By A Spider's Thread

Chapter Twenty-six

TESS MOVED HER ALDEN ACROSS THE WATER WITH Swift, sure strokes, but rowing could not soothe her this morning. Even as her body found peace in the automatic rhythms, her brain revved, like an engine in overdrive, stuck on one thought. She had promised not to reveal to Rubin anything that Boris Petrovich told her. But she had made no such promises about the men in the group. So where did Larry Kirsch's confidences fit in? Her shell skimmed across the water, and the morning sounds all seemed to coalesce into a refrain of advice: Call him. Call him. Call him. Tell him. Tell him. Tell him.

She did the first part, reaching him on his cell when she got off the water at seven, but her resolve crumbled when she heard the eagerness in his voice, the optimism.

"Did you find out anything?"

"Not much," she said. "But the men all spoke so fondly of you, I can't help thinking that Amos would open up more if you came with me to Grantsville." Open up and tell you that your wife was sort of a whore before she met you, which would keep me from having to inform you of same.

"Really?" His voice seemed to brighten. "The men liked the group?"

"Really. And this may be a key interview. The one person who keeps coming up, wherever I go, is Lana Wishnia-she was even on your father-in-law's visiting list-and she was married to Amos briefly. Plus, Mickey Harvey said Amos was tight with your father-in-law as well. So I think it's worth the three-hour drive, if you can afford a day away from work."

"I have to make a trip to our storage facility, which is out near Finksburg but sort of en route. Could you be there within an hour?"

"I'll meet you there," Tess promised.

What would she do if Amos didn't conveniently drop the bombshell she needed him to drop? What were the ethics of withholding information from a client, in hopes that someone else would be the bearer of bad news? Tess thought about asking the SnoopSisters, then decided against it. The only problem with the Sisters was that they tended to say what they really thought.

The Robbins amp; Sons warehouse stood on a frontage road along I-795, just inside Carroll County. The area had probably been farmland as recently as a decade ago, and there were still cornfields to three sides of the plain rectangular building. There was nothing to identify the unmarked structure as the furrier's storage facility, a prudent decision in Tess's opinion. Why advertise the off-season home of hundreds of fur coats? But Tess wondered if she had come to the right place when she noticed that the only car in the lot was a pale green Jaguar, a sporty two-seater. Rubin usually drove a dark blue Cadillac Seville. Yet it was Rubin who emerged from the building, locking a series of dead bolts behind him, then testing the door to make sure the warehouse was secure.

"A Jaguar?" she asked.

"It was my fortieth-birthday gift to myself." He had the good sense to look a little sheepish. "I don't drive it as much as I thought I would, so I figured it could use a nice long spell of highway driving. Sorry to get you up so early, but if we get there by noon, we could be back by four or five-give me a chance to check on the store before closing."

"I've been up since six, putting in an hour on the water." Tess ran her fingers through her hair, still damp and curly from her quick shower.

"On the water?"

"I rowed in college, and I still work out in a single, although I don't compete anymore."

"College crew, very preppy. Have you heard about the crew team at Yeshiva University?"

"I didn't even know they had one."

"Oh, yes, but they were terrible for years. So they finally decided to send their captain to Cambridge, see how the Ivy League schools do it, and it changed everything for them."

"How so?"

"The captain came back and said"-Rubin smacked his forehead with his palm, in the style of a man having an epiphany-" 'It's supposed to be eight people rowing and one person yelling'."

Tess was so unaccustomed to Rubin's making jokes that it took her a bewildered moment to laugh. But he was clearly pleased by her guffaw, belated though it might be.

"A crew-Jew joke! You're in a good mood this morning."

"It's a pretty day, got that nice crisp autumn feel. And it feels good to be doing something. I was wrong not to tell you about Natalie's father, I see that now. I was so wrapped up in the idea that it was a shanda, something I must never speak of outside the family. But he didn't tell you anything, did he?"

"No, he didn't."

"So I was crazy, all those years, worrying about nothing. What a waste."

Burdened with the information she was keeping from Rubin, Tess could only nod noncommittally.

The Jaguar drove the way that Tess's greyhound sometimes ran when seized by memories of the track-smooth and fast, with a kind of carefree rhapsody.

