“Well,” Freddie told him, “we couldn’t lock the front doors because of the fire regulations, but we’ve got guys strung out all along the front hall, the whole football team in fact. They’re not much of a football team, but they ought to be all right.”
“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Gregor said. “What about our friends?”
“Take a look for yourself.”
Freddie was leering at Bennis, who had declined to come in costume but had put on one of her best black silk shirts. She had a lot of them, all so fine they might as well have been transparent, and she always wore them with the top two buttons undone. Gregor pushed past them both and went up the small flight of stairs that was the only other way to go than out. The flight led to a fire door that led to a short hall that led to another fire door. Gregor pushed this open and stuck his head through.
The “auditorium” was really the entire second floor of the old church, fitted out now with curving rows of cushioned chairs like a movie theater, its east wall an unbroken curtain of black cloth. The room itself was brightly lit and packed full, mostly of students in varying degrees of self-conscious absurdity. Gregor saw a couple made up as Barbie and Ken, a boy dressed up as a beach ball, an entire row of girls dressed up as pumpkins. He scanned the room until he picked out the faces he was looking for, and the costumes: Dr. Ken Crockett and Dr. Alice Elkinson sitting side by side on the third row center aisle; Dr. Katherine Branch, red hair floating in the air like liquid flame, sitting by herself and looking furious in the middle of the front row; Jack Carroll and Chessey Flint, in costume but easily identifiable, surrounded by friends in the back toward the left. When Jack saw Gregor he nodded slightly, reached down into his seat, and came up with his bat hood mask. Then he pulled it over his head.
“Look,” Tibor said from somewhere behind Gregor. “Look what Freddie kept for us.” He pushed in on Gregor’s left side and held out his hand. Perched there, pecking at a fine dust of honey-sticky crumbs, was Lenore.
“Krekor?” Tibor said.
Gregor was capable of making up his mind in an instant. Sometimes he even wanted to. “Have you got any more of whatever you’re feeding it?” he asked Tibor. “Can you put some of that stuff on my hand?”
Tibor reached into the pocket of his cassock, came up with a mangled piece of Lida Arkmanian’s honey cake, and held it out. Lenore followed it, pecking as she went.
“Usually they sleep in the nighttime, I think,” Tibor said. “But this is a good bird, Krekor. This is a bird who knows how to be an ally.”
In Gregor’s opinion, this was a bird who knew how to eat, but that was irrelevant. He had just made up his mind about something else. Back at the apartment, he and Markham and Bennis and Tibor had gone over and over the choreography of this scene. First Tibor would introduce him to the Dean, who was waiting patiently in the front row to finally be allowed to participate in this event. Then the Dean would introduce Gregor, reading from a vita supplied by Tibor and containing Gregor didn’t want to know what. Then—
But it was all too complicated and it would take too long. Gregor had always been a man more comfortable with formality than chaos, but there was a limit. He smeared his own left hand with honey and cake and watched while Lenore climbed onto it. Then he stepped out onto the stage and crossed to the lectern. Behind him, Tibor was scrambling frantically to catch up. He was not quick enough and he didn’t make it. On Gregor’s hand, Lenore pecked, hopped, pecked again, and then cawed out “Bastard, bastard, bastard” in a chillingly venomous voice that carried to the back of the hall.
On the floor behind the lectern there was a can of Belleville Lemon and Lime soda and Freddie Murchison’s case of Belleville beer. Gregor tapped the mike on the lectern’s surface and was relieved to find it live and loud. By then, Tibor had caught up with him and begun hissing in his ear.
“Krekor,” he said, “Krekor, what are you doing? I’m supposed to speak first. You’re supposed to meet the Dean.”
Because Gregor had never met the Dean, he didn’t know which one of the faces in the front row belonged to him, and he thought that was just as well. He leaned into the mike and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I was supposed to come here tonight and tell you how the Federal Bureau of Investigation, of which I was a part for many years, goes about the tracking and the capture of serial killers. I have decided to talk instead about a topic much more interesting to me at the moment, and probably much more interesting to you. I have decided to discuss the maiming and mutilation of a secretary in this college’s Interdisciplinary Program in the American Idea, Miss Maryanne Veer—and the murder of a professor in that same department, Dr. Donegal Steele.”