I was dreaming of our children as he died, alone and betrayed, on the deserted docks of the kingdom that made him.
They were beautiful, our kids. Two little girls with eyes like their daddy's, clear and disarming. They ran through my dreams in petal pink dresses, echoes of laughter pealing across the hallways of my brain, making me smile in my sleep as I lay curled up in the bunkroom.
It had been twenty-four hours, almost exactly, since our conversation on the rooftop. The day had gone by just like any other, and I had seen him for only a few minutes, minutes in which he took the opportunity to pull me into a conveniently nearby alleyway and drop kisses all over my face like rain. "Can ya come out tonight?" He wanted to know, but I shrank back from the suggestion. Out? With him? And other people watching?
Seeing my hesitation, Pete smiled slightly. "If you don't, that's okay. I know you're not a going-out sort of girl. We'll stay in, just you and me..." The clanging of a church bell made him snap to attention, then curse softly. "Dammit. I gotta go." He looked down at me, expression apologetic.
"That's alright," I said, still unsure if this whole thing was real, if I wasn't going to wake up a moment later, his kisses only a cruel figment of my imagination,. "I'll see you back at the Lodging House."
But I never did.
Messengers were sent along to me later in the evening, expressing Pete's sincere regret that he had serious business to attend to and wouldn't be home until the small hours of the morning, and that I should get my rest and could I possibly forgive him enough to spend time with him tomorrow?
I was upset, but not overly so. I went to bed early, consoling myself with dreams of Pete and I in whatever fanciful situation my over-active imagination could conjure up.
While I was in this liquid, swirling world of dreams, Pete was back on earth, leaning against a discarded barrel with hands jammed in his pockets on a caliginous dock, waiting somewhat impatiently for a business partner that had promised to meet him here. Grumbling something about the good-for-nothing bums that couldn't seem to tell time right from Harlem, Pete shifted, digging for a cigarette in his vest pocket.
His head was still bent downward, hair falling in his eyes, as footsteps sounded hollowly on the warped wood, approaching him slowly.
Pete looked up, cigarette dangling from his lips, squinting. "Aki? That you?"
It was. The girl smiled some as she advanced toward her leader, eyeglasses casting funny looking shadows on her smooth face. "Heya Spot."
Before Pete could open his mouth to let loose the question of Aki's curious appearance in this supposedly secret meeting, a hulking figure materialized behind her. Shaggy hair veiled dark, deep set eyes, and even in the dim light Pete could see the young man's face was lacerated with scars, like he had been attacked by some kind of animal in the past.
"You know what I've always hated about you, Spot?" Aki spoke again, folding her arms neatly over her chest. "You've got this great reputation as a cold-hearted sonovabitch. A real bastard, ya know?" The pair was drawing ever close to Pete as she continued, and as discreetly as he could Pete slipped his fingers around the handle of the knife concealed in his waistband.
"But really, you're nothing but a regular Joe. A sucker, just like a normal person. You love. You fear. You bleed. You aren't fit to be a leader of anythin', much less Brooklyn."
Pete's muscles were coiling into tight springs as her speech went on. This may have been unexpected, but it didn't mean he wasn't going to conquer it. Pete could handle unexpected. "It's been you all along, ain't it?" He asked slowly, smiling a little, just to prove she didn't scare him with her hard, bitter words and that behemoth backing her up.
Aki narrowed her eyes at him, but before she could open her mouth to respond the figure behind her stepped forward, the pistol clenched in his hand gleaming in the soft light. "You're smarter than I thought, Conlon. But it's too late. Game over. Now Brooklyn's gonna have the sorta king it deserves." His finger put pressure on the trigger, and the night exploded with noise and light. Aki stumbled backwards, reaching out for a crate to balance herself. Her eyes burned with gun smoke.
And when it all cleared, Pete lay in a puddle of crimson, a neat bullet hole through his chest. And as he took his last, ragged breath, his blood dripped through the cracks of the worn wooden bones of the dock, mixing with the black waters of the river that whispered and gurgled and sang like it was alive beneath him.
His funeral was surreal. But I suppose an even that we all thought would never happen couldn't have been anything but surreal. It was a gorgeous day, unseasonably warm, with a high, round sun laughing down from the sky at our pain and sorrow as a small group gathered in the otherwise empty cemetery. The turnout—or lack thereof—had surprised me. It was only a few of us who were brave enough to appear at Pete's grave. Everyone else, I suppose, couldn't bring themselves to do it. Going to the funeral of Peter "Spot" Conlon would be like confirming something no one had the heart to believe. To many of the citizens of Brooklyn, his death was nothing more than a nasty rumor, utterly false and unbelievable, something Pete himself would soon clear up. Him? Dead? Never. That was impossible.
But I knew better. I could feel the rough wood of the coffin that held him as I laid my single daisy across the lid. There were no tears. Even there, in that terribly sad place, with a old priest hovering nearby like Death itself waiting to take Pete away from me permanently. Stepping back, I was sandwiched between Aki and the elusive Declan Doyle, a brute of a young man with scars crisscrossing half of his face. I had just met him that morning, and was not particularly impressed with his demanding, forceful nature. He reached up and patted my trembling shoulder.
"Holdin' up okay Rose?" He whispered as the priest began to speak. I nodded, swallowing.
"Just fine, Connor. Just fine."
His hand dropped from my shoulder. Above my head, a gaze bridged the gap between his eyes and Aki's own. They shared a small, confident smile for a split-second before returning their attention to the priest's words, alternately patting my back and stroking my hair like a pair of doting grandmothers.
Brooklyn was theirs. Why shouldn't they have been smiling?
To some people, a place can be so much more than just a simple location, a place on a map. Sometimes, to some people, a place can be like a friend, or a parent, or even a lover. Whether it is New York City or Chicago or Brooklyn or the Moon, some people can love a place to deeply, so passionately, that they pledge their loyalty to it as if it was a living, breathing thing, and then fight for it to the bitter end.
I am not one of those people. Pete was, but not me.
Brooklyn never got me under the spell that it casts on so many of its children. I never felt much passion for the place. I saw it for what it was: dirty, reeking of sweat and death and starvation and poverty, merciless and cruel. No matter how much you loved it, it never truly loved you back.
To me, Brooklyn meant Pete. And once Pete was gone, Brooklyn meant nothing.
That was why I left.