The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg Read Free Book Online

decided I wanted it after all and went back to the store, but it was gone. It had cost two dollars.
    So, what was his message to me, on that little slip of paper? Take the green bowl. Take all the green bowls; love what you love without apology. I went down to the chest and pulled out other slips of paper. Those that I had been unable to decipher, at least not then. But here was the glory: We were not done with each other yet.

    Henckley Realtors was in a strip mall a few miles away, along with a pizza parlor, a pet store, an exercise club, a beauty shop, and a Laundromat. The place had the dispiriting air of all strip malls, but at least the businesses weren’t chain stores. I sat in the car for a couple of minutes. Was I
sure
? Sure enough, I decided.
    When I came in the door, I saw Delores seated at the only desk, her jacket slung over the back of her chair. Philodendrons grew down the sides of a filing cabinet. There was a card table covered by an embroidered tablecloth, holding a Mr. Coffee and various-sized ceramic mugs. One said I WORKED MY ASS OFF, BUT IT CAME BACK AND FOUND ME. A round wooden table had three chairs grouped around it—the conference center, I presumed. Delores was on the phone, and her brow was furrowed. “Now, that’s not what I—” she said. “Well, if you want, I—” She listened for a long while, then said, “No, I should think that—” She listened again, then leaned forward in her chair and yelled, “LYDIA! Stop your yammering and let me get a word in! Now, the woman who’s interested is standing right in front of me. Do you want her to think that you’re—” She sighed. “Yes . . . all right, Lydia. Hold on and I’ll see.”
    Delores put her hand over the mouthpiece and looked up at me. “This is the owner, Lydia Samuels, I’ve got here on the phone. Just in case you hadn’t figured that out. She wants to meet you. Won’t sell the house to anyone she hasn’t met. Would you be willing? She’s over at the Rose McNair Home, it’s pretty close by. Won’t take us more than ten, fifteen minutes to get there.”
    “I guess that would be all right. But you haven’t even told me the price!”
    “Well, I know that. You forgot to ask and I forgot to tell you.
And
I forgot to show you the pictures of the garden in bloom! We’re a hell of a team. The house is listed at three hundred and fifty thousand. We’ll get to all the financing options, and there are some other things I want to talk to you about, too. But first I had to call Lydia. I promised her that if I showed it, I’d let her know who to. And now she’s gone and—” She turned her attention back to the phone. “What? . . . All right, yes, I suppose I could do that. What kind do you want? . . . With or without nuts? . . . All right. So let’s say, five?” Delores looked up at me and I nodded. “Fine, Lydia, we’ll see you then.”
    Shaking her head, Delores hung up the phone. “You know, she is something, that old woman. She’s ninety-five years old now, and she still scares the bejesus out of me.” She gestured to the chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat.”
    I moved to the chair and picked up a small pile of newspaper clippings that were resting there. “Did you want these?”
    “Oh, that.” She reached for the clippings and shoved them into a desk drawer. “Recipes. Clip them out every day and never make a single one. You do that?”
    I nodded. “I used to.”
    “You will again,” she said, and her words seemed so full of something beyond what she had said. I looked closely at her, both afraid and hoping she’d impart some particular wisdom, but she was busy reading a listing, I assumed for the house we’d just looked at.
    But what she said when she looked up was, “Now, this is a condo, which I think might be much more appropriate for you. What do you say we have a look at it, before you make an offer on a three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar house that I know will not come down one