"My midlife-crisis car," Rubin said, almost apologetic. "And, of course, I couldn't buy German."

"Of course? Oh, of course. I get to thinking that all cars are the same, mere modes of transportation. But this really is a different ride from my fourteen-year-old Toyota."

"Do you want to try it?"

"No, I'd be too nervous behind the wheel of something whose value exceeds my net worth."

"It's not that dear."

"And my net worth isn't that high."

They had already covered over ninety miles, reaching the point where the roads, shaped by the demands of the Appalachians, started to climb and curve. Mark Rubin was relishing the drive as much as the car. In sunglasses, his usual dark suit and tie-shirt immaculate, thick hair gleaming-he had an almost James Bond-like savoir faire, Tess thought. Assuming one could imagine James Bond wearing a yarmulke.

"I have to ask you something," she said.

" 'Have to'-that construction actually means a person wants to ask something but knows it's rude."

"Not rude, but naive perhaps. Anyway, the yarmulke-what's the point?"

"It reminds me that God is always above me."

"You could wear a hat. Besides, if you need a piece of cloth to remind you where God is, how sturdy is your faith?"

"At some point rituals cannot be deconstructed. The acceptance of ritual is part of faith. Why take communion? Why bow to the east in prayer?"

"I don't do any of those things, but at least they can be done in private. A yarmulke-it announces you're a Jew."

"So?"

"So did six-pointed stars pinned to jackets, and everyone agrees those were a bad idea."

"One is a choice, the other an attempt to stigmatize."

"But having made the choice, you single yourself out, which can lead people to stigmatize you anyway."

"Single myself out? There are more than a hundred thousand Jews in the Baltimore area. I'm far from alone."

"I mean-the yarmulke tells everyone you're Jewish, which invites everything you do to be viewed through the prism of all sorts of prejudices and judgments." Tess was thinking about how tough he had been in negotiation, the day she had overheard him on the phone. His contact in Montreal probably ascribed Rubin's behavior to his religion-assuming the Montreal supplier wasn't a Jew himself. "Don't you ever want to pass through the world anonymously, responsible for only yourself?"

"Look, Tess, I can take my yarmulke off, but what will that gain me? Do you think that Mark Rubin-seller of furs, resident of Pikesville, owner of a striking yet prominent nose"-he thrummed the tip of said nose with an index finger-"is going to pass? I've never wanted to be anyone but who I am. No offense, but your views on religion are a little warped."

"Warped?"

"Maybe that's too strong a word. But-you'll forgive me a little dime-store psychology-just because you like to have it both ways doesn't mean everyone else wants to play the same game."

"What do you mean?" He had, however accidentally, echoed an accusation made against Tess not long ago, although in a different context.

"You like this game you play, shifting between identities, confusing people. With me, you act like a shiksa naif. But I bet when it suits you, when you're around more unambiguously goyish types, you play the Jew."

He had scored a bull's-eye, but Tess didn't see any reason to concede his point.

"I'm not playing anything. I'm legitimately stranded between two religions."

"Do you believe in God?"

"That's awfully personal."

Rubin laughed. It was the first time Tess had heard his laugh, and it was full-bodied, extremely appealing, the kind of laugh that made her want to keep saying funny things.

"Tess, you've asked me about my marriage, my sex life, my wife's convict father, and my finances. I think I'm entitled to ask whether you believe in God."

"Okay, okay. I… do."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure I could explain it."

"Maybe there's your yarmulke."

"I don't get it."

"Think about it."

Tess might have said something more, but as they crossed the next summit, the horizon turned gray-green and the air changed perceptibly. A sudden drenching rainstorm began moments later, a downpour so complete that visibility was reduced to virtually nothing. The scenario happened to match one of Tess's recurring nightmares, one in which she was driving but could not see-because of weather or simply because her eyes refused to open.

"Pull over," she urged Rubin in a tight, dry voice.

"It's safer to keep going, as long as I can see the taillights of the car ahead."

"Yeah, assuming he's still on the road. You could follow him right off the side of the mountain, too."

Rubin did not bother to reply, just drove in grim silence. The freak storm lasted no more than a minute or two, but Tess spent every endless second awaiting a plunge over the side of the highway or the sudden jolt of a runaway truck on the Jaguar's bumper. She would have felt so much better if she were behind the wheel.

