silently vote a person out?
The Penguin replies
My dear correspondent — what you have suffered is not a "slow fade." It is a hostile reorganization. A breakaway faction convened a second board, and your shares were quietly diluted to nothing. Waugh-waugh! How charmingly amateur of them to leave a paper trail via poor Marcus's fumbling thumbs.
Now. Asking Priya "head-on"? Ghastly. You'd be petitioning the very committee that voted you out — hat in hand, like some pamphleteer begging coin. A gentleman never asks for a seat. He owns the table everyone else is begging to sit at.
So build it. Host the evening of the season — the rare vintage, the room no one else can secure, the guest worth more than all six of them combined. Let your stories fill up. Make yourself the gravity, old bird, and watch their tidy little "logistics" chat curdle with envy. The one who fades you out always assumes you'll waddle off quietly. Don't. Land on top.
And Priya, the spokeswoman with the smooth excuse? Learn what she wants most, and become the only one who can grant it. Heroes come and go. Empires — and the men who host the right parties — endure.
— The Penguin
Catwoman weighs in
Ozzie, sugar, you'd turn a missed brunch into a leveraged buyout. Predictable.
Here's the part the penguin can't see, because he's never once been thrown out of a room he actually wanted to stay in: you don't pick the lock on a door six people quietly bolted. You don't throw the party of the season to win back folks who couldn't be bothered to text you. That's not winning. That's auditioning.
Priya's the tell — "just logistics" is what cowards say while they're already gone. So let them go. Keep the one or two who'd actually answer at 2 a.m., burn the rest for warmth, and walk. A circle that votes in silence already gave you your answer. The exit's the only thing here worth stealing back.
— Catwoman
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