“Gregor,” the letter said. He tried not to wonder what it meant that it didn’t say “dear.” He couldn’t even remember if she ever started letters with “dear.” They didn’t write each other many letters.
I don’t want you to think I’ve run out on you. I haven’t. I’ve just taken off for a week to think. I haven’t been thinking much since we first met. I saw you, and Cavanaugh Street, as a chance at salvation, a road out of the emotional insanity of my family, a safe place. There’s nothing wrong with safe places. We all need them, and I need this one, still. But it seems to me that that really isn’t enough in a situation like ours. It never occurred to me, before these last few months, that you might see me as something else than a woman you loved, or that the love you say you feel for me might be something other than what I feel for you. I’m all grown up, Gregor. I need a safe place, I even need protection, but it is the protection of strength and not the shelter you give to a wounded child. I’m not even wounded anymore. I need to be to you what I would have been if you had never seen me as a waif you had to rescue, and I don’t know if that’s possible. I hope it is. I hope you 7/take the time I’m gone to figure it all out. Figure out what it is you want from me, and who it is you think I am. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and your idea of me and my idea of me will match. If not, there’s nothing lost, no matter how much it feels there is. I haven’t left an address or a phone number. I don’t want to talk for a while. Ill see you on the twenty-first of March, unless you want to run out on me and buy yourself tickets to Pago Pago so I won’t find you waiting when I get home. I love you. Bennis.
Gregor put the letter down on the bed and stared at it. The woman was insane. He’d never in his life seen her as a waif, and he’d certainly never considered the possibility that he had to rescue her. She could walk through a snake pit and come out the other side without a mark on her. Had she really spent all her time on Cavanaugh Street feeling like a needy child being taken care of by the grown-ups? He looked at the letter again. That wasn’t what she had said. What she had said was that something he’d done recently had made her think that that was the way he saw her. This was rapidly turning into one of those things women found desperately important but men couldn’t figure out at all. Men couldn’t even figure out what the topic was.
He stuffed the letter into the pocket of his pants and went into the living room. He picked up the phone and called downstairs to see if Tibor was in his second-floor apartment. There was no answer. He checked the clock and realized it was almost five. Tibor was probably at the Ararat, not to eat—he ate late, most of the time—but to hang out with everybody and talk. He wondered if they knew Bennis was gone. Then he stopped himself. This was Cavanaugh Street. Of course they knew that Bennis was gone.
He got his coat back on and went out onto the landing, careful to lock the door behind him. People in this building were so complacent about the safety of Cavanaugh Street, they forgot there was a relatively unsafe city all around it and didn’t bother to lock up. He practically ran down the stairs to the ground floor, if you could call slipping on the stair edges running. He went out onto Cavanaugh Street and turned toward the Ararat. It was getting dark, but not as darkas it had been at this time of night just a few days ago. Gregor wondered if that was the result of the year marching on, or of the fact that he was now farther south. He decided he was going insane. His thoughts were no longer connecting to reality. He passed the church, still under reconstruction. It looked no more finished than it had been when he left.
He turned into the Ararat and saw Tibor sitting at a big, round table in the middle of the room with old George Tekemanian, Howard Kashinian, and Grace Feinman. Grace lived on the fourth floor of his building and played the harpsichord. He hadn’t even realized he wasn’t hearing it. He had no idea if he loved Bennis the way Bennis wanted him to love her—What the hell was that supposed to mean anyway? Why did women say things like that? Why wasn’t love just love, for God’s sake?—but he did know that he cared for her enough so that he hadn’t even noticed that the nonstop harpsichord music that had become the background to his life was not in fact in attendance. The Ararat was nearly empty. This was a good thing because Gregor had no intention of talking to Tibor in front of half the neighborhood.
He made his way over to Tibor’s table, grabbed him by the shoulder, and said, “Excuse me” to Grace, Howard, and old George. He pulled Tibor over to a table along the wall and checked the window seat table to see who was there: Lida Arkmanian, Sheila Kashinian, Hannah Krekorian, and one of the Ohanian women, probably plotting another fund-raising project for the new church. He turned his mind away from the question of whether he would be asked to dress up like the Easter Bunny this time in order to collect a few thousand dollars to buy pew cushions, took the letter out of his pocket, and handed it over to Tibor.