The nonsensical pictures of Gregor published in The Inquirer appeared on what used to be called the “Society Page” and was now called “Lifestyles,” and it was a picture from the “Lifestyles” page that was tacked to the bulletin board just behind the cash register at Ohanian’s Middle Eastern Food Store when Gregor came in after his lunch with Don Elkham. Actually, it was well after. Lunch had been predictably terrible, and Gregor had felt the need to walk it off. He’d done some shopping and some reading at the library and some wandering around near the historic monuments before deciding it was time to get home. Now it was dark and wet and cold and he was carrying an unwieldy package full of new ties in tie boxes. Why they couldn’t just fold ties into little lumps and put them in a bag was beyond him. The picture on Ohanian’s bulletin board was of him standing around at intermission at a performance of the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra. Bennis was at his side looking like a bird of paradise. He was in his brown suit looking like a lump. He rang the bell on Ohanian’s counter, readjusted the tie boxes in his arms, and sighed.
“Mary?” he called out. “Michael?”
There was a rustle of curtains at the back and a young boy stuck his head through to the front.
“Oh, Mr. Demarkian. Just a minute, will you? I’ve got a little problem here.”
The head disappeared behind the curtains again. Gregor put the tie boxes down on the counter. The head belonged to Joseph Ohanian, also known as Joey, who was just sixteen and supposed to be away at school at Deerfield. What he was doing home, Gregor didn’t know.
The curtains rustled for a third time and Joey came out, looking hot and frazzled. “Boxes,” he said with exasperation. “Dozens of boxes of canned stuffed grape leaves. Can you imagine that? My mother would eat canned stuffed grape leaves about the time she’d eat cyanide. She says we’ve got to stock ’em for the tourists.”
“Where is your mother?”
“With my sister and everybody else in the neighborhood. Over at Bennis Hannaford’s getting ready to watch that sex show.”
“What?”
There was a crash from the back room, and Joey winced. “Just a minute,” he said, and disappeared behind the curtain again.
Gregor left the ties where he had laid them down and went to the back of the store to get some cheese from the refrigerated compartment. While he was back there he picked up a can of smoked oysters and a jar of marinated artichoke hearts. With bread and pastry from the front, he could have what Bennis called one of his “perfectly awful dinners”—and nobody would bother him about it, because they would all be down at Bennis’s watching “that sex show.”
He wondered what sex show.
He put the oysters and the artichokes and the cheese down on the counter and watched Joey come back out through the curtains, more flushed than ever.
“A loaf of pideh,” he said. “And about a pound of bourma.”
“A pound? Are you having company, Mr. Demarkian?”
“If I were having company, I’d get two pounds.”
“Bennis Hannaford told my sister Mary the other day that you really have to watch what you eat from now on because you’re beginning to look less like Harrison Ford than like James Earl Jones, except of course you’re white, but Mary said she thought James Earl Jones was the sexiest man in movies, so Bennis said—”
“I thought you were supposed to be away at prep school,” Gregor interrupted. “Don’t you go to Deerfield? Weren’t you there last year? Don’t tell me the school year hasn’t started yet?”
The pideh were piled in a pyramid under the bulletin board with Gregor’s picture on it. The bourma were in a glass-fronted display case to the left of the cash register. Joey got the pideh first, put it in a paper bag, and put the bag down next to Gregor’s other things. Then he went to get the bourma.
“I’m sorry if I put my foot in it,” Gregor said. “I hope you haven’t been expelled or something worse.”
“No,” Joey said. “I haven’t been expelled. It’s just that I’ve been thinking.”
“About what?”
“Well, about places like Deerfield. They’re not fair, are they? I mean, it’s all well and good to say I got in because I worked hard and I’m smart—I mean, I did and I am—but that’s not the point, is it?”
“What is the point?”
“Well,” Joey said, “the point is, it wouldn’t matter how good or how smart I was, if my parents didn’t have the money, I couldn’t go. And it’s a lot of money, Mr. Demarkian. Almost fifteen thousand a year.”