The rain ended as abruptly as it began, stopping completely instead of tapering off. Over the next few miles, Tess and Mark passed dozens of cars on the shoulder-cars with crumpled fronts or crushed backs, surrounded by dazed-looking people. At least no one appeared to have been badly injured.

"See?" Mark said.

"See what?"

"They pulled over and ended up having accidents."

"You don't know that. They could have pulled over after the collisions."

"Do you always insist on having the last word?"

Tess opened her mouth, saw the trap he had set for her, and shut it, shaking her head emphatically instead. Rubin's laugh boomed out again, but she could not quite recapture the pleasant mood. The rain had seemed prophetic, a reminder that they had crossed some unseen boundary and all natural laws were now suspended.

Amos Greif lived outside Grantsville on a large farm, a place of several hundred acres judging by the long expanse of barbed-wire fence that fronted the roadway, no trespassing signs were posted every few feet, and when the Jaguar turned into the long, dirt driveway, two mutts raced it for much of the way, dropping out only because the distance was so great, almost two miles by the odometer.

Tess hummed a few lines from the old Deliverance banjo duet.

"Are you sure this guy is Jewish?" she asked Rubin.

"In his own way, yes."

"How did a car thief ever make a living in Grantsville? It's pretty small."

"Amos ran a chop shop out here, dismantling cars stolen from Baltimore and Pittsburgh-and who knows what else. I think he took care of the paperwork, too."

"One-stop shopping. How convenient."

Amos was standing on his porch by the time they reached the top of the hill, probably alerted by the dogs and the Jaguar's noisy approach. He was the biggest man Tess had ever seen-maybe six foot eight and at least three hundred pounds, massive but not fat. He was perhaps the one person who really could attribute his weight to being big-boned. He also looked like he never quite came clean, although not for lack of trying. Perhaps there was just too much of him to wash, and too many places he couldn't see.

Tess and Mark got out of the car but lingered behind the Jaguar's open doors, unsure of their welcome.

"So," Amos said, "the mountain comes to Muhammad."

Tess looked across the roof of the car at Rubin, who seemed equally mystified by the greeting. They had literally come to the mountains, and the man on the porch was far more mountainlike than either of them.

"It's been a long time, Amos. You look well."

This generous description didn't lure Amos forward or even convince him to unfold his huge, muscled arms. "Why are you here?"

"Miss Monaghan is helping me look for my wife and children, who have been missing since before Labor Day. During her investigation she discovered that Natalie had a friend, Lana Wishnia. Tess tells me you were once married to Lana, and that you may have been a confidante of my father-in-law as well. You remember him, Boris Petrovich? I couldn't help thinking-well, hoping-that you knew something, anything, about Natalie's whereabouts. If either one of them told you anything…"

Amos just kept staring, assessing them.

"There's money for you," Tess said, "if you know something."

Rubin nodded. "Absolutely. I'd pay dearly for any information that led me to my family."

"Wait here," Amos said, in a tone that made it unthinkable to do anything else. He turned his back on them and disappeared inside the little farmhouse with a slam of the screen door. He hadn't done much to prettify it, but the wood-frame building was well tended.

Tess and Mark were left where they stood, car still idling, its open doors like wings on a green metallic bug. Tess would not be surprised if the Jaguar proved to have magical powers, a la Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, capable of taking them through the sky or across the water. There was no trace in the air of the strange weather they had passed through. The sky was a cloudless blue again, clear enough to see miles in all directions.

"You can see three states from here," Rubin said, "if you know where to look."

Tess didn't even try to make conversation. She was too busy worrying that Amos, not exactly a garrulous sort, wasn't going to let her off the hook. How would she ever tell Rubin what Larry Kirsch had said about Natalie? Perhaps it wasn't even true. She should get at least one more source to verify the information.

"My property's posted," Amos announced, coming back on the porch. "Which means I'm entitled to do this."

He had a shotgun in his arms, and he leveled it at Rubin, taking aim. Even then Tess did not quite believe he meant to shoot them. It was a warning, an order to leave, nothing more. A little over the top, but country people were touchy about property rights.

"A job done is a job done," Amos said, more to himself than them, his finger on the trigger.

