“I think it was to discourage break-ins,” Gregor said.
“On Cavanaugh Street?” Grace snorted. “The only person who’s going to break into a house on Cavanaugh Street is Donna, and all she’s going to want is to get at your windows so she can decorate. You’d think they’d know better than that, wouldn’t you? I mean, they’re supposed to be running the entire city.”
Gregor had no idea if Grace was talking about the mayor’s office, or the police, or who. He didn’t think he’d learn much by asking.
“I’m going to go get some breakfast,” he said. “You should talk to Bennis so she doesn’t get too crazy.”
“I will. Have a good morning, Gregor. And try not to be so depressed.”
Grace’s head disappeared from the stair rail, and a moment later Gregor heard playing again. It was the harpsichord he was listening to, he realized. That was Bach’s Concerto in D Minor. It was one of maybe four harpsichord pieces he could recognize just by listening to it.
He turned down the stairwell and went carefully and slowly, as if he were afraid to trip. The apartments in this building were all “floor-throughs.” There was one apartment on each floor, taking up the entire floor. The floor below Gregor’s own, the second, actually belonged to Bennis, and was now part of the apartment above it. Bennis’s first idea for making a home had been to knock out some walls and some ceiling and meld the two apartments together. Gregor had thought this was a very good idea, but for some reason it had never quite come off. The two apartments were melded together, but he and Bennis always stayed upstairs on the third floor, as if the second did not exist. Bennis did her writing on the second floor, but that was all. She hadn’t even stored her renovating samples down there.
Gregor stood on the landing and stared at the door there for a while. He listened to Grace playing above his head. He thought he ought to go to Grace’s concert tonight. It had been years since he had heard her play in person. He thought he and Bennis ought to do something unusual, like take a vacation. He would even be willing to take a vacation where there was sand. He thought he had spent too much of his life being narrowminded about vacations where there was sand.
He looked around and told himself he was spending this time of his life acting like a four-year-old who thinks he can make the bogeyman go away if he just pretends he doesn’t really exist.
But the bogeyman did exist, of course. He existed and lived and breathed and was never far away from anybody’s front door. It was just that, as a grown-up, he called the bogeyman “death.”
Gregor made himself go down the last flight of stairs and into the foyer below. He looked out through the door with the glass panel that led to the vestibule with the mailboxes in the wall. Then he turned away and made himself look at the door to old George Tekemanian’s apartment.
It was funny the way that worked, he thought. He could tell that the apartment was empty—not just empty because nobody was home, but empty because nobody lived there. He would have been able to tell that even if he’d never entered this building before, and if he’d never known old George Tekemanian.
Gregor went back to the door and turned the knob. It opened easily. He pushed it in. Most of old George’s things were already gone. What was left was laid around in very neat stacks, most of them with white slips of paper taped to them. This stack was going to the homeless shelter. This stack was going to the yard sale. This stack was …
Gregor saw old George’s sock baller, a machine Martin had given him once for a Christmas or a birthday. Old George and Father Tibor used to hang around old George’s apartment sometimes and ball socks and let the machine fling them around the room. For some reason, the machine was never satisfied with just balling socks. It liked to play the catapult.
Gregor stepped back into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind him.
He didn’t want to see the rest of the apartment. He didn’t want to tell anybody about what he had just done. He had the odd feeling that everybody knew, anyway.
2
“Death is a part of life,” Tibor said, when Gregor picked him up at the apartment in back of the church.
Tibor was muffled up as if it were the middle of February. He had on a long black winter coat and a scarf and the kind of hat that made Gregor wonder if Tibor ever looked at himself in a mirror. He had gloves on his hands and his hands in his pockets. Gregor could never get over just how short he was.
“The man was a hundred years old,” Tibor said, as they rounded the corner into the alley and headed for Cavanaugh Street. “A hundred years old. The Bible says the days of a man are three score and ten. He was in overtime. And, sincerely Krekor, he knew it.”