In Big Trouble

hair and the sweater.

'He said he was trying to comfort you.'

'He was.' Tess paused. 'Where that might have gone remains to be seen. It was up to me, and I'm not sure what I might have done.'

'Up to you,' Kris said, her back still to Tess, but the catch in her voice, the way she jerked her shoulder blades, hinted at the angry tears she was trying to hold back. 'Who do you think you are, some sort of femme fatale who crooks her little finger and the men all come running? No offense, but Rick says he doesn't have the slightest interest in you, he wouldn't have fooled around with you just because he was mad at me.'

'No, he wouldn't.' Tess suspected this was a lie, but lies were greatly underrated when it came to making people feel better. 'Look, I'm not one of those women who thinks women are inherently better than men. Obviously, I'm not inherently better. I felt crummy last night, and I would have reached for anything offering a little temporary oblivion. A drink, a joint, someone else's boyfriend. You have the solace of knowing nothing happened. But I'll never know what I might have done if you hadn't shown up.'

She was still looking at Kristina's back, at the white blond hair, worn today in two plaits, exposing her milk- white neck and a narrow part as pink as a little girl's.

'Besides, what if I had? What if I had come to my senses, gone home and crawled into bed with Don Quixote? The book, I mean. I still thought about it. I lusted in my heart. Not for your boyfriend, not for Rick-although he's a great guy,' she added hastily, as Kristina turned, green eyes narrowed at the inferred insult. 'I just wanted to blot out my thoughts for an hour or two.'

Kristina's lips twitched. 'It didn't last quite that long.'

'Did you-?'

She nodded. 'Then he made me breakfast in bed this morning. And you can be damn sure he went out and got some two percent along with the roses.'

Tess couldn't help feeling a small pang. So many people having sex and then breakfast, and she wasn't one of them. She hadn't even had breakfast this morning, because her stomach was jumping at the thought of this meeting.

'Well, I hope Rick persuaded you he was totally innocent.'

'Oh, he sold you out,' Kris said cheerfully. 'Sang like a canary, to use the vernacular of his trade. Still, it's a relief to have you come in here and say more or less the same thing. I'm assuming he didn't put you up to it, because I can't imagine anyone making a more unflattering apology than you just did. I'll give you points for that. You didn't try to sugarcoat it, not much. It almost makes me think I could like you again. Almost.'

Kitty was right: Tess had to apologize, but Kristina didn't have to forgive her. Still, it hurt that this open-faced, generous girl no longer trusted her.

'Tell me about that thing you're putting together, that old frienda.'

Her deliberately mangled Spanish wrested a small smile from Kristina. 'Ofrenda. It's in memory of my grandmother, who died last year.'

'But why the beer, and cigarettes, and all the other stuff?'

'Because Day of the Dead is the day that people come back to visit us. So we have to have their favorite things, along with the traditional marigolds and pan de muerto-dead bread.' She held up a pair of silver combs. 'These were my grandmother's favorites. She also loved beer and keno-I used these Mexican loteria cards instead. Most of all, she loved her Merits, even if they did kill her. If she's coming back, she'll want a smoke. Day of the Dead isn't a time for lessons.'

'Can anyone do this?'

'Sure. It's not like there's a licensing requirement.' Kristina scanned Tess's face. 'Is there someone you're missing? You could make a small one right here. I'd help you.'

'Maybe…I'd need some things, though-ordinary things, like you have, but I'm not sure where I'd find them.'

'I don't know what you need, but there's a Family Dollar store, and a liquor store on Main for starters. You go scare up whatever you think is appropriate, and I'll cover a card table with a cloth, put out the candles, flowers, and dead bread.'

'I don't know-'

'C'mon, Tess. Maybe this is one time when it would be a good idea to act on your impulses.'

She was back in less than an hour, arms laden as if she had been on a scavenger hunt. A bottle of mezcal, a Big Mac, a Hohner Marine Band harmonica. A bag of Domino sugar, to stand in for the neon sign they had watched from her terrace. The Beacon-Light had been the hardest item to find, and she had almost settled on a New York Times from a box. She had driven all over the city's north side, it seemed, before she found a bookstore with out-of-town papers.

Her collection of artifacts seemed paltry when compared to Kris's more elaborate ofrenda, and she looked around the gallery for things she might add. Her eyes fell on a ceramic taxi, driven by a grinning psychopath of a skeleton, a backseat full of terrified skeleton passengers, bony fingers clasped to their cheekbones in Munch-style horror, a devil perched on the trunk, watching the whole scene with great amusement. Kris nodded at the question in her eyes, and she added the taxi to the table of candles and flowers, although there had been no passengers. No witnesses, in fact, except her and the driver, who had not been smiling, not as far as she knew. It had been such a foggy morning, the air thick, like some animal's coat.

And although she hadn't seen the devil sitting on the taxi's fender, she had never doubted he was there.

'Do you have a picture?' Kris asked. 'It's traditional to use one.'

Yes, she had a picture. Two, really. A picture in her head, of a man airborne over a Fells Point alley, and another one that she kept in her datebook, a grinning head shot that could never quite blot out the first one. Perhaps that had been part of the problem. The literal photo, not the mental one. People blame the wiring in their heads for everything. But maybe it's all the things, Tess thought. The mementos, the sealed packages of love letters, the dates we keep in our heads-maybe these are what really weigh us down and keep us from moving forward. The photo in her datebook had been the unseen wedge between her and Crow, an amulet between her and the risk of caring too deeply, in a world where death, life, and other women were always out there. She took the snapshot out of a slender fold meant for business cards and propped it up on the ofrenda, against the taxi that had taken his life.

Jonathan Ross, dead at twenty-eight, killed because he was a better reporter than even he had known. It was for him to write, and her to act. Vale.

'Boyfriend?' Kris asked.

'No,' Tess said.

She sat in a cafe she had noticed while driving around town on Mission Ofrenda. The name, Twin Sisters, had drawn her in. It was apparently literal, although the photos of the owners invited disbelief. One had dark corkscrew curls, the other straight blond hair. The menu showcased the same kind of striking contrast, with pastries and tacos mixed in with more healthful fare. Tess asked for a bowl of fruit, pointed to a sugar-topped muffin in the case. 'Oh yeah, the Jewish coffee cake,' the waitress said, and Tess was taken aback. But surely it was meant as a compliment?

She skimmed the Eagle's weekend section, which provided a full schedule of this weekend's All Soul activities. She hadn't realized just what a big deal it was-B. B. King and Etta James were playing Saturday night, there was even a symposium on Robert Johnson. Meanwhile, the local listings claimed a band known as the Breakfast Club was still at the Morgue, while Las Almas Perdidas was scheduled to appear at Hector's. Hard to cancel gigs while one was on the run, she supposed, stealing glances at a family enjoying a late lunch. School was out, apparently, a teachers' conference according to the scraps of conversation she could overhear.

The younger child, a freckled-faced boy, was playing air guitar with a lot of Pete Townshend gyrations, while his sister rolled her eyes beneath a mop of amazing pre-Raphaelite curls, beautiful hair that would probably be her complete despair for much of her adolescence. Mother and father exchanged fond, if tired, looks over their heads, and the looks carried so much history that it made Tess ache a little. She wanted to know how these people,