The Boat Dock

[decker]

[[New Day]]

She was taller than he remembered, but no prettier. She had always been plain to him, and he had never especially liked her. She seemed glad to see him, though. He scolded himself for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He could swear he had gotten rid of her forever. But when he had gone out to the boat dock to see if he could bum some cigarettes off the workers, there she was, waiting at the back of the line with several other passengers to board a boat that was just coming into the harbor.

"Oh, Colin, how wonderful to see you again! I thought I was going to have to go through my whole life without ever seeing my dear brother again, and here you are, just as I'm about to go away! Isn't this just grand? How lucky!" The stupid smile on her face was enough to make Decker sick. He would have kept walking, had she not grabbed her luggage and hurried over to him.

"Well, let me take a look at you! Oh, you are not looking well, not at all! You're so thin...and what in the world happened to your eye? Have you been fighting, brother? Those clothes you're wearing look so old...they look as if they fit you very poorly, as well. I know a wonderful tailor who will fix them for as little as five dollars..."

Decker had to shut her up. "Enough," he said, holding up one grimy hand to silence her. "I gotta go. See you around, I guess." He hoped not.

"Oh, please wait! I have so much to tell you, and who knows when I'm going to see you again...!"

"Just get on your boat, all right? Have a nice life..." He really did not want to talk to her. There was a reason he had left, and it wasn't just because his father was a drunken bastard. His mother was an insufferable old hag and his sister was an annoying little brat. He had no desire to see any of them ever again, and if he had just waited about five more minutes, or set out five minutes earlier, he wouldn't have had to.

"Colin. You don't mean that, do you?" She was already beginning to cry.

"Sure do. There's your boat. Have a good time."

"Oh, but Colin...Colin, I'm going away to marry a man in Belgium. I might never see you again! Don't you have anything nice to say to me before I go? Oh, Colin, I need to tell you..."

"I got nothing to say to you, Blaire. And I don't want to hear anything you have to tell me. You're annoying and I've never really liked you and I couldn't care less about you and our parents, you got that? I'm glad I left so I don't have to deal with royal pains in the ass like you anymore."

She began to cry. People turned to look at the scene. "Fine! Good-bye! I hope you drink so much you die, just like our father did..."

"...He's dead?"

"Yes, he's gone, but you didn't even know, did you? It isn't like you would have cared if you had! And our poor mother just slipped inside herself and she hasn't been well since! Mr. Predovichu is looking after her, she's so weak..."

"Your boat is here."

"You still don't care, do you? Oh, you're awful! You're just awful, Colin O'Boyle!" In tears, she picked up her bags and got onto the boat without a second glance back. Decker didn't bother to tell her she'd left a carpet bag behind. He picked it up, and walked away with it, wondering if he could sell any of the contents.

[Copper]

Copper was shoving her way through the bustling crowd, waving papers above her head to be seen and easily attracting business without having to make a sound. It was one of the greatest selling spots in the city, and she was more than willing to take the risk of getting her ass handed to her by Brooklyn for being there. Of course, the risk was lessened by the many friends she had across the bridge, perhaps even more than in her own borough.

As a very confused looking immigrant approached, constantly looking up at the imposing buildings and keeping her child close to her skirts, Copper stepped toward her and held out a newspaper with a grin. The woman attempted to ask something of the newsgirl, but her foreign language went far over her head. Attempting to hold back a scowl as the woman's voice began to raise (as if that could suddenly make her understand), Copper put up a hand to stop her and held out a paper with a smile and a nod. The woman pursed her lips slightly and brought a coin from her pocket, again attempting to communicate through incomprehensible speech. With a quick nod Copper handed over the paper and accepted the woman's quarter, quickly turning and disappearing into the crowd in the off chance the moron figured out she'd been duped.

Flipping the coin with a devious smirk on her face she made her way farther down the docks, confident she would be making a killing today. Her impudence continued to rise until it was shot down in a single moment at the sound of Decker's voice. Stopping in her tracks she quickly stepped behind a stack of crates, hoping she hadn't been seen.

Listening intently to the entire exchange she couldn't help but smirk at Decker's treatment of what, from what she could tell, was an annoying twit of a woman. At the remark about the father Copper dared to peek around the edge, watching the rest of the sibling interaction with slight fascination. She'd never had family herself, and as such didn't feel qualified to judge how anyone treated theirs. As far as she was concerned, Decker stealing the forgotten luggage was nothing short of brilliant.

[decker]

Just as Decker was about to walk away with his sister's carpet bag, he detected a flit of motion out of the corner of his eye. His eyes darted over to a stack of crates. He wondered if he had seen something, or if he had just imagined it, or if the wind had moved something like a rope or a net. Holding the bag in one hand, he stepped quietly over to the stack of crates. There was a vaguely familiar face behind it...hadn't he seen her talking to Birdie at some point? "Eavesdroppin'?" he asked cooly, but his expression was rather intimidating. "Or, maybe you spend a lot of your time behind crates. No way I can know..."

[Copper]

She shrugged, matching his hard expression and cocking her head slightly. Apparently he didn't know she was Queens, and she was going to try and keep it that way. "Course not, why would I?" She cocked an eyebrow, looking completely unaffected and indifferent. He was right of course. Eavesdropping was a chronic habit of hers, something she was even known for in Queens. But then, so was lying.

