"In that case, a lot of people aren't going to have alibis. Are you going to ask Feeney to prove where he was?"
"Feeney has a very satisfactory alibi, or else I wouldn't even be working on this. That would be totally unethical." Funny, how smoothly a lie could come, when it really had to. "And, yes, everyone will be held to the same standard."
"Don't be naive. There are more sets of standards at the Beacon-Light than you'll ever know."
Spare me, Tess thought. The last thing she wanted to hear was Rosita's list of grievances against her bosses. Perhaps she would do well to follow the reporter's advice after all, steering her into innocuous territory so she would be less hostile.
"You know, I don't pay attention to bylines as much as I should, so I'm not really sure when you started at the Beacon-Light, although I remember admiring your writing on several pieces. What has it been, a year or so?"
"Fourteen months, but I lost four months on the sports copy desk. I really wanted to cover baseball-I covered the minor league team in San Antonio, and Guy-Guy Whitman, the A.M.E. for sports and features-keeps promising me I'll have a shot at the number three slot covering the Orioles. Until then, he has me in the girl ghetto, features."
"What's wrong with features?"
"I want to be a real reporter. That's why I lobbied to get on the Wynkowski story. And I've done a good job. Feeney got the financial stuff, but I got the stuff about his marriage and his gambling problem. If you listen to what people are talking about around town, it's my part of the story."
Jesus, Tess thought, all roads led to Rosita, at least in her mind. The domestic violence was sweetly salacious, and the gambling could be a huge stumbling block, but that was nothing but hearsay. The financial angle was the real story.
"Are you from Texas?"
" Texas? Oh, because of San Antonio. God, no. I spent one year and seven months in that godforsaken place and it seemed as if the temperature was above ninety for all but three days. I'm from New England. I like seasons, and I prefer cool ones to hot ones."
" Baltimore 's summers are pretty wicked."
"Yeah, and the winters are wimpy, with people going crazy at the sight of the first snowflake. It's still an improvement, for now. I'll get to the Globe yet."
"Just the Globe? Why not the New York Times or the Washington Post?" Why not the Vatican?
For all her instructions on how to conduct an interview, Rosita wasn't a very good listener. "What I really need to do is get back into sportswriting. It's still something of a novelty act, the woman in the locker room. Some 22-year-old in overalls won a Pulitzer this year for an umpire story, for Christ's sake. No, there aren't many more female sportswriters than there were ten years ago. The difference is, editors don't feel as guilt-ridden about it.
"You sound like one of those people with a five-year plan you update every December thirty-first."
"I am. Two five-year plans, actually, one for work and one for my alleged personal life. Work is proving to be more manageable." Her smile this time wasn't her usual fake grin. It was tiny and rueful, fading away quickly, the Cheshire Cat in reverse. She glanced past Tess, who followed her eyes to the clock in the kitchen gallery. No wonder Tess had cats on the brain: the clock was one of those insanely grinning Kit-Kat Klock tchotchkes, sequined tail swinging back and forth in time with round eyes that cased the room.
"Look, I really don't have any more time for this," Rosita said abruptly.
"Sorry, you obviously have plans. Big date?"
"No, no, just dinner with a friend. You know, the usual unattached single woman's routine for a Saturday night. Are you married?"
"God, no," Tess said.
"Boyfriend?"
"Sort of. I mean yes, yes I do. In fact, his band is playing tonight, so I have to go do the band member's girlfriend thing. Stand in a crowd, stare adoringly at him."
"In my experience, it doesn't matter what your boyfriend does. Sooner or later, you're expected to stand in a crowd and stare at him adoringly." Rosita almost seemed likable to Tess now. She was sharp, she had a certain wit. Then she reverted to being merely sharp. "Of course in Baltimore, there are no available men, not if you have standards. I'd rather be dateless."
With someone else, it might have been mere tactlessness. In this case, there was no doubt the remark was deliberately waspish, an intentional implication that Tess did not have standards.
"Protect those toenails. I'll let myself out."
It was dark now along University Parkway and Tess, a born voyeur, glanced into lighted windows as she walked to her car. This stretch of buildings was older than Rosita's tower, with the elegant touches once common to the city's apartments-dark wood paneling, high ceilings, crown moldings. Why did people's lives, captured on the sly like this, look so enticing, like old photographs unearthed in an antique store? Tess caught glimpses of women her age, yet so much more polished looking in their real Saturday night date clothes. She saw their men, in jackets and ties. Grown-ups, headed to restaurants and Center Stage, perhaps the symphony. And where was she going to be on Saturday night? Lost in the funhouse of the Floating Opera until the wee small hours of the morning, keeping company with wee small minds.
Chapter 10
"How much do you weigh?"
The voice, thin and high, interrupted Tess's reverie. She was keeping herself awake by coming up with new nicknames for Baltimore neighborhoods. They were in an old ballroom in SoWeBo, Southwest Baltimore, once home to H.L. Mencken and Edgar Allan Poe, now home to restaurants like Mencken's Cultured Pearl and the Telltale Hearth. But how about SoO (South of Orioles Park at Camden Yard) or SoPoeBo, near where Poe was buried? So-SoBo, which could encompass the isolated south side neighborhoods. It was a mark of how tired she was that this seemed incredibly witty.
"What?" she asked groggily, stealing a look at her watch. Almost 3 A.M., up for twenty hours. She had caught a second wind about 11, over Afghan food followed by a round of Galliano liqueur. She was reasonably sure the Galliano was not authentically Afghani, but it had made a nice kicker. The licorice-like syrup reminded her of prescription cold medicines, the old-fashioned kind that really made the pain go away for a while. And it had kept her going through the first three bands, but it was wearing off now, just when she needed to radiate the kind of mindless devotion and appreciation expected of a Musician's Girlfriend. Not to mention a certain proprietary zeal. While her mouth smiled at Crow, her eyes were suppose to flash "no poaching" signals to all the females present. It took a lot of energy, this Musician's Girlfriend gig. But she really did care about Crow, who was possibly the nicest man she had ever known. And he would get over being twenty-three. After all, she had.
"I asked how much you weigh," the chirpy little voice repeated. It was Maisie, one of her two cohorts in the Poe White Trash Ladies' Auxiliary. She was sure it was Maisie, because Maisie had the pierced nose. Actually, the nose stud was a fake, a gold ball she attached to her nostril with a small magnet. Maisie's boyfriend, the bass player, had told Crow, who then shared this useful piece of intelligence with Tess. It allowed her to tell Maisie apart from Lorna, the one who wore those tight little necklaces that appeared to be choking her. But that was probably just wishful thinking on Tess's part.
"I don't know. I don't own a scale."
"She doesn't own a scale," Maisie told Lorna, who squealed in delight.
"What about at the doctor's office?" This was a familiar topic, but a favorite one, the tyranny of the tiny. Their weight barely registered in the three digits. Lorna could be particularly tiresome, talking about the high-protein shakes she had to drink because pounds just fell off her.