Glass Houses(27)

“We’re being profiled,” she announced happily, and breathlessly, as Gregor caught her on the way in. “Isn’t that wonderful? By The Inquirer. I’ve got to be downtown in concert dress in forty-five minutes. I can’t believe how amazing this is. Nobody ever takes harpsichords seriously in the mainstream media. I saw Bennis. Isn’t it wonderful? She’s finally back home.”

As far as Gregor was concerned, she wasn’t really back home. It made him more than a little annoyed to realize that everyone on Cavanaugh Street had seen her before he did. He retreated to his own living room and considered making the phone calls he had to make for Russ as he’d promised to do. He could hear Grace dashing around banging open doors and drawers. He thought concert dress must be the long, black satin gown she wore to play in on the nights when there were paying customers. From what he remembered, all classical musicians who were women wore those to play. Men wore tuxedos. Gregor had always thought they looked like they were at a funeral. How could they expect to interest a new generation of listeners in classical music if they looked as if the stuff was only good for putting people in the ground? That made no sense. It didn’t even begin to make sense.

He went to the window and looked out on the street for the four hundredth time. This was not how he had expected to respond to Bennis’s coming back home. Maybe that was because he had expected to see her right away, to be the first one, and to know as soon as he saw her what was or was not happening between them. Now he was so distracted, his mind felt full of fuzz. He wondered what he was supposed to do about Alison this evening. No wonder she had tried to put him off having dinner. She’d seen the interview on Good Morning Philadelphia. Should he go, and if he went, how should he behave. He was suddenly very, very relieved that the relationship with Alison had not moved any farther than it had. He was also very, very clear about what her problems with him had been all this time. Before, he’d been in too much denial to believe them.

“I am Gregor Demarkian,” he said, out loud. “I do not believe in denial.”

He also didn’t believe in talking out loud to himself in his own living room.

He tried to force himself to move away from the window. People came and went on the street, none of them Bennis. Howard Kashinian was home in the middle of the day, which posed an interesting question about why he was not at his office. Howard’s life tended to erupt in IRS auditors every once in a while. Grace left the building and ran a block in black satin and high heels before a taxi picked her up. Taxis loved Cavanaugh Street. One of the Ohanian girls and one of the Melajian girls got out of yet another taxi, carrying shopping bags.

This time Gregor did manage to force himself away from the window and back onto the couch. He was both surprised and disturbed with himself. He knew his feelings for Bennis were very deep, but he’d never felt this kind of schoolboy agitation in his life. Even with his late wife, Elizabeth, his emotions had been calm and measured and capable of being handled when he needed his mind for his work. And it wasn’t that he had loved Elizabeth less. If anything, he would have said he’d loved Elizabeth more. At the least, he had loved her differently. He didn’t know what he meant anymore. He didn’t know what to think.

He made himself pick up the phone on the side table. It took him a moment to remember Rob Benedetti’s direct line—his memory seemed to have gone the way of all the rest of his mental faculties—but when he did, he dialed it and waited and introduced himself to Rob’s secretary as if he were a sane man. There was a drumbeat going on in the back of his head now, in concert with all the other upset. Did he love Bennis? Was that it? Was that what Alison and Tibor both saw and he did not?

The phone picked up on the other end. Rob Benedetti said, “Gregor! Hello! I was expecting you two hours ago!”

“You were?” Gregor couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had left the police station and Henry Tyder’s odd little act.

“Jackman called me,” Rob said. “He’s more than a little agitated that you’re going to sign on on the other side this time, but I told him not to worry. It’s not how you work. So you’ve seen him. What do you think? Is he our Plate Glass Killer?”

“Have you seen him?”

“Not yet,” Rob said. “I’ve had reports, and some of them are pretty bizarre. I take it that the original report, last night, that he’s some homeless wino on the street isn’t exactly accurate.”

There was a picture of Gregor and Bennis in evening dress in a silver Tiffany frame on the side table at some awards dinner she’d made him take her to. He’d forgotten it was there. In fact he’d used the side table for weeks without ever really seeing it. It was a black-and-white picture because Bennis preferred black-and-white. He picked it up and put it face down on the table.