Wanting Sheila Dead(18)

“That’s what this is about? You’re having a delayed reaction to our getting married?”

Gregor sighed again.

They were at the Ararat now. Tibor really was sitting in the window booth. The Ararat still looked the way it always did, in spite of the fact that it had picked up a good deal of dinner traffic over the years. It was still a fairly basic diner, just one that served a lot of Armenian food.

Gregor pushed open the big plate glass door and held it for Bennis to go in. Then he came in himself and nodded to Linda Melajian. The Melajians owned the Ararat, and Gregor knew that old Mikhail Melajian had been sick on and off now for a year. He couldn’t imagine that the Ararat would close. Maybe Linda would take it over, or her brothers.

Gregor went to the booth and slid in next to Bennis. The booth was half a joke between the lot of them. It was low to the floor, the way booths were in the Old Country. The older they all got, the harder they found it to get in and out of the thing.

“What do you figure people do back in Armenia?” Gregor said. “I mean, the old women, and people like that? Do they get down on the floor and just get stuck there?”

“They are more used to it than we are, Krekor,” Tibor said.

Linda came to the table with the coffeepot and started pouring. “Good morning,” she said. “I thought I’d better warn you. The Very Old Ladies were here when I first opened up this morning, and I mean first. They were here when I unlocked for myself, never mind opening up the restaurant itself. And they’ve been waiting ever since. And now they’re staring at you.”

“They’re staring at Gregor,” Bennis said confidently. “They don’t mind me anymore because I’m married to him.”

“They’re always going to mind you,” Gregor said. “You were practically living with me first. Never mind, you know, the thing with not belonging to the church.”

“They really are staring at you,” Tibor said.

The three of them managed to look at the Very Old Ladies all at once, and to look away again all at once. The problem with the Very Old Ladies was that they always looked ready to pronounce doom on the world around them. The head-to-toe black they wore was not a help. Bennis and Tibor and Gregor all looked down at their hands and then up at each other.

“Well,” Bennis said. “I still don’t think they’re going to come over here and lecture me about living in sin. If they were going to do that, they’d have done it years ago.”

Linda came back with a rack of toast. Gregor found himself enormously grateful to have that to concentrate on.

“So,” he said, taking toast and a couple of little packets of honey to put on it, “I was telling Bennis this morning. Agatha Christie wrote metaphors.”

“Oh, very good, Krekor,” Tibor said. “That’s it exactly. She writes very important metaphors, too. She writes—”

Bennis tapped on the table. “You two are not going to do this this morning,” she said. “My point is perfectly valid. If it isn’t valid, then you should say so. And if you can’t say so, then I say it’s time for Gregor here to get off his ass and do something.”

Gregor had put enough honey on his bread to reconstitute a beehive. He put it all down on the little round side plate that was part of the standard Ararat table setting.

“I have been doing something,” he said. “First, I got married. Then, I spent nearly a month in Jamaica—”

“You went on your honeymoon and complained the whole time,” Bennis said. “That’s not doing something. You need to go back to work.”

“Why?” Gregor asked. “I don’t need the money. Even without you I don’t need the money. I’ve been working a lot the last couple of years. I’m tired of it.”

“You’re not tired of it,” Bennis said. “You’re just annoyed with it, it’s not the same thing. And you need to do it because you’re driving me crazy going on the way you are now. You are not a person who does nothing comfortably.”

“I’m perfectly comfortable,” Gregor said.

“I’m not,” Bennis said.

“And besides . . .” Gregor said, watching Linda come across the room with their breakfasts. Linda Melajian was infallible. She knew what all the regulars ate, and even knew when they were going to vary the usual. In Gregor’s case, she knew what he ate when he was alone with Tibor, and what he ate when Bennis was at the table. When Bennis was at the table, there was a lot of fruit.

Gregor looked down at the fruit and cheese and thought about breakfast sausages. Then he said, “I can’t just jump out of bed in the morning and go to work. Somebody has to hire me. Nobody is interested in hiring me at the moment.”