Deadly Beloved(85)
Gregor had no idea where Tibor had gotten the idea that nobody ever cleaned fraternity houses. From Animal House, maybe. Bennis and Donna were always renting movies to watch in Tibor’s living room, although most of those were big-bug horror films from the fifties. Gregor picked up his plate and Tibor’s and took them into the kitchen to put them in the sink. They had been eating on folding tables in Tibor’s living room, a quieter place than the Ararat restaurant’s dining room and an easier place to talk without being overheard. All the furniture in Tibor’s apartment was stacked with books. Tibor read at least seven languages, including Latin and ancient Greek. He had copies of Plato and Aristotle in the original, copies of Erasmus and Clausewitz in translation, copies of Harlequin romances in Hebrew. He even had the latest modern Greek edition of Cosmopolitan magazine, which seemed to have something on the cover about rating your marriage for its “satisfaction factor.” The words “satisfaction factor” were printed in the Roman alphabet, as if there were no Greek equivalent, as if there were no translation. Considering what “satisfaction factor” probably meant, there probably wasn’t.
Tibor’s kitchen was full of books too, but the table there was covered over with samples of wedding favors. There were little knots of Jordan almonds wrapped in white net and tied with white ribbons. There were silver and white matchbooks that spelled out DONNA AND RUSS in overelaborate script, in spite of the fact that neither Donna nor Russ smoked. Bennis smoked, Gregor thought, and Lida and Hannah and Helen and Sheila could use the matches to light the gas burners that went out after things boiled over on the stove. There was a stack of small white napkins with silver script on them too, that ubiquitous DONNA AND RUSS.
“She’s going to have to marry Russ,” Gregor said, making sure Lida Arkmanian’s best blue serving platter didn’t get chipped in the mess in Tibor’s sink. All the food they had eaten tonight had come from Lida or Hannah or one of the others. Tibor couldn’t cook anything that would not be responsible for food poisoning, and Gregor made only steaks in the summers on an outdoor grill. Gregor pushed Hannah Krekorian’s rose china soup bowl to the side—what had Tibor had for lunch?—and made sure that Lida’s serving platter was lying flat along the bottom of the sink. Then he picked up one of the matchbooks and tossed it in the air.
“If they don’t get married, they’re going to feel pretty silly,” he said. “They’re going to be tripping over this stuff for the rest of their lives.”
“If they don’t get married, they’re both going to feel miserable,” Tibor said. “And what is worse, Tommy is going to feel miserable too. Bennis is making excuses to Russell.”
“About Donna? Shouldn’t Donna make her own excuses?”
“Donna would tell the truth. This is not a girl with a wonderful sense of self-preservation, Krekor. I should say ‘woman,’ except I shouldn’t, because a full-grown woman would have more sense.”
“Donna is over twenty-one,” Gregor pointed out. “And she has a child.”
“I wouldn’t care if she had thirty children,” Tibor said. “She is a child. She is especially a child about men. How is it that American girls can grow up with men all over the place, boys in their school classes, dates by the time they’re fourteen, and know so little about men?”
“Maybe if they knew a lot about men, they’d give up the dates and demand to have duennas,” Gregor said.
Tibor waved this away. “Don’t be ridiculous, Krekor. When you are in the teenage, the whole world is about sex. You don’t want to have anything to do with a duenna. But Donna should know better about Peter. He is not an unknown quantity. Even in the biblical sense.”
“Well, she got Tommy out of that, Tibor. Good things come out of messes sometimes.”
“No good thing is going to come out of this mess,” Tibor said. “I have a plan.”
“What kind of plan? A plan about what?”
“About Peter. About what we do just in case he shows up to spoil the wedding. Bennis and I have talked about it.”
“Peter isn’t going to show up to spoil the wedding. Don’t be silly. Peter’s irresponsible, Tibor, but he’s not a complete fool.”
“Even you don’t know very much about men.” Tibor said this disapprovingly. “He is a spoiler, that one. He does not like to see other people happy.”
“You’re making him sound like a psychopath.”
“If he comes here to stop the wedding, I want you to arrest him,” Tibor said.