Laura Lippman Read Online Free PDF

accused me of objectifying them, or using them for sex.”
    Kitty laughed, pleased with herself for being such a cadette. Laylah clapped her baby hands and laughed with her, while Jackie just shook her head and snorted: “White girl craziness.”
    It was one of Jackie’s favorite expressions, but Tess thought it didn’t apply here. Different pathologies for black and white women, but pathologies all the same. Valuing the men who didn’t value you. Settling for vicarious power, instead of grabbing your own chunk of it. Worrying about the size of your butt. She had a sudden yearning to sweep Laylah up in her arms and tell her that they’d have it all worked out by the time she was a grown-up.
    Jackie picked up the clipping that Kitty had left on the table. “He is kind of cute. I hope you’re going to call him, make sure he’s okay.”
    “I am not . Let him call me if he wants to talk. My home number hasn’t changed, even if it’s unlisted now.”
    “You know for a fact he sent this?” Jackie had switched to her professional persona, the steely-eyed Grand Inquisitor who had built her fund-raising business into such a hot property that clients ended up auditioning for her.
    “Well, no, but he’s the only person I know in Texas.”
    “The only person you know you know in Texas. Besides, what if he really is in a bind? I know you, girl, you’ll never forgive yourself if something happens to that boy.”
    Kitty nudged the portable phone toward Tess with her elbow. Tess ignored it, pouring herself another glass of wine. “If I were to call— if —do you think I would do it here, within your hearing?”
    Jackie and Kitty smiled smugly at each other, while Laylah made another pass at Esskay, squealing in delight when the dog ran away and slunk under the table, whimpering piteously.
    “What does the doggie say, Laylah?” Jackie asked automatically.
    “Meow,” Laylah said. “Meeeee-ow.”

     

    Not even an hour later, Tess sat on her bed in the third-floor apartment above the store, Esskay nestled beside her, yet another glass of wine on her bedside table. Almost eleven o’clock. An hour earlier in Texas, and a Friday night. He’d be out, of course, performing with his band, lots of Texas girls staring at him hungrily. Texas women were reputed to be better-looking than women from elsewhere. She imagined a super-gender with hard bodies, harder hair, tanning-bed tans, and those taut neck cords that come from years of expert bulimia. Barfing sorority girls with credit cards, convertibles, and eager, grasping mouths. Girls who kept a man out late, assuming he got home at all.
    So if she called now, she’d get his machine. A machine would be a nice compromise, actually. Ideal, even, the equivalent of a drive-by shooting in the gender wars. Tag, you’re it .
    “What city?” asked the mechanical voice attached to the 512 area code.
    “Austin,” she said into the alloted portion of silence.
    “What listing?”
    “Cr—Edgar Ransome.” She had to grope for his real name. Crow had always been Crow to her.
    The voice provided ten digits and she punched them in from memory, only to hear another mechanical voice: “I’m sorry the number you have called is not in service…”
    She stared at the phone, puzzled. The phone must have been cut off pretty recently if he was still listed. Oh well, Crow wouldn’t be the first musician to miss too many phone bills. Although his doting parents, the ones who had been so tolerant of his six-year plan at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, had always been good-natured about subsidizing him.
    And if he were really in trouble, he’d go to them. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? An only child like her, Crow had been brought up in a much more stereotypically worshipful home. In fact, his ego was so intact, his self-esteem so genuine, that it was as if it had been baked in his mother’s kiln and coated with layers of shiny glaze. At least, she thought his mother had