Did Rubin scream for Tess to duck? If so, she never heard the warning, falling instinctively to the ground behind the open door before Amos fired and scrambling for her gun, worn on her belt today. She had spent a lot of time working on her marksmanship over the summer, and those hours of practice paid off. She positioned herself and pulled her gun out as automatically as she might hit the snooze button on her alarm clock, albeit with more alertness.

Yet as quickly as she had moved, Rubin had moved faster still, diving into the car from his side, banging open the glove compartment and grabbing a gun. Holding the weapon in his left hand, he reached through the passenger door and pushed Tess's head down with his right, using so much force she almost ate a mouthful of gravel. He then shot his onetime acolyte square in the chest, catching him just as he fired, sending the shotgun blast into the porch roof.

Amos dropped his shotgun, but he continued to stand for several long, agonizing seconds, swaying slightly, as if it took a while for his massive body to transfer the news of his injury to his nervous system. Finally, with a confused yet almost respectful look for Mark Rubin, he fell to the floor of his porch.

Tess and Rubin remained huddled together, listening to each other breathe. After a few seconds, he pulled himself away from her and began brushing dirt and dust from his suit. He approached the porch, his weapon drawn, walking around Amos's huge body, then kneeling down to take his pulse at the neck. Mark's lips moved, and Tess assumed he was reciting a prayer, perhaps a kaddish. Even so, Tess approached the porch with great caution, her own gun in hand.

A thousand questions occurred to her, but she settled for perhaps the least important. "Why in hell do you have that gun?"

"I always carry a gun when I go to the storage facility or transport furs. One of my father's ways of saving money."

"But I mean… it's not just any gun." She recognized the pistol from her own recent gun-shopping days, when she had decided to upgrade to the Beretta. "It's a SIG Sauer. A German gun."

"Swiss-German, actually."

"Still, for a man who wouldn't even consider owning a BMW…"

"Oh." He shrugged. "They do some things very well."

Chapter Twenty-seven

The Garrett County authorities were polite, almost painstakingly so, to "that girl and that Jew who killed Amos," as Tess overheard one deputy say to another. The tone was innocuous, the meaning clear: They were outsiders who had killed a local. Just their luck, Amos Greif was well liked in his hometown, if only because he kept to himself and paid his property taxes. And if he had come out of prison less than rehabilitated, as a cursory examination of his house seemed to indicate, at least Grantsville was only a staging area for his auto-theft network. Amos Greif was a good neighbor. He left the local cars alone.

Luckily, Tyner knew a Cumberland lawyer willing to safeguard their rights on short notice. Tess had learned through sorry experience that there was no percentage in talking to authorities without a lawyer present, especially when she was innocent. The lawyer arrived quickly, and by the time the sun went down over West Virginia, the sheriff had decided to let Tess and Mark Rubin leave, although he reminded them that they would be expected to return for grand jury proceedings. ButTyner's friend said she knew the state's attorney and he was likely to recommend no indictment under the circumstances. Tess and Mark were licensed gun owners on legitimate business, and their stories meshed with the physical evidence at the scene.

"It would have been better," said the lawyer, Gloria Hess, "if you hadn't gone inside his house after you shot him. But I still think you'll both be okay."

She was a tall, striking brunette, gorgeous enough so that even Mark seemed to register the fact, shaking her hand with a faintly dazed look. It occurred to Tess that Tyner's legal contacts all tended to be lookers.

"I had to call 911, and it's hard to get service on my cell out here," Tess told Gloria. "You have to admit, Greif's behavior made more sense after the deputies saw what was in his house. Clearly it wasn't trespassing he was worried about."

The deputies had opened a closed door off the central hallway and discovered a state-of-the-art forger's shop, with a gleaming photocopier and templates for all sorts of documents-temporary tags, titles, driver's licenses. There also were meticulous files, kept in restored oak filing cabinets, showing price lists for certain parts and in-demand vehicles, broken down by region. Another folder yielded voluminous correspondence about firearms, but this appeared to be legal-up to a point. Greif was the registered owner of hundreds of handguns, but the only weapon the deputies turned up was the shotgun he had died holding.

