The young woman behind the counter handed him his change. “Now, let me get this straight,” she said. “You wanted the roses delivered today at two o’clock. Today.”
“Yep.”
“Not Valentine’s Day.”
“I’ve got something else cooking for Valentine’s Day.”
“Something bigger than this?”
“Yep.”
“Well, that’s going to be a gas and a half. If you order it through us, you better give us a couple of days’ notice.”
“They can’t be there before two o’clock because she won’t be home until one-thirty. She’s got a meeting of the Armenian-American Heritage Library Association.”
“I know,” the young woman said. “My mother has that too. In fact, Lida will probably bring my mother home. I’ll send the flowers over as soon as I see the whites of their eyes.”
“Great.” Christopher took one of the candies out of its wrapper and bit into it. “Thanks a lot.”
“Have a nice day,” the young woman said.
Out on Cavanaugh Street, it was ten o’clock and sunny, but still bitterly cold. Christopher was used to California, and this weather was beginning to annoy him. Didn’t this city ever thaw out? He tried to remember how he had felt about it when he was growing up here. As far as he could recall, he hadn’t noticed the weather. He finished the first of the candies and opened the second. Christ, he hadn’t felt this good in he didn’t know how long. He really hadn’t. This was better than champagne and chocolate. This was even better than marijuana, and marijuana had been Christopher’s favorite thing on earth until a combination of his own age and the stubbornness of the United States government in maintaining the illegality of it had made it too much trouble. Nothing would ever make this too much trouble. He wondered if she was sitting there in her meeting right now, thinking about him. Maybe she was thinking about the things they did instead, and blushing. She was always blushing. Christopher had never met a woman who was so easy to make blush. He finished the second candy and opened the third. He was working again. That was always the best sign. His pockets were full of scraps of paper with lines of poetry written on them.
He had reached the Ararat Restaurant. He stuffed the last corner of candy into his mouth and went inside. It was really terrible candy, nothing at all like the Godiva things he had been eating at Lida’s the night before. He was going to have to buy Lida some more Godiva chocolates. He was eating her out of the ones she had at home.
Bennis sat alone in the window booth, drinking black coffee and reading the Inquirer. She looked up when he walked in and he waved to her.
“Linda,” he said to Linda Melajian, who was going by with a pile of menus under one arm. “Can you get me a cup of coffee and a mushroom omelet? I’m going to be sitting over there with Bennis.”
“Be right there,” Linda Melajian said. “Isn’t it awful? Don’t you feel terrible? Helen Tevorakian was in here this morning, saying she didn’t think Hannah would ever be able to sleep in that bedroom again.”
“Well, it’s terrible enough,” Christopher agreed.
“Nobody can talk about anything else,” Linda Melajian said. “You should have heard this place during the breakfast rush. We must have had fifty people in here. And then, of course, Gregor didn’t show up, for the first time in I don’t know how long. He always eats breakfast here when he’s at home. I thought we were going to have a riot.”
“Maybe you can stake out his apartment and catch him when he comes home.”
“Don’t joke,” Linda Melajian said. “The way people are around here this morning, they’re likely to do anything.”
Christopher sat down opposite Bennis. Bennis looked up from her paper again.
“Well, well,” she said. “The bear emerges from hibernation.”
“I haven’t been hibernating,” Christopher said. “I was at the party last night.”
“So you were. Of course, it’s practically the only time I’ve seen you since you got here.”
“I’ve been trying not to make a pest of myself.”
“Is that what it is?”
“I’ve been having a very refreshing vacation, Bennis. Isn’t that what vacations are for?”
“I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I always know what I’m doing.”
Linda Melajian came over with a cup of coffee. Christopher thanked her and started drinking it. Bennis took her classic Hannaford sugar cravings out on coffee so sweet it was almost a syrup, but Christopher couldn’t stand to drink coffee that way. He preferred his candy straight.