"He wants it to be a surprise. I'm not sure if you're the sort of person who'd spoil it for him if you had the chance."

He puts on a look of utmost innocence. "Course not."

"Alas," says Bella. "You have not successfully made me sure."

"Could I?"

"Maybe. Not easily, probably."

"Mm." He smiles. "How?"

"If I tell you a sequence of actions to perform," Bella says, "they lose most of their communicative value."

"Nnot if the sequence in question is, 'Pretty please, read my mind,'" he suggests. "For example."

"That wouldn't rule out the possibility of you changing your mind. If anyone knows how to be sincere in the moment and less so a minute later, I'd bet on you."

"Smart cookie. So no, I can't convince you," he says. "Tell me anyway."

"No," Bella says. "It's a surprise. If I'm feeling particularly friendly towards you at the time I leave the bar I might conjure you a note when you won't have an opportunity to spoil it for Alice, but I might not."

"Can't you cheat?" he wonders.

"What, cheat at not letting you tell my surprise? Yes, but I think that would make you even more likely to try to tell him, and it's possible you'd think of a loophole, and I can make the probability of you successfully telling him zero by not telling you, and I am just not that strongly motivated to tell you."

"I don't wanna tell him," he says, leaning back in his seat. "Take a look."

"No," says Bella.

"Do you have a plan for getting out of jail?" Bella asks. "For that matter, how long are you going to cool your heels in Milliways?"

"I'm not in jail," he says. "Technically. I'm in an innnstitution for the criminally insane. And I can walk out anytime I want; their security's a--" he licks his lips "--heh, joke."

"I'm kind of surprised they left you in the makeup and the custom outfit," Bella says. "Don't they usually put everybody in unattractive smocks in those places?"

"Sweetie," he says. "I'm dreaming, remember?"

She tilts her head. "That wasn't given to me as part of my Milliways explanation, but I suppose it could have been incomplete."

"I don't think it's usual," he explains. "But I'm kinnnd of a special case. I think they're afraid of what I'd do, if I came in the normal way. 'Cause every time I'm about to do something particularly, hmm, un-friendly--" he snaps his fingers, "I wake up!"

"Interesting," says Bella. "All part of the lovely security system that renders my alternate willing to let her daughter come here, I suppose."

"I'm dangerous," the Joker says agreeably. "According to whoever runs this place, I am apparently more dangerous than anybody."

"Or at least more interested in being dangerous," Bella remarks. "I rather wonder if you'd pass my alternate's daughter's safety test. You're just a non-magical human, right? Albeit a... psychologically unique sort?"