going to give in. With any luck, the people who run the Celebration are too intelligent to let her. There’s a place in this brochure called The Magick Endive, spelled with a ‘ck.’ Let’s go there.”
“I like The Magick Endive, too,” Tibor said. “And it’s eleven-oh-two. I don’t think it’s right, Mary and Elizabeth fighting over their parts in a religious play.”
“Of course it isn’t right,” Bennis said.
“I don’t like that man,” Gregor told them.
They all turned around in unison, to look again at the little group in front of the Bethlehem News and Mail . There was nothing to see. The little group had gone.
That’s what happens when you start making mountains out of molehills, Gregor told himself. You make yourself feel silly.
2
Surprisingly, The Magick Endive didn’t turn out to be such a bad idea at all. Gregor had been convinced because of the name that the place would be a holding pen for the vegetarian and the leftover hippie. He expected to find salads made of nettles and tofu and honey-sweetened sassafras tea. He found all those things—although not the nettles, not really; nobody could eat nettles—but he also found a good deal more, and the good deal more made him very cheerful. “We use the Moosewood cookbooks,” the menu said. Gregor had never heard of the Moosewood cookbooks, but after reading a few of the descriptions under the listed dishes, he decided those books must be absolutely peachy. Meat there was not. Cheese there was, as well as sour cream, real butter and enough different kinds of pasta to make an Italian feel he’d gone to heaven. There were some items on the menu that would actually have been healthy for him to eat—low-fat, low-cholesterol, high-complex carbohydrate—but Gregor didn’t pay any attention to them. As far as he was concerned, the entire healthy-foods movement had been invented to make comfortable middle-aged men like himself feel bad.
He picked out a bean-and-pasta casserole with a sauce made of sour cream and dill, ignored Bennis’s pointed “beans and pasta this early in the day?” and then applied his mind to his surroundings. That scene on Main Street was nagging at him. There was no reason it should. It was none of his business. He just couldn’t get it out of his mind. The man especially had made him uncomfortable, and he just wished he knew—
Their waitress was a small girl in jeans and a pony-tail. After she’d taken their order, she’d gone through a swinging door at the back, been invisible for a few seconds, and then come out again. She was now sitting at a table carefully placed behind two potted evergreen trees. There was another girl with her, much the same physical type, as if this restaurant chose its help with an eye to physical stature. Gregor wondered how old they were, and whether he ought to be using the word “girl” to describe them. They looked impossibly young to him, but they also looked hip.
Bennis was sitting next to Tibor on the other side of the table, bending over an open brochure and plotting the day.
“I don’t think we ought to go souvenir shopping first thing,” she was telling him. “We ought to look around a little first and see how we feel. What about the tableaux for this afternoon? They’ve got ‘Celebrating the Winter Solstice Around the World’ in the basement of the Episcopal Church.”
“I don’t understand this ‘Celebrating the Winter Solstice,’ Bennis. I am not celebrating the winter solstice. I am celebrating the birth of Our Lord.”
“Right. Well. How about Christmas carols? The Baptist children’s choir is singing Christmas carols on the steps of the Baptist Church right here on Main Street starting at one-forty-five. That would even give us time to go back to the hotel and change.”
Gregor wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep, but he figured he could fight that out with the two of them later. Now he stood up, stretched a little and said, “I’ll be right
“I like The Magick Endive, too,” Tibor said. “And it’s eleven-oh-two. I don’t think it’s right, Mary and Elizabeth fighting over their parts in a religious play.”
“Of course it isn’t right,” Bennis said.
“I don’t like that man,” Gregor told them.
They all turned around in unison, to look again at the little group in front of the Bethlehem News and Mail . There was nothing to see. The little group had gone.
That’s what happens when you start making mountains out of molehills, Gregor told himself. You make yourself feel silly.
2
Surprisingly, The Magick Endive didn’t turn out to be such a bad idea at all. Gregor had been convinced because of the name that the place would be a holding pen for the vegetarian and the leftover hippie. He expected to find salads made of nettles and tofu and honey-sweetened sassafras tea. He found all those things—although not the nettles, not really; nobody could eat nettles—but he also found a good deal more, and the good deal more made him very cheerful. “We use the Moosewood cookbooks,” the menu said. Gregor had never heard of the Moosewood cookbooks, but after reading a few of the descriptions under the listed dishes, he decided those books must be absolutely peachy. Meat there was not. Cheese there was, as well as sour cream, real butter and enough different kinds of pasta to make an Italian feel he’d gone to heaven. There were some items on the menu that would actually have been healthy for him to eat—low-fat, low-cholesterol, high-complex carbohydrate—but Gregor didn’t pay any attention to them. As far as he was concerned, the entire healthy-foods movement had been invented to make comfortable middle-aged men like himself feel bad.
He picked out a bean-and-pasta casserole with a sauce made of sour cream and dill, ignored Bennis’s pointed “beans and pasta this early in the day?” and then applied his mind to his surroundings. That scene on Main Street was nagging at him. There was no reason it should. It was none of his business. He just couldn’t get it out of his mind. The man especially had made him uncomfortable, and he just wished he knew—
Their waitress was a small girl in jeans and a pony-tail. After she’d taken their order, she’d gone through a swinging door at the back, been invisible for a few seconds, and then come out again. She was now sitting at a table carefully placed behind two potted evergreen trees. There was another girl with her, much the same physical type, as if this restaurant chose its help with an eye to physical stature. Gregor wondered how old they were, and whether he ought to be using the word “girl” to describe them. They looked impossibly young to him, but they also looked hip.
Bennis was sitting next to Tibor on the other side of the table, bending over an open brochure and plotting the day.
“I don’t think we ought to go souvenir shopping first thing,” she was telling him. “We ought to look around a little first and see how we feel. What about the tableaux for this afternoon? They’ve got ‘Celebrating the Winter Solstice Around the World’ in the basement of the Episcopal Church.”
“I don’t understand this ‘Celebrating the Winter Solstice,’ Bennis. I am not celebrating the winter solstice. I am celebrating the birth of Our Lord.”
“Right. Well. How about Christmas carols? The Baptist children’s choir is singing Christmas carols on the steps of the Baptist Church right here on Main Street starting at one-forty-five. That would even give us time to go back to the hotel and change.”
Gregor wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep, but he figured he could fight that out with the two of them later. Now he stood up, stretched a little and said, “I’ll be right
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