Festival of Deaths(33)

Gregor decided to disappear into the kitchen after her.

He had to do something, because he didn’t want to listen to what was going on on the television any longer. He looked at Tibor and old George Tekamanian, and saw that they both looked a little sick. All the women looked fascinated.

Gregor went around through the foyer again and got into the kitchen through that door. He found Bennis pulling bowls out of her refrigerator and tasting the contents of each one. She seemed to have enough bowls to throw a party for forty people. He pulled out one of her kitchen chairs and sat down.

“Bennis,” he said. “What’s going on out there?”

“Nobody wanted to watch their first Lotte Goldman show alone,” Bennis said. “They said they were afraid of what it would be like.”

“They said?”

“It’s the kind of thing you do in college,” Bennis explained. “I mean, what’s the point in watching something like that alone? You want to talk about it. You want to get embarrassed in public.”

“Right,” Gregor said.

“You can serve the enguinar chilled,” Bennis said, “in fact, I think you’re supposed to. Honestly, they should know better than to leave me alone with the food. Stop looking so green. You’ll do fine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“On the show,” Bennis said. “You’ll do fine. You give great television. I’ve seen you.”

If anyone in this crowd was going to see reason, Bennis was. What that said about the crowd, Gregor wasn’t willing to contemplate.

“Bennis,” he tried, in his best-modulated, most rational voice, “I can’t possibly go on a show like that. I can’t possibly. You must see that.”

“Why?”

Bennis Hannaford was five feet four inches tall and weighed about a hundred pounds. She had thick black hair that floated like a cloud around her head, features so perfectly even and so well defined they could have been drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and not a wrinkle on her face in spite of the fact that she was thirty-six (no, almost thirty-seven) years old. She looked like an angel, even in worn jeans, a long-gone-shapeless turtleneck, and one of her brother’s ancient flannel shirts. Only Gregor knew how truly implacable she was.

“Bennis,” he said. “I have a reputation to consider. I make the newspapers a lot.”

“I know.”

“What will they say if I go on a show like that?”

“That you kept your dignity the whole time.”

“I won’t keep my dignity the whole time. I’ll shout at somebody.”

“Don’t.”

“How could I help it?”

“Gregor, everybody on Cavanaugh Street is counting on you. It’s going to be only the second excuse they’ve ever had to watch that thing. And this Lotte Goldman person is going to be counting on you, too. Bekkah Goldman told Lida Arkmanian that Tibor told David that you said you would—”

“Think about it,” Gregor said. “That’s all I promised to do. Think about it.”

“Well, then just think yes. Really. It’ll be easier than you think. And you won’t have to disappoint anybody.”

“Bennis—”

The kitchen door on the living room side swung open and Lida came through, carrying the phone away from her ear.

“Here,” she said, thrusting the receiver at Bennis, “hang this up. I have to get back out there. The woman in the pink dress was just describing the way her husband was so big, he punctured the inflatable doll they got him to relieve his stress.”

“I’ll be right there,” Bennis said.

“Bennis,” Gregor said.

But Bennis was gone, out there with the rest of them, thinking God only knew what, and Gregor knew it was no use.

That was his biggest problem on Cavanaugh Street.

He didn’t know how to turn anyone in the neighborhood down.

He didn’t know how to say no to women he had known as girls and old men he had known as strapping, bass-voiced pillars of the church.

He didn’t know how to say no to much of anybody.

At least they fed him right.

He got a stuffed artichoke out of the bowl of enguinar and munched on it, imagining what he was going to do if Lotte Goldman asked him to describe the sexual practices of John Wayne Gacy.

A chorus of excited squeals rose out of the crowd in the living room. Gregor Demarkian winced.





THREE


1


FOR LOTTE GOLDMAN, THE ten weeks the show spent touring America, taping in two-week sprints in five different cities, were an adventure. The first two weeks were always spent in Philadelphia, so she and anyone else from the show who wanted to could celebrate the first night of Hanukkah at David and Rebekkah’s. After that, the migration might be for anywhere. In past years, Lotte had gone to Seattle and San Francisco, Phoenix and Tulsa, St. Augustine and St. Louis. She had found a good kosher restaurant in each one and lots of little things to bring home to her niece and nephews. Lotte got tired of being cooped up in New York. She got especially tired of doing nothing but going from her apartment to the studio and back again. When she had been younger, it had been different. Newly arrived in the city, Lotte had claimed every spare moment for discovery. She had gone to the Empire State Building and the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and the zoo. Even once she’d started her long climb to what would turn out to be success, she made time for herself. In those days, she would survive on two hours of sleep just to make sure she had time to hear Aida performed by Maria Callas or see the El Greco exhibit sent over by the government of Spain. It was after Lotte got successful that she got dull. Taping, researching, interviewing, talking to the press: it didn’t sound like it should take so much time, but it did. The week after the show got its first forty share, Lotte went out and bought a Filofax, and she’d been addicted to it ever since. Things to do. Places to be. Phone numbers to remember. Lotte seemed to be busy all the time at the same time she seemed to be doing nothing at all.