NINE

The crowd of bachelorettes that split onto the street from the pub did so in a cloud of drunken laughter, unaffected by the disgruntled side eye of passers-by, unapologetic in their jubilance. A few of them embraced the bride-to-be, whining about their parting as they began to split in pairs. The majority of the group stayed huddled around the bride, talking loudly about the next place to hit, and should they get a cab or call an Uber?

They were easiest like this. They thought they had safety in numbers, and general drunkenness always made things smooth.

They, being her targets.

Quickly, she brought her hood up, adjusted her gloves, and ducked her head as she meandered towards the group of women together on the sidewalk – head bowed as if bracing the cold wind making a few of the women in short skirts hide their shivers. Quickly and quietly, she moved through and around them, muttering apologies, giving soothing pats. Women weren’t usually bothered by other women. Her female voice made them smile instead of shying away warily. She gave one last apology, an awkward wave, and crossed the road – as if that had been her intention all along.

Her pockets were heavier now, and when she balled her fists into them, she met her newest treasures. Salvaged, as Tom liked to say. Salvaged treasures. Liberated, as she preferred.

She broke into a jog when she reached the other side of the road. It was never wise to hang around too long after a jaunt. She knew the city better now, and she slipped into the nearest side street, nodding to the pair of women digging through a dumpster near the entrance.

“Out hunting?” The taller of the two, missing several teeth, with a scabbing sore above her lip waggled her eyebrows expressively.

“Just playing, Jo.” She responded easily, lightly. Tom told her not to fear any of the other people on the streets with them, but he told her to be aware. Just because they were in the same boat didn’t mean they wouldn’t let you drown to stay afloat. “Sup, Marsha.” She greeted the shorter woman, who she’d seen on a few of the corners some of the working girls occupied. Looked as though Marsha was taking some time off.

Marsha lifted her head, squinting through an impressive black eye. “Fuck off, kid.” She rasped. She looked too thin, and went back to scrabbling through the trash.

Jo shrugged at her, turning back to the heap. Alley sighed, and dug briefly through her pockets. She pulled out a couple of dollar bills and thrust them at the women. Jo’s eyes lit up, and she darted for the money. Alley was faster, yanking it out of her reach. “Wait. Get something for her face, okay?”

Marsha looked up slowly, giving her an unreadable look. “You’re still with Tommy?” She asked lowly. The red-headed woman had been beautiful once, Alley could see it. But weeks, months, living down here tended to take away everything you had. Including looks.

She debated lying. Tom believed in honour among thieves, and part of their deal was to share all resources implicitly between the two of them. Giving away something wasn’t exactly in either of their best interests, but Marsha obviously knew Tom, and Alley couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the too-thin woman. It was Tom’s grace that was keeping Alley from becoming Marsha. She wondered if the other woman realised that too. “I’m my own person, Marsha. You want it or not?”

Jo and Marsha exchanged a look, before Marsha nodded. This time when Jo reached for the money, Alley gave it to her. “You’re lucky, Alley Cat.” Jo said, grinning viciously, the stretch of her mouth threatening to split open her scab.

Alley resisted the urge to laugh hysterically. She managed a wry smile, backing down the alley. “So, I’ve been told.” When the women were out of sight, she headed for the nearest fire-escape. Her body had grown used to this; hauling herself up the sides of buildings, keeping her balance on thin railings, quietly moving through a city that never slept.

That first day, after the sun had risen, she’d fallen unconscious in the little den Tom occupied on the roof of his building. And it was his building, just like that alley was his, just like the city was his, just like she was his too. Tom had been living on the streets of Brooklyn longer than she had been alive, and he knew more about the city and its people than anyone else. Tom also knew how to survive.

And he’d been teaching her.

It had been hard. But truthfully, she savoured every aching muscle, every strained breath, every dreamless, exhausted sleep, because it meant she didn’t have to think about what she had left behind, what had been taken from her.

For a few weeks after the night it all ended, her face had been plastered across the city. She saw herself on television, she heard her old name on the radio, she walked past missing posters with her face in black and white taped to walls, and every day she had wondered if she should let herself be found.

Tom had told her they would forget, and whilst she didn’t want to believe him, with the coming of the New Year, all traces of her seemed to be taken down and stored away with the Christmas decorations.

He had been, as always, right. She had just been a face and an old name. They hadn’t really cared.

Besides, Alley Cat was better. Newer. Bolder. Smarter. Stronger.

