In Big Trouble

their energy for their real music.

'We're going to close with something a little different, but give it a chance,' he said. 'We call this medley Sondheim con salsa.'

He didn't even like the Broadway composer, Tess recalled, a little miffed. Sondheim was her passion, and Crow had often mocked her for it, damning it as too clever, the kind of music where the smart lyrics were there to form a barrier between the listener and the composer. Of all the things Crow might have carried out of the burning house of their relationship, Sondheim would have been her last pick.

Maybe it was intended as parody instead of tribute. The medley Crow had concocted drew on the considerable number of songs Sondheim had written for those on the verge of a nervous breakdown, thanks to love. 'You Could Drive a Person Crazy.' 'Losing My Mind.' 'Not a Day Goes By.' Was he making fun of the words by setting them to these new rhythms? No, with the help of Emmie's heartrending voice, he was making them sadder still. Especially on the last, 'Every Day a Little Death'-a song about surviving betrayal in a marriage. But the song could have been about any broken relationship, with its incantatory accounting of how lost love turns up everywhere in one's life. In buttons, in bread. In a sweater the color of sauteed mushrooms. In a greyhound's breath. In a bagel. In a neon Domino's sugar sign, blazing red across the harbor. No, that had belonged to her and Jonathan.

Tess wanted to turn away, embarrassed by the nakedness of Emmie's yearning, but it was impossible to take one's eyes from her face. As she rasped out the final words, her head dropped and her knees buckled a little, and it appeared she might faint. Out of the corner of her eye, Tess saw Steve start to move toward the stage. Crow was watching, too, but he didn't seem quite as concerned. Another second passed, and Emmie lifted her head, blew a kiss to the audience, and waved good night.

The patio lights came up and the audience erupted into a standing ovation. Without thinking, Tess jumped to her feet with the others, managing to upset the small metal table at which they sat. The resounding crash seemed to echo forever across the patio, and the people in the audience ducked reflexively. The sound of an overturned table was not unknown at Hector's, Tess thought, although it probably signaled the beginning for a fight, not some dumb woman's clumsiness. She was now the center of attention, and when Crow saw her, a smile broke over his face-a sunny, guilt-free grin, as if he had no memory of the trick he had played on her just that afternoon. He put down his guitar and the crowd parted, allowing him to walk straight to her.

'You're still here,' he said.

'Evidently.'

'You didn't rat me out, did you? You didn't tell my parents where I was?'

Maybe that was all he had wanted to know. But what in her motel room could have told him that?

'No,' she said. 'I made sure they know you're okay, but I didn't tell them anything else. You asked for seven days. You've got it.'

'So why are you still here?'

Good question. One of the big questions, as Emmie might have pointed out. Why was she here? Tess had thought she was staying because she didn't trust Crow to stop running, and because she needed to know what he was running from, and if it had any connection to the death of some ex-felon named Tom Darden.

So why was she at Hector's? Because Crow had searched her room, because Emmie had dropped enough hints. Maybe Crow had wanted her here, so she would know that he wasn't spending his life cranking out bad music in some tourist trap. Why was anyone anywhere? It was past three A.M., and she had been up for almost twenty-one hours and she was fresh out of answers for even the easiest questions. She only knew she was standing in a little circle of light in the middle of some vast darkness, and Crow was grinning at her as if she had passed some test. She wondered what it was.

'You want breakfast?' he asked. 'I could probably find a place where you can get two bagels, toasted, one with cream cheese and one without. And I'll make sure the waitress keeps your coffee cup filled to the brim, although she's more likely to call you honey than hon. But it would still be your usual, just like back in Jimmy's.'

Finally, a question she could answer.

'I don't want my usual. I've driven sixteen hundred miles, crossed five state lines, and entered a new time zone. I want something I've never had before, in a place I've never been before.'

Crow smiled. 'I think that can be arranged.'

Chapter 12

They ended up Earl Abel's, the restaurant that Emmie had mentioned, the place where secrets came out as the sun came up. But Crow just ate ice and played with a piece of pie, while Tess was almost too weary to lift the forkfuls of German chocolate cake to her mouth. Almost.

'Still not much of a night person, are you? You row in the mornings still?'

'Oh, yeah,' Tess said automatically, as if he had asked if she was breathing on a regular basis.

'Of course you do. You row in the morning and you eat at Jimmy's for breakfast. You walk Esskay twice a day, and you always take the same route. You hang out in Kitty's kitchen, you argue with Tyner. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.'

'Not exactly.' He might consider her life boring and static, but there were changes, significant ones. She just didn't know how to explain Jackie and Laylah, or even Detective Martin Tull, who had come into her life as Crow was leaving it. Nor could she explain the mix of feelings that came over her as she sat in her office, balancing her books. She felt a frisson of pride, yes, but also a suffocating sense that life was closing in too quickly, setting around her like a quick-drying concrete. She thought of her parents, going, to the same jobs every day for almost thirty years now, of how moody and distracted Tyner had been as of late. Every bowl of porridge was too cold for him, every bed too soft. It wasn't that long ago she had yearned for such sameness and security, but now that she had it, she was beginning to see the charming precariousness of her old life.

'How did you know about Hector's, anyway? Not exactly your kind of place.'

'Emmie mentioned it when she came to see me today.'

'Emmie came to see you?' She had been wrong, Crow could fake ignorance exceedingly well. Tess decided to let it go, for now. She'd find out eventually what he had been doing in her room.

'Yes. We went to lunch together.'

'She's a good kid.'

'A little…odd,' Tess said. She thought it was a polite way to describe someone who was several Prozacs short of a prescription, but Crow frowned and shook his head.

'She's a brilliant singer, fucking brilliant. You can't expect her to be without a few idiosyncrasies. That's what makes her an artist.'

'If you say so.'

Crow crunched a piece of ice. Other than his haircut and a new range of frowning facial expressions, he hadn't changed that much, either. He had always chewed his way through a glass of postperformance ice in his Poe White Trash days.

'So, what did you think?' His voice was too casual.

'Of what?' Of Emmie?

'Of Hector's.'

'The Shiner Bock was very good.'

'No, of us. The band.'

Tess hesitated. She thought the band was terrific, but she was reluctant to praise his new life, after the way he had mocked hers.

'At first, it felt a little over the top to me, too conscious of whatever musical style you were aping. I couldn't see that you brought out anything new in the covers you did. I thought it was gimmicky, blending all those styles. But then, I began to like it. It was like bluegrass and zydeco and-what did you call it?'

'Conjunto. Together.'

'Conjunto,' she repeated after him. 'Anyway, I got used to it, and the differences weren't so jarring and I listened to the voices, and the instruments, and it all fit. It was the best performance I've ever seen you give.'