Fridays at Enrico's by Don Carpenter Read Free Book Online Page A

“That’s what I’m looking for mostly.”
    â€œThis way.” She led him down the hall to their library. For Kenny, it was like walking into King Solomon’s mine. Everywhere he looked he saw beautiful books in their original dust wrappers. Names leaped out: Joyce, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Hemingway . . . He reached for a copy of The Sun Also Rises , in its original dust wrapper. The book was in excellent condition. He opened it to the copyright page and saw the letter A where he hoped to find it. First edition. He checked a Fitzgerald. First edition. He hoped his hand wasn’t trembling as he slid the Fitzgerald back into place. He turned and smiled at Mrs. Froward.
    â€œNice books,” he said. “Are you a collector?”
    â€œMy husband collected the books,” she said. “He’s gone now.”
    Just exactly what Kenny hoped to hear. But something was bothering him. “I could buy all these books,” he heard himself saying. “If it’s cheap enough.”
    â€œWhat do you think?” she asked. She sat down in a nice-looking leather chair, well-worn, probably where the dead guy sat and read over his collection. He looked around. Approximately two hundred books.
    â€œI could give you fifty cents apiece,” he said. “A hundred dollars for the whole bunch. I could haul ’em out of here this morning.”
    She looked up at him, and this time he saw the pain in her eyes, for only a second, but it was there. “I don’t know,” she said. “You’d be getting a lot of valuable books. I wasn’t actually thinking of selling the books, but we need the money.”
    â€œLook,” he heard himself saying, “you’re gonna have a lot of furniture dealers here pretty soon. They’ll be trying to screw you, excuse me, but they’ll want to get all this really valuable stuff cheap. You have to be ready to bargain . . .” His heart sank as he listened to himself. But he couldn’t steal from an old drunk woman. It just wasn’t in him.
    â€œYou don’t know the value of any of this stuff, do you?” he asked her. He sat down on the little love seat, and noticed for the first time with a shock that the small painting on the wall in front of him was a Matisse. Or it looked like a Matisse. “Matisse?” he asked her and she nodded absently. She must have been up all night drinking. Her husband dies and she’s helpless. And then the scavengers arrive. Kenny sighed. If he had been a real businessman he would have made her an offer for everything in the house, screwed her blind and made a fortune. Instead, because he was a writer, because he needed to be a man of honor more than he needed the money, Kenny told Mrs. Froward the facts of life.
    â€œLady, you’re not in shape to sell your stuff, pardon me.”
    â€œThat’s true,” she said. “But sell it I must.”
    He sighed again. Last chance to be a vulture. “Let me call you a reputable dealer,” he said. “Somebody who can take over and auction off your things for the right prices. It will take a while, but otherwise they’d take you to the cleaners.”
    He telephoned Butterfield’s and told them what was going on. They were sending a man over, and meanwhile, Kenny would stop people at the door and tell them the sale was over.
    â€œWhy are you doing this?” she asked him.
    â€œI don’t know, lady,” he said. He couldn’t tell her he was a man of honor, could he?

9.
    Jaime thought her period had stopped because of the death of her father. But no, she was pregnant, and had obviously gotten pregnant on her first night of love. And to top that off, when she told her mother, Edna snapped, “Fine. Then you’re his responsibility. You can go live with him.”
    â€œOh, fine,” Jaime snapped back, thinking about Charlie’s luxurious apartment. On that first night