Tom taught her how to steal, how to make her fingers deft and swift. He had taught her to scavenge and stockpile, to barter and bargain and wheedle and lie and charm. He taught her how to build a fire with damp card and old wood, how to pitch a tent, how to patch up holes in roofs. He taught her to hold her own weight, how to run fast and think quicker still. He taught her where to hit to hurt, and where to aim to kill. He taught her to stop being afraid.

His friends called him Ginger Tom and they laughed at her; the little Alley Cat, trailing beside and behind their hero. Because Tom was a hero. He was hardened and shrewd, but he wasn’t cruel and he commanded respect that others could only admire. To others, she was lucky. Lucky to have his patronage. Lucky to be kept out of the darker parts of New York’s underbelly. Lucky to be alive.

She hauled herself over the brick lip of the apartment block, balancing for a moment on the very edge. As always, with risk so close, the faint lines over her heart stung with phantom pain. Tom said it was psychosomatic. She didn’t really remember much about That Night, but Tom told her that when she’d come to him, she’d been bruised and scratched, and he figured she had done it to herself.

She didn’t remember it; but the now-healed scarring over her heart said otherwise. Nine lines, the raised pink of scar tissue. Nine lives, that had been taken – ten, if she included her own. Absently, she pressed her hand flat over the scars, and imagined her heart stopping.

The sound of the pigeons cooing drew her from her reverie, and she headed towards the wire cage that housed the birds during the night. When dawn came, she would set them free, and they would spiral upwards in a grey smoke-like flurry of wings. She crouched before the coop, and stuck her fingers through the holes in the wire. As always, the few that were awake began to sing nervously. She unsettled the birds, and if she was up on the roof when it was time for them to roost, they would delay the act, and sit in clumps out of reach, watching her with anxious, beady eyes.

“Stop scaring the birds!”

Tom’s barked order made her grin to herself, and she stood, swivelling on the balls of her feet to meet the glower of the old man hanging out of the empty water tower they called home. Tom glared at her a moment longer, before ducking back into the small, rusting structure. The whole apartment block was in a state of disuse, and because the residents were too poor to think to worry about anything but keeping their own roof over their heads, Tom had lived atop the roof without trouble for years.

She took her time heading towards the tower, part of her revelling in the small rebellion. Inside, it was still warm, and the small camper stove’s flame was flickering merrily. That camper stove and it’s faint smell of gas, and its tiny, hardworking flame sometimes seemed to be the nicest and friendliest thing in the city, and she thought she might never sleep a wink if not for its hard work.

Tom was pouring over his box of trinkets, and he had his magnifying lens up to his eye. When he looked up at her entrance, his watery blue eye was massive and knowing, and she felt the guilt she thought she’d conquered fill her chest again.

“I gave away some bills.” She said, without preamble. The eye sharpened and she shoved her hands deep into her pockets. “To Marsha. For her eye.” Tom grunted, the eye softening just enough for her to take another step inside. “But I have other things.” She emptied her pockets onto the flat of her pillow.

The thin gold chain of a delicate Tiffany bracelet had tangled around a small crystal topped pin, and she gently tugged it free, and laid it flat beside a few hair ties and a slim watch. The rest was half a protein bar, still in its wrapper, and a crust of sandwich which she would give to the pigeons before she let them out. Without the crumpled bills, it was definitely a smaller taking than usual, but she figured the bracelet would be enough.

Tom’s grunt this time was definitively positive, and she sat back on her haunches as he reached for the pin and the bracelet. “Is it real?” she asked, eyeing the way the small clear stone winked in the light of the small oil lamp on the table.

He breathed on the small stone, and held it up to check the condensation. He frowned again, this time in frustration. “It’s too small to tell. Take it to the shop when you go out.” She nodded, and broke the bar in half, offering him the untouched end. He took it, and shoved it into his mouth whole with a happy grumble.

Another thing she had learnt; how to decipher the wordless noises Tom made. Often when he grumbled he wasn’t actually grumbling, and often when he smiled he wasn’t actually smiling.

She leant back against the cardboard that insulated the water tower, and watched him work. His hands, though spotted, and scarred and knobbled from age, were deft and agile, and he kept the first two nails of his left hand long and sharp enough to pick unerringly through the trinkets at his desk. The late hour was beginning to wear on her, and as her eyelids began to droop to the quiet clinking and humming, she knew that dawn was drawing nearer.

She dragged herself upright, disentangling herself from the pile of ragged blankets she usually slept beneath, and left the tower.

