“I thought they were going to pick me up,” the girl was saying.

“Here? No, not here. I told you. You’re going to Harbor Court for tea.”

“Iced tea in winter? That’s all I get? Jesus, I thought this guy had money.”

“Hot tea, with little sandwiches. You’ll like it. Just don’t eat too many. This is a look-see, remember. You might not get it.”

“And it’s a good thing to get?”

“Honey, it’s the best gig in town. If you get it. Most don’t. For every ten that go, maybe one gets picked.”

They climbed into the man’s car. Tess was able to catch sight of the license plate, the make of the car. A Mercury Marquis, fairly new. She waited until it turned out of the alley and then stood up, unkinking her knees, brushing herself off. She wondered if she could pass muster at the Harbor Court’s high tea. She’d have to. She walked slowly through the alley, and the five blocks back to her car. Running, rushing, attracted attention, and it didn’t gain that much time in the end. She’d make it to Harbor Court before tea was over.

Or so she thought, until she rounded the corner and saw the blond duo from Domenick’s, sitting on the trunk of her car.

“WHERE YOU BEEN?” ASKED ONE, HAILING HER AS if they were old friends.

“Yeah, where you been?” echoed the other. “We’ve been waiting for you. You been talking to Gee-gee all this time?”

“Gee-gee?”

“It’s what we call my grandmother,” the first one said, scowling, daring her to make something of it.

My grandmother, not our, she noted. Then they weren’t brothers, although they could have passed. Could have passed for twins, in fact. Two Baltimore punks with the unhealthy pinkish pallor that always reminded her of the inside of a white rabbit’s ears. In the dim light of the bar, they had looked stringy and small. Now she saw they were taller than she was by several inches, with taut neck cords and sinewy forearms.

“I was walking around the neighborhood. I decided while I was here, I’d take a tour of Mencken’s house.”

She was counting on them not knowing it was closed, because she was counting on them not knowing who Mencken was.

“The Mexican restaurant?” the other one asked. “That’s long-gone.”

“Not Mencken’s Cultured Pearl, the writer’s house. The Mexican restaurant was named for him.”

“Bullshit,” the first one said. “Ain’t no writer famous enough to have his house be a museum, much less a Mexican restaurant.”

“Not many,” Tess agreed.

“Yeah, where is this place?”

“Over on Hollins, across from the park. I’ll show you, if you want to walk up there with me.” She was screwed if they took her up on her offer. The Mencken House had been closed since the City Life Museum had gone belly-up and parceled out its holdings.

Then again, she might be able to outrun them in the park. Maybe.

“I hate fucking museums,” the second one said, leaning back against the rear windshield, his hands behind his neck, as if to catch a little sun. “When we was in school, they were always dragging us to those fuckin’ places. They’d take us to the B amp;O, right here in our fuckin’ neighborhood. Like I give a shit about trains. I liked the FBI, though. That was cool.”

The taller one got up and walked around the car, leaning against the Toyota’s driver-side door. Tess would have to push him away to get her key in the lock. That’s what he wanted, she realized with a sinking feeling. He wanted her to make the first move, and then he would make the second.

“You like Domenick’s?” he asked. “You keep coming around.”

“I’ve been to friendlier places.”

“Well, it’s a neighborhood joint, and this isn’t your neighborhood, is it?”

The one sitting on her trunk sat up and began to bounce, so her car moved beneath him, jouncing on its worn shocks. Tess took out her keys and tried to reach around the other one in order to open her door. He grabbed her wrist, hard. What was it with men and her wrists today?

“Don’t,” she said.

“What?”

She wished she knew. “Tell your friend to stop rocking my car.”

“He’s not my friend, he’s my nephew.”

“That’s a fact,” the other one said, still bouncing with an almost autistic rhythm. Close up, she could see their eyes were bloodshot, their pupils dilated. Mean and high, a great combination.

“I got a sister sixteen years older ’n me. She and my mom had us the same weekend. We’re closer than some brothers I know. Gee-gee is my grandma, his great-grandma. She calls us Pete and Repete. Pretty cool, huh?”

“It’s practically ‘The Brady Bunch,’ right here in Sowebo.”

He squeezed her wrist harder, bringing her hand up to his face as if it were a small animal he had caught by the scruff of the neck. Tess tried to figure out if she could use the keys clutched in her fist to scratch him, or gouge his eyes. But that would address only half her problem.

Repete got off her car, came and stood behind her. She was now pressed between these two not-quite-men, no-longer-boys. They could have been anywhere between seventeen and twenty-two. Tess hoped they were on the older side. The younger they were, the more dangerous they would be. Their clothes were slightly rank, as if they had been worn a few days running. But their skin gave off a sweet, sticky smell, suggesting a teenager’s diet. Mountain Dew, rubbery sweet tubes of strawberry licorice, pink Hostess snowballs.

“He’s older, by a day,” the nephew, Repete, said in her ear. “But I’m bigger.”

He ground his crotch into her backside. Not much happening there, not as much as he seemed to think. Tess tried to tell herself they wouldn’t dare to do anything, not here. It was light out, she was on a busy street, cars were going by. All she had to do was scream, run into the traffic, find a way to grab her cell phone from her knapsack and punch in 911.

She saw a woman walking her dog and their eyes met. Tess let the woman see her fear, tried to put the shared history of their gender into that one look. She said nothing, yet it was the loudest plea she had ever made in her life.

The woman crossed to the other side of the street and turned her back to her.

“I don’t think you should come back here,” Pete said.

Her mouth was dry. “I agree.”

“If you come back here, you’re ours. You know what I mean?” He pressed a thumbnail into the side of her throat. “Gee-gee said we could.”

The nephew held her by the hipbones and the uncle humped her leg the way a dog might. Tess felt something at her back, something much too hard to be part of anyone’s anatomy. A knife.

The uncle released her hand, and the two stepped away from her so quickly she almost fell. She wished her hand wasn’t shaking as she unlocked her door, but her fear made them happy, so perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing.

Uncle Pete blocked her car door with his body, placed his grubby hand on the side of her neck, as if to caress her. “I usually let him do the girls,” he said, jerking his head toward Repete. “He likes it better. But I’m willing to make an exception in your case.”

Tess nodded, past caring. Pete stepped back and she turned the key, but nothing happened. She didn’t have her foot on the clutch. She tried again, the car started and she began to drive, mindlessly following the one-way streets, until she realized she was on Frederick Road, headed away from the city, toward her parents’ house in Ten Hills. She turned around, but lost her way, caught by the neighborhood’s triangles and diagonals. Funny, she knew Southwest Baltimore well, or thought she did. She got her bearings by pointing her car toward the ballpark and the purple accents of Ravens Stadium. Harbor Court, she reminded herself, I have to go to Harbor Court. Her legs were shaking so hard that she had trouble with the play on her clutch, and the car kept stalling out.