Baltimore Blues

me.'

'My dream come true.' Tess pulled away. Jonathan oversold all his stories, so it was hard to know if this one was truly special. But something told her the little boy who cried wolf-this little boy who called, 'Extra, extra, read all about the wolf!'-was going to come through this time. He had unearthed a journalistic treasure. And she was the first to know, the unnamed native servant, following the great white hunter into the forbidden temple and watching in pagan terror as he contemplated a sacred object she had never dared to touch. Once he lifted this golden artifact from its perch, nothing would be the same. The earth would move, the temple would rumble, and Jonathan's future would be made in the brief moment when he decided to run with his treasure. And he would run with it. Of that she had no doubt.

Still, she could not give him the satisfaction of seeming impressed. 'I'll believe it when I see it. As you said, you don't even have anything on the record.'

'But I will. You know I will,' he said, pulling Tess down on top of him, a new hunger in him.

The imminence of fame and success was an aphrodisiac to Jonathan. He was tender and insatiable, as if Tess embodied the dreams hovering close. They made love once, twice, three times, drinking mescal shots between bouts of lovemaking, talking of everything but the source of Jonathan's excitement. They still had not slept when Tess's alarm went off at 5:30 A.M., summoning her to the boat house.

'Skip your workout for once,' Jonathan murmured wetly into her neck. For once Tess did, although she had a slight twinge of guilt about Rock. He worried when she missed practice, assuming she must be gravely ill.

She made a pot of coffee and they climbed to the roof to watch the sun rise. The temperature had dropped thirty degrees overnight as a cool front moved through, and Baltimore looked glorious. No polluted haze over the harbor, just a clear, almost white sky, the kind that would deepen to cerulean blue as the day wore on. A bright red tug moved slowly across the harbor. The bay was green gray. Even the seagulls looked fresh and clean. Tess felt closer to Jonathan than she had in years, as if they were the couple they had been in their Star days. She tried not to think about his girlfriend, waking up alone somewhere outside D.C. At least she assumed the girlfriend woke up alone. Maybe their relationship was more complicated than she knew.

'Great view,' Jonathan said admiringly. 'Some people pay two thousand dollars a month for this view, and you get it for almost nothing.'

'Yes, I lead such a charmed life.'

'Well, you do, you know. I've always envied you.'

'My fabulous career? My riches?' Tess tried for a light tone, but Jonathan's praise felt like pity to her.

'Your family, your sense of place here. In some ways I'm still this schmuck from the suburbs. I don't know the city the way you do. I don't have your credentials.'

'You have talent, which is better.'

'But I feel like such a fake sometimes.' This was familiar territory, the other side of the Oreo, Jonathan ebbing, surrendering to every neurotic doubt, expecting her to prop him up.

'I still remember my first day at work, when I didn't know the city at all but pretended I did. ‘Oh, yeah, I went to Hopkins, man, Russell Baker's alma mater. I know this place cold.' They sent me to a fire, and I couldn't find it. I fucking missed a five-alarm. I had the address, I had my little grid map. I could see the smoke, I could hear the trucks, but I couldn't find the fucking fire. It was in one of those odd little wedges off Frederick Road, you know?'

Tess knew. Southwest Baltimore was a series of such wedges, where streets disappeared only to begin again several blocks later. A lot of her father's people had lived there when it was still semirespectable.

'Nick, the rewrite man, got more by phone than I did by going out,' Jonathan continued. 'He had everything just from working the crisscross, calling neighbors. And when I came back to the office with absolutely nothing, he looked at me and said: ‘Nice job, Sparky.' Everyone laughed. He called me ‘Sparky' for two years. Right up to the point when the Star folded. Then he went off to the unemployment line, and I went to the Beacon-Light.'

'I kind of remember that. But I always thought it was sweet. You know, well-intentioned hazing.'

'Trust me. It wasn't sweet. There's not a day I go to work and don't think about Sparky and Nick.' He struggled to his feet. 'In fact, I need to confront the beast right now, after a quick shower and some aspirin. It will probably be the first time in a decade someone has shown up with a hangover at the Beacon- Light. Half the people there are in AA. The other half have families and can't stay out all night drinking.'

'Hey, face it. The Front Page is history. Most journalists aren't much different from the pencil pushing bureaucrats they cover.'

'Watch that kind of talk, or I might have to take a piss off the roof and pretend the alley is the Chicago River, just to show you the old tabloid spirit lives.'

Jonathan punched her shoulder. Why did every man she know give her these comradely pokes?

'Jimmy's is open,' she said, trying not to sound wistful. 'Want to grab breakfast?'

'No time to eat. I'm not even hungry.'

They climbed back into her apartment. Jonathan pocketed his harmonica and ran down the stairs at top speed. He whistled as he ran, tunelessly but happily. She watched him go, feeling pretty shitty herself, in need of ibuprofen and sleep. He should be crawling into bed, hung over and miserable, Tess thought. He should feel as bad as I do.

She did feel bad. Her stomach hurt and her head ached, and there was a bad taste in her mouth. Mescal and lack of sleep probably explained the first two symptoms. Eating the worm may have caused the third. She had a vague memory of doing just that at 3 A.M. That had been her idea; she had no one else to blame. And she had no one else to blame for the way she hated Jonathan, at least a little bit, as he rushed headlong toward his brilliant career.

Chapter 18

It was almost noon before Tess could face being vertical. She sat on the floor of the shower and let hot water pound on her, trying to decide if this made her feel better or worse. It was a draw. Finally she slicked her hair back into a tight, damp ponytail-the tension from the elastic band seemed to help her headache-and set out for the courthouse pressroom.

'Feeney's law,' a sign on the door warned. 'The second-worst editor is a failed reporter. The worst editors were all successful reporters.'

She pushed open the door and found the Beacon-Light courthouse reporter leaning back in his ergonomic chair, his feet on the antique rolltop he had salvaged with the help of a friendly custodian. He had the phone cradled in his ear, a computer keyboard in his lap, and an entire bag of Utz potato chips in his mouth. Sour cream and onion. She could smell them from across the room.

'I don't care what you told 'em at the eleven o'clock budget meeting,' he drawled, crunching between words. 'You see, unfortunately, it didn't happen that way. The judge just didn't understand your need for simplicity, for- what do you call it?-a hard, clean narrative line. Maybe by the time you go to the three o'clock budget meeting you can get it right. If not, try for the four o'clock meeting. Hey, but it's not your fault. You're an editor. You're a moron.'

He placed the phone carefully back in its cradle. If Feeney had slammed down phones or raised his voice, he might have been fired long ago for insubordination. That or the death threats he made against editors every other day. But he was so calm, almost jovial in the way he verbally abused his bosses, that they assumed his attitude was a joke. They never guessed, or at least never admitted, that Feeney's contempt for them was genuine.

Feeney was everything his office sanctuary was not-untidy, with hair forever straggling over his collar and his shirttail always slipping out of baggy khakis. He ate only those foods that could be purchased within fifty yards of the courthouse, a self-imposed restriction guaranteeing a steady diet of hot dogs, which had added a slight paunch to his lanky frame now that he was in his forties. Once a month he shaved, usually on the day he went in to file his expense account. He had been at the newspaper for almost three years, and most of his coworkers were not sure