how I knew. I just feel it. That’s been my whole day so far—doing and thinking stuff that doesn’t make any sense, just ’cause it feels right.”
Manny lets out a slow breath to calm himself. “Yeah. Same.”
Bel’s calmer now, and his regional accent has faded back into generic Britishness. “I’m glad I have no idea what you’re talking about. It sounds, ah, fraught.”
Brooklyn snorts at this, though she then focuses on Manny again. “I’ve heard… something… since I was a child,” she admits. “Muttering, feelings, images. Felt things, too—little twitches and sighs and touches. All for so long that I don’t even really think about it anymore. For a while I talked back. Never told anybody they were love songs to the city, but not everybody needs to know everything.”
Her expression has gone flat, and he understands then what she doesn’t like—not him, but the fact that she has to speak about something so obviously personal. He nods back, trying to convey that he won’t use this against her, but she just shakes her head, annoyed at the situation regardless. That’s when something about her scowl hits Manny. He stops in his tracks. She stops after another step or two, then turns back with visible reluctance. There’s a held breath in her expression this time, as if she’s bracing herself for something. That’s his confirmation.
“Oh wow,” he says. “You’re MC Free.”
“Whaaaaaat.” Bel stops, too, staring at her. “Oh, shit, you are.”
“I’m Brooklyn Thomason,” she replies. It’s gentle, but firm. “MC Free was my stage name thirty years and thirty pounds ago. These days I’m on the city council. I got a JD and a fourteen-year-old and a side hustle renting out vacation property.” Then she sighs, relenting. “But… yeah. That’s who I used to be.”
“My God,” Bel says in a tone of naked reverence. “The greatest of the early female MCs. Lewisham was all over you back then. I grew up on your music.”
Brooklyn’s expression turns faintly sour. “Every time somebody says that to me, I pop another gray hair. You notice I dye it now?”
Bel winces and takes the hint to get over it. “Yyyyyeah, sorry. Shutting up.”
They all shut up for a while, because the hill has winded them. On impulse, Manny lifts his eyes to the tree canopy as they walk. It’s cooler, here in the forest shadows, than it is on the asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks. Strange to think that there are probably wild animals in this forest, like raccoons and maybe deer or coyotes; he’s read that those are making a comeback in some areas of the city. But other kinds of animals abound here, too. How many other people, besides Martha Blemins, have been mugged here? How many beatings, how many stabbings, how many rapes? Whole villages of Lenape were driven away from the city and its immediate vicinity by the Dutch; how many of them died in the process? How much blood and fear has soaked into this old bedrock?
I am Manhattan, he thinks again, this time in a slow upwelling of despair. Every murderer. Every slave broker. Every slumlord who shut off the heat and froze children to death. Every stockbroker who got rich off war and suffering.
It’s only the truth. He doesn’t have to like it, though.
They reach Dyckman after a while. The clotting traffic on the street means that rush hour has started. School’s out, sending packs of same-aged children forth to flow along both sides of the street. No one’s looking at Manny and company as they emerge from the park. If the police did respond to Martha’s call, there’s no sign of them anywhere nearby. Then again, given the Williamsburg, they probably didn’t bother to come.
“So what now?” Manny asks.
Brooklyn sighs. “No idea. But I’ll tell you what: I’m pretty sure there’s a reason all of this is happening, all of a sudden.” She eyes him. “You know the bridge thing is part of this, right?”
Manny stares at her. Bel looks from one to the other of them, incredulous. “The Williamsburg? What, fell down because of—” He gestures vaguely in the direction of the tulip tree rock. “Those squiggly things, and that other woman?”
Brooklyn frowns at him. “Other woman?”
“The one that Mrs. Nosy Parker turned into for a moment. Before you showed up.” He shivers a little. “Never seen anything creepier, except those horrid little white things.”
Brooklyn shakes her head in confusion, and Manny has to explain. It’s actually difficult to find the words for what they