"Why only twenty-five for the house? I thought that place was worth over a hundred grand? He won't have enough money to do the repairs, will he?"

"When he bought the place in 1962, it was worth twenty-five thousand and that's what he insured it for. He never increased the coverage and he hasn't taken out any other policies. Personally, I don't see how he can do anything with the house. It's a complete loss, which I think is what's broken him."

Now that she'd told me, I felt guilty for all the macho bullshit I'd laid on her.

"Thanks. That's a big help," I said. "Uh… by the way, Vera wanted me to ask if you'd be interested in meeting an unattached aerospace engineer with bucks."

A wonderful look of uncertainty crossed her face: suspicion, sexual hunger, greed. Was I offering her a cookie or a flat brown turd on a plate? I knew what was going through her head. In Santa Teresa, a single man is on the market maybe ten days before someone snaps him up.

She shot me a worried look. "What's wrong with him? Why didn't you take him first?"

"I just came off a relationship," I said, "I'm in retreat." Which was true.

"Maybe I'll give Vera a buzz," she said faintly.

"Great. Thanks again for the information," I said and I gave her a little wave as I moved away from her desk. With my luck, she'd fall in love with the guy and want me to be a bridesmaid. Then I'd be stuck with one of those dumb dresses with a hunk of flounce on the hip. When I glanced back at her, she seemed to have shrunk and I felt a twinge. She wasn't so bad.

Chapter 11

I ate dinner that night at Rosie's, a little place half a block down from my apartment. It's a cross between a neighborhood bar and an old-fashioned beanery, sandwiched between a Laundromat on the corner and an appliance repair shop that a man named McPherson operates out of his house. All three of these businesses have been in operation for over twenty-five years and are now, in theory, illegal, representing zoning violations of a profound and offensive sort, at least to people who live somewhere else. Every other year, some overzealous citizen gets a bug up his butt and goes before the city council denouncing the outrage of this breach of residential integrity. In the off years, I think money changes hands.

Rosie herself is probably sixty-five, Hungarian, short, and top-heavy, a creature of muumuus and hennaed hair growing low on her forehead. She wears lipstick in a burnt-orange shade that usually exceeds the actual shape of her mouth, giving the impression that she once had a much larger set of lips. She uses a brown eyebrow pencil lavishly, making her eyes look stern and reproachful. The tip of her nose comes close to meeting her upper lip.

I sat down in my usual booth near the back. There was a mimeographed menu sheet slipped into a clear plastic cover stuck between the ketchup bottle and the napkin box. The selections were typed in pale purple like those notices they used to send home with us when we were in grade school. Most of the items were written in Hungarian; words with lots of accent marks and z's and double dots, suggesting that the dishes would be fierce and emphatic.

Rosie marched over, pad and pencil poised, her manner withdrawn. She was feeling offended about something, but I wasn't sure yet what I'd done. She snatched the menu out of my hand and put it back, writing out the order without consulting me. If you don't like the way the place is run, you go somewhere else. She finished writing and squinted at the pad, checking the results. She wouldn't quite meet my eyes.

"You didn't come in for a week so I figured you was mad at me," she said. "I bet you been eating junk, right? Don't answer that. I don't want to hear. You don't owe me an apology. You just lucky I give you something decent. Here's what you gonna get."

She consulted the pad again with a critical eye, reading the order to me then with interest as though it were news to her too.

"Green pepper salad. Fantastic. The best. I made it myself so I know it's done right. Olive oil, vinegar, little pinch of sugar. Forget the bread, I'm out. Henry didn't bring fresh today so what do I know? He could be mad at me too. How do I know what I did? Nobody tells me these things. Then I give you sour oxtail stew."

She crossed that off. "Too much grease. Is no good for you. Instead I give you tejfeles suit ponty, some nice pike I bake in cream, and if you clean your plate, I could give you deep-fried cherries if I think you deserve it, which you don't. The wine I'm gonna bring with the flatware. Is Austrian, but okay."

She marched away then, her back straight, her hair the color of dried tangerine peels. Her rudeness sometimes has an eccentric charm to it, but it's just as often simply irritating, something you have to endure if you want to eat Rosie's meals. Some nights I can't tolerate verbal abuse at the end of the day, preferring instead the impersonal mechanics of a drive-in restaurant or the peace and quiet of a peanut butter and dill pickle sandwich at home.