The first vestiges of the dawn were beginning to bleach the darkness of the night sky a gentler indigo. She hadn’t seen the sun properly in a little while. Jaunts were always riskier in the daylight, people more alert, more police on the streets, less shadows to hide in.

The birds were waking properly now, warbling their morning song, and she approached the roost again, feeding crumbs of the crust through the wire. They squabbled for the tiny morsels, and as the sun began to become visible again, she opened the hatch. The pigeons soared skywards without delay, and began their circling spiral out to the city.

She watched them for a moment, picking at the holes in her sweater and idly imaging flying through the city, above the muck and grime. Absolute freedom.

“It’s real. Low carat and shit clarity though.”

Ernest, the owner of the pawnshop on East 18^th, looked up to give her a hard stare. By now, of course, she was well used to these stony looks. They usually preceded bargaining, and she was also used to the clipped tones in which he conducted his business. Ernest asked no questions, and demanded none in return, but she suspected he got as much pleasure out of the act of haggling as she did. The first few times she’d come to East’s Pawn Shop, it had been with Tom, and she’d flinched every time the two men had swore and spat as they argued the price of a treasure.

Now, Tom trusted her enough to go herself, and now she was confident enough to return victorious. “One hundred.” She began first, without preamble.

He drew himself up behind the dirty plastic window and glowered. “You must be fucking delusional, girl.” He shook his head disbelievingly; “forty is good enough.”

“You’re criminal.” She told him, jabbing her gloved fingers at him. One of the knuckles was already worn through, and she could see the knob of her own finger through the fabric. “Eighty-five.”

“No – you are a criminal.” He told her, and she shrugged. It was true. “Forty-five.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Give it back. I’ll take it to Abraham’s.” He shook, he spat, he muttered something under his breath. She would do no such thing, because John Abraham and his assistant did ask questions, but it was a good bluff. “C’mon, give it back. I’m only ten, and I need to eat…” she adopted a patented starved-and-hard-done-by look and wobbled her bottom lip.

“Oh, fuck off.” He told her, “Cut the crap, you know it don’t work. Fifty-five.”

She dropped the act. “Seventy.”

“Sixty.”

“Sixty-five.”

“No.”

“Fine.”

She shoved her arm through the small opening, and they shook hands. He opened a cabinet and dropped the pin and his diamond tester into it, and then wheeled himself over to the till. She watched him count the crisp bills, and tucked her fists back into her pockets. “If I have a bracelet, real gold-”

“How many carats.” He interrupted her casual comment, not even looking up from the money.

“I don’t know. But it’s Tiffany,” She continued, “What would you recommend for, ah, cleaning it?” By cleaning, she meant getting rid of the small engraved initials on the clasp.

He hummed in genuine thought, casting a cursory eye behind him to the racks of tools and materials. “I would recommend at least 800 grit sandpaper.” As he spoke, he pulled off a strip of the stuff, and tucked it into the envelope he was placing the money in. “But it might degrade the value.” As in, she would have to pay cost for using the sandpaper before she brought in the bracelet.

“By how much?” she demanded, taking the envelope from him and tucking it in-between her waistband and stomach.

He smiled slightly, nothing but a faint upturn of his lips, and it didn’t quite touch his eyes. “Only by a couple of dollars.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ll remember you said that. Maybe you should write it down somewhere too. Just so you don’t forget.”

The not-quite smile disappeared. “Get out of my shop, Alley Cat.”

She grinned, and flicked him a lazy salute, shouldering her way out of the door and onto the street. She drifted into the foot traffic, letting the current of pedestrians carry her towards the nearest alley. Habitually, she checked the full trash can by the entrance, flicking her eyes over the discarded wrappers and coffee cups. Her stomach growled, but her pride reminded her of the money in her pocket, and she told herself to keep walking.

With the errand done, she was at a bit of a loss of what to do. It was still early – for her, anyways – and she paused to squint at the time through a shop window. Nearly three-thirty in the afternoon. Very early. She didn’t normally leave the tower until well after sundown, and she yawned involuntarily at the thought of the cosy den.

Before she kept walking, one of the girls behind the counter caught her eye and wrinkled her pert, button nose. Automatically, she ducked her head and turned to go, but not before catching the edge of her reflection in the clean glass. She knew what the girl saw. Another vagrant. One of the dirty, unwashed displaced peoples that weren’t supposed to go in, or even be near high-end, five-dollar-coffee-bakery-boutiques.

