“What did you tell her?”
“I told her no, Krekor, without thinking about it. But if I had thought about it, I should have told her that I keep an M-16 and a rocket launcher in my kitchen. An M-16 is a kind of rifle, yes?”
“Yes. A very good kind of rifle. Also very powerful. What would you do with an M-16 aside from scaring the poor woman to death?”
“It is perhaps not the worst of outcomes, Krekor.”
Gregor got up and got his sports jacket from the back of the couch. It was probably only just cool enough to wear a sports jacket, but he wore them all the time, even in the middle of July, and most of the time he wore a tie, too. It was no use trying to be somebody you were not. He couldn’t have turned himself into a “hip” person or a “cool” person just for Bennis. He had to admit he didn’t even want to. Maybe that was the key. Maybe she could sense, from that, that his commitment to her was not everything she wanted it to be.
This was so insane, Gregor began to wonder if he had started listening to soap operas in his sleep. Maybe he sleepwalked and turned on the set and watched—what? It used to be that soap operas were on only during the day. Now there was the Soap Channel, and he was fairly sure they got it on their cable tier.
“Tcha,” Tibor said. “You’re off somewhere again. Aren’t you going to breakfast?”
“Right away,” Gregor said.
There was something heavy in the pocket of his sports jacket. He reached in with his hand and came out with the Palm Pilot Bennis had given him as a present the Christmas before last.
He’d had no idea he was carrying it around.
2
Gregor Demarkian was a man who needed—even demanded—a certain amount of regularity in his life. In the years since he had come to live on Cavanaugh Street, breakfast at the Ararat had become one of the hallmarks of that regularity. It wasn’t quite as satisfying as a full-bore professional schedule, when you knew where you had to be every minute of every hour and there was a secretary at the end of the hall keeping tabs on it, but it had the advantage of being considerably more personal. The Ararat had the virtue of being always the same in its general outline, although always different in its particulars.
Today the Ararat was in a bit of a fuss. Gregor and Tibor always arrived for breakfast as soon as the doors opened, and there were rarely as many as five or six other people there to open up with them. Now the entire street seemed to be out early. Even Donna Moradanyan was having breakfast out, although she never did that anymore now that she had Russ to feed at home. Gregor wondered where Russ was. Donna was sitting with her son, Tommy, and one of the older Ohanian girls and Grace Fineman, who lived in Donna’s old apartment in Gregor’s building. Gregor tried to remember which of the Ohanian girls this was. There were so many Ohanians, Gregor could never keep track of them.
In spite of the crowd, nobody had taken the large window booth with its low benches covered with cushions, the one old Vartan Melajian had tarted up to look like what he imagined a bazaar restaurant would look like in Yekevan. Of course, Vartan had never been in Yekevan. He was of Gregor’s generation, which meant it was his parents who had come over on the boat, and they had both been dead before he decided to open the Ararat. Gregor had always had the sneaking suspicion that what the booth actually looked like was the reception room in a brothel. It didn’t matter. Nobody would have been rude enough to make fun of Vartan over his decorating schemes—except his children, and they didn’t count—and the tourists absolutely adored the thing. People called up and made reservations just for the booth.
Gregor slid in on the bench on one side and waited for Tibor to slide in on the other. The window looked directly out onto Cavanaugh Street, and from the direction he was facing Gregor could see Ohanian’s Middle Eastern Food Store already open for business, with big round apple baskets and displays of vegetables set up outside. It was good the Ohanians had all those children. If they’d had only one or two, there might have been a mutiny over the day-today responsibilities of opening up and getting the vegetables out this early.
Linda Melajian came over with two cups, two saucers, and the coffeepot. She put the saucers down, placed the cups in them, and started to pour. She had not brought over menus. She knew Gregor and Tibor wouldn’t need them.
“What do you think?” she said. “Have you talked to her?”
“I’m not even awake yet,” Gregor said.
“You will be in a minute,” Linda said. “I saw her go up the street to Dimitri’s place to buy the paper, and she hasn’t come back down again. I keep telling Dimitri to come in for breakfast, but he still doesn’t have anybody to help him in the store. To tell you the truth, I don’t think he wants to spend the money to hire somebody. It’s hard when you don’t have family, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I think she’s very distinguished—Miss Lydgate, I mean. Donna says to call her Miss Lydgate, not Ms. They don’t use Ms. in England. Or something. You want eggs and sausage?”