Baltimore Blues Read Free Page B

within minutes, and both ate intently, swiftly, as if racing again. For Tess, meals were the high point of her day, which only made her more ravenous. Rock simply wanted to stoke the vast machinery of his body and get it over with. Tess was still working on her second bagel when he wiped the last bit of jelly from his plate with his last pancake.
    “Now,” he began, rummaging in his wallet. He slid an envelope across the table to Tess, who took it happily. A check, she thought. A retainer. But inside she found only a small photograph of Ava and two sheets of paper with phone numbers and addresses. Rock also had included a basic outline of Ava’s day—when she went to work, when she got home—and the places she frequented. That was his word, written on the list. She frequented a gym in Federal Hill, a bar near her office, and an Italian restaurant known primarily for its breathtaking views and inedible food.
    “Funny,” Tess said, examining the envelope’s contents.
    “What?”
    “You had this with you, all ready. Did you assume I’d say yes?”
    Rock blushed. “I know you can always use some extra cash.”
    “Well, it’s not as if I would do anything for money, you know. I have turned down PR jobs.” Being broke had become something of a shtick for Tess.
    He didn’t smile.
    They said good-bye on the cobblestone street in front of Jimmy’s, suddenly awkward with each other. Tess had worked for a lot of relatives, but never a friend. Rock seemedequally uncomfortable with the new relationship. He kept punching her on the shoulder, light taps for him, which left tiny black-and-blue marks. Finally he took his ten-speed out of Tess’s trunk and headed up Broadway, the long gradual hill to Johns Hopkins Hospital and his life as Darryl Paxton.
    Tess crossed the wide plaza on Broadway, cutting over to pretty little Shakespeare Street, where she sneaked glances into unshuttered windows. It was only 8 A.M . and other people, normal people as Tess thought of them, were still gathered at breakfast tables, or venturing out in bathrobes to grab the Beacon-Light . It was the kind of existence she had once imagined for herself, to the extent she had imagined such mundane details at all. A husband, a baby, a dining room table. Sometimes her aunt and her aunt’s latest boyfriend set a place for Tess at their breakfast table, but their attempt at homeyness only exacerbated Tess’s feeling of strangeness. It was odd, sitting down to Cheerios and blueberries with her aunt and her aunt’s man of the month, both usually in bathrobes and flushed.
    Shakespeare ended at Bond, the street on which Tess lived. She stopped and looked at the building she called home, a hulking warehouse of garnet brick with white trim, all buffed up with her aunt’s love. The windows gleamed in the early morning light and the books inside—mellow shades of red, green, and amber—glowed like jewels in a box. Above the door the scarlet letters were so bright and bold they seemed three-dimensional: WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST . And, in smaller letters, for the occasional oaf who thought it was a lifeboat store: A S PECIALTY B OOKS E MPORIUM .
    Not everyone would have seen the potential in a store that sold only women’s and children’s books. Tess’s aunt, Katherine “Kitty” Monaghan, was not like everyone. She was not like anyone. A librarian with the city schools for almost twenty years, she had taken early retirement after a parent complained fairy tales were godless, encouraging belief in Satan and the occult.
    That was the official version. The longer version included the Super Fresh, a cabbage, and a rutabaga. Kitty was firedafter she decked a mother who stopped her in the produce section and complained about Jack and the Beanstalk . It encouraged antisocial behavior, the mother complained. It glorified robbery. Kitty blackened her eye. The administration dismissed her: Apparently there was a policy against assaulting parents. She sued for