Quoth the Raven(53)
“They will have to be there, Krekor. Jack Carroll is the president of the students. Chessey Flint goes always where Jack Carroll goes.”
“Mmm,” Gregor said.
“Found it,” Bennis said. “Le Petit Chignon. My God, what a name. I don’t even think it’s grammatical. Anyway, ‘Fine Continental Cuisine,’ which is always a tip-off. ‘Jackets and ties required,’ which is also a tip-off. And listen to this, ‘live entertainment for discriminating tastes, Wednesday and Thursday nights.’ She’ll have a piano, a microphone turned up too loud, and an octave and a half in voice range. When she tries to do ‘Chelsea Morning,’ her voice will crack.”
“Wonderful,” Gregor said. “Don’t you ever like to go to nice restaurants? There probably are a few around here.”
“I was brought up on nice restaurants. I want kitsch.”
“Bennis,” Tibor said, “I do not have a tie, or a jacket, either. I have only my cassocks and what I wear under them.”
“They won’t object to clerical dress, Father. They never do. It’s Gregor I’m worried about. Do you have anything unspotted, unwrinkled, and unshredded you can wear around your neck?”
“I don’t have to. I’m not going.”
“Why not?” Bennis said.
“Because I’m not hungry, I’m not in the mood for your driving, and I need a little time to walk around, get some air, and think.”
“Do you really?” Bennis said.
“Krekor,” Tibor said, “I don’t think I want to—”
“Oh, yes, you do.” Bennis jumped up, looked around the room, found Tibor’s coat and grabbed it. Gregor had expected her to drop the whole dinner project as soon as she found he had something else he wanted to do. She was like that about his investigations. She hated the idea of being left out of any part of them, even though she knew being left out was inevitable at least some of the time. Tonight, apparently, she was no more in the mood for him than he was for Le Petit Chignon.
“We’ll call and make a reservation because they’ll expect it,” she said, “but they won’t be full and there won’t be any problem. Then I’ll go put on my dress and make up my face and put on my pearls. I don’t suppose you know how to drive a car?”
“No,” Tibor said.
“Well, I’ll just have to be the designated driver. Maybe they’ll sell me a bottle of wine to bring home. Places will sometimes if you offer them enough money and you don’t look like a drunk or a cop.”
“Try not to get arrested,” Gregor said. “Try to do that.”
“I always try to do that, Gregor. Go off walking or whatever it is you want to do. Assuming you know what you want to do. Which I doubt. I’m going to have a little fun.”
2
ACTUALLY, GREGOR THOUGHT, WALKING out of Constitution House into the quad, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. The snag came in getting to do it the way he wanted to do it. For that, he needed a guide. In this carnival of costumes and extremities, he wasn’t sure where he would find one. He paused at the bottom of the Constitution House steps and looked around. The real action was taking place far away from him, at the place where the sidewalks came together to make a circular frame of concrete for the statue of the Minuteman. At his edge of the quad, the crowd was sparse. He saw a girl dressed up as Carmen Miranda, with enough wax fruit on her head to provide a legion of baby van Goghs with the material for still-lifes. He saw three boys dressed up as bikers from Hell, huddled together, passing around a little grass. The grass made Gregor feel a little irritated, but not much more. He had made it a point to stay as far out of the Great Drug War as he could get, but he was not naive. Outside the grammar schools, practically everyone, especially college administrations, had given up the fight against grass.
Gregor moved away from the Constitution House steps and into the crowd, picking his way carefully through the increasingly thick clusters of students. He’d had a half-formed idea, upstairs, that it would be easy to find who he was looking for. He had forgotten about the abysmal lack of originality that always seemed to run rampant among the young. There were at least three bats, six Frankensteins, and fourteen mummies in his immediate field of vision. There were no fewer than fifty girls dressed up as identical pumpkins, as if they had each and every one of them given up their chance to play out their fantasies to play it safe in a sorority of timidity. He moved a little closer and caught sight of the boy performing in the center, his back to the Minuteman’s chest, a refreshing sight in a plain black eye mask, white tie, and tails. The boy was balancing five Day-Glo-painted polystyrene balls, large to small, top to bottom, on the end of a ghost wand balanced on the tip of his nose. Gregor didn’t know if it counted as juggling or not, but whatever it was it was very impressive. He moved a little farther forward to get a better look, and then began to feel silly. This was hardly getting him where he wanted to go.