A Night to Remember -open-

[Beatrice Michaels]

Night. 11:30 pm.

A chilling wind raised the hairs on the back of Bea's neck. It had been a warm day, but now Bea wished she had worn a warmer jacket to the office that day. Between working late and getting to central park she had not had time to go home and change before heading to central park. She wore a dark blue dress and jacket with a string of pearls around her neck. Her light blond hair was pinned up, showing off her high cheek bones and slender neck. She carried briefcase like purse which held folders and documents of leads and stories she was working on. She had the originals locked away safely in her apartment.

Bea reached her destination slowly as she was fifteen minutes early. Bea was normally always early to any appointment or date she had. Normally it was so she could quickly become familiar with the situation before too many people came and overwhelmed her. Tonight it was so she could scout possible escape routes if the night outing turned dangerous. She did not always expect it to become too dangerous for her, but the life of a reporter was difficult sometimes, and tonight she was meeting with a member form the local mafia.

A new speakeasy had opened up and she had been tipped off about the Midnight Cabaret. She also heard that it was owned not by the mafia, but by someone else. This could cause problems as the mafia technically controlled the underground and if there was a new fish in the waters, there was a potential for it to turn ugly. Bea wanted the story before things would get out of hand and innocent people would start getting hurt.

She sat down on the bench, placing her bag to her left side. It was too dark to see her reporter's pad, but Bea had practice writing in the dark. So now she waited. Part of her knew that the mobster was not going to show up. The only question was, who was?

[Paddy Maguire]

Paddy landed one swift left hook on on the punch bag, then another, then another. The hooks were fast and direct, though not quite as powerful as he would have liked. Still a lot better than the week before when everyone was laughing at his limp wrists. But of course his hooks ought to have gotten better, he had been practising for hours into the evening each day to perfect them, and he was almost there. If only the others could see him now, perhaps the Coach would let him into the ring to fight a match and not just to sweep the place after one. But still the punches weren't perfect, and what if his wrists went limp again? Paddy was never good at performing under pressure, especially when under the scrutiny of rest of them.

After giving the punch bag one last hit Paddy took of his gloves and tied them neatly together. Walking over to the store room he placed the gloves lovingly in their rightful place and checked to see whether everything was neat and tidy. Once satisfied he left the training hall, switching off all the lights and locking up all the doors and windows on his way out. He had practised enough for that day.

The night was colder than Paddy had expected it to be. He zipped his jacket all the way up and lifted his collar to shield his neck from the bitter breeze. His joints ached from the training he had done that day, but of course they always ached. Putting his hands in his pockets, Paddy finally made his way home.

The quickest way back to the squalid apartment both he and his mother shared was by cutting through Central Park. A beautiful place to be during the day but at night it was almost hauntingly scary. The darkness of the park contrasted starkly with the fluorescent lights that adorned the rest of the city. One was almost rendered blind walking through the trees.

Making his way swiftly down the winding paths that cut in between the foliage, Paddy kept and eye out for any dark moving shapes and an ear out for any strange sounds. It was then that his eyes fell upon a figure, a female figure, sitting rather stoically on a bench a hundred or so metres away. His eyebrows rose in surprise. What was a woman doing out here half an hour to midnight? Was she okay? Perhaps she needed help, and of course Paddy was always eager to help. Hastening his pace to a jog, he made his way swiftly to the figure. It was definitely a woman, he could tell for sure now, perhaps not that many years older than himself. Did she not know how dangerous the park was at night?

"Are you okay?" he called out to her when he was only a few metres away. "You're not lost are you?"

[Beatrice Michaels]

The night became chillier as Beatrice sat on her park bench and she started to wonder whether or not this source was actually going to arrive. Little did Bea know that her source was currently in a holding cell as a suspect to a murder case. Of course he would be let free by the next morning, but that would be too late. Bea relaxed her posture a little as she wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm. Soon she would leave. Waiting any longer seemed stupid and she really did not want to get sick. She was about to bend over and grab her bag when she heard a voice.

