Lately, Gregor Demarkian had been staying out of the Ararat as much as possible. Since he couldn’t cook and didn’t much like either delivery pizza or fast-food hamburgers, this was not as often as he would have liked—but it was enough to make it seem as if he had been avoiding the place, and as soon as he walked in he knew that people on the street had been speculating about why. Of course, people on Cavanaugh Street speculated about everything all the time. It was what they had for a hobby instead of needlepoint or crochet. Even so, it made him uncomfortable. He opened the door and stepped in out of the rain and fifty heads turned to look at him and stayed turned, as if he were a curiosity, as if it were his first week back in the neighborhood. Gregor had vague memories of the first few weeks he had been back in Philadelphia after retiring from the FBI. At the time, he had been treated like a cross between an escaped zoo animal and a pet iguana.
He brushed the wrinkles out of his suit, saw Father Tibor Kasparian seated alone in the front booth, and headed in that direction. In the light of morning the Ararat was a diner-like place with bare Formica tabletops and glass and silver sugar cylinders and a menu full of cholesterol and saturated fat encased in a cracking plastic cover. By night, however, the Ararat got exotic. That was because it had been written up in the Philadelphia Inquirer on and off as an “authentic ethnic experience”—which, in fact, was what it was in the morning. There was no telling what it ought to be called now, with the big menus with their bright red tassels laid out on every bright red tablecloth; with Linda Melajian dressed up in Gypsy skirts and dangling earrings made of bits of gold-colored tin and black plastic beads. It was a mercy nobody had thought of dressing Linda up as a belly dancer—or maybe they had, and her mother wouldn’t allow it. The whole thing gave Gregor a headache. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the people of Cavanaugh Street had been in continuous contact with the people of Armenia, and they all knew perfectly well that Armenians did not wear Gypsy skirts and beaded earrings. They wore Levi’s jeans and rayon flower-print dresses from Sears if they could get them—which, thanks to Lida Arkmanian and Father Tibor Kasparian, they usually could.
Gregor made his way over to Tibor’s booth and looked down at the books strewn across the tabletop. Tibor scattered books wherever he went, like Hansel and Gretel scattering bread crumbs. Two of the books on the table were in Greek, so that Gregor couldn’t read the titles. The third was The Client by John Grisham. Tibor was reading a little paperback called How to Have a Perfect Wedding. Gregor sat down.
“Well,” he said, pointing to the paperback’s cover when Tibor looked up. “How do you have a perfect wedding?”
Tibor made a face. “It is apparently a lot of work. I would have thought it would have been enough if the bride and the groom loved each other, but that is not true. There have to be wedding favors. There have to be three different entrees in case there are guests who are vegetarians allergic to cheese.”
“I can’t imagine anybody on Cavanaugh Street being allergic to anything edible. Has anybody actually seen Donna today?”
“We all see her, Krekor. We do not talk to her. Her mother is here.”
“I know.”
“Her mother wants to decorate the iconostasis with flowers, Krekor. It isn’t possible. The only time we decorate icons with flowers it is in honor of the Epiphany. Or something like that. I think it has been a mistake to conduct our services in Armenian now that we are in America.”
“We’ve been in America for generations. We’ve been conducting our services in Armenian for all the generations we’ve been here.”
“I know, Krekor, but not one of these new generations can speak Armenian. They don’t know what the liturgies say. They don’t know what the religion teaches. They get their ideas about weddings from magazines and their ideas about church services from Martha Stewart. I am going to shout at somebody before this all is finished.”
“Probably Donna’s mother.”
“Probably you. I wouldn’t want to offend Donna’s mother.”
“Gregor!” Linda Melajian rushed up in a jangle of beads and tin and rustly cheap fabric. She was out of breath. “What can I get for you? Did you hear about the tea service Donna’s aunt sent from Seattle? Donna’s father’s sister. It was sterling silver.”
Linda was wearing a gold and white ribbon in her hair. It didn’t go with her Gypsy outfit. Gregor looked around and realized that all the tables had little gold and white bows on them, placed at the base of the glass candle holders that were supposed to look like kerosene lamps but didn’t. Had they ever used kerosene lamps like that in Armenia? Gregor had no idea.
“Could you get me some yaprak sarma?” he asked Linda. “And a bottle of Perrier water or whatever. And a salad. Is Donna going to have her reception in here?”
“Donna’s going to have her reception catered from here, but we’re closing off the whole street. She got permission from the city. Like a block party.”
“She sent out three thousand invitations,” Tibor said. “Not so many people are going to fit into Holy Trinity Church.”
“Oh, they won’t all come to the church,” Linda said dismissively. “They wouldn’t even want to. I mean, these days, a third of them will probably be Buddhists and a third of them will probably be atheists, and nobody will have the time.”
“Right,” Tibor said.
