Hardscrabble Road(7)

Gregor was only vaguely aware of what the full faith and credit clause was, and then because Tibor had explained it to him. Tibor sometimes made him feel as if he should have gone to law school instead of business school. He’d joined the FBI in the days when every special agent was required to be either a lawyer or a CPA, and he’d thought he was better with numbers than he was ever going to be at the law. He was also fairly sure that the law in all its intricacy would bore him to tears. He understood crime and criminals. He didn’t understand the fascination with the kind of thing Tibor was now railing on about, waving the butter knife in the air while he did it.

“Then there is the side that favors gay marriage,” Tibor said. “They say they are only pursuing a civil rights issue and they don’t want to tell anybody else how to live, but that isn’t true, either. If it was, they’d be in favor of the amendment I mentioned, and of course they’re not. Everybody is looking to change the culture, Krekor, that’s what the problem is. The issue isn’t politics, really, it’s about who the culture will look like and who will feel at home in it. And it’s exacerbated by the fact that the ordinary American doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a state law and a federal law.”

“The oddest young man just walked through the door,” Gregor said. If the coat was open, the man must have been walking around in the cold wind with it open. Gregor had had enough trouble just going without a hat. The man didn’t have a hat, either, although he did have good black leather gloves.

“Pay attention, Krekor,” Tibor said. “The world is going to hell around you and you don’t pay attention. People really don’t know the difference between a state law and a federal law. They think of all law as federal, most of them, or they think that if something happens in one state it has to happen with another. They’re not aware that the states have their own constitutions. When they hear Constitution, they think of the federal one. The ignorance is breathtaking. It makes it impossible to have a decent conversation about anything.”

“Is that what this is about?” Gregor asked him. “Did you go spend the evening with that religious group you belong to—”

“The Philadelphia Coalition of Churches,” Tibor said. “Tcha, Krekor, you’re impossible. It’s not a religious group. It’s a discussion group made up of pastors and rabbis. It used to be interesting. Now it’s all fighting, and the Evangelical pastors are talking about leaving, because the rest of us are liberal pilot fish for the Antichrist. Do you know what pilot fish are, Krekor? I had to go look it up.”

The man in the black coat was looking carefully around the restaurant, pausing a little at almost every table and then moving on. He got to the window booth and stopped, nodding a little to himself. Then he started to walk over. Gregor was still vaguely fascinated with the idea that the man must be close to freezing to death, if he’d come any distance at all. Then the man got closer, and held out his hand.

“Mr. Demarkian? I don’t know if you recognize me. I’m Edmund George. Chickie.”

Gregor was struggling to get up from the booth. It was always a struggle to get up from that booth, because it was built low to the ground, so that you had the impression that you were sitting on the floor, the way they really would in Armenia. The young man he was looking at was extremely good-looking, more like an actor than a citizen on the street, but not like any actor Gregor had ever seen. He took the hand and shook it.

Chickie George smiled slightly. “I know. I don’t look the same. Everybody says so. It’s amazing that an act like that can so change people’s perceptions of what you’re like physically. But the act had to go. It didn’t feel right somehow. And the University of Pennsylvania Law School was not going to be happy with it.”

“You’re looking to go to law school?” Gregor said.

“I’m in law school, second year. I started after all that mess with St. Anselm’s and St. Stephen’s. And Margaret Mary went to New York to be a nun. So.”

Gregor was completely lost. He remembered Chickie George, if only slightly. He remembered St. Anselm’s and St. Stephen’s. He didn’t remember Margaret Mary at all. He would have thought she was Chickie’s girlfriend if he didn’t know better. What she was instead, he couldn’t say.

He waved at the booth, and Chickie said, “Thank you,” sliding in next to Father Tibor.

“Tell me,” Father Tibor said. “Do you favor same-sex marriage or oppose it?”