Deadly Beloved(101)

“If it comes to conclusions I haven’t reached, I can study it for a while. You can tell me that at breakfast. Let’s go.”

“Gregor—”

Gregor took him by the arm and started to tug him downstairs. The sound of female voices was high and harsh and unmistakable in the air above them. Suddenly, the whole brownstone seemed female. Men got married too. Why were weddings a female thing? Gregor dragged John Jackman downstairs, past Bennis’s apartment on the second floor and into the lobby next to old George Tekemanian’s door. Bennis’s door had one of those big white and gold bows on it and old George Tekemanian’s had a bouquet of silk flowers that looked like they were growing little pieces of glitter on their stems.

“Jesus,” John Jackman said.

Gregor pushed him out the front door onto the stoop—but the street was just as bad, really. They must have done it while he was out and around with John yesterday, he thought, and he just hadn’t noticed when he got back. Maybe it had been this way for weeks, and he just hadn’t noticed at all. The street was a mass of silver and gold and white. It was more decorated than Gregor had ever seen it decorated before, even for Christmas, and Christmas was Donna Moradanyan’s holy calling. There were at least three bows on every lamppost. If whatever department it was that was responsible for the lampposts ever decided to lower the boom on Donna Moradanyan, God only knew what would happen. The fronts of the town houses and the brownstones were all covered with bows too. Lida Arkmanian’s window had a huge display of candles in it, all white with electric flames, all dripping fake but glittery wax off their uneven tips. The candles made Gregor feel instantly better. He knew they hadn’t been there yesterday. He would have noticed them even if he had noticed nothing else.

“They must have been at it all night,” he told John Jackman. “They’re incredible.”

“It’s not Bennis who’s having the wedding,” John Jackman said. “You’re sure of that?”

“Of course I’m sure of that. Who would marry Bennis?”

“Mick Jagger,” John Jackman said solemnly. “Harrison Ford. The next candidate for president for the Republican Party.”

“Bennis wouldn’t marry a Republican.”

“In this case she ought to, Gregor. He’s probably going to win.”

Weddings were bad enough. The last thing Gregor wanted was to get dragged into a discussion of party politics, Tibor’s favorite pastime. He’d had enough of politics during the elections. He was going to have more than enough of it during the next elections.

The gray metal garbage cans had been covered over with silver plastic bags and tied with silver and white bows. The concrete frames of the basement windows had been painted over with silver paint and dotted with tiny faux pearls. Down the street, at Holy Trinity Armenian Christian Church, it looked as if the façade had exploded in little, tiny oyster eggs. Gregor turned his eyes determinedly toward the Ararat, and got moving.

“Incredible,” John Jackman said when he finally caught up. “It really is incredible. You think there’s any way you can get me asked to this wedding?”





2.


The Ararat was not as bad as the street was, but it was edging in that direction. When Gregor brought John Jackman in that morning, he found not only the bows on the little candles on all the tables, but bows on Linda Melajian as well. She was carrying a big pot of coffee across the main dining room with a white and silver bow in her hair, making the bow sway and shudder against her skull every time she moved her feet. Linda Melajian had very short hair. Gregor led John Jackman to the front booth with its cushioned benches and ignored his protests about how hard the thing was going to be to get into and out of. Of course it was hard to get into and out of. Gregor had problems with it every morning of his life. It was also the best booth in the restaurant, and the biggest, and they needed the room.

Gregor pushed aside a little candle with a bow and a little pot of silk flowers with ribbons all over it—silver and white, always silver and white—and began to spread the printouts across it.

“Come and talk to me,” he said to John.

John Jackman sat down. Linda Melajian brought over her pot of coffee, noticed that neither one of them had a cup, and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. It was a good thing the food here was good, Gregor thought, because they certainly took their regular patrons for granted.

“So,” Gregor said. “Tell me about it.”

John Jackman took his attention off the door through which Linda Melajian had gone and applied himself to the printouts. “In the first place,” he said, “Julianne Corbett was telling the truth, at least as far as we can find out. A young American woman named Patricia MacLaren did die in New Delhi in 1969. The death certificate is on file with the authorities there.”