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couldn’t begin to guess at.
    He dropped into a needlepoint-embroidered wing chair. The fire was going, meaning Martin and his wife had been here not long before. The five-pound bag of sugar and the Hostess Twinkies were out, meaning they had been gone long enough for George to get comfortable. Sometimes Gregor wondered why he spent so much time in George’s apartment. It might be the pleasure of George’s company—which was considerable. It might also be envy.
    George poured a cup of punch, dropped an immense dab of butter into it, and passed it over to Gregor.
    “So,” he said, “you went over to see Father Tibor. How was he?”
    Gregor knew better than to think George wanted a report on Tibor’s health. “He wasn’t what I expected,” he said. “I thought—”
    “You’d find old Karpakian?”
    Gregor smiled. Old Karpakian had been the priest at Holy Trinity while he was growing up—and the smelliest, most malicious old man Gregor had ever known. Armenians are respectful of their priests. Armenia was, after all, the first country to adopt Christianity as a state religion. Karpakian had been that anomaly of anomalies, a priest who was genuinely and universally hated.
    Suddenly, Gregor had a flash, a memory that hadn’t surfaced in God only knew how many years. And it was just as funny now as its reality had been on V-E Day.
    “Oh, God,” he said, starting to laugh. “George. Do you remember the donkey?”
    “Of course I remember the donkey,” George said. “I—” He sat forward in his seat and tried to frown. “Krekor. The donkey. Was that you?”
    “Me and Lida and Howard Kashinian,” Gregor said. He was laughing so hard he was choking. “Lida and I weren’t supposed to play with Howard Kashinian, but we needed him. He knew where to find the donkey. And he was the one with the criminal mind.”
    “But Krekor—”
    “Well, old Karpakian deserved it,” Gregor said. “The day before we’d had this church school class, preparation for something, I don’t remember what. And Lida’s sister Mary had a cold. She was sick as a dog and her mother had given her something for it that kept putting her to sleep. So she fell asleep at her desk and Karpakian came thundering down on her with a ruler and practically broke her fingers. And Lida said—”
    “Krekor, old Karpakian may have deserved it, but I didn’t deserve to spend my Sunday afternoon getting a donkey off the second floor of a church. Never mind out of that little room.”
    “He certainly knew what the little room was for,” Gregor said. “That’s the first thing he did when we got him in there.”
    George sighed. “Drink your drink, Krekor. And try to remember I’m an old man. I don’t want to die without knowing how it was done.”
    Gregor took a long pull on his rum punch. “Oh, well,” he said. “Tibor. I suppose I expected an illiterate peasant. I got a scholar. It’s unusual.”
    George hesitated, as if he wanted to take up the matter of the donkey again. Then he said, “Tibor is unusual. When they sent him we got a report from the bishops. You know how that is?”
    “I didn’t know they let old wrecks like you on the parish council,” Gregor said.
    “The parish council is all old wrecks like me,” George said. “The young men want to give the church gold-plated icon stands. There was a wife, you know.”
    “I wondered about that. I thought we liked them married.”
    “We do. Tibor’s wife was just as crazy as he is, from what we hear. Crazy in a good way. She died in prison in the Soviet Union.”
    “That’s interesting. What was she in prison for?”
    “We don’t know. I think this man may be a saint, Krekor. A real one, not the plasterboard kind they like to tell us about in church.”
    “I find it hard to believe you don’t know all about him,” Gregor said. “Everybody always knows everything about everybody around here. They used to say Lida’s mother knew who was going to have a baby before they