“Anyway,” Linda went on, “we’re going to block off the whole street and have tables set up on the sidewalks and Lida and Hannah and Sheila and Helen are all cooking and so is Sophie Oumoudian’s great-aunt, you know the one, and somebody is bringing liquor from Armenia. My mother says we shouldn’t drink any of it because it’s probably going to be moonshine.”
“It’s probably going to be fatal,” Tibor said.
“I think it’s going to be the best,” Linda said. “Anyway, I’ll get you your yaprak sarma, Gregor, and your salad and whatever. I mean, we’re not all out of it at the moment. Bennis was in here earlier. She had pictures of her dress.”
“Dress?” Gregor asked.
“Her maiden of honor dress,” Tibor said helpfully. “Under the circumstances, I think for Bennis to be a maiden of honor is possibly incorrect.”
“I don’t think they take it that literally anymore,” Gregor said. “At least, not in the United States.”
“Of course they don’t,” Linda Melajian said. “Really, Gregor, it’s going to be wonderful. Donna’s picked out the most wonderful bridesmaids’ dresses and there’s going to be a daisy chain flown in from California—two, I think, actually, one for each side of the aisle—and I don’t know. I can hardly wait, can you?”
Gregor was about to say that he most certainly could wait, he could wait forever. He wanted to see Donna married, but the wedding was doing something worse than getting to him. Then there was the sound of thunder all around them, the rumble of something ominous and immediate, and Gregor looked up. It would have been all right, except that the thunder didn’t sound as if it was coming from the outside. It sounded as if it had exploded in the middle of the Ararat’s dining room, and now it was sending aftershocks around to all of the glass-and-candlelit tables. Ass, Gregor told himself. Thunder doesn’t have aftershocks.
The Ararat was always so dark at night, it was difficult to get a grip on anything, even when it was happening right next to you. It took Gregor a good half-minute to adjust his eyesight to the dimness in the middle of the room, and to begin to pick out familiar figures at the tables there. Lida Arkmanian was there, having dinner with Hannah Krekorian and the older Mary Ohanian. Sheila and Howard Kashinian were there, having dinner together and alone and looking sour-faced and grim in the conduct of it. Even Bennis Hannaford was there, having dinner with old George Tekemanian’s grandson Martin and his prissy daughter-in-law Angela, who were probably telling her off for letting old George have food that wasn’t on his diet. Martin and Angela Tekemanian regularly took Bennis Hannaford out to lecture her, and Bennis regularly let them. In her opinion, the reason they really wanted to take her out was that she had made her debut at a good ball on the Main Line and at the Philadelphia Assemblies, and that was the kind of thing Angela was impressed by.
At the round table in the very center of the restaurant, however, was the star of their show: Donna Moradanyan. For once she had neither her small son Tommy nor her formidable mother with her. She was alone with her beloved, Russ Donahue, once one of John Jackman’s best and youngest homicide detectives. Russ was tall and spare and redheaded, a curiosity on Cavanaugh Street, filled with the dark-haired children and grandchildren of Armenian immigrants—but he was sitting down. Donna was standing up, and she was something of an anomaly too. Tall and blond and athletic, Donna was the least Armenian-looking woman Gregor had ever seen, although she was definitely Armenian. All four of her grandparents had come from Yerevan.
Donna was standing next to the table, holding the little glass candleholder in her hand. The candle was still lit, which seemed strange to Gregor. Shouldn’t waving it around in the breeze like that have blown the flame out? Donna was waving herself around in the breeze. She was wearing one of those spaghetti-strapped A-line shift things with a T-shirt under it. Gregor had seen them everywhere in Philadelphia that spring. The shift was bright red and the T-shirt was stark white. There was something about the way Donna was standing that made her seem just on the edge of violence.
“Oh, dear,” Tibor said in a whisper. “I think there is something very wrong here, Krekor.”
Tibor’s whisper carried, although Donna didn’t seem to hear it. The whole of the Ararat had gone deathly still. Even the tourists were quiet, and tourists, in Gregor’s experience, never shut up.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Donna said in a clipped, angry voice. “I’m not even sure I care anymore. But if you think I’m going to let you get away with this—”
“Donna, for God’s sake,” Russ said, starting to stand up.
Donna put a hand on Russ’s shoulder and pushed him back. Russ wasn’t expecting the move. He staggered sideways a little and then dropped back into his chair. If he had gone sideways half an inch more, he would have ended up on the floor. He looked stunned.
“Donna,” he said.
“Oh, he shouldn’t say it like that,” a woman at a nearby table hissed. Gregor thought it was old Miss Belladarian, ninety-five if she was a day and a lifelong member of the Society for the Prevention of Vice. “He sounds so weak.”
