“Donna, for God’s sake,” Russ said, starting to stand up.
Donna put a hand on Russ’s shoulder and pushed him back. Russ wasn’t expecting the move. He staggered sideways a little and then dropped back into his chair. If he had gone sideways half an inch more, he would have ended up on the floor. He looked stunned.
“Donna,” he said.
“Oh, he shouldn’t say it like that,” a woman at a nearby table hissed. Gregor thought it was old Miss Belladarian, ninety-five if she was a day and a lifelong member of the Society for the Prevention of Vice. “He sounds so weak.”
Old Miss Belladarian was sitting with old Mrs. Vartenian, one of the street’s prime harridans. She nodded vigorously now and said, loud enough to be heard in Delaware, “Yes, yes. He should be forceful. He should be a man.”
Oh, for God’s sake, Gregor thought.
Old Miss Belladarian was sighing. “Men aren’t what they were in my day,” she said piously. “They’ve lost their manliness to all this new world feminism.”
“Nonsense,” old Mrs. Vartenian said. “Men were never anything but a pack of children with less common sense than God gave chickens, but they ought to act like men. They have an obligation.”
Gregor’s head was beginning to hurt again.
Donna was waving the candle around in its holder. The flame still had not gone out. It was beginning to look like a kind of miracle.
“I’ve had it with you,” Donna said, sounding tremulous. “I really mean it, Russell. I’ve had it with you.”
“Why?” Russ asked desperately. “Donna, what the hell is going on here? All I said was—”
“You don’t understand one thing about me,” Donna said. “Not a thing. Not after all this time.”
“Donna, listen—”
“And I can’t trust you. That’s the important part. I can’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”
Russ looked stunned. “Trust me? What does any of this have to do with trusting me? All I said was—”
“Ah,” old Mrs. Vartenian said. “I see what all this is about now. This is about sex.”
Old Miss Belladarian blushed.
Old Mrs. Vartenian starting talking in rapid-fire Armenian, which made Father Tibor Kasparian blush.
Donna seemed suddenly to become aware of the candle and the candleholder in her hand. She looked at it with an expression that seemed to say that she was looking at a dog turd, then turned around, raised it over Russ Donahue’s head, and sent it hurtling to the floor. The floor of the Ararat was hardwood. The thin glass of the candleholder shattered into a thousand shards. The candle rolled, still burning, down the slight slope caused by the warp in the floor toward Gregor Demarkian’s table. It came to rest under Sheila and Howard Kashinian’s table. The flame began to lap blackly against the hem of their tablecloth.
“Jesus Christ,” Howard said, bending over almost double in an attempt to stamp the fire out.
Sheila looked at him in exasperation and put the flame out with her shoe. “Ass,” she said.
“You,” Donna Moradanyan said to Russ, “are absolutely impossible.”
Then she stomped away from him, past Gregor and Tibor, past old Mrs. Vartenian and old Miss Belladarian, past Howard and Sheila, out into the purple night. She left the door to the Ararat open when she went, caught in a heavy dark breeze and groaning slightly under the sound of the wind.
“Jesus Christ,” Howard Kashinian said again.
Russ Donahue was still sitting in his chair, looking embarrassed and upset and confused and angry all at once. He was much too aware of the people around him, staring in his direction, talking in whispers that weren’t really whispers. Gregor had a crazy urge to go tell old Mrs. Vartenian to get herself a better hearing aid. If the woman wanted to conduct her gossip in full view of the general public, then she ought at least to be able to manage a real whisper.
All of a sudden Linda Melajian rushed forward out of nowhere and snatched the candle out from under Howard and Sheila’s table. The edge of the tablecloth was singed black. Linda began to hurry toward the back.
“Somebody close the door,” she called over her shoulder, sounding nothing like a Gypsy at all. She didn’t even sound like an Armenian. “Oh, dear,” she kept saying. “What are we going to do now?”
Somebody shut the door. Gregor didn’t see who it was. Bennis Hannaford stood up at her table in the back and came into the center of the room to where Russ was. Russ was still sitting stunned in his chair, his mouth hanging slightly open, his hair wet with sweat.
“What happened?” he demanded when he saw Bennis. “What’s going on here? All I said was that I liked her hair down around her shoulders instead of pinned up. That’s all I said.”