In Big Trouble

doll. Real blond hair, big blue eyes, and cheeks that looked like she had little pink circles painted on them, but natural, you know? I noticed her because she looked like one of the sorority girls around here, except kind of sad- looking, too. Like she was tuned into some frequency only she could hear. He called her lady. At first, I thought it was generic, like ‘my old lady.' But it might have been her name.'

'Blond hair, blue eyes, pink cheeks, sad-looking. Anything more, uh, specific?'

He shook his head. 'Naw. Beautiful girls are everywhere in Austin. You get kind of numb to them after a while. Not numb, exactly, but you stop making those real fine distinctions. It's like eating too much Mexican food. Just burns out your taste buds.'

Maury nodded in commiseration. Tess was mystified-she hadn't noticed that Austin was so burdened with pulchritude, although she had observed that bodies here ran to a taut, lean look quite unlike the mesomorphs back home.

'Here's the number where I'm staying, please have him call if he should stop by again.' She handed over one of her business cards, skeptical of how it would fare in this apartment's filing system. 'One last thing, do you know where he played?'

'Played what?'

'With his band. Where did they perform?'

'I didn't even know he was in a band, but I guess everyone in Austin is. Everyone who's not a movie star or in software,' he amended. 'Man, what you damn Yankees have wrought.'

'Yankee? Crow was from Virginia and I live in Baltimore. Check a map sometime, Maryland lies below the Mason-Dixon line.'

'You telling me you're a Southerner?'

It was an astute question, one no Baltimorean could answer. The map said one thing, the city's architecture said something else, its race relations something else again. It was both, it was neither. 'Just giving you a little geography lesson.'

'What's this about, anyway? Eddie in trouble? He seemed like a good guy, but you never know.'

Tess avoided his questions by asking one of her own. 'What do you do, anyway?'

'Me? I'm a student.'

'You look like you're almost thirty.'

'Try thirty-five. But I'll have my master's by the time I'm forty if I don't get distracted again, wander off to Mexico for a while. I worked a couple years down in San Miguel de Allende, but that's almost too American now. I'm thinking Merida, maybe farther down the coast in the Yucatan. Tulum. Or I could just keep going, all the way to Belize. I don't know. Whatever comes next.'

'Whatever comes next,' she repeated to Maury, once they were back in the car.

'What does come next?' he asked. 'Where do you want to go now?'

'I was just quoting Crow's tenant. Seems like an enviable way to live. Except that when I lived that way, I didn't realize how free I was. I just thought I was unemployed.'

Maury held his forefinger and thumb out toward her. 'You are about this close to singing a Joni Mitchell song and you don't even know it.'

'No, what I'm saying is that things are different here. In warm climates, people are more relaxed about being down on their luck, because spending a night outside isn't a matter of life and death.'

'So, you don't have any homeless guys up in Baltimore?' he asked.

'Okay, my theory needs a little refining.' Still, there was something in the weather here, or the water, that changed one's perceptions of time and possibilities. If Crow had caught this local fever, he could be anywhere.

With anyone.

Chapter 5

They took a break, heading back to Quadling Country to wile away the hours until the clubs started opening. A late-afternoon run along the paths near Town Lake gave Tess a glimpse into Austin 's charms. Here was a city, that worshipped fitness, that accommodated those who exercised. Quite unlike Baltimore, where chain-smoking drivers liked to force runners off the roads for the sheer sport of it. It should have been a perfect fit for her. If only Tess believed in perfect fits. Thanks to Kitty, she had been raised on the real Brothers Grimm, where Cinderella's sisters sliced off their toes and heels to cram their feet into that stupid glass slipper.

A few scullers and sweep rowers were working out, and she found she missed her own unpretentious little Alden. The rowing season was almost over in Baltimore, she would lose some of the best days if she stayed here too long. But she would be home soon, she reminded herself. Things were simpler than she or Crow's parents had realized. He had moved out to be with a woman. She'd probably find him-and her-on Sixth Street tonight. All she had to do was walk him to a pay phone, and she was out of here.

So why had he stopped calling his parents? she asked herself, as she ran along Town Lake. How to explain the postcard? Crow might still be angry enough to play such a prank on her, but why would he want to worry his parents?

Her best guess was that carelessness was the prerogative of sons and daughters everywhere, at every age. After all, she hadn't called her parents since she arrived in Texas, and she waited to phone Tyner's office until last night, when she was sure of getting the machine. There were times when one was in too much of a hurry-or too much in love-to stop and talk to anyone.

It was after ten and they were walking north along the street that bordered the west side of the UT campus when Maury said: 'You want to stop and get something to eat? I'm dragging. There's a good place not too far.'

'Vegetarian?' Tess asked skeptically. She was dragging, too, although not from hunger. It had been depressing, going from music club to music club, showing photos of Crow-one as Tess had known him, with his dyed dreadlocks, and the one in the newspaper clipping. Have you seen him? Have you seen him? No one had.

'Barbecue.'

'Barbecue? I thought you had given up red meat.'

'Sure, at home. But I can eat what I want when I'm out-as long as I brush my teeth before I come home. I can come home smelling of marijuana, but if Dad catches a whiff of burger on me, I'm grounded.'

The thing was, no one here knew Crow or Edgar or Ed or Eddie. They had started with the better places, along Sixth Street, where the local headliners played. And, as Maury kept telling her, a local headliner in Austin was a pretty big deal in the city that was home to Willie Nelson, Shawn Colvin and a lot of other people that Tess had never heard of. Then they had worked their way out and out and out, in ever-widening circles, until they were checking depressed little bars where some kid might be allowed to play in the silences between televised sporting events. Still, no one remembered a guy named Ransome, with or without a doll-like girl.

Now she and Maury were walking through the university section, just in case Crow and his band had been reduced to playing for handouts.

'Or we could go to Sonic,' Maury offered. 'Get a chili dog.'

Tess could accept that no one had hired Crow, although she had always thought Poe White Trash as good as any punk band she had heard. It was harder to believe that no one remembered him. Crow had been so vivid, so alive. He had always made an impression on people.

'Can't you even remember if he ever came in here looking for work?' Tess had asked one club manager.

The manager was the kind of person who never made eye contact, keeping his gaze riveted over one's shoulder, in case someone more interesting might appear on the horizon.

'You know how many kids I see in a typical week? Everyone who gets off the Greyhound thinks he's going to be Austin's next whatever. The place is like Hollywood in the forties. Everyone wants to live here.'

'Really?' Tess had said. 'I don't.'

He met her eyes then, in order to scoff properly. 'As if you could.'