Bleeding Hearts(21)

Chris finished his note, looked at it thoughtfully, and then nodded to himself. He took his Swiss army knife out of his pocket and opened it to one of the smallest blades.

“This will hold it up,” he said, “and she’ll know it’s really me. I’ve got the ultimate model, you know. It’s even got a knife and fork and spoon.”

“Big enough to eat with?” Lida asked doubtfully.

“Big enough to eat with if you’re Thumbelina,” Chris said.

“Let’s go across the street,” Lida said. “I’ll give you a knife and fork and spoon big enough to eat with if you’re the Green Giant. Or whoever it was that Jack met. I’m not very good at fairy tales.”

“Neither am I.”

Lida felt perfectly at peace. She was silly to chide herself about the amount of cooking she did. She had been cooking since she was a girl. It was an excellent mode of communication with people she only barely knew. It was a completely safe zone of human endeavor. Once she’d started talking about cooking, she hadn’t been afraid of Christopher Hannaford in the least.

Feed them, Lida Arkmanian told herself. If you feed them, the feeding will blot out everything else.

It always had before.





9


VERY MUCH LATER, AT ten twenty-two, when the windchill was down to minus forty degrees and the sidewalks felt like ice, Bennis Hannaford finally got home with Father Tibor Kasparian in tow. She had a couple of other people in tow too. Father Ryan. Father Carmichael. Father Papageorgiou. Reverend Kress. Cold or no cold, Bennis had the window she was sitting next to all the way open. She was puffing frantically on a Benson & Hedges menthol and seriously considering taking to dope.

“We can’t possibly sit in at the mayor’s residence,” Father Carmichael was saying, “because he’s got pit bulls.”

The cab pulled up in front of Holy Trinity Church. Bennis shoved her hands in her pockets, came up with a wad of money, and peeled off a few bills for the cabdriver. The driver took them and asked,

“Are they always like this? Aren’t they supposed to be holy people?”

“I don’t know what they’re supposed to be,” Bennis said. “You can keep the change.”

“Very nice.”

“I’m getting out,” Bennis said to the collective clergy. “This is where we’re all going. You guys should get out too.”

The collective clergy didn’t seem to have heard her. Bennis landed on the sidewalk and walked back along the side of Holy Trinity into the little courtyard onto which Father Tibor’s apartment fronted. She had her hands in her hair and her mind on something else. She was thinking she really ought to get out of there and go back home to see if Christopher had arrived.

“Idiots,” she said to the air.

Nothing happened. No priests or ministers rounded the corner from the church. No sounds of vigorous arguing split the night air. They were probably still back there, taking up space in the cab.

Bennis went back out along the side of the church and around to the front again. It was too cold to sit still and she was too exasperated to want to. She found the Fathers and Reverend Kress standing in the little plaza in front of the church steps, stomping their feet in the cold but otherwise oblivious of it. They were discussing tactics for mounting an assault on Independence Hall.

“It would be a purely symbolic gesture,” Father Ryan was saying, “but it would be wonderful symbolism.”

“Gentlemen,” Bennis said.

And then she stopped.

Holy Trinity Church was much closer to the building where Hannah Krekorian lived than Bennis’s own apartment building. It was close enough so that Bennis could now get a good look at the tall man in the coat who seemed to be taking up Hannah Krekorian’s night. They were coming back from somewhere again, which meant they must have been out together in the meantime, but Bennis didn’t bother about that. She got up as close to the edge of the church’s property as she could, so that she had a clear look at the man’s face.

That was when she got a very rude shock.

“Good God,” she said. “Where did Hannah pick him up?”

Father Tibor tapped her on the shoulder. “Bennis? Will you come to the apartment for some coffee? We need to pay you back for all you have done.”

Bennis was still staring at the man. He had taken Hannah’s key now, the way well-brought-up men used to do when she was younger, and he was opening the building’s front door. He hadn’t changed at all since the last time Bennis had seen him. He didn’t have a touch of loss or grief in his face.

“Bennis?” Father Tibor asked again.