Glass Houses(73)

Bennis tilted her head. “There’s a catch here. I know there’s a catch here.”

“It has to do with franchises,” Gregor said.

“Franchises. What kind of franchises? McDonald’s? You haven’t been eating at McDonald’s again, have you?”

“Detectives working a case have to have a franchise, or they don’t have access to information,” Gregor said. “That’s why I never bothered to get a private detective’s license and that’s why I don’t operate as a private detective. Private detectives have no franchise. If I get called in as a consultant by the police department, I’ve got a franchise. Which doesn’t mean I don’t help people out on a private level, just—”

“Yes, okay, I get it,” Bennis said. “I just don’t get what that has to do with us.”

“You don’t owe me any explanation. We don’t have any kind of an agreement that I remember. I’ll accept your offer. We’ll get married. Tomorrow, if you want to. We can go down to Maryland. I think they still have that thing where there’s no waiting period for a marriage license.”

Bennis took another chocolate out of the purple-and-gold box and stared at him. “There’s a catch to this somewhere,” she said. “I just can’t see where.”

“There’s no catch to the marriage part. I want to marry you, Bennis. I’ve wanted to marry you for half a decade. To all intents and purposes, we’ve been married for half a decade. Except that there was no formal agreement, and there was no explicit understanding, so I didn’t have a franchise. And still don’t.”

“Wait,” Bennis said. “I think I get this. If we get married, I’m your wife, and that’s a franchise, so you have the right to demand any information you want.”

“Something like that.”

“Why won’t you believe me when I tell you that there isn’t any information to have? I really didn’t do anything but read a lot and have drinks alone on terraces and feel sorry for myself.”

“If that’s the case, Bennis, you’re even crazier than I think you are, and we’re doomed. Think about it. Maryland’s a good idea.”

“I had something more like a, you know, wedding in mind. Donna deco-rating. Tommy as ring bearer.”

The phone rang. They both turned to look at the door to the living room. It was propped back with a rubber doorstop. It usually was.

“That will be Rob Benedetti’s office,” Gregor said, getting up. “Or some-body calling at the request of Rob Benedetti’s office. I’ve got to get to work.”

“I really would rather have an actual wedding,” Bennis said.

“I really would rather have a life that didn’t come apart at the seams every time you have insufficient chocolate in the house. It’s time to do something, Bennis. It really is. So let’s do it. Oh, and one more thing.”

“What?”

“Her name is Alision Standish, and you’ve met her. You were on some panel at a Modern Language Association thing together. The Changing something—”

“The Changing Subtext of Gender.”

“That’s right,” Gregor said.

Then he got up and went into the living room to answer the phone.





2


There was, Gregor thought, getting out of the cab that had taken him downtown to Rob Benedetti’s office, one thing in life that anybody could count on: personal problems would always be the enemy of inner peace and outer success. Or something. He unkinked his legs on the sidewalk and searched through his wallet for the fare. What was it his mind had just thrown up at him? Did it make any sense? Was he making no sense because Bennis was making him crazy—not, he had to admit, an unusual occurrence—or because he’d had no sleep the night before? Or this morning. Or something. There was that “something” again. He needed to lie down for about two days and pretend he was somebody else.

He looked up at the building and wished Benedetti’s office wasn’t as far away as it was. He looked across the street and saw that Rob and John had managed to get their posters up without breaking the rules and putting them on government property. He wondered what the incumbent mayor of Philadelphia was doing now that it was more and more obvious that John Jackman was going to win this race whether he liked it or not. He wondered what it had been like when machine politics determined winners before anybody ever went to the polls, and if they didn’t a few people ended up with their feet in cement.

The term for this, he thought, was “fevered imagination.” He turned his back on the posters and went into the building. The lobby was clean and empty. There was a single police officer on duty at a little desk. He was an old man, not a serious guard. If terrorists wanted to storm this building, they wouldn’t have to work up much more than a summer shower. Gregor went up to the desk and started to take out his wallet to find his ID.