Laura Lippman: The Sugar House

“When did you leave the house?”

Must have been ten or so. It had been nice for November. Mild. He grabbed his denim jacket instead of his down coat. See, that’s why he had the rubber hose in his pocket. Not because he was planning anything. It was just there, from the last time he had worn the jacket, which shows how long it had been since he had siphoned anything, weeks and weeks. If it had been colder, if he had taken the other coat, if he had gotten that hit of gasoline he was going for…but he didn’t. Don’t tell me what might have been, Ruthie always said.

He walked up to Latrobe Park after the guy at the gas station chased him off. Were the wheels turning? He really couldn’t tell what was inside his head and what was outside anymore. Maybe he never could. His words felt like sand in his mouth, like he’d taken a tumble in a wave at Ocean City, swallowed half the beach. But he wasn’t going to drink that fucking Pepsi, no way.

“Henry?”

He went to Latrobe Park, and that’s where he saw her.

The fat cop sat up straighter in his chair, the pretty one unfolded his arms.

She had looked like a kid, at first. Maybe it was because she was on a swing. Or maybe because her legs had no shape, no shape at all. And her hair was stuffed into one of those knitted caps, like some goddamn Rastafarian, although the pieces that straggled out were straight and fine, dark brown. There was something about her face that made you want to look at it. Not sexy, not sexy at all, more like a flower in a vase. He hadn’t expected that.

She had been cool to him at first, scared beneath the cool, but he had expected that. He turned it on, not boy-girl style, but brotherly. She said she was hungry-said it like it surprised her, like he should care-and he had his opening. A little bottle of glue from the store, he told her, nothing more. A little bottle of glue, and she could use what was left over to buy what she wanted. They’d have themselves a party back at his house.

You have a house, she asked. Yeah, he had a house.

With a phone? Of course we got a phone.

Okay, she said.

She bought the weirdest stuff, he couldn’t help noticing. Cool Whip, a big package of M amp;M’s, a bag of Fig Newtons. He took her to the house, to the little scrap of backyard. He told her about his dad, and Domino’s, how it was called the Sugar House once. She said yeah, yeah, she knew all that.

The glue didn’t do much for him-he needed the real thing, industrial, maybe some spray paint, but he’d get that later. She turned her back on him, mixed the M amp;M’s into her Cool Whip with her finger, then dragged the cookies through it, like it was dip. Then she stopped, laughing a little.

What’s so funny, he had asked.

It’s not that good, she said. It’s just not that good.

No shit.

I want an apple, she said. Or some orange juice. Real food. You got any real food? And she had tried to go up the steps to the house, which he couldn’t let her do. No, no, no, she couldn’t go in the house, not Ruthie’s house, he couldn’t let it happen in the house.

She had turned back at the noise, at the sound of something scraping. He tried not to think about what he had seen in her eyes at that moment. She started to scream, but he had already placed his hand over her mouth. She jerked away, she tried to run, and that’s when she fell. The backyard, it’s all concrete, and she hit it hard going down. She was dead, or going to be. An accident.

“Then why did you tie your hose around her neck?” That was the pretty boy. But Henry honestly can’t remember.

Funny, the one thing he remembers is how sour her breath was, beneath all the sweet she had eaten. It was as if she were dead all along, inside, as if she had never been alive at all.

SOUR BEEF DAY DAWNED CLEAR AND MILD IN BALTIMORE.

Other cities have their spaghetti dinners and potluck at the local parish, bull roasts and barbecues, bake sales and fish fries. Baltimore had all those things, too, and more. But in the waning, decadent days of autumn, there came a time when sour beef was the only thing to eat, and Locust Point was the only place to eat it.

“I’m going to ask for an extra dumpling,” Tess told her boyfriend, Crow, as his Volvo edged forward through the neighborhood’s narrow streets. The unseasonably warm day had sharpened her appetite, but then a cold one would have done the same thing. Just about everything goosed Tess Monaghan’s appetite. Good weather, bad weather. Good news, bad news. Love affairs, breakups. Peace, war. Day and night. She had eaten when she was depressed; happy now, she ate more. Then she worked out, so she could eat again.

But the primary reason she ate was because she was hungry, a feeling she never took for granted.

“You deserve an extra dumpling,” Crow said. “You deserve whatever your heart desires. What do you want for Christmas, anyway?”

“Nothing, I keep telling you, absolutely nothing. I have everything I want.” She squeezed his knee. “Although if I could have anything, it would be one of those neon signs you see at beauty supply stores, the ones that say ‘Human Hair.’”

Crow started to slide the car into a mirage of a space, only to realize the gap was really an alleyway. He sighed philosophically. “Locust Point feels like it’s at the end of the world.”

“Just the end of Baltimore.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” He was teasing her, in a way that only he could. There was no bitter under Crow’s sweet, no meaness lurking in his narrow face. When they had first known each other, that almost-pretty face had been lost under a head full of purple dreads. Shorn now, and back to his natural black, Crow was a guileless little beacon, beaming his feelings out into the world. She liked that in a man.

Unless the man was her father, standing on the church steps, frowning at his watch. Her Uncle Spike was next to him, chewing placidly on a cigar. Uncle Spike didn’t take time so seriously.

“Great, we’re late, and we’ll never find a parking space this close. Look, even the fire truck is illegally parked.”

“Just for carry-out,” said Crow, who couldn’t shake his bad habit of thinking the best of everyone. “See, there the firefighters are now, with a stack of plastic containers. What does sour beef taste like, anyway?”

“Like sauerbraten, I guess. Not that I’ve ever had sauerbraten.”

“I thought sour beef was sauerbraten.”

“Yes, but-well, Baltimore, Crow.” Funny how much could be explained with just those four words. Yes, but, well, Baltimore. “If we don’t get in soon, there’ll be a line. The dinner’s late this year, because of a fire in the kitchen. Usually it’s before Thanksgiving.”

“Why don’t I let you out here, and then come in when I find a place to park? Just save me a seat-and make sure it’s next to you.”

Tess leaned across the gearshift for a quick kiss. Crow grabbed her and gave her the sort of deep, passionate, open-mouth probe suitable to sending a loved one behind prison walls, or into the French Foreign Legion. Since they had reunited this fall, he was living in the moment with characteristic fervor. Tess found it overwhelming, exhausting, and altogether glorious.

Although the glory faded a little when she surfaced for air and found her father’s blue eyes focused on them in a hard, unapproving stare. Tess disentangled herself, slipped out of the car, and crossed the street, wishing she didn’t blush so easily. It was the one thing she had in common with her father, one of those red-all-over redheads.

“You went all the way to Texas to get him ?” Patrick Monaghan asked, not for the first time.

“She brings ’em back alive,” Uncle Spike said around the butt-end of his cigar. His bald head gleamed in the weak winter sun, and his liver spots seemed to have multiplied since Tess last saw him, making his resemblance to a springer spaniel all the more pronounced. “Her and Frank Buck. They bring ’em back alive. He’s a good kid, Pat-”