THE PRINTOUTS ARRIVED BY messenger at 6:45 A.M. John Jackman arrived at 7:02, just as Gregor was about to leave his apartment to go to the Ararat. The brownstone was already a mess of noise and confusion. With the wedding now no further away than Sunday, Gregor no longer had Donna’s decorations to trip over. He now had the actual preparations for the actual wedding to trip over. Donna Moradanyan’s mother had come in from the Main Line God only knew when. Gregor was only sure that she was there when the printouts arrived; she was standing on the fourth floor landing, calling out directions in a voice that was half Katharine Hepburn and half Willard Scott. Bolts of cloth and bits of netting were everywhere. As John Jackman stood on Gregor’s doorstep ringing his bell, a long ribbon of ice green floated down out of nowhere onto his head. Moments later Bennis Hannaford rushed downstairs, grabbed it off him, and rushed back upstairs again.
“Good morning, Bennis,” Jackman said.
Bennis didn’t even look at him. “I don’t have time to argue with you now,” she said. “The flower girl lost all the trim off her dress at the dry cleaner’s.”
Gregor wanted to ask what the flower girl’s dress was doing at the dry cleaner’s when the flower girl shouldn’t even have worn it yet, but instead he shifted his stack of computer printouts from one arm to the other and said, “Your material came. Are we going to breakfast?”
“What’s going on up there?” Jackman backed into a stairwell so that he could look up. There was a big bolt of white lace draped over the banister. Donna Moradanyan’s mother was talking through pins.
“The Jordan almonds,” she was saying. “Somebody has to remember the Jordan almonds.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jackman said. “They’re going to kill somebody.”
Gregor stepped onto the landing himself and closed his front door behind him. “Ararat,” he said firmly. “Work. If you get caught up in the kind of thing that goes on around here, you’ll never get anything done at all. Let’s move.”
“You can’t have had much of a chance to look over the material.” John Jackman was looking back up the stairwell again. Gregor wondered if Bennis was standing there. “Don’t you want to study it for a while?”
“If it comes to conclusions I haven’t reached, I can study it for a while. You can tell me that at breakfast. Let’s go.”
“Gregor—”
Gregor took him by the arm and started to tug him downstairs. The sound of female voices was high and harsh and unmistakable in the air above them. Suddenly, the whole brownstone seemed female. Men got married too. Why were weddings a female thing? Gregor dragged John Jackman downstairs, past Bennis’s apartment on the second floor and into the lobby next to old George Tekemanian’s door. Bennis’s door had one of those big white and gold bows on it and old George Tekemanian’s had a bouquet of silk flowers that looked like they were growing little pieces of glitter on their stems.
“Jesus,” John Jackman said.
Gregor pushed him out the front door onto the stoop—but the street was just as bad, really. They must have done it while he was out and around with John yesterday, he thought, and he just hadn’t noticed when he got back. Maybe it had been this way for weeks, and he just hadn’t noticed at all. The street was a mass of silver and gold and white. It was more decorated than Gregor had ever seen it decorated before, even for Christmas, and Christmas was Donna Moradanyan’s holy calling. There were at least three bows on every lamppost. If whatever department it was that was responsible for the lampposts ever decided to lower the boom on Donna Moradanyan, God only knew what would happen. The fronts of the town houses and the brownstones were all covered with bows too. Lida Arkmanian’s window had a huge display of candles in it, all white with electric flames, all dripping fake but glittery wax off their uneven tips. The candles made Gregor feel instantly better. He knew they hadn’t been there yesterday. He would have noticed them even if he had noticed nothing else.
“They must have been at it all night,” he told John Jackman. “They’re incredible.”
“It’s not Bennis who’s having the wedding,” John Jackman said. “You’re sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure of that. Who would marry Bennis?”
“Mick Jagger,” John Jackman said solemnly. “Harrison Ford. The next candidate for president for the Republican Party.”
“Bennis wouldn’t marry a Republican.”
“In this case she ought to, Gregor. He’s probably going to win.”
Weddings were bad enough. The last thing Gregor wanted was to get dragged into a discussion of party politics, Tibor’s favorite pastime. He’d had enough of politics during the elections. He was going to have more than enough of it during the next elections.
The gray metal garbage cans had been covered over with silver plastic bags and tied with silver and white bows. The concrete frames of the basement windows had been painted over with silver paint and dotted with tiny faux pearls. Down the street, at Holy Trinity Armenian Christian Church, it looked as if the façade had exploded in little, tiny oyster eggs. Gregor turned his eyes determinedly toward the Ararat, and got moving.
“Incredible,” John Jackman said when he finally caught up. “It really is incredible. You think there’s any way you can get me asked to this wedding?”