The deputies were impressed by their find, so Tess had pretended to be, too, despite having seen it all, and more. She wished she had thought to shut down Greif's computer-with the flick of a finger, the deputies could have traced her frantic path through it in the minutes before they arrived. She had searched documents for references to Natalie and the children, started and quit all the recent applications. The last thing she did was click on Greif's America Online account.

"What's the use?" Rubin hissed from the door, where he was keeping watch. "You can't get into his e-mail without his password."

"But I can get into his address book." She opened it up and was grateful to discover that Greif had stored only five addresses.

The first four, all Hotmail accounts, meant nothing to her. Tess jotted them down, knowing that a computer-savvy type could discern a lot from mere addresses.

The last address was for Wishnia, Lana, with an AOL user name of SlavicBeautee. And the comment box included the P.O. Box at the Reisterstown mail store where Tess had followed her that first day.

Tess quit the program, scooting out of the room and into the front hallway just moments before the deputies climbed the porch steps and began walking around the considerable corpse left there. Contemplating the lifeless form, Tess had felt nothing, or close to it. Her only regret about Greif's death was that he had taken whatever he knew with him.

"I'm sorry." They were passing the ballpark outside Frederick, home to the Keys, dark this time of year.

"Sorry for what?" Mark said, glancing longingly at the park. "I took Isaac there once. It's a great little stadium."

"I'm sorry you had to kill a man today. You should have let me do it, given that I already have one on my scorecard."

"There really wasn't time to sort it out. I've gotten so used to the fact that you carry a gun that I forgot about it. I suppose we could have done the Alphonse and Gaston thing: 'After you. No, after you. No, I insist, after you.' But we'd both be dead by now."

Tess smiled, feeling through her jeans for the bumpy scar on her knee. She had bruised it when Mark threw her down, and she couldn't help feeling it might burst open once again, exposing the bone. Of all the things she had seen in her life, few had made her queasier than a glimpse of bone inside in her own knee.

"Any idea what he meant, about the mountain coming to Muhammad, or a job done being a job done?"

"I'm not sure he knew what he meant Maybe he had just taken an order for some hard-to-get Jaguar parts. It does seem that the only thing Amos learned in prison was how to run his criminal enterprises with more technological finesse."

"Are you disappointed that he didn't change? You spent all that time visiting Jessup, trying to help these guys, and he goes right back to his old ways."

"I did it as much for myself as for them. That's the nasty little secret about charity. We do it for ourselves."

"Well, sure, if it's just some onetime thing. I read in the newspaper once that the local soup kitchens dread Thanksgiving because all these dilettantes come out of the woodwork, determined to hand out platters of sweet potatoes so they can then go home and watch football while enveloped in a saintly glow. The writer called it 'the one-day philanthropy fix.' But you're not one of those people."

"Still, my motives were largely selfish."

"How so?"

Rubin hesitated. "You've heard me speak of a shanda?"

"With Natalie's father, right. It means 'shame.' "

"It's bigger than shame in some ways. I grew up surrounded by relatives who really did evaluate everything on the basis of whether it was good for the Jews or bad for the Jews. Hank Greenberg? Good for the Jews. Michael Milken? Bad for the Jews. We were responsible not just for ourselves but for every Jew, and the bad always outweighed the good. When I… became aware of the Jewish men in Maryland's prison system, I felt I should do something. My own father…" His voice trailed off.

"Was your father in prison?"

"Oh, God, no. No. But there was gossip, ugly gossip, about his business and his money. My stepmother was very well fixed. And, truth be told, my father had a little gonif in him. That means-"

"Thief," Tess said. "I've read everything Philip Roth has ever written."

"Roth. That self-loathing monster, projecting his own problems onto an entire people."

"Read The Ghost Writer and American Pastoral, then get back to me. What about your father?"

"I told you it was my dad's idea for us to offer lifetime storage to his customers at a discounted rate. What I didn't tell you is that the original building was just an old, crummy warehouse in downtown Baltimore. No climate control, nothing. He figured that most people wouldn't know if their coats had been properly stored, and if one got damaged, he would just replace it and still be ahead financially. It was a gamble, and it paid off. But it was dishonest, taking money from people to put their furs in that nasty old building. When I came on as his partner, I insisted on the new warehouse. It was a big capital expense, but I wanted to make up for all the years my father ripped people off."

