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PART ONE. KISS KISS BANG BANG
Fall came early to Mount Vernon this October – much to the neighborhood’s disgust. According to Mandy Stewart, vice president of the Mount Vernon Neighborhood Association, workers for Ma
“They just came through in late September and ripped the leaves from the trees, then put up a few fake brown ones in their place,” Stewart told the Beacon-Light. “They stole our fall out from under us! And they’ve made parking a nightmare.”
Steelworkers are equally peeved with Ma
He said retired steelworkers are considering informational pickets at the series’ various locations around the city, but he disavowed any co
The Maryland Film Commission and the city’s film liaison both said they had received no complaints, insisting the production had been an exemplary, polite presence in the city. Tumulty, through his assistant, refused repeated requests for comment.
Tumulty is the son of the Baltimore filmmaker Philip Tumulty Sr., who first attracted attention with lovingly detailed movies about Baltimore ’s Highlandtown neighborhood in the 1960s and early 1970s, such as Pit Beef and The Last Pagoda. But he turned his attention to more conventional – and far more lucrative – Hollywood blockbusters, including The Beast, Piano Man, and Gunsmoke, the last a reworking of the long-ru
His latest project, Ma
Unlike previous productions, Ma
“We are grateful to Baltimore and Maryland for all they’ve done to make this film possible,” said co-executive producer Charlotte MacKenzie when asked for comment. “We just wish others were grateful for the $25 million we’re spending, half of which will go directly into the local economy.”
Community activist Stewart is not about to be mollified: “The economic benefits of film production are wildly exaggerated, based on the stars’ salaries, which may or may not be taxed by local authorities,” she said. “The bottom line is that Ma
– THE BEACON-LIGHT,
OCT . 15
MONDAY
Chapter 1
The headphones were a mistake. She realized this only in hindsight, but then – what other vision is available to a person heading backward into the world?
True, they were good old-fashioned headphones, which didn’t seal tightly to the ear, not earbuds, which she loathed on principle, the principle being that she was thirty-four going on seventy. Furthermore, she had dialed down the volume on her Sony Walkman – yes, a Sony Walkman, sturdy and battered and taxicab yellow, not a sleek little iPod in a more modern or electric shade. Still, for all her precautions, she could hear very little. And even Tess Monaghan would admit that it’s important to be attuned to the world when one is charging into it backward, gliding along the middle branch of the Patapsco in a scull and passing through cha
But Tess had painstakingly rationalized her way into trouble, which, she decided later, is pretty much how everyone gets into trouble, one small rationalization at a time. She wanted to row, yet she felt obligated to listen to her boyfriend on a local radio show, promoting the Oktoberfest lineup at her father’s bar. Besides, he pla
It did not occur to Tess to row a little later, or skip the workout altogether. The rowing season traditionally ended after Thanksgiving, a mere month away. She had to take advantage of every waning day, especially now that Baltimore was in its full autumnal glory. If aliens had landed in Baltimore on this particular October morning, they would have concluded that it was the most perfect city on the globe they were about to conquer, truly the Charm City it claimed to be. The trees were tinged with gold and scarlet, the breeze was light, the sky was slowly deepening into the kind of brilliant blue that reminded Tess that she once knew the word cerulean, if only because it had been on the vocabulary lists for the SATs.
She set out for Fort McHenry, at the distant tip of Locust Point, rationalizing every stroke of the way: She knew the route so well, it was so early, the sun not even up. She had beaten the other rowers to the water, arriving in darkness and pushing off from the dock at first light. She wouldn’t wear the headphones on the way back. She just needed to hear Crow on WTMD, listen to him play a few snippets of Brave Combo, then she would turn off the Walkman and-
That’s when the police boat, bullhorn blaring, crossed into her line of vision and came charging toward her. By the time she registered everything that was happening – the approaching boat, the screams and shouts coming from all directions, the fact that someone was very keen that she stop or change course – the motorboat had stopped, setting up an enormous, choppy wake that was going to hit her sideways. Tess, trying frantically to slow and steady her scull, had a bona fide moment of prescience. Granted, her vision extended only two or three seconds into the future, but it was unca
At least the water held some leftover summer warmth. She broke the surface quickly, orienting herself by locating the star-shaped fort just to the north, then the wide cha
A man sat in the stern of this one, his face obscured by a baseball cap, his arms crossed over a fleece vest emblazoned with a curious logo, MANN OF STEEL. He continued to hug his arms close to his chest, a modern-day Washington crossing the Delaware, even as two young people put down their clipboards and reached out to Tess, boosting her into the boat.