Tess wanted to ask her father a few more questions about Ruthie. But she wasn’t sure she was ready for the answers.
“It’s late, for you to be out. Mom will be holding supper, wondering where you are.”
“Not tonight. She’s in a book club.”
“She’s in a book club?” Tess had not heard about this development, and she subscribed to a strict double standard with her parents: She told them nothing, no matter how important, they must tell her everything, no matter how insignificant. Her father looked forlorn, and his drop-by suddenly seemed less sinister. He just didn’t want to go back to the dark house in Ten Hills and eat whatever Judith had left him in her color-coordinated Rubbermaid containers.
“You want to grab a bite?”
“Just us?” he asked, and she realized it was never just them, there was always Uncle Donald or Uncle Spike or Judith.
“Why not?”
They sat in silence, mulling their own answers to that question. Finding none, they ended up at the Austin Grill, part of the renovated American Can Company complex, one of the many unlikely success stories in the once-working-class neighborhood of Canton.
Tess wanted to go Salvadoran-her taste buds had been somewhat transformed by her recent trip to Texas. But the Austin Grill was about as far as her father could go, culinarily.
He studied the menu as if it were in Sanskrit. “It all looks very…exotic.”
“Have the fajitas,” she said. “It’s just meat in some bread, think of it that way. I’m going to have migas. Oh, and two Shiner Bocks on draft, please.”
Her father frowned. “You’re driving.”
“You’re driving farther. It’s one beer, Dad. Get a grip.”
He looked around the restaurant, surveying it with a practiced eye. Like an architect who couldn’t help seeing the details that went into a building, Pat was never truly off-duty when he was in a bar. His gaze was drawn not to the sponge-painted red walls and industrial pipes running through the ceiling, but to the patrons in the high booths, the bartender behind the counter.
“Ten years ago-heck, five years ago-I would have taken odds they’d never get this old place developed. Wish I’d bought me some real estate in Canton. Never did have an instinct for making money. If you had told me people would want to live in these little old rowhouses, just because they can see water-” he shook his head. “But what do I know? Other than the fact that if I was on duty, I’d be writing this guy up for serving underage drinkers.”
Tess looked at the crowd, which was chic, by Baltimore standards. Almost everyone was wearing black, although there were a few patches of bright, preppy colors bursting through, the usual pinks and greens.
“They don’t look like college kids to me,” she said.
“That’s because they’ve put a lot of effort into not looking like college kids. Too much effort. The drinks give them away. The boys go cheap and the girls go sweet. See that table over there. The guys all have Budweisers, the girls have-what is that, anyway? Strawberry margaritas.”
“Swirlies, as the menu would have it.”
“Yeah, well I bet a lot of them will be going swirlie before the night is over. But it’s not my problem, not my territory.” He took a chip from the basket, held it tentatively toward the salsa, then decided to eat it plain. “Oh, like an Utz corn chip,” he said. “Where’s the boyfriend tonight?”
The boyfriend. As if saying the name was too painful.
“I’m not sure. We have a new policy. If we want to see each other, we have to ask at least twelve hours in advance, make a real date. No-” she stopped, blushing, realizing she had almost used the term “booty call” in front of her father. Dear Mom. I’m sorry I gave Dad that fatal heart attack at the Austin Grill. Apparently, he didn’t know his thirty-year-old daughter was having sex.
Her father was blushing an even deeper red. It must be awful, in some ways, for a man to have daughters. Fathers knew how men think.
Several silent swallows of Shiner Bock later, her father thought of something to say.
“So now you know how a liquor board inspector looks at a bar. What does the private detective see?”
Tess looked around. “The couple in the corner? One of them, maybe both of them, is stepping out on someone. My guess is he’s married-he has a ring, and he’s older than she, by a good bit. He’s eating, but she’s not. In fact, she looks as if she’s been living on fumes for a while. Her eyes are fixed on his face, while he’s looking at his enchilada.”
“Maybe she’s in love and he’s not.”
“That wouldn’t cancel out my thesis.”
“What’s the point of cheating on your wife if it’s not for love?”
Tess couldn’t decide if she found this sentiment reassuring or unnerving, coming from her father.
“None, I guess,” she said, although she didn’t believe it. In fact, it was her contention that most people who cheated, men and women, were concerned with anything but love. She had slept with another woman’s man out of childish self-pity. Of course, that was before her conversion to monogamy.
“You never told me how your work for Ruthie is going, anyway.”
From adultery to Ruthie. Tess didn’t even want to contemplate that connection in her father’s mind.
“It’s not. I had one little lead, but it hasn’t gone anywhere. A kid down in Locust Point-a girl who may or may not be a pathological liar-told me she talked to the girl and she said she had worked at a place with a name like Domino’s, a place that might as well be called the Sugar House. I spent the afternoon calling every Domino pizza takeout in the city, along with sundry plumbing supply companies, candy shops, taverns, and anything in the Yellow Pages that began DOM. No one remembers a girl who dropped out of sight a year ago, but then, who would?”
“You worked the phone book?
“What else is there?”
“Well, if it’s a city bar, it might be Domino’s on the application, just a blank storefront on the street, and no phone listing at all. You ever see those weird little places, the ones that look like someone’s house except for a neon Bar sign in the window? They have names, but they’re not written down anywhere. Except on the applications. Or they might have one name on the sign, another on the application. Sugar House-Domino’s. It’s a long shot, but if you want to come in and look at the files, they’re public information.”
“But if it’s not a bar…”
“Then you’ve lost about twenty minutes out of your life. And it’s all on the clock, right? You’re getting paid, what do you care?”
The fajitas arrived. They always reminded Tess of a magic act, the way smoke poured from the hot skillet as the meat sizzled. Once the waiter was gone, Patrick looked helplessly at the little dishes arrayed in front of him, the basket of flour tortillas.
“How do I do this, anyway?” he asked Tess.
“You must be the last person in America to eat a fajita,” Tess said, showing him how to assemble the skirt steak, pico de gallo, and guacamole in a tortilla, feeling a surge of affection. She had a sudden image of sitting opposite her father in some nursing home, pouring his Sanka and cutting his meat. It was unbearably sad to think of him that way. She was glad her father was still young, that those days were far away. She liked the relative irresponsibility of being a daughter.
“Yeah, I may never have eaten a fajita-” Patrick hit the j hard, “but there’s plenty of other things I’ve done.”
She decided not to ask for details. Maybe she didn’t want to know everything about her parents after all.
chapter 7
HER FATHER’S IDEA OF CHECKING THE BAR FILES WAS AS good as any she had, which was to say not very. Certainly, it didn’t seem particularly urgent when Tess rose the next morning, not as urgent as her desire for a specific kind of rush, a rush found only in one place. She hurried Esskay through their morning walk, then headed to a small, perfectly kept rowhouse not even 500 feet from where she lived.