"KELLY! KELLY!" Spot Conlon bellowed as impatient and demanding as he had always been. The tall young man stomped through the Little Shamrock, ducking under low hanging chandeliers and jumping over the drunks that overstretched across the bar stools.
"Conlon, stop ye shouting. You aren't down on the docks lad." A shout with a clank of an empty glass came from behind the counter. A short woman with dark curls piled onto her head in a way that always seemed just ready to tumble down glared at Spot, as she wiped clean another glass. Spot halted his beeline through the saloon and spun around to tip his hat politely to the woman. Remembering his manners, if only minutes too late.
"Apologies Mrs. Julia, Jack in the back?" He smiled at her. It was still early afternoon, time for the dinner crowd but not quite the seedier and darker drinkers of the night. Just the right shift for Quigley's wife Julia, a woman. Though Spot nor Jack were not fooled. Woman or not they both knew Julia Quigley, not her husband, ran the Little Shamrock and two other saloons in the city. She reminded Spot of Blue's mother, rounder and sterner than his own but always ready with a bowl of food and sound advice and maybe a knock around the ears.
"Been here for the last quarter of an hour, wouldn't take dinner until you lads got here." Julia arched a disbelieving eyebrow, as if no man had ever refused her food but waved Spot down the bar nonetheless.
Tucked behind one of the pillars, sitting under one of the only wall lamps that was bright enough to read or write under was Jack Kelly. The man's hat sat on the table in front of his writing hand, as he scribbled madly with a well-used pencil. He stopped mid scribble to look up as Spot's approaching footsteps quieted.
"Shouting my name like a headline makes me think you do miss being a newsy after all." Jack clucked his tongue.
"Kelly, you've got to do something about that girl." Spot huffed as he kicked out his own chair to fall into it.
"Who, Laces?" Jack frowned, popping the pencil behind his ear.
"Yes, Laces. Wild, impulsive, reckless, inconsiderate girl." Spot growled through gritted teeth pulling out a thick letter out of his coat pocket. Jack leaned back in his chair, rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck while studying his friend's agitated movements. Spot jerked the poorly folded sheets of the letter out of the envelope, knocking his elbow into the chair behind him. Jack swallowed back the irrational surge of jealousy at the thickness of it, reminding himself she wrote him twice as often as she did Spot.
"Who's been chirping in your ear there Conlon?" Jack sighed warily. Spot glowered up at his friend as Mrs. Julia trudged over to them. She unceremoniously plunked two glasses of a dark ale on the table.
"You lads best not get caught up in your letters and forget about dinner." Mrs. Julia warned.
"No ma'am." Jack and Spot replied instantly together, reacting to her tone and the lithe of her voice in a way they hadn't done since they were children. She gave them a satisfied smile and wander away from them again.
"She's teaching at the lodging house, parading around the city as if she's untouchable." Spot threw his letter on the table, angry. Jack had seen this brewing, since he read bits from his last letter out loud about her traveling on the elevated train and being in the nest. About how she had finally become a bird. Conlon was protective and controlling and neither attribute worked well from afar.
"Conlon, all of them are watching her." Jack tried patiently.
"They aren't, you know they aren't! You know the moment she became one of them, they stopped. You know, Jack Kelly, what happens when she believes she is safe and capable and untouchable. You and I both know what happens to her, to girls like her…" Spot let the memories hang in the silence.
"She is not a girl anymore Spot. She was never really quite a girl, even when we found her." Jack tried to argue.
"I found her, on the steps of my lodging house. I found her, a waif, a crying child, with no name and more bruises than I care to remember." Spot sorted through the sheets.
"That was before the strike," Jack tried to start again, picking up his hat to clear room for the flurry of paper.
"And where was she during the strike, Kelly? Where had she gotten off to?" Spot demanded.
"The refugee." Jack sighed resigned to the tirade. Spot pulled up one of the sheets and started to read from it out loud.
"Some days I offer to go to the shops for Casey, to Ladies Mile not because I enjoy shopping. But for the chance to wander, explore Manhattan. To see the city, but still not really be seen. A lady and a newsboy share a common experience of going unnoticed. But as a lady, I'm left alone, maybe even revered and protected." Spot read, his voice dropping to a sneer by the word protected. "You know, as well as I know Kelly, that even a lady is easy prey. Especially a lady not taking care of herself."
"You do not know she's not being careful." Jack protests.
"She's never once been careful. Not the whole time I've known her." Spot sighed, suddenly sounding tired.
It was the second letter she had written Spot since she had started writing earnestly. Spot's two letters had been long, descriptive tales of information and travels, reports from a bird. She was teasing and brash, a bit wilder. The way she had always been with Conlon. Jack's letters were more intimate, personal retellings of her afternoons and her nights with a yearning of someone who missed him. She wrote to Jack as if she was talking to him. His letters were drawing him to her, while Spot's letters were keeping him with her. In her letters she was Laces, but the men were receiving other reports and newspaper clippings of Miss Audrey and the two were hard to reconcile. Jack knew Spot was right. Unrestrained Audrey Kai was reckless. She had always been.
"What would you have me do?" Jack leaned across the table and lifted the beer up to Spot. Spot huffed out an aggravated breath before lifting his own beer. The men drank silently until David Jacobs appeared, holding his own ale.
"How is she?" David asks pleasantly ignoring the tension.
A pair of brown and blue eyes snap up to the young teacher, each ready for a fight. But David had long ago grown accustomed to his companions always being ready for a fight.
"She is being reckless." Spot gritted out.
"Ah, so she is being herself." David smiled patiently.
"I can write to her to take care, to not travel alone and at night, to do all the sensible things she should be." Jack pressed his pencil to paper again.
"I've written to O'Connell." Spot declared.
"Oh that will be welcomed by her." Jack grumbled.
"He is where we are not." Spot shrugged unapologetically.
One of Mrs. Julia's daughters, the youngest and quietest appeared with three plates of food. She shyly smiled at David as she patiently waited for Spot and Jack to clear their letters from the table.
"Has the lake melted back in central park?" David asked casually, trying to coax news from the letter that would not cause more commotion.