Glass Houses(4)

“No,” Gregor said. When Bennis had first been away, he had taken a certain amount of satisfaction in eating all the things she used to yell at him for eating, but now the novelty had worn off, and eggs and bacon just made him feel tired and overful. “I’ll have orange juice and a melon and cheese. Something good for the cheese. Gruyere?”

“If you want, but it’ll cost you extra. The stuff is like twelve dollars a pound, even wholesale,” Linda said. “So what’s the deal? Is Bennis about to descend on us again so we’re trying to make sure we can’t tell her you’ve been eating like a pig?”

Tibor cleared his throat. Twice.

Linda gave them both a withering look. “Well, she hasn’t moved out, has she? Her furniture is still here, and her apartment isn’t up for sale. If it was, we’d all know it. So she must be coming back.”

“She must be,” Gregor agreed, “but if it’s anytime soon, I don’t know about it. Why don’t you get me that melon and cheese?”

“And for me hash browns and sausages,” Tibor said. “And for yourself, more discretion, please. You act like a teenager.”

“I’m not exactly geriatric,” Linda said. “Never mind. I really do think she looks distinguished, you know what I mean? It must be wonderful to have a job like that. Donna says we shouldn’t all gang up on her, and we won’t, really, but still. Oh, and one more thing. Grade’s group is having a concert downtown at the end of the month, and Donna wants us all to go. I’ve never heard a harpsichord concert. I wonder what it will be like. Do you want water with everything else?”

“Yes,” Gregor said.

“I wonder what she thinks of Philadelphia,” Linda added. “I mean, what it looks like to her. I wonder if she likes it.”

“She hasn’t been here a full twenty-four hours,” Gregor said, “and she got here late last night, at least from what I’ve heard. Give her a minute.”

“I bet she’s formed impressions, though,” Linda said. “Everybody forms impressions right away. But if you’re going to see the city, night is the time to do it. It looks all lit up and shiny. Did you say you wanted water?”

“Yes,” Tibor said. “Linda, please, pay attention.”

“I am paying attention. I’m just a little excited, that’s all. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Gregor watched her go all the way across the restaurant’s main room, stopping at tables along the way to chatter. He shook his head. “If this is what you’ve all been like,” he said, “it’s no wonder she’s not here yet, if she’s going to be here at all. You’d all fall on the woman.”

Tibor shook his head. “She will be here, Krekor. She is only snooping. I know this kind of woman.”

“They had a lot of international newspaper reporters in the Soviet gulag, did they?”

“They had a lot of everybody in the gulag,” Tibor said, “but in this case, I was talking of the sense of Miss Marple. You don’t have to be an international newspaper reporter to be what this woman is. There is one in every village. Tcha. There is one in every family. I keep trying to tell people, but they won’t listen.”

“They’re just being friendly,” Gregor said. “As well as ridiculously nosy. Which is what they’re like. They don’t mean any harm.”

“She does. Wait and see, Krekor. She will begin to write her articles, and then everybody will see and be upset. But I have tried to warn them.”

“Well, maybe she won’t even come to breakfast, no matter what you think. It’s her first day. If it was my first day, I’d find all this a little overwhelming. Come to think of it, I did.”

Linda was back with plates and a tray. She put down two tiny glasses of water and then began to pass out the rest of it. Gregor’s melon was huge and orange and cut in half. The actual item on the menu said only half a melon, but he’d come to an equitable agreement with the Melajians a long time ago.

“I’ve brought the paper,” Linda said, throwing a copy of The Inquirer down on the table. “They’ve caught the Plate Glass Killer, isn’t that wonderful? Maybe my father will stop being such an idiot when all I want to do is go to the movies with a couple of friends. I mean, honestly, what sense did it make giving me a curfew anyway? He killed those women in the daytime as well as the nighttime. It’s not like I am all right in the sunlight but in mortal peril after dark. I like the whole idea of mortal peril, don’t you? It sounds like something out of a Sherlock Holmes’s story. They all sound so much better educated in England, don’t you think?”