“All right,” Gregor said abruptly. “Let me get dressed.”
2
Later, standing in front of the mirror in the small bathroom and trying to make sure his tie was straight, it occurred to Gregor that he was not really suited for this—relationship—he was having with Bennis. In his day, people hadn’t had relationships. They had had marriages, or friendships, or love affairs, and those were very stylized things, where everybody’s roles were clearly defined. Women emoted and men stayed stoic in the face of it, that was the thing. Women had feelings and men took care of them when they got that way. Gregor knew what to do in a situation like that. It was what he had done for Elizabeth, all the long months of her painful dying. He did not know what to do now, for Bennis, who was getting dressed in the living room and smoking nonstop in the process. She expected something else from him besides stoic support. He knew that He just didn’t know what. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was about to execute Bennis Hannaford’s sister—for a murder Gregor himself had solved and that Bennis herself had been some help in solving. Gregor was shocked to realize that he didn’t even know what method Pennsylvania used in executions. Gas chamber, electric chair, lethal injection: It would make a difference.
Christ, Gregor thought. Of course it would make a difference. He shoved the knot of his tie all the way up to his Adam’s apple. It made him feel strangled, and he didn’t even care. He wished he knew what he felt for Bennis really. He wished he could sort out and put a name to all the things that had him so confused. When he wasn’t paying attention to them, there seemed to be millions, all swirling around in his head and chest and groin. When he turned his attention to them, they reduced themselves to one—this desperation, this feeling beyond desperation, to be wherever she was, in her sight, in her hearing, every day and all the time, without ceasing. If this was love, then he had never loved Elizabeth. He had never felt this way about anybody else in his life.
He gave up on the tie and stepped out of the bathroom. Bennis was pacing through the tiny living room, still smoking. She had on one of those plain black dresses that her closet seemed to be full of, even though they looked mostly alike. This one had short sleeves and a little jacket that went with it. The jacket was lying over the back of the couch. Bennis was coughing. Sometimes she had to stop dead in the middle of the carpet and bend over double to let it happen.
“You ought to get somebody to check out that cough,” Gregor told her.
Bennis stopped coughing and stood up. “I’m fine. I’m a little hyper. You ready to go?”
“Absolutely. Do you ever feel like you were born out of time and out of place?”
“Are we going to do philosophy again?”
“No,” Gregor said.
He got his coat from where he had left it lying on a chair when he first got to this room. He draped it over his shoulder. As he passed the couch he looked down at the little black jacket and saw the Chanel label inside the collar. Bennis would never consent to wear a real coat over a Chanel jacket/dress. It would spoil the line.
“Ready,” Gregor said.
Bennis got her bag—more Chanel. Gregor recognized the double-C bit on the handle. What was going on here? Bennis never dressed up like this, unless she was going to be interviewed on television. She hated shopping for clothes, and hated even more spending money on them, even though she didn’t really have to worry about what she spent. Here it was again: one more thing to make him feel confused; one more thing to make him feel off-balance; one more thing to convince him that he was somehow getting it wrong.
He opened the door that went from the living room to the hall. He waited for Bennis to go through and then walked out behind her.
Just a few minutes ago, he had been thinking about people who craved isolation, who hated connection. He had been thinking that that was true of everybody, to some extent. Now he thought he was thinking nonsense. It was not true about him. He had no need for isolation at all. He hated the very thought of it. If he remembered himself as he had been between the time Elizabeth had died and the time he had first met Bennis Hannaford, it was only because he now knew that he had been dead.
Then he remembered the title of a book he had seen once in an airport a couple of years ago, a paperback book in a rack with a dozen other books. All the other books in the rack had had something to do with diets. This one had been called New Hope for the Dead.
He started to laugh out loud. Then he realized that Bennis was looking at him oddly, as if he had lost it, which maybe he had.
He bit his lip and made himself stop.