Baltimore Blues

spine and white neck of the team's stroke, Whitney Talbot.

Tess opened her eyes. The first 2,500 meters had clocked in at 9:35, but she knew she could never keep up a sub-twenty-minute pace. She backed off, cruising on the strength of her legs. All she had to do was try. Rock was going to buy her breakfast no matter what. She would shock him, shock everyone in Jimmy's by ordering something completely different. Fried eggs. Scrapple.

Thinking about food actually increased her speed. If she could pull the last 500 in under two minutes, it would be a personal best for her. Rock was partially right, her previous best was 21:02; only it had been his shoes she had vomited on. Only a good friend could forget that salient detail. Pulling at full power for fifty strokes, she began to feel the dizzying nausea of a race. Nothing was like this-not a hard run, not benching 100 pounds, not even throwing one's self at a heavy bag, something she did when the seedy little boxing gym in her neighborhood was empty. Her calves ached, her stomach hovered dangerously near her throat, her forearms burned, her skin felt as if it might fly off. She had nothing left, yet she had to find more. With one final, wrenching pull, she traveled her last ten meters: 20:55, seven seconds off her best time. She let go of the bar and put her head between her knees, gasping and heaving.

'You win,' Rock said.

Tess shook her head, unable to speak. Rock had finished aeons ago. Even when he tried to handicap a race for her sake, his competitive nature took over and he won. She lifted her head to read the figures on his clock: 18:30. Possibly a personal worst for Rock, at least thirty seconds off his best.

'I guess I'm a little distracted,' he apologized. 'But I'm proud of you, Tess. You really pushed today.'

She smiled weakly and struggled to her feet. Her legs buckled and she had to lean over, hands propped above her knees, to keep from falling down. Her breath came in ragged, panting gasps. Her brain was forming words, but her mouth refused to say them. It wanted only to gulp down air.

Rock held a plastic wastebasket up to her chin and placed his hand on the back of her neck. 'Don't hold it down. It feels better to let it go.' Her stomach was empty, so all she produced was a thin, clear drool, like a dog that had been eating grass. Rock wiped her face with the tail of his sweat-drenched T-shirt, then helped her to the room's one chair, massaging her calves after she sat down.

It was strange to have a man move his hands along her body and feel nothing, no sexual tingle. It had always been this way with Rock. They were too large, she thought, almost freakish together, to even think about being a couple. Apparently he thought so, too: His occasional girlfriends had all been tiny, although none so tiny as Ava. So there was no subtext, no tension as he rubbed Tess's legs. How different things might be if there had been. No Ava. No dead Abramowitz. Not free to choose, Tess thought wryly, but free to fall. And, oh, had they fallen.

'You're good to me, Rock.'

'Well, you're good to me, too.'

'No. I-I screwed things up. I got in over my head, and I dragged you in with me.'

'It was my idea, remember? Don't listen to Tyner, Tess. God knows, I don't.'

Now was the time to confess, to tell him how she had manipulated him, tried to manipulate Ava, tried to arrange things so she could take his check without breaking his heart. She said nothing.

Suddenly the rain Rock had predicted began in earnest, a heavy, lashing downpour, with flashes of lightning. If he hadn't warned her she would have been on the water by now, far enough out to be in real danger. In a storm like this it was risky to ride it out, equally risky to try to make it back to the boat house.

'Let's go watch from the front,' Rock said. 'I like thunderstorms.'

They left through their respective dressing rooms, meeting in the large hall that ran the length of the building's north side. Although this room was decorated with plaques, photographs, and etchings of rowers and their shells, real rowers seldom ventured into it. The city rented it out every weekend for wedding receptions, bar mitzvahs, and banquets. A plain room, it was in demand only because of its sweeping view of the Patapsco and the city beyond-Camden Yards, the three large gas tanks that rose and fell depending on the city's natural gas supply, downtown's ragged skyline. The view was better at night, all white lights and silhouettes.

'Maybe lightning will strike the IBM building,' Tess said, referring to a white skyscraper usually listed among the city's top ten architectural offenses.

'Or the Maryland National Bank tower,' Rock said. 'Excuse me, the NationsBank tower. I still can't get used to that, this North Carolina company owning Maryland 's biggest bank.'

'Hey, I haven't gotten used to Friendship Airport becoming Baltimore-Washington International, and that must have happened over twenty-five years ago.'

'Sometimes I think Baltimore is a city that defines itself by what's gone, what used to be.'

'Well, the Star is a parking lot across from Harborplace.'

'The Colts-the Ravens can't make up for losing Johnny Unitas's team.'

'Hutzler's department store is the Department of Human Resources.'

'McCormick moved to the suburbs, so there's no more cinnamon smell drifting over the harbor.'

'And the flea market at the old Edmondson Drive-In is a Home Depot now.

This was how they spoke: They built lists together, stacks of loosely related facts. Tess did not know if this was a generally masculine way of speaking, or a style specific to Rock. At any rate, she liked it.

He looked over the water, watching the lightning strike. Tess looked at him, remembering Jonathan's questions. Where was he from? Does he have a history of assaulting people? She knew only that he wasn't born here, although he had been in Baltimore long enough to consider it home. Their friendship was built on the present, and they seldom spoke of the past. Tess had assumed this was how men became friends-through activities, innocuous riffing and banter, sports scores. How 'bout them O's? She liked it. Besides, Baltimore was filled with people who knew her life story. It had been a relief to find a friend who wanted to talk about nothing more than current events, or whether antioxidants boosted performance.

The storm was moving east. Tess could have taken a crayon and drawn a line straight up the floor-to-ceiling windows. To the right of the line the sky would be black, shot through with lightning; the left was washed-out and clear. An eerie sight, this black and white Baltimore. She slipped her hand into Rock's. Nothing about Tess was dainty, but her hands were especially large, with ragged nails and a rower's calluses. Rock's hand was larger and rougher still. She liked him for that, too. Folding her hand inside his, he squeezed gently. He did know his strength, how to be gentle, how to curb his power. But he had to think about it, Tess realized. He had to try.

Chapter 10

Whitney-former college roommate, sometime best friend, sometime toughest competitor- called at nine that morning, when Tess had finally started to transcribe her tapes and notes. She was grateful for the distraction. She could have written a news story or a press release about her meetings with Dumbarton and Miles, but a report was a foreign form to her. Did one include everything, or edit judiciously? Could she record her own impressions, or did objectivity rule here, too? Hopelessly blocked, she lunged for the phone.

'Word is, you had another Jonathan encounter,' Whitney said by way of greeting.

Tess sighed. 'I bet he came into work this morning and sent an electronic message to everyone on the Beacon-Light computer system: ‘Tess Monaghan will sleep with you, but she won't tell you anything.''

'No, but he did stage one of his special scenes for my benefit, pacing madly around his desk when I walked by, complaining loudly to the city editor about how ‘she' wouldn't leak. Lovely imagery.'

'I don't leak. It's one of my best qualities.'

'Why don't you meet me for lunch at the Tate-on the paper, of course. I can always claim I was wooing a recalcitrant source. But I'm leaving if you start to leak. Or even ooze. I've had enough dates like that recently. It's like a science fiction novel. All they leave behind are little puddles.'

'Talk about lovely imagery. Noon?'

'Twelve-fifteen. If I'm late order me a crab cake and coleslaw. The patty, not the sandwich. Broiled, not fried.' Whitney never meant to sound imperious, but certain tones came naturally to a Talbot.