Skeleton Key(29)

“There’s just one thing. There’s only one train to Waterbury a day. So—”

“One train?”

“You’ve got to be at Grand Central by nine-thirty in the morning. That will get you here around twelve. You got that?”

“Bennis—”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Bennis said.

“I love you,” Gregor started to say, but Bennis was already gone. The phone was humming in his ear.

He got up and put the receiver down, so that he would no longer be cut off from the world.





3


Twenty minutes later—suddenly tired, but still not able to sleep—Gregor went to his closet and got out his most casual pants. They were khakis, not jeans, because no matter how many times he tried jeans he felt silly in them, and he suspected he looked silly, as well. Some things did not change, and one of those things was that he was a very formal man. He found a shirt and put that on, too, a white one with a button-down collar. He found a sweater he’d left lying over the back of a chair. He put his loafers on without bothering with socks. This was as rakish as he got. It was also the best he could do at four o’clock in the morning.

Four o’clock.

In the apartment upstairs, Donna and Russ and Tommy were sleeping out one of their last nights before they moved to a townhouse down the street. In the apartment on the ground floor, old George Tekemanian was curled up in a bed that his grandson had bought him, a bed that did everything but sing the theme song from The Sound of Music. Down the street, the Ararat restaurant was closed, and wouldn’t open for another three hours.

Gregor let himself out into the hall and closed the door behind him. Then he pulled at the knob to make sure it was locked. He walked down one flight of steps and stopped in front of Bennis’s door. He checked to make sure that that was locked, too, although he’d done it half a dozen times in the last day. It hadn’t been locked right after she left, of course, because Bennis never bothered to lock doors. But Gregor had been ready for that.

He made his way down the rest of the stairs and through the foyer onto the stoop. The air was cold and bright under the streetlamps. The street looked naked. In any other year, Donna would have decorated by now. She would have wrapped their brownstone in black and orange crepe paper and put out jack-o’-lanterns and plastic goblins and cardboard witches riding on real broomsticks that went right across the roof. This year, Gregor supposed, she had just too much to do.

Some things change that are for the worse.

Gregor went down the street to Holy Trinity Church. He went around the back on the little cobblestone path and let himself through the low wrought-iron gate into the courtyard. He noticed that the vines that wound around the pillars next to Tibor’s front door were out of control again. Tibor never remembered to call the yard service that was supposed to take care of things like that

Gregor knocked, got no answer, and used his key. He fumbled with the door for a good three minutes before he realized that the door hadn’t been locked in the first place, and that he was only locking himself out. He got the mess turned around the right way and stepped into Tibor’s foyer. Stacks of paperback books rose from the floor on both sides, leaning dangerously toward the center, ending well above his head. He took one down at random and found he was holding a copy of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. He put it back.

“Tibor?” he called out.

There was no answer. He made his way through yet more stacks of books and into the living room. Tibor was, as usual, laid out on the couch, fully clothed, with books all over him. Gregor didn’t think the man ever actually slept in his bed.

“Tibor,” Gregor said again. It wasn’t a question this time. It was a command.

Tibor squirmed slightly on the couch. Gregor went over to him and took the books off his chest. He had Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, in hardcover; Aristotle’s Nicomachian Ethics, in ancient Greek; and a paperback copy of John Grisham’s The Street. Gregor was very careful not to lose Tibor’s place in any of them. He left them open on the floor.

“Tibor,” Gregor said, louder this time.

Tibor stirred on the couch, turned on his side. Squinted his eyes open.

“Krekor?”

“I need to talk to you,” Gregor said.

Tibor turned side to side, and then seemed to make up his mind. He let his legs swing off the side of the couch and brought himself slowly, more or less, upright.

“I fell asleep on the couch again,” he said. “Did I sleep through my alarm clock again? Is it time for breakfast?”

“It’s four o’clock in the morning.”