Laura Lippman - Charm City

"Whitney said she had something big to tell us. I assume she finally got Tokyo."

They arrived a few seconds later, Whitney breathless from keeping pace, but still able to bark out an order for hot tea. Tyner motioned the waitress away impatiently, as if surprised that someone expected him to place an order at a restaurant.

" Hot tea ?" Tess asked Whitney. "We know you're going to Tokyo, you don't need accessories to break the news."

"I am going to Tokyo," she said, "but not for the Beacon-Light . I resigned today."

Tess looked at Feeney, but he was as baffled and surprised as she was. Whitney speared a sweet potato off Tess's plate.

"It's true," Tyner confirmed. "She was in my office, going over the terms of her trust, making sure it could support her at the current yen-to-dollar exchange rate."

"Tokyo on a trust fund," Feeney said. "Very brave of you."

Tess threw a piece of focaccia at his head, missing on purpose so Esskay could have a little more food. "Hey, it is brave. Whitney's finally doing something for herself, instead of fulfilling everyone's expectations of her. It may be the bravest thing she's ever done."

"I'm here," Whitney said with uncharacteristic quiet. "I can speak for myself. The fact is, things aren't going so well for me at the Beacon-Light . As it turns out, shooting an editor in the shoulder wasn't the best career move."

"You saved my life," Tess said. "Isn't that a mitigating circumstance?

"Only to the police and grand jury. At work, I make the other editors nervous now. Especially all the new ones they keep hiring. They point and whisper behind my back. ‘Shot a man in Leakin Park, just to watch him die.' I had a disagreement with my boss over punctuation recently, and he called security." Whitney sighed, then took a sip of Tess's wine, ate another of her sweet potatoes. They were back in synch again. How could Whitney move to the other side of the world?

"It's not forever," Whitney said. "Six months, maybe a year."

"But you'll be on the other side of the international date line. You'll know what's happening before I do."

"Tess-" Whitney's smile would put a Chesire cat to shame. "I always did."

Two weeks later, a package arrived from Tokyo. While Esskay watched, Tess pulled out a birdcage in the shape of a pagoda. The accompanying letter, on hotel stationery, said only: "Is it true the crow always flies in a straight line? I'm not so sure. Birds, like all of us, might need directions and encouragement."

Certainly, it was all the encouragement Tess needed. As she dialed the phone, she realized she had been waiting all along for someone to nudge her into action. As usual, that person was Whitney, even if she was 5,000 miles away.

"Maisie? Tess Monaghan. Where's the Floating Opera landing tonight?"

It was a new site, at least to Tess, an old cannery in West Baltimore on the same block as Bon Secours Hospital and several methadone clinics. Convenient for this crowd. She waited until 3 A.M. to show up, hoping Crow would already be on stage. He was, but without his band, or any instruments. He sat on a stool, microphone in hand, his black hair down his back in a long glossy braid without any of the not-in-nature highlights Tess remembered. He began to sing, a cappella.

The song wasn't recognizable at first, not in this dirgelike incarnation. "Thunder Road." Tess actually heard a few hisses in the audience, which apparently considered itself too avant-garde for Springsteen, Wink's beloved Boss. But something about Crow's face, and the unadorned beauty of his voice, snuffed out the crowd's initial hostility.

Did Crow remember this was the song that had been playing on Wink's stereo the night he died? He had been so taken with the detail at the time, intent on discussing various suicide-suitable songs. Now everyone knew it hadn't been Wink's choice at all, but Jack Sterling's. A town full of losers, indeed. Baltimore did have a knack for memorable losses-the '69 Orioles, the '84 Colts, 1996's American League Championship series, stolen by a twelve-year-old Yankee fan with a big glove-but it made for a gracious city. Anyone could win with élan. Baltimore knew how to lose, and how to go on, still strangely hopeful.

His song done, Crow tried to leave the stage, but the audience insisted on an encore, stamping their feet until he returned.

"It never entered my mind," he said. At first, Tess thought he was acknowledging the crowd's enthusiasm, but then he began to sing and she realized he had simply been announcing the song's title, one of her favorite Rodgers and Hart ballads. Men seldom sang it, given that it was impossible to make the kind of rhyming cheats necessary to change the gender of the song's forlorn lover, who worried about mudpacks and face powder.

Once, you warned me, that if you scorned me

I'd sing the maiden's prayer again

And wish that you were there again

To get into my hair again

It never entered my mind .

Crow shook his head until the long braid unraveled and his black hair fanned out around his shoulders. He looks like someone I know , Tess thought. Willie Nelson? No, it's me. That's me up there, singing about the mistake I made when I let him go. Does he know I feel that way? Or does he simply hope I feel that way? Or do I hope he hopes I feel that way ?

The set over, she worked her way down front, not caring if she was just one of several women working their way toward Crow at this precise moment. Lovely young things crowded around him, falling back when they saw her. Apparently Maisie and Lorna hadn't gotten the news out that Tess no longer had any claim on Crow.

"Rodgers and Hart," she said.

"It sank in."

"I guess anything will, if you wait long enough."

He shrugged noncommittally. This cool, taciturn Crow made her nervous, and she began babbling: "I still have Esskay. Spike got out of the hospital, and he's okay-well, his leg bothers him, but he goes to therapy-but he let me keep her. Then Whitney sent me this birdhouse from Japan and it made me think-"

Crow stared at her. She had wanted him to be older, more mature. Now he was, thanks to her. She had hurt him into adulthood.

"I'm graduating," he said at last. "My parents are so thrilled, they've given me the money they put aside for next year's tuition. We-the band and I-are going to Texas. To Austin."

"To Austin," she repeated stupidly.

"I know, it's kind of a cliché, but at least people there still get excited about music."

"For how long? I mean, how long will you be there?"

"I don't know." He hesitated-Crow, who never thought about what he was going to say next, or how to say it, or how it might sound when he did say it. "I might not like it, anyway."

"Then where will you go?"

"I don't know."

She cast around for something more to say, something that might shatter this stranger's mask and reveal the man she had known, the man she had loved without knowing she loved him, without knowing he was more of a man than the illusion of one she had desired.

"Crow-I made a mistake."

Again, he thought before he said anything. "Yes, you did."

Tess wandered outside, where she briefly considered some Scarlett O'Hara histrionics: throwing herself to the ground with wracking sobs, then lifting a luminous tear-streaked face to the heavens, vowing to get him back tomorrow. But in this neighborhood, hurling one's body about in such a heedless fashion would only result in contact with a discarded needle or a broken bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon. She sat down gingerly on the curb, wishing she had a drink or some chocolate. But there was nothing close at hand. Even the methadone was locked up securely for the night. Methadone, now there was a concept: a drug for life that blocked the effects of the drug you really yearned for. Were there such remedies for one's heart?