"You're not responsible for your dad."

"You're wrong about that. I'm responsible for my dad, and my family. As you pointed out this morning, everywhere I go, people see a Jew, first and foremost. So I have to live an exemplary life."

"Is there an element of shame in the fact that Natalie left you?"

He nodded, his eyes on the road. "Absolutely. If I were a good husband, she never would have gone. Clearly, I failed her in some way."

"Not necessarily."

"Necessarily. I've told you we had no problems, and that was true. But if she left me to keep me from learning something about her… well, that's my failure, too. Somehow she came to believe that she couldn't be completely honest with me, that she couldn't trust my love for her."

"Maybe Natalie isn't the person you thought she was. Maybe she's concealing something far worse than you could ever imagine."

"She's the mother of my children. What else matters? We're the adults, we can work out whatever we need to work out. But children are better off when their parents stay together."

They drove for a few more miles in silence. Tess saw an ad for a real-estate agent, one in which two giant hands shook and sealed a deal for a little piece of the American dream.

"You touched me today," she said.

"What?"

"You pushed my head down. Before you-"

"Any Jewish law can be suspended if a person's life is in danger."

"Yeah, but you shook Gloria Hess's hand, too. Didn't hesitate."

He had the good grace to blush. "In business a man has to shake hands sometimes."

"So why did you make such a show of not shaking mine the first time I offered it?"

"You offered it and withdrew it before I could do anything. In that moment… well, I didn't think it would be such a bad thing if you were a little off balance."

"You mean you thought it would be good if I felt tentative enough that I didn't ask too many hard questions. What else are you keeping from me, Mark?" Tess realized with a start it was the first time she had used his first name. He had been "Mr. Rubin" to her in conversation, "Rubin" in her head. Nothing like a little justifiable homicide to bring two people closer.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What are you keeping from me?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

Tess wondered if Mark were lying, too.

The countryside was fading away and the suburbs, with their diffuse, fuzzy lights, came rushing toward them. Mark Rubin was not as delusional as Tess had once thought. He had sought the assistance of a private detective, insisting there were no overt problems in his marriage, convinced that some secret had cost him the life he knew. Almost everything Tess had learned so far supported this original theory. Natalie did have a secret. And her father, used to getting a cut of whatever Natalie made, had tried to blackmail her. Mark Rubin had been stalwart enough not to peek under the lid of that Pandora's box. For a decade, that had granted Natalie a reprieve from her scheming father. But now Boris had a new buyer for his information. If Natalie cared for Mark, would she rationalize that leaving him was the only way to save him?

Then where did the mystery man fit in? And was a desire to protect his criminal enterprises the only reason that Amos Greif had produced that shotgun, clearly ready to kill them both? The mountain had come to Muhammad. Mark was the mountain. Greif had been expecting to see him, only not today, not on his property.

"Lana's the key," Tess said, thinking out loud. "I'm going to follow her tomorrow, see where she leads us."

"Can I come along?"

"You have a business to run. Besides, that's not very professional. You hired me to do this stuff. I don't need anyone riding shotgun." Mark grimaced. "Sorry, poor choice of words. You know, you should… see someone."

"I should start dating while I'm still looking for my wife?"

"No, I mean… what you did today. It will stay with you in ways you might not expect. Even when there's no choice, when it's you or him, it leaves a mark."

"So you think I should go to counseling?"

"Yes."

"Is that what you did?"

"More or less." Tess had already been in counseling, for unrelated reasons, but she'd been smart enough to realize she needed the therapist's help.

"Well, if you had a God, maybe you could have talked to him and prayed to him. And saved yourself a little money in the process."

"God is great, and God is good," Tess intoned. "But he can't get you prescription drugs."

It was after ten when Tess arrived home, and the dogs were almost hysterical, although she had arranged for a neighbor boy to walk and feed them when she realized she wouldn't be back until late. They were probably scared she had simply left, never to be seen again.

After all, Crow had.

He had been gone less than a month, but even a day was an eternity to Esskay and Miata. Or perhaps they had sussed out, from the tenor of the conversations in the house in the days before he left, that Crow didn't plan on coming back.

