“Wait,” Grandma said. “See that lady, she just won a Pontiac convertible, can you imagine? Now she has to decide to keep it or trade it for what’s behind the curtain. See, she don’t know what’s behind the curtain. She has to decide without looking. See!”

The woman traded. The curtain opened, and Grandma sucked in her breath, then exploded with strident laughter. Behind the curtain was a set of Teflon-coated aluminum frying pans.

“For this she trades the Pontiac convertible,” Grandma said. “With four-speed transmission and power seats, can you believe it?” The woman who had made this mistake was crying bravely, and the emcee was smiling and saying something about it all being part of the game. “Ha!” said Grandma, and pressed a remote-control button to extinguish the program. “Now,” she said, whirling around to face us. “Who is this? You’re married, Katin?”

“No,” Kitty-Katin said. “Grandma, this is Evan Tanner. He wanted to see you.”

“To see me?”

She was a gnomish little woman, her still-black hair parted absurdly in the middle, a strange light dancing merrily in her brown eyes. She was smoking a Helmar cigarette and had a tall glass of a dangerous orange liquid beside her. This was her life-a chair in front of a television set in her daughter’s house. It was extraordinary, her eyes said, that a young man would come to see her.

“He’s a writer,” Kitty explained. “He is very interested in the story of how you left Turkey. Of the riches and the massacres and…uh…all of that.”

“His name?”

“Evan Tanner.”

“Tanner? He is Armenian?”

In Armenian I said, “I am not Armenian myself, Mrs. Bazerian, but I have long been a great friend of the Armenian people and their supporter in their heroic fight for freedom.”

Her eyes caught fire. “He speaks Armenian!” she cried. “Katin, he speaks Armenian!”

“I knew she would love you,” Kitty told me.

“Katin, make coffee.