Her eyes looked too big for her face, standing stark against the dirt on her skin, and the holes in her obviously unwashed clothes were evident and – she realised with a startling flush – embarrassing. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt the sick, hot, almost-shameful emotion. 

A flash of memory; damp sheets that weren’t her own, and a boy’s face wrinkled in the same disgust. A cry of outrage, and her own answering, humiliated sobs. A warm touch, a motherly reassurance-

She stilled.

A sharp bump against her shoulder, and an aggravated huff of the pedestrian she had inadvertently inconvenienced made her shift automatically to the side. She kept moving until her back had flattened against a tall, industrial piece of metal so cold she could feel it through her sweater. Above her, the 7-train rattled and rumbled past. In the shadow of the above-ground tracks, she blinked until she was seeing straight.

She hadn’t thought about Peter Parker since… then. Since The Night.

But the memory of him, appalled at the fact she had wet his bed in the throes of a nightmare, was so clear. That had been… almost six years ago. She hadn’t seen him in almost a full year now. She was tiptoeing around the centre of all the other things. If she thought too long or too hard, then all the other things would come back too-

Pine and a wet, metallic tang filled her nose-

Peter. Peter Parker and the feeling of his hand wrapped around her own. Peter Parker and the reluctant kindness he had extended her. Peter Parker and a few dollar bills, and the playground at the end of their street, and soda from Delmar’s.

That wasn’t- he was-

The sickening smell went away, and she kept thinking about other things, about the scraps of Peter that were safe to think about it. Above her, another train roared by, and she shook with its passing, and hoped that her memories weren’t too shaken by it. Hoped that nothing had been dislodged.

It was three-thirty in the afternoon, and she wiped away the sweat on her brow that had formed despite the chill in the air and told herself she wouldn’t be embarrassed again.

Tom didn’t say anything when she came in just after sundown. It would have been strange if she hadn’t noticed the faint sheen to his eyes, and hadn’t seen him running a finger over a worn photo she’d never quite been able to look at properly.

She wasn’t the only one worried about shaking things loose.

Tom had fought more battles than the ones she saw. Tom had fought a real war, with guns and bullets and bodies and blood. Sometimes, she would be awoken by his yelling. Tom still fought the war sometimes, still saw the jungle and the Vietcong, in sleep and in wake. Sometimes when he taught her things, he’d call her soldier, with that sheen to his eyes. Once, when he’d been showing her how to hold a knife, his old fingers had stilled around hers, and he’d whispered; “they are getting younger, Jack. They’re sending children to die.”

She didn’t know who Jack was. Wasn’t sure she’d ever know.

But there was something about the sheen, and the unpredictability of his moods when it came over him, that made her antsy. It itched at her feet and her arms, and made her twitchy. She dropped the money and sandpaper in front of him, unsurprised by his lack of reaction, and left the tower again.

Still, the itchy, twitchy feeling remained, and she reached up to touch her temples. Keep it locked tight, keep your head screwed on, don’t let things come loose. She made a sound, something slipping loose from her throat that she didn’t recognize. The pigeons cooed anxiously behind her, and she turned to watch them, even as it kicked up their fussing more.

She didn’t want to disturb Tom, and as her skin prickled and itched again, she left the roof.

The subway was crowded, perhaps a little more than usual, and it was only after she surfaced in Manhattan she realised why. There had been a plane crash – not too far from here – and if the screens at Time Square were to be believed, it had involved heroes and villains, and Tony Stark. Iron Man.  

Peter used to have Iron Man posters stuck up all around his room, and she could still picture the proud look he got whenever he replayed the events of the Stark Expo he had attended, and had his brush with the man in the suit of armour.

She had once felt the same awe he had.

One of the first things Tom had taught her was to spit at the idea of them. The ‘Avengers’. The world’s mighty defenders. Superheroes.

Crock of shit. Tom had snarled with real vitriol. They only care for their image. If they were serious about it, tell me why we’re living like this.

She hadn’t needed Tom to tell her that. She had stopped believing in heroes, in defenders, in avengers on The Night that Alice had died. If they were really heroes, then the men that had- her family- her mo-

There was that dangerous, shaking sensation. She held her hands to her temples again and turned away from the glow of the square. Don’t shake anything loose.

Avenge: to inflict harm in return to an injury done to oneself or others.

Behind her, footage of a burning wreckage smouldered red against the night. A dangerous notion began to grow in her mind.