Laura Lippman - In Big Trouble

"Whereas I had to do anything and everything to stand out-down to purple dreadlocks." He noticed, for the first time, that she was wearing her Cafe Hon T-shirt. "Or dying my T-shirt orange, because I couldn't have a Cafe Hon T-shirt like everyone else in Baltimore, oh no."

"I always saw you as this blissed-out boy who followed his heart."

"Was I?" Crow furrowed his brow, as if trying to remember someone they had both once known, many years ago. "I'd like to think so. I'd like to think there was a time when I just did what I wanted to do and didn't have to run it through eighteen different filters. A time when I knew what I wanted, and was sure of what I could do."

"What do you want right now?"

"I want-I want-" He was laughing, completely at ease for the first time.

"No thinking," Tess said. "Just say what you want, the first thing that comes to your mind. More pie, another cup of coffee? A Rolex, a new guitar, a chartreuse Cafe Hon T-shirt, a first edition of Poe's Eureka …"

"I want-" They were both giggling now, giddy as a couple of drunks.

"Say it, Crow."

"I want to make love to you."

All the other sounds of the restaurant seemed to disappear. Tess looked down at her plate. His voice had been low and sure, without a single teasing note to get them off the hook. She realized she was forking her cake in half. Not eating it, as Jackie would say, yet still obsessed with it. She didn't feel quite so tired anymore.

Crow wasn't finished. "I want to take you back to my house and take all your clothes off and put you in my bed and keep you there until we both walk funny, as if we'd been out to sea for weeks and weeks."

She wanted him, too, which surprised her, yet didn't surprise her. She wanted him because he had rejected her, and that left her feeling unfinished. A psychiatrist would say she only wanted the men she couldn't quite have, and she supposed her life so far supported this thesis. But now Crow was sitting here, saying she could have him. In which case, she shouldn't want him at all, right? So if she went with him, she was actually doing the right thing, right?

"What do you say, Tess?" Whatever filters Crow had learned to put up between himself and the world were gone now. He looked younger and older, very pure, as if he couldn't tell a lie to save his life. Yet he had been lying to her right and left over the past twenty-four hours. Which made him a bum, which made him her dream man, which made her-Jesus, didn't her brain have an off-switch?

"Tess?" he asked again.

"I think that could be arranged," she said.

Earl Abel's wasn't even two miles from the duplex Crow shared with Emmie, but it took them a long time to travel those two miles. It was as if they were in such a hurry that they had to keep slowing down. First in the parking lot-Crow wouldn't even let her get her key in the door lock, he had to kiss her right there, much to the rowdy amusement of some college boys who had arrived at the restaurant after a long night of partying.

"Nail her, man," one yelled.

"Get a room," another called out.

"Nail her, then get a room," a third suggested.

"What about your car?" Tess asked Crow, coming up for air.

"Leave it. Let them tow it. I don't care."

When they were finally in her car, he kissed her at stoplights, holding her face in his hands until horns sounded behind them.

"My place is closer," Tess said, even as La Casita's flickering neon sign flew past.

"No," Crow said. Now he was trying to kiss her as she drove, lifting up her hair in the back, pressing his lips against her neck and her throat. "I don't want to feel like some john you picked up in Brackenridge Park. Turn right here, onto Mulberry. Can't you drive any faster?"

She thought she was going pretty fast, but she was like a drunk who couldn't distinguish fifteen miles per hour from ninety-five. She was losing all her senses, except those Crow had engaged. His hand was under her T-shirt now, on the small of her back.

"How much farther?" she asked.

"Left here, then right on the second street, Magnolia Drive. I'm at the end of the block."

But once the car was parked, Crow simply began kissing her again. It was as if he didn't want to risk letting go for even the moment it would take to run up the walk. She wasn't so sure she wanted to leave the car yet, anyway. The truth was, it was delicious to neck in a car again, to feel sixteen again. She could have been parked in front of her parents' house, testing the boundaries as she had done back then, wondering how far she would dare to go with her father not-sleeping just yards away. One more minute , the boy would ask. Just a little more. Can I-? Will you-? And she assented, silently, always silently, for if she spoke of what she was doing, she would betray how conscious it was, how much she craved it, how she was really the one who was setting the pace, pushing them further and further on each date. Part of her wanted to keep going. Part of her yearned for Patrick to come charging out of the house and yank her from the car, and back into the safety of her childhood. When he didn't, there was nothing to do but keep pushing forward, until she found herself on her back in the Enchanted Castle. Sixteen had really been too young, she knew that in the split-second it had taken her high school boyfriend to finish. With the loss of virginity, a girl lost her best reason for saying no. From that moment on, she had to choose, and choose carefully, there was nothing between her and her desires. That had been the terrifying part, not the sex itself.

The strange thing was, it was no less terrifying now.

And then, with the suddenness of a nightmare, she was sixteen again and the thing that had never happened was happening-the car's doors were being thrown open, and there was yelling, and heavy, thick arms reached in from the darkness to drag the two of them apart.

"Put your hands up and step away from the car," an amplified voice called from beyond a bank of lights. The light was so bright that Tess couldn't see anything, but she was aware of running car engines and the sudden sound of a helicopter overhead.

"It's not what you think," she said, struggling against the arms that held her. Her braid had come loose at some point and her hair was flying around her head in snaky Medusa tendrils. Crow was lying in the street, a police officer's knee in his back, his hands being cuffed. Four other officers stood in a circle around him, and when Crow tried to raise his head, one pushed him back to the pavement with his foot.

"Leave him alone," Tess screamed. "He wasn't doing anything."

"Do you live here?" one of the officers asked impatiently. The one who had been holding her arms had finally released her, but she could still feel his bulk at her back.

"No, it's his place."

"Fine." He walked over to Crow, bent down, and took the keys from his pocket, using them to open the door. It seemed as if dozens of officers followed, although Tess later realized there were no more than six. Her sense of time was also off-it felt like hours passed, but her watch said only fifteen minutes had elapsed when they returned, toting a rifle bagged in plastic. A plainclothes officer had arrived at the scene, and they showed him their find with great excitement. But he shook his head, and although Tess could not hear what he said, he seemed angry and upset.

"Is this your shotgun?" the plainclothes officer asked Crow, now handcuffed and in the back of one of the patrol cars.

"I've never seen that before in my life."

"Do you have a search warrant?" Tess asked.

"We had a warrant for the arrest of one Ed Ransome and this was under the bed in what appears to be his room." The cop turned back to Crow. "And if this is the gun that killed Tom Darden, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do."