Old Miss Belladarian was sitting with old Mrs. Vartenian, one of the street’s prime harridans. She nodded vigorously now and said, loud enough to be heard in Delaware, “Yes, yes. He should be forceful. He should be a man.”
Oh, for God’s sake, Gregor thought.
Old Miss Belladarian was sighing. “Men aren’t what they were in my day,” she said piously. “They’ve lost their manliness to all this new world feminism.”
“Nonsense,” old Mrs. Vartenian said. “Men were never anything but a pack of children with less common sense than God gave chickens, but they ought to act like men. They have an obligation.”
Gregor’s head was beginning to hurt again.
Donna was waving the candle around in its holder. The flame still had not gone out. It was beginning to look like a kind of miracle.
“I’ve had it with you,” Donna said, sounding tremulous. “I really mean it, Russell. I’ve had it with you.”
“Why?” Russ asked desperately. “Donna, what the hell is going on here? All I said was—”
“You don’t understand one thing about me,” Donna said. “Not a thing. Not after all this time.”
“Donna, listen—”
“And I can’t trust you. That’s the important part. I can’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”
Russ looked stunned. “Trust me? What does any of this have to do with trusting me? All I said was—”
“Ah,” old Mrs. Vartenian said. “I see what all this is about now. This is about sex.”
Old Miss Belladarian blushed.
Old Mrs. Vartenian starting talking in rapid-fire Armenian, which made Father Tibor Kasparian blush.
Donna seemed suddenly to become aware of the candle and the candleholder in her hand. She looked at it with an expression that seemed to say that she was looking at a dog turd, then turned around, raised it over Russ Donahue’s head, and sent it hurtling to the floor. The floor of the Ararat was hardwood. The thin glass of the candleholder shattered into a thousand shards. The candle rolled, still burning, down the slight slope caused by the warp in the floor toward Gregor Demarkian’s table. It came to rest under Sheila and Howard Kashinian’s table. The flame began to lap blackly against the hem of their tablecloth.
“Jesus Christ,” Howard said, bending over almost double in an attempt to stamp the fire out.
Sheila looked at him in exasperation and put the flame out with her shoe. “Ass,” she said.
“You,” Donna Moradanyan said to Russ, “are absolutely impossible.”
Then she stomped away from him, past Gregor and Tibor, past old Mrs. Vartenian and old Miss Belladarian, past Howard and Sheila, out into the purple night. She left the door to the Ararat open when she went, caught in a heavy dark breeze and groaning slightly under the sound of the wind.
“Jesus Christ,” Howard Kashinian said again.
Russ Donahue was still sitting in his chair, looking embarrassed and upset and confused and angry all at once. He was much too aware of the people around him, staring in his direction, talking in whispers that weren’t really whispers. Gregor had a crazy urge to go tell old Mrs. Vartenian to get herself a better hearing aid. If the woman wanted to conduct her gossip in full view of the general public, then she ought at least to be able to manage a real whisper.
All of a sudden Linda Melajian rushed forward out of nowhere and snatched the candle out from under Howard and Sheila’s table. The edge of the tablecloth was singed black. Linda began to hurry toward the back.
“Somebody close the door,” she called over her shoulder, sounding nothing like a Gypsy at all. She didn’t even sound like an Armenian. “Oh, dear,” she kept saying. “What are we going to do now?”
Somebody shut the door. Gregor didn’t see who it was. Bennis Hannaford stood up at her table in the back and came into the center of the room to where Russ was. Russ was still sitting stunned in his chair, his mouth hanging slightly open, his hair wet with sweat.
“What happened?” he demanded when he saw Bennis. “What’s going on here? All I said was that I liked her hair down around her shoulders instead of pinned up. That’s all I said.”
“It doesn’t matter what you said,” Bennis Hannaford told him.
Russ rubbed the palms of his hands in front of his face.
Bennis saw Gregor and Tibor, walked over to their booth, and threw herself down on one of the cushions.
“Well,” she said. “It finally happened. I’ve been waiting for it for weeks, and now it’s finally happened.”
“What’s happened?” Gregor demanded. “What are you talking about?”
Bennis took her pack of Benson and Hedges out of the pocket of her skirt, lit up, and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. The front booth was the only place in the Ararat where customers were allowed to smoke. Linda Melajian’s mother hated smoke, and she thought that if Bennis was made uncomfortable enough, she would stop smoking altogether. Linda Melajian’s mother did not know Bennis Hannaford as well as she should have.
Bennis took another drag, released another stream of smoke, and sighed.
“Gregor,” she said, “if Donna Moradanyan ever actually ends up at the altar, it’s going to be a miracle. Trust me. It’s going to be a very big miracle.”
Gregor—who had lived with the preparations for Donna’s wedding for so long now that he sometimes found himself thinking it had already happened—felt as if he’d fallen down the rabbit hole.