Sure, he had left some clothes behind, along with various objects that he would want eventually-CDs, art supplies, a Swiffer. But he wasn't going to come through the door at 2:00 a.m. anymore and slide into bed next to Tess, pirating her warmth. He wasn't around to take over the kitchen, impulsively swept up in his need to make a souffle or risotto. Crow being Crow, he wasn't the type of boyfriend to wreck a kitchen and leave the mess to his girlfriend. He cleaned up as he went, so there was relatively little to do at the end of one of his meals. When Tess once asked why he was so considerate, he said, "After I've made someone dinner, I don't want her expending all her energy on the kitchen. I want her to focus her goodwill on me." He was, as her friend Whitney had once observed, the perfect postmodern boyfriend.

So why had Tess balked when he suggested that she promote him to perfect postmodern husband?

The proposal, such as it was, had come on a perfect summer night late in August, as they walked the dogs through the deepening dusk. There had been a sudden change in the air, and although the nights were still warm, it was clear the sultry summer was losing its grip. Tess had been meandering along with Miata, so docile and easy to walk, while Crow had been holding on to Esskay, who had a major chip on her bony shoulder when it came to all other living creatures. Squirrels, rabbits, cats, other dogs, fast-moving pieces of paper-Esskay lunged at anything that moved.

"She's like that cartoon character-the little cat-who's always saying, 'Let me at 'em, let me at 'em,' " Tess observed, then felt stupid for having such lowbrow cultural references. Why couldn't she allude to Dickens with the same alacrity with which she cited cartoons?

"She's like you," Crow said.

"That's nice."

"Just an affectionate observation. Actually, you're not quite as thin-skinned as you were when we met. But you used to go at the world that way, always expecting dissent and antagonism."

"And I was right, most of the time."

"Do you think I've been good for you?"

Esskay had dragged Crow from the path, intent on sniffing the base of a tree, so Tess could not see his face just then.

"Probably."

"Do you think we should get married?"

Perhaps it was the fact that Tess could not see his face, or perhaps it was the near dark, which seemed to make everything portentous, so that the consequences of a lie seemed more grave than usual. At any rate, she said what she was thinking, swiftly and regretfully: "No."

Three days of arguing followed, disputes notable only by the universality of the cliches thrown back and forth: You're afraid to commit. Marriage is just a meaningless legal construct, in which two people agree to pool all their stuff, so they can pay lawyers to split it up seven years later. If it's so meaningless, why not just humor me and do it?

It would be wrong to say they were relieved when the call came from Charlottesville with the news that Crow's mother had a cancerous lump in her breast. But the family emergency did grant them a reprieve from their own problems. Within a week Crow had called with the glad news that his mother had received the best possible prognosis, but he wanted to stay with his parents for a while, perhaps audit a few courses at UVA. Tess had accepted the decision for the gracious, passive cease-fire she assumed it was.

Was she happy, was she free? The question was not so absurd. She was free, but miserable. She didn't want to live without Crow, but she didn't want to live with him if that meant being a wife. She wasn't sure she wanted to be anyone's wife. She tried to graft the details of marriage and family onto her life, and they just didn't fit. She imagined herself on surveillance, a fractious baby in a car seat. She saw herself trying to tiptoe out of the house in the morning, en route to her 7:00 a.m. row, only to have a child demanding its due. Unlike a dog, a child would not be content with a quick walk and a biscuit.

But in the end Tess said no because she suspected that Crow had asked for all the wrong reasons. Frightened by her brush with death this past spring, he wanted to protect her, care for her, keep her safe. Which was admirable, lovable even. It was not, however, a good reason to get married. That's what she had been trying to figure out all along, but Crow had run away before she could find the words. Now she was too proud to pick up the phone and ask him to come back, and he was… well, who knew what he was? Crow's enthusiasms had always come and gone so quickly. Why should she trust his love for her, when he had a mandolin and a bread machine gathering dust in various cupboards?

So on the night of the day she watched Mark Rubin kill a man, Tess walked her dogs down that same dark path and wondered if she was ever going to get her life right. It was beginning to seem like a Rubik's Cube, in which the colors-love, work, family, self-never lined up.

And unlike the toy she had owned as a child, her life couldn't be pounded into the floor until it was a satisfying pile of multicolored plastic.