in the woman’s conversation. She wondered if the waitress might have known Gwen, but she was so clearly new-Tess remembered how overwhelmed she had seemed, just carrying a tray, how she had dropped everything with a crash-that she couldn’t have been working here a year ago.
She left the bar. No one said goodbye. Instead of walking back to her car, she went around the block and headed down the alley behind Domenick’s. There was a large green dumpster there, and she crouched behind it, watching the back of the bar. Something was wrong, something was missing. It was the smell of food. Granted, no one was in Domenick’s eating just now, but taverns always smelled of the fried foods they served. And her hiding place, the dumpster, should have been a stew of ripe, rotting smells. She glanced inside-bottles, cans, broken- down cases. Go figure, the owners of Domenick’s didn’t recycle. Still, whatever brought people to Domenick’s wasn’t the food. She had probably been the first person to eat there in ages.
She wedged herself behind the dumpster, lying flat on the ground, and continued to watch the back door. She didn’t know what she expected to see, but her gut told her that if a girl in an ivory dress disappeared, she eventually had to reappear. Fifteen minutes passed-a short time, yet much longer when one was lying on a cold, rough patch of cement. A car pulled up in the alley. From her place on the pavement, all Tess could see were tires, a strip of shiny maroon paint on some kind of sedan. Gray trousered legs went from the car to the back door, disappearing inside. Soon the same legs appeared, accompanied by a pair of girl’s calves. Tess couldn’t help noticing that the girl’s legs were stubby and thick-ankled.
“I thought they were going to pick me up,” the girl was saying.
“Here? No, not here. I told you. You’re going to Harbor Court for tea.”
“Iced tea in winter? That’s all I get? Jesus, I thought this guy had money.”
“Hot tea, with little sandwiches. You’ll like it. Just don’t eat too many. This is a look-see, remember. You might not get it.”
“And it’s a good thing to get?”
“Honey, it’s the best gig in town. If you get it. Most don’t. For every ten that go, maybe one gets picked.”
They climbed into the man’s car. Tess was able to catch sight of the license plate, the make of the car. A Mercury Marquis, fairly new. She waited until it turned out of the alley and then stood up, unkinking her knees, brushing herself off. She wondered if she could pass muster at the Harbor Court’s high tea. She’d have to. She walked slowly through the alley, and the five blocks back to her car. Running, rushing, attracted attention, and it didn’t gain that much time in the end. She’d make it to Harbor Court before tea was over.
Or so she thought, until she rounded the corner and saw the blond duo from Domenick’s, sitting on the trunk of her car.
chapter 20
“WHERE YOU BEEN?” ASKED ONE, HAILING HER AS if they were old friends.
“Yeah, where you been?” echoed the other. “We’ve been waiting for you. You been talking to Gee-gee all this time?”
“Gee-gee?”
“It’s what we call my grandmother,” the first one said, scowling, daring her to make something of it.
My grandmother, not our, she noted. Then they weren’t brothers, although they could have passed. Could have passed for twins, in fact. Two Baltimore punks with the unhealthy pinkish pallor that always reminded her of the inside of a white rabbit’s ears. In the dim light of the bar, they had looked stringy and small. Now she saw they were taller than she was by several inches, with taut neck cords and sinewy forearms.
“I was walking around the neighborhood. I decided while I was here, I’d take a tour of Mencken’s house.”
She was counting on them not knowing it was closed, because she was counting on them not knowing who Mencken was.
“The Mexican restaurant?” the other one asked. “That’s long-gone.”
“Not Mencken’s Cultured Pearl, the writer’s house. The Mexican restaurant was named for him.”
“Bullshit,” the first one said. “Ain’t no writer famous enough to have his house be a museum, much less a Mexican restaurant.”
“Not many,” Tess agreed.
“Yeah, where is this place?”
“Over on Hollins, across from the park. I’ll show you, if you want to walk up there with me.” She was screwed if they took her up on her offer. The Mencken House had been closed since the City Life Museum had gone belly-up and parceled out its holdings.
Then again, she might be able to outrun them in the park. Maybe.
“I hate fucking museums,” the second one said, leaning back against the rear windshield, his hands behind his neck, as if to catch a little sun. “When we was in school, they were always dragging us to those fuckin’ places. They’d take us to the B amp;O, right here in our fuckin’ neighborhood. Like I give a shit about trains. I liked the FBI, though. That was cool.”
The taller one got up and walked around the car, leaning against the Toyota’s driver-side door. Tess would have to push him away to get her key in the lock. That’s what he wanted, she realized with a sinking feeling. He wanted her to make the first move, and then he would make the second.
“You like Domenick’s?” he asked. “You keep coming around.”
“I’ve been to friendlier places.”
“Well, it’s a neighborhood joint, and this isn’t your neighborhood, is it?”
The one sitting on her trunk sat up and began to bounce, so her car moved beneath him, jouncing on its worn shocks. Tess took out her keys and tried to reach around the other one in order to open her door. He grabbed her wrist, hard. What was it with men and her wrists today?
“Don’t,” she said.
“What?”
She wished she knew. “Tell your friend to stop rocking my car.”
“He’s not my friend, he’s my nephew.”
“That’s a fact,” the other one said, still bouncing with an almost autistic rhythm. Close up, she could see their eyes were bloodshot, their pupils dilated. Mean and high, a great combination.
“I got a sister sixteen years older ’n me. She and my mom had us the same weekend. We’re closer than some brothers I know. Gee-gee is my grandma, his great-grandma. She calls us Pete and Repete. Pretty cool, huh?”
“It’s practically ‘The Brady Bunch,’ right here in Sowebo.”
He squeezed her wrist harder, bringing her hand up to his face as if it were a small animal he had caught by the scruff of the neck. Tess tried to figure out if she could use the keys clutched in her fist to scratch him, or gouge his eyes. But that would address only half her problem.
Repete got off her car, came and stood behind her. She was now pressed between these two not-quite-men, no-longer-boys. They could have been anywhere between seventeen and twenty-two. Tess hoped they were on the older side. The younger they were, the more dangerous they would be. Their clothes were slightly rank, as if they had been worn a few days running. But their skin gave off a sweet, sticky smell, suggesting a teenager’s diet. Mountain Dew, rubbery sweet tubes of strawberry licorice, pink Hostess snowballs.
“He’s older, by a day,” the nephew, Repete, said in her ear. “But I’m bigger.”
He ground his crotch into her backside. Not much happening there, not as much as he seemed to think. Tess tried to tell herself they wouldn’t dare to do anything, not here. It was light out, she was on a busy street, cars were going by. All she had to do was scream, run into the traffic, find a way to grab her cell phone from her knapsack and punch in 911.
She saw a woman walking her dog and their eyes met. Tess let the woman see her fear, tried to put the shared history of their gender into that one look. She said nothing, yet it was the loudest plea she had ever made in her life.
The woman crossed to the other side of the street and turned her back to her.
“I don’t think you should come back here,” Pete said.
