Hardscrabble Road(79)

“I’m going to run across the street for some lunch,” he told her. “If Mr. Benedetti is looking for me, he can find me there. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

The receptionist gave him a big smile and wrote it all down on a jumbosized Post-it note. Gregor turned his back to her, walked down the hall, and pushed the button for the elevator. Nobody followed him. Rob Benedetti didn’t come careening into view, demanding that he sit still and wait until they were off to do whatever it was they were supposed to do. Gregor almost resented the ease with which he was able to get away. He’d only been sitting in that damned waiting room because Rob Benedetti had said it was important.

The elevator hit the ground floor and let him out. He went through the plate glass doors to the street and only then remembered what the day was like. The wind hit broadside, forcing up the hem of his coat until it billowed around him like a cape. He saw a homeless man with his possessions in a shopping cart slip into the narrow alley between two buildings, so narrow he thought the cart wouldn’t make it. Then he headed toward the coffee shop at a run. Philadelphia wasn’t supposed to be this cold. The New England delegates to the Constitutional Convention had referred to it as a “Southern” city. He wondered where homeless people found the carts they used to carry things around in. The most sensible answer was that they stole them from supermarket parking lots, but there weren’t that many supermarkets in downtown Philadelphia, and supermarkets usually marked their carts in one way or the other. He turned into the coffee shop and blessed whoever was to be blessed for the existence of hot air heat.





2


Tibor was five minutes later than he said he would be, and by that time Gregor had managed to drink two cups of coffee and read an entire copy of USA Today. He’d have bought the Inquirer, but he’d already seen it, or the New York Times, but there weren’t any left. His only other choice had been the Wall Street Journal, and he wasn’t ready for that yet. Their editorials gave him headaches. All this coffee was giving him a headache, too. From where he sat, he could see the street and the people going by on it, bent against the wind, wrapped up in coats and hats and gloves. The Inquirer this morning had had a little advisory on the front page, warning people that it wasn’t safe to go out without every inch of skin covered. Frostbite could happen faster than you thought.

A cab pulled up outside, and the door opened, and a small man in a long black coat, black gloves, and three different-colored scarves got out. Gregor watched as Tibor paid the cabbie and came across the sidewalk to the coffee shop. If he hadn’t known Tibor for so many years, he would never have recognized him now. The scarves were red, yellow, and bright royal blue. The bright royal blue one was pulled up over his mouth and nose, as if he were about to rob a bank.

Tibor came in, looked around, and spotted Gregor in one of the booths at the side. He came down next to the counter with its chrome-accented swivel stools and threw his hat on the empty bench.

“Tcha, Krekor, it’s impossible. In weather like this there ought to be an emergency. Business should stop. The city should close down. And then I see there are people on the street, living there in the cold. You did not wait lunch for me, Krekor? I ate hours ago.”

Tibor unwound the scarves and put them on the seat, too. Then he took off his coat and hung it on the shiny rack that rose up at the side of the booth. Then he sat down. The waitress was there in a flash. Gregor had the guilty feeling that she had been hovering in the background for a while, watching him take up one of her booths without ordering much of anything. On the other hand, there were plenty of empty booths. Nobody was being prevented from having lunch because he was there.

“Krekor?”

“Nothing,” Gregor said. “I’m having an odd day. I keep going into fugues. Could I have a Philly steak big meat with extra cheese and some french fries? And, uh, water, I guess, and more coffee.”

“I will have only coffee, please,” Tibor said.

The waitress gave them both murderous looks, and stomped off. Gregor shook his head. “I forgot about the cold. I should never have asked you to come out. I was just being held prisoner, or something. Rob Benedetti wants me around even if he has nothing for me to do, and I was tired of waiting until he wanted to move.”

“I was getting tired of Hannah and Lida talking to me about wallpaper for the children’s center,” Tibor said. “They are good women, Krekor, but they make everything into a production. Buy wallpaper in cheerful colors and make sure you can wash it when children draw on it with crayons, what else do they need to know? But they have to discuss things. So there I was.”