He was also very hungry, and he knew more about David Sandler’s cooking than he wanted to.
2
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO make Betsey’s House of Hominy look festive. It was a solid little diner with metal frames on the windows and vinyl on the floor, and no matter how many balloons got tacked to its ceiling, it would never be anything else. The ceiling this morning was covered with balloons, in five or six different colors. There were even a few of the shiny silver Mylar kind, filled with helium and bouncing on the currents of air that came through the open windows. There were little bouquets of balloons in every booth and at intervals along the counters. There were ribbons and bows on every coatrack. People seemed to be stuffed into the corners and plastered to the walls, there were so many of them. What there wasn’t was a banner, of the kind Gregor had gotten used to from the parties Donna Moradanyan threw at home. There was nothing saying “Congratulations Ginny!” or “Welcome Home Ginny!” or “Happy Jailbreak Ginny!” Maybe there was nothing that could be put on a banner that the organizers of this thing thought would be appropriate. There was a cake, however, sitting on a cake stand on the counter with the two seats in front of it left empty, so that nobody would elbow it onto the floor and ruin the whole thing. The cake had almost as many tiers as a wedding cake, and was iced in white and pink. All that was written on top of it was “Ginny.”
There wasn’t anyplace to sit. Gregor wedged himself into the crowd behind David Sandler and Henry Holborn and finally took up a place against the wall near the front door. Nobody was paying attention to him. Ginny was seated on the counter next to the cake—literally on the counter, with her legs folded under her, like a Girl Scout at a tent meeting at camp. Her hair cascaded down her back in loops and curls. The collar of her shirt was open to reveal a gold cross on a gold chain around her neck. Oddly, she was heavier than Gregor remembered thinking she would be, when he had seen her on television. For most people, the camera added pounds instead of taking them off. Maybe she had gained weight in jail, sitting alone in that single cell with nothing to do but eat. In a situation like that, Gregor himself would have found something to read, but Ginny Marsh didn’t look like the sort of young woman who liked books.
Betsey herself had put a round of candles on the cake, and now everybody in the room started singing something, Gregor couldn’t tell what. The tune was “Happy Birthday,” but it was obvious that the two blond women Gregor remembered as Rose MacNeill and Naomi Brent had written new words to the music. Whatever it was they were saying got a laugh from the people closest to them. Then Ginny leaned over and blew out the candles on the cake. It was right to call her Ginny and not Virginia, Gregor thought. She lacked the elegance to carry the more formal name. Ginny was, in fact, the perfect picture of a small-town nice girl, the kind of girl who would be respectful of older people and kind to younger ones, happy to canvass for the March of Dimes and diligent about donating food to the Christmas basket drive at her church. When the news had first broken about the death of the child, some of the news programs had done their best to demonize her. Nobody wanted to be taken in again, not after what had happened with Susan Smith. In the end, it had been impossible to demonize Ginny Marsh. There were no demons there. She was what she appeared to be, every minute of every day. She didn’t change into a werewolf after dark.
Somebody started to pass around the cake, and somebody else got up to leave. Gregor grabbed the empty chair and sat down. He didn’t want any cake, not at this hour of the morning, but he did want to stay awhile and watch. Rose MacNeill and Naomi Brent both looked feverish, probably because they had too much to do and weren’t used to this kind of party. Gregor saw Ricky Drake saying grace over his food—but Henry Holborn just ate his, picking it up in his hands instead of using the little plastic fork that he’d been handed. Now that the cake had been cut, people were starting to drift out. It was an ordinary workday for most of them. They had places to go and people to see.
It was after the crowd had really started to thin out that Ginny Marsh came over to him, bouncing and weaving through the few people who were left as if she had little springs attached to the bottoms of her shoes. Maggie Kelleher had pointed him out to her. Gregor saw it happen. Ginny paused every few feet on her way across the floor to say something to somebody, to smile and nod and make small talk.
By the time she got to him, the only people close to him were David and Henry Holborn, and they were talking to each other about the difficulties of running a small publishing house. David had run one for a decade, specializing in books that argued against the propositions of Christianity. Holborn wanted to start one to specialize in books that would argue in favor of those same propositions. Since it all came down to paper and ink and printers’ deadlines and the First Amendment, they had a lot to say to each other.