A Stillness in Bethlehem(106)

“I’m back,” he said. “Are you sitting there waiting for me?”

Tibor looked up from his reading. It was most certainly Soldier of Fortune. Tibor was reading an article on mercenary operations in Central America. He closed the magazine and put it down on his lap.

“Hello, Krekor,” he said. “If I was waiting for you only, I would have waited in the room. I am here now keeping this young lady company while we both wait for you.”

“Which young lady?” Gregor asked.

“Me.”

The voice came from the other side of the fireplace, from what was Gregor’s back. He turned and saw a young woman putting down a magazine of her own, and not one he would have guessed she’d have much interest in.

The magazine was Good Housekeeping, and the young woman was Kelley Grey.





Four


1


LATE LAST NIGHT, WHEN they had all come in half frozen from the park and been wandering back and forth across the corridor that divided Gregor and Tibor’s suite from Bennis’s room, Bennis had said a very odd thing. “Kelley Grey,” she had said, “is the kind of woman some other women want to mother.” It had been a throwaway line, nothing to do with the case, and Gregor hadn’t pursued the topic. Bennis had had a copy of something called The Medical Miracle Metabolism Diet in the pocket of her robe. Tibor had been staring at it. It was all Gregor had been able to do to get Tibor to bed and Bennis safely behind her own door before Tibor had an outburst. Or a lecture. Or whatever it was, Tibor was eager to have at Bennis and get it over with. Bennis could have said anything she wanted to about anybody at all. She could have claimed that Queen Elizabeth I was a Rastafarian. Gregor wouldn’t have listened to her. Now he was sorry he hadn’t paid at least a little attention. Bennis often made him exasperated—and she could be a royal pain in the rear in more ways than one—but she was an intelligent judge of the characters of women. What she said usually had some truth in it. Meeting Kelley Grey in the park, Gregor wouldn’t have said she was capable of eliciting maternal feelings from anyone. She seemed to be a thoroughly cold, sullen and hostile person. Now… now…

Gregor didn’t know what it was about now. Kelley Grey was changed. He just couldn’t explain it. For one thing, she didn’t look sullen, but determined, if a little nervous. For another, she had a bright red silk scarf draped around her neck. She was still plain—she would always be plain—but at least she didn’t look dull at the same time. To be honest, though, he had to go back to attitude. Kelley Grey seemed to have undergone a sea change in the hours since he had last seen her. Underneath the nervousness and the diffidence and the trace of fear, Gregor thought he could smell exhilaration.

Tibor had come up behind him and interposed himself in the open space right in front of the fireplace. He looked small and determined and out-of-time in his plain black cassock, but also very benevolent. He nodded at Kelley Grey and said, “I had come downstairs to wait, Krekor, and they were turning her away at the desk. I couldn’t let them turn her away at the desk.”

“Of course not,” Gregor said.

“I couldn’t have stayed much longer,” Kelley said. “I’ve got to be over at the play before it starts. I’m riding shotgun.”

“What?” Gregor said.

“I’m going upstairs,” Tibor said. “I have been in Bennis’s room, Krekor, to leave her a box of cupcakes I bought at the bakery, chocolate with chocolate icing, her favorite. And I have found another one, Krekor.”

“Found another one what?” Kelley Grey asked.

“Diet book,” Tibor said ominously. “This is The Sugar Addict’s No Willpower Weight Loss Plan. It will ruin her teeth on top of everything else, Krekor.”

“I’ve tried that one,” Kelley Grey said. “It’s a good one. You don’t lose much weight, but you get to eat buttercream frosting three times a day.”

“Buttercream frosting?” Gregor was bewildered.

Tibor backed away. “I am going up now, Krekor,” he said. “I am bringing her a ham sandwich from the Village Restaurant and a bag of potato chips. I am going to put a stop to this.”

“He’s been talking about putting a stop to it the whole time I’ve been here,” Kelley said, watching Tibor as he hurried away. “I wonder why.”

“Our friend doesn’t need to lose any weight,” Gregor explained.

Kelley looked blank. “What does that have to do with it? I mean, everybody’s on a diet all the time now, aren’t they? It’s a kind of entertainment. Like miniature golf or something.”