Turning, Bea saw a young man, maybe 17 or 18 years of age. He looked a little scrawny from where she was sitting, but there was also a charming, sweet look to him. Bea doubted he would try to rob her, but even still she stick her hand onto her bag and held on to the small knife she kept in there just incase. She had never used it before, but her dead fiancé had given it to her a few years back.

“No, I am not lost,” Bea replied. She looked him over before raising an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a little young to be out so late?” Bea knew that she could easily sound like a hypocrite. She was only 21 herself and a young 21 at that. Her street smarts had developed at a later age due to the fact that she had grown up and lived in an extremely safe neighborhood most of her life. She had not even lived a full year in New York. The only thing that changed was that her love had died and now she had nothing to truly live for other than her goal of being a famous reporter, and for that she had put her life in danger a couple of times. Bea did not want to die, but she was willing to risk her life and wellbeing for a story any day.

[Paddy Maguire]

Paddy frowned ever so slightly at the woman's question. He definitely was not too young! He was perfectly capable of looking out for himself. After all he was training to be a boxer, sort of, so only idiots would want to mess with him.

"Well..." Paddy began, trying his best to think up a reasonable retaliation. "Well aren't you a little too... lady to be out this late." It wasn't quite the verbal assault that he had been hoping for, or as grammatically correct as he probably would have wanted, but the Irish boy was never very good with his words. He didn't really need to be with the career he had in his sites.

"There are some bad folk around here at night time," he said matter-of-factly, nodding his head as if to confirm the fact. "Just the other day me mate Charlie... well he's not really me mate but anyway, he almost got robbed by some hobo by those bushes over there." Paddy pointed over to some bushes in the distance that were rustling suspiciously. "The guy came at him with a butter knife and Charlie just bonked him over the head like this..." He demonstracted the action by lifting his fist up in the air and bringing it viciously back down again.

"I think the hobo was a dwarf though," he added, looking somewhat contemplative as he tried to remember the story correctly. "To be honest it was pretty mean of Charlie to bonk a dwarf on the head like that because he's a pretty big guy. But Charlie's a bit of a twat like that..." Paddy shrugged and looked down at the gravel lain upon the path, kicking at a few stray stones absentmindedly with his shoes. After a few silent seconds had gone past he looked up again, a slightly bemused expression upon his face.

"What was I talking about again?"

[Beatrice Michaels]

“You are a funny one,” Bea responded, laughing a little at his comic retelling of a weird story. A dwarf hobo who robs people. She had not run into anyone like that. Her hand moved away from the knife in her bag as she faced the young man more directly, though still staying seated.

“I suppose ladies should be sitting at home making your supper,” Be said confrontationally. “There is nothing here that can harm me!.” Bea knew that that was not true, but she did not want to appear weak infront of this nosy young man, even if his intentions were good. And yes, maybe they were good and if she were not so focused on her job and annoyed that she had waited out in the cold for so long then maybe she would have appreciated his concern. But at the moment, Bea was slightly irritable, and unless this man offered her a warm cup of coffee and a cozy place to sit before she walked home, she did not care who he was.

Well, that had been a little harsh, but she was sticking to that thought and nothing could change her mind! Bea could be stubborn like that sometimes and she pitied the boy for meeting her under these situations.

“Now, don’t you have a mom back home who is probably worried sick that some dwarf hobo is going to rob you?” Bea asked, a little too sarcastically perhaps.

[Paddy Maguire]

Paddy blushed slightly when the young woman laughed at his anecdote. He hadn't intended it to be funny, in fact he had hoped that it would be a harrowing tale of the dangers of wandering around in Central Park during late hours of the night. If only he had remembered before he had started the story that the hobo was a dwarf and that Charlie was a bastard. Hell, how could he ever forget that Charlie was a bastard?