Ignoring him a moment she glanced back out from behind the crates in the direction he and his sister had been, intently scanning the crowd before leaning back behind the security of the crates and sighing. She looked no different than any other newsie who was hiding from a disgruntled customer. "I spend plenty of time behind crates the way I sell." She shrugged, flipping her recently acquired quarter before tucking it securly in her pocket. "You up ta somethin' you don't want overheard then?" Turning the situation back on her accuser she raised a curious brow before dropping her gaze to her hands, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it.

[decker]

Decker's eyes followed the quarter with admiration before it dissapeared into Copper's pocket. A newsie with a quarter was a rich newsie. He hardly believed she wasn't eavesdropping. Even if she hadn't ducked behind the crates to listen in on the conversation, she would have heard some of it from where she was. In response to her accusation, Decker scoffed. "How could I? She was screechin' loud enough for the whole damn city to hear us..." Decker looked at the departing ship, now just far enough from the dock that if Blaire had noticed her bag was missing, she couldn't do a thing about it. Out of curiosity, Decker undid the clasps on the bag, opened it just slightly, glanced inside, and closed it again without changing expression. "Interesting," he said, more to himself than to Copper. He wondered if she would ask what was inside.

He noticed she had a cigarette, and suddenly rememberd why he had come down to the docks in the first place. "You got another one of those for me?" he asked, nodding to the cigarette in her mouth. That was the way he always asked for a cigarette, assuming yet somehow not impolite. After that episode with Blaire, he either needed a cigarette or something with a proof value; and the cigarette was more readily avaliable. In this town, you took whatever you could get.

[Copper]

"How could I? She was screechin' loud enough for the whole damn city to hear us..."

Copper offered a small grin at this, acknowledgment that she had in fact over heard, but merely due to proximity. As she took a drag of her cigarette she watched closely as he opened the bag, but managed to keep her dull, uninterested expression as he snapped it shut again. At his comment that the contents of the bag were "interesting" she eyed him, briefly considering that he could be toying with her but unable to resist the question. Posing it as cooly as she could, not even looking at him as she pretended to be distracted by a particularly rowdy group in the distance, she offhandedly asked, "Why is that?"

At his request for a cigarette she immediately obliged, pulling another from her pocket and holding it out to him. It wasn't that she wouldn't normally be so eager to share, but she couldn't deny the hold he had over her as a Queens newsie, even if he was yet unaware of it, not to mention she was finding the Brooklyn boy mildly interesting (which was more than she would say of most people).

[decker]

Decker suppressed a smirk; he had the feeling she would take the bait. "My sister's prolly goin' nuts right about now," he said, looking at the boat as it sailed away. He wondered if one of the distant figures standing at the stern was her, looking back at the dock to see if she could spot the bag she left behind. Decker opened the carpet bag completely to allow Copper a glance inside. "What do we got here? Some silk scarves," he shifted through the contents with little reverence, "some jewelry--ain't that a nice one?--and we got..." he pulled out a thin box tied with a ribbon, "some stationary." He pulled the ribbon off and tossed it to Copper. "Here. Put it in your hair or somethin'." He opened the box and flipped through the contents. It wasn't stationary...they were wedding invitations. Karl Fritzman and Blaire O'Boyle, such and such a date, time, place, RSVP. Poor Blaire, Decker thought cynically.

He took the cigarette when it was handed to him and nodded once in a paltry gesture of thanks. He fished into his pocket and found two loose matches; he struck one of the on his St. Anthony medallion and took a drag on the cigarette. "Cheap stuff..." he commented, looking at the cigarette with distaste. He'd gotten to be a sort of gourmet when it came to cigarettes, ever since he stole a pack of Pall Malls a few months ago. The kind he and the other newsies usually got had never tasted quite as good, but there was a slim chance he would getting away with stealing more of the real expensive kind. he would have to make do with what he had.

[Copper]

Copper ignored his remarks about his departing sibling, her interest now lying exclusively with the mysterious contents of the bag. As he began rummaging through it her fascination quickly waned, seeing nothing far from ordinary to find in such a girl's possession. Though the silks and jewelry could be of some value for him to sell, it wasn't much more than some newsie picked every day out of the pockets of strangers wielding parasols and top hats. When he tossed her the ribbon she barely noticed, but without so much as a thought she did exactly as he suggested, pulling her hair back from her face and tying it in a lopsided and fairly sad looking knot.

When he made a remark about her cigarette being of sub-par quality a slight grimace of disgust tugged at her features. Who was he to turn his nose up at a cheap cigarette? "If you don' want it.." she held her hand out for him to return it, not wanting it to be wasted on some dandiprat.

[decker]

Decker glanced up to see her tying her hair back with the ribbon. As he looked back down at the bag, he thought that he hadn't expected her to do it for real. He guessed the suggestion was a good one, and she'd taken it. The ribbon, he thought, would be the nicest thing a newsie like them would wear on any given day. It was silk or satin or something (what did he know? It was clean, it was soft, it was nicer than the rags they usually wore) and a blue color that matched the one on the invitations. He stuffed the box full of them back into the bag. "Wonder where I could sell this stuff..." A lot of places wouldn't take things from you if it didn't look like you owned it. Pawn brokers and the like would assume you stole it, and of course "I found it" was an overused excuse. Maybe some of the newsgirls would buy the scarves if they liked one of them enough. He tried to imagine Lucky or Smalls wearing a flowered scarf, though, and decided he would have to try his luck in another borough. The jewelrey, though...a lot of mill girls and low-class girls would jump at the chance to own things like that...

"If you don' want it...

"Never said I didn't want it," he said quickly, taking another drag. "Once you've had the good stuff everything tastes cheap. I'm a gourmet when it comes to cigarettes."