Not a Creature Was Stirring(13)

He climbed the five stone steps to the door of the small house where he had his apartment and searched through his pockets for his key. It was after five and getting dark. He could feel a wet sting against his hands that was the first of this winter’s snow. He was beginning to regret his months of coldness. With the coming of the season, Cavanaugh Street had been transformed. He’d missed Christmas, he realized—not Christmas as it was celebrated in Washington and New York, but real Christmas with children and grandmothers and too much food, with colored lights strung in windows and ribboned wreaths hanging on doors. That, Cavanaugh Street had not lost.

He got the door open—he’d had so much trouble with it because it hadn’t been locked in the first place—and as he swung into the vestibule he heard George Tekamanian fumbling at the first-floor apartment door. Gregor shut the outer door against the wind and waited. George was quick for eighty-six, but he was still eighty-six. And just now, Gregor wanted to talk to someone. Badly.

The door scraped, screeched, popped. George stuck his tiny grey head into the vestibule, looking for all the world like a geriatric punk.

“Krekor,” he said, using the Armenian pronunciation, the way all the old people did. “I thought it was you. Come in, come in. I have the rum punch, yes?”

“Does your doctor let you drink rum punch?”

“If it was up to my doctor, I’d live on grass.” George swung the door wide and grinned. “Hot rum punch,” he promised. “Real butter. Cholesterol city.”

Gregor shook his shoes off on the vestibule carpet and followed George into the apartment—the Impossible Apartment, he thought of it, because the first time he’d seen it he’d thought he was hallucinating. George’s grandson Martin had made a killing in the stock market—six or seven killings, from the look of it—and since George had adamantly refused to leave Cavanaugh Street for the Main Line, Martin had decided to bring the Main Line to George. George’s apartment had been gutted and remodeled, its rooms made larger and airier, its soft plywood floors replaced with polished oak, its plain walls adorned with plaster moldings. In its present incarnation, it could have been a cover for Metropolitan Home, or a page from one of those catalogs for Yuppies Who Have Everything. Martin had bought George a “total entertainment center” in a walnut cabinet, complete with forty-inch TV and compact disc player. There was also an electric pencil sharpener, an electric waffle maker, an electric yogurt maker, a food processor that did nothing but roll meatballs and a set of sterling silver swizzle sticks in the shape of miniature golf clubs. There were also paintings, but both Gregor and George tried to ignore those. Martin had an unfortunate passion for postmodern art.

The rum punch was in a Baccarat crystal bowl surrounded by half a dozen matching cups—$8,000 worth of glass. The bowl and cups were sitting on a sterling silver serving tray—another $2,000. The tray rested on a butler’s table that looked like a museum quality-antique—with a price tag Gregor couldn’t begin to guess at.

He dropped into a needlepoint-embroidered wing chair. The fire was going, meaning Martin and his wife had been here not long before. The five-pound bag of sugar and the Hostess Twinkies were out, meaning they had been gone long enough for George to get comfortable. Sometimes Gregor wondered why he spent so much time in George’s apartment. It might be the pleasure of George’s company—which was considerable. It might also be envy.

George poured a cup of punch, dropped an immense dab of butter into it, and passed it over to Gregor.

“So,” he said, “you went over to see Father Tibor. How was he?”

Gregor knew better than to think George wanted a report on Tibor’s health. “He wasn’t what I expected,” he said. “I thought—”

“You’d find old Karpakian?”

Gregor smiled. Old Karpakian had been the priest at Holy Trinity while he was growing up—and the smelliest, most malicious old man Gregor had ever known. Armenians are respectful of their priests. Armenia was, after all, the first country to adopt Christianity as a state religion. Karpakian had been that anomaly of anomalies, a priest who was genuinely and universally hated.

Suddenly, Gregor had a flash, a memory that hadn’t surfaced in God only knew how many years. And it was just as funny now as its reality had been on V-E Day.

“Oh, God,” he said, starting to laugh. “George. Do you remember the donkey?”

“Of course I remember the donkey,” George said. “I—” He sat forward in his seat and tried to frown. “Krekor. The donkey. Was that you?”