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"If my brother's dead, I am not alive. If I'm alive, my brother can't be dead."
- Andrew Kozma
•-•-•-•-•
May 23rd, 1962
The story goes that on a particularly rainy morning in 1934, under the cavernous beauty of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a preacher's daughter met the son of a sailor. Both were too captivated by the frescos of Michelangelo to notice the other, that is, of course, until one ran headfirst into the other, with the person at fault being a subject of constant debate in his childhood.
Mother had loved all the great renaissance painters, an appetite matched only by her veracious love of jazz. It only made sense then, that she had named his sister what she did.
Mona Lisa.
Mother had died just before Mona turned 7. He had been 11 at the time, and not as knowledgeable about the concept of death, of its finality and permanence. Nielton was a great deal more knowledgeable now, of the goings-on of death. Far more familiar than he would like to be. That knowledge is what's led him to this point, to this very moment. To the crackling sound of his sister's biting voice.
"You have nothing of her in you."
So, it was about Mother.
Again.
Mona has always been so serious, so sullen. She's too intense for a girl of nearly 15.
"I'm not to blame for the fact that I look nothing like her."
Cassandra King was a woman of surpassing beauty, surpassing grace. Eyes the color of brass and skin an unforgettable shade of sable. She was a woman who was, indeed, impossible not to love. To love her was to recognize every fault line and fissure in her perfectly crafted facade and love her not in spite of, but because of those many craggy secrets hidden in the demure tilt and coy intellect of her smile.
He wishes to be worth even half of her.
Cassandra King was a wonderfully ambitious woman with a wandering eye, and he is a result of that, no matter whose name he bears.
"You haven't even a heart, Nielton."
Mona's so angry, so vividly angry, so clearly their mother's daughter. The emotion richly colors every part of her and bleeds from her very pores. Her eyes, her voice, her sharp tongue. Nielton looks nothing like her, nothing like their mother, nothing like the man who raised him, who gave him his name. He looks like one of the city's countless wharfmen. He looks like a myth, like a figure in the mist.
The difference, between myth and reality, His mother had once written, is nothing more than a trick of the light.
"For once, don't run away."
Mona hasn't a leg to stand on. Mona knows nothing, she's a child. A poor little sheltered fool.
"Don't tell Father."
Father. Da. William. Mr. King.
His erstwhile savior.
"You know he'll be up in a few hours, it's nearly dawn, Niel."
"I'll be gone before the sun rises."
Mona, since her first breath, has been a stoic figure, something ill-suited for a little girl, iller suited still, for the young women she was slowly becoming.
She murmurs something to herself, liar or coward or traitor. It doesn't matter what, Nielton's heard it all before, especially from her. He is not the one who robbed the world of Cassandra King, that was Mona, no matter how much she wanted to forget that fact.
"Goodbye Mona Lisa."
•-•-•-•-•
August 26th, 1962
By the dying quarter of the year, Nielton King was living in a rundown studio apartment in one of Magnus’s plethora of residential hotels. Despite being only two months from 19, he had made enough mistakes to have a rather sizable rap sheet trailing behind him, no matter where he went, or how far he ran.
The knock on his door isn’t quite a cop knock, but it’s close enough to set him on edge. To make his skin crawl, in a way it hasn't since he was a child. Both instinct and intuition. He thinks for a moment about sneaking out the window, shimming down the fire escape, and booking it down the block. The knocking begins again and he thinks better of himself, before hurrying to open the door.
Dr. Elias Everett stands in his pressed suit and patent leather loafers in the dingy, grime-covered hallway, with its peeling wallpaper and cracked linoleum. He looks rather like a ghost. A dead man walking. Or perhaps Neilton himself is better suited to that particular turn of phrase.
“Good afternoon, Nielton.”
He steps aside to let the man in, conscious of the broken bottles of beer that litter the floor and the clothes strewn across the unmade murphy bed.
"You know, you're a very hard man to find."
Evidently, not hard enough.
Nielton laughs tersely, “What brings you here Dr. Everett?”
“I have a job offer for you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, as a handler. It pays well. We’re government funded, so those pesky army men will be off your tail for draft dodging. How does that sound?”
You better not look this gift horse in its mouth. But there has to be a catch. There’s always a catch.
“That sounds… nice.”
Dr. Everett smiles and hands him a business card, done up in heavy white cardstock. Weighty, expensive, a careful show of his hand. Of his superiority.
“Come to this address at 9 am sharp tomorrow morning.”
“Yes Sir.”
“I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon, Mr. King.”
Mr. King…
He liked the sound of that.
He liked the sound of that a lot.