"No I don't expect ladies to be doing that!" Paddy quickly said in an apologetic manner. Although, in all honesty, 'sitting at home cooking supper' was in his opinion quite a reasonable thing to expect ladies to be doing. But of course he didn't want to tell this particular lady that. He imagined she was one of those newfangled strong and independent types, femenemists or something. Paddy didn't want to look anti-femenemist.

"I do have mom back home..." Paddy replied, shuffling his feet on the gravel. "But she don't know about that hobo story..." Then, with a sense of deficiency he looked back up at the young woman. "What about you lady?" he asked accusingly, "you ain't that much older than me! What are you, twenty or somethin'?"

[Beatrice Michaels]

"You could say 20 or something," Bea responded with a smile. It was rude to ask a lady her age, but she would forgive him this one. She supposed they were close enough in age that his question was not meant as insulting. Bea remembered the days when she would walk down to the dock, only a minute from the main gates of the naval academy, and sit on the small floating dock bordering the fence. it would be just around sunset and she would sit there with Michael on the other side and they would watch the boats sail by as the sun painted the bay orange.

"My mother is back in Annapolis. I'm here alone," Bea responded. Perhaps it was not smart to tell anybody that she lived alone, especially anybody she met at night, but she was not always the brightest pumpkin on the porch. "So, what are you doing here so late at night?" Bea asked, somewhat interested. As a journalist, it was her job to find the truth through curiosity and questions.

[Paddy Maguire]

Annapolis... Paddy's geography wasn't all that great but he had a feeling that Annapolis was not in the State of New York, which meant (in his eyes at least) that is was pretty far away. Paddy had never left New York State, hell he'd barely ever left New York City. His parents had arrived in America before he was even born and so he had never had the chance to see anything beyond the shores of Staten Island or past the margins of Delaware County.

Paddy could imagine how difficult it would be to live away from one's ma. He could never leave his own ma alone, because that's what she would be if she didn't have him around to keep her company. And living alone here in the Big Apple, especially as young as the young woman Paddy could see sitting in front of him, hell that would be another thing entirely.

"Oh," he said, snapping out of his thoughts when he noticed the lady had asked a question. "I've been practising," Paddy answered, the slightest hint of pride tinting his voice. "I'm training to be a boxer you see. Like my Pa." The pride was now evident when he began talking about his father. "They called him 'Fire Fists' Maguire, they did. He was the greatest."

[Beatrice Michaels]

Bea had to suppress a laugh. This boy, a boxer . . . ? That was a little surprising. "And what do they call you?" she asked. Perhaps that could be considered a little rude, but within the short time they had been talking, Bea had started to warm up to him. There was a boyish charm and innocence about him that Bea had not found in such a big city.

Finally Bea stood up from her bench. Sitting there looking up at him had become tiring and she was close to finding a warm place to rest instead of staying out in the cold. Even though Bea acted like she was tough, even she was susceptible to illness and common colds. She pulled her jacket closer to her, berating herself for forgetting her gloves. So she stuck her hands into her skirt pockets. The tip of her nose was already turning slightly pink like the color of her cheeks.

[Paddy Maguire]

Paddy shrugged at her question, a blush rising up in his cheeks, which were already flushed pink from the bitter night air.

"Aww they don't call me anything yet," he answered rather meekly. This statement, however, was not entirely true. People called him a lot of things, especially at the Boxing Club. 'Towel boy' was one of them, 'little Irish pansy' was another. Of course Paddy wasn't going to tell the girl that.

"I work at this Boxing Club you see, down along that'a way," he explained, pointing with his thumb to the approximate area. "They don't really let me train much in the day, because, you know, you have to be a payin' customer to use all the facilities and stuff durin' the day. But because I work there the manager lets me use the equipment and all that when the club closes, as long as I lock up proper when I leave."

When the girl stood up Paddy rushed to assist her. Not that she needed any assistance, it wasn't like she was an old lady, but the young man had been taught manners by his ma and he wasn't going to let them go to waste.

"You want me to walk you home?" he asked. "I don't mind or nothin'. It's getting pretty late and all."