Friends till the End Read Free

Crandall, following his own train of thought. “I’ll bet he doesn’t even know where the Pantanal is. Don’t you think so, darling?”
    “Yes, Harry,” Heather said submissively.
    “Ignoramus,” her husband said gleefully. “That’s what he is, you know, Heather. A total ignoramus.”
    “Yes, darling.”
    “What were you and Laura talking about?”
    “She wasn’t feeling well. I was going to tell her about
ghee
but I didn’t have the time.”
    “Oh, well. Next time, then.”
    “Yes,” said Heather. “Next time.”
    *      *      *
    In the Abramses’ car the conversation was short and direct.
    “That Freda,” Sam Abrams was saying. He was a little gray man with a resigned expression. “Has she ever had a day’s worry in her life?”
    “Oh, Sam, that’s not fair,” said Ruth. “Her husband died.”
    “And left her with more money than she knows what to do with.”
    “Oh, Sam.”
    Her husband gave her a quizzical glance. “You wouldn’t think of knocking me off, now would you, honey? For the insurance money, maybe?”
    “Oh,
Sam.
” Ruth felt resentful. You shouldn’t even joke about things like that, her expression said.
    But it was true enough, what he had said about Freda Simms. Not that she had had such an easy time of it—look at the way she drank, she certainly had her share of problems. She was running away from
something.
But she had never had to worry about money.
    Ruth felt that awful feeling again, that stab of resentment.
    She had never had to
worry
.…
    Isabel Sloane saw her friend out to his car.
    “Snooky,” she said, “it was terrific seeing you again. How long will you be at your sisters?”
    “About as long as she and her husband can stand me.”
    “Let’s get together soon.”
    The young man looked down at her thoughtfully. “Why don’t you come over for dinner tomorrow night?”
    “Your sister wouldn’t mind?”
    “Oh, no. She and Bernard love that kind of thing.”
    “Well … okay. That would be great. See you then.”
    She stood and watched as he drive away. She didn’t wave.
    On the way home he punched the radio dials aimlessly. Finally, giving up, he began to whistle an opera aria. He was singing by the time he reached his sister’s house and roaring as he climbed the front steps.
    His sister came out on the porch and flicked on the light.
    “So there you are, you slobhead,” she said affectionately.
    “Here I am, myself.”
    “Have fun at your party?”
    “Uh-huh. Hey, Maya?”
    “Speak on, little one.”
    “You wouldn’t mind having Isabel over for dinner tomorrow, would you?”
    “Oh, no,” said his sister, flicking off the porch light and closing the door. “You know I just live to entertain your little friends.”
    *      *      *
    “Sam,” Ruth Abrams said, “Sam, where’s the sugar bowl?”
    She was standing on a chair and reaching into the dark recesses of the upper shelf of the pantry.
    “Sam?”
    Her husband had disappeared somewhere, probably into the basement to tinker with the old radios and dinosaurlike remnants of electrical equipment he hoarded down there.
    Ruth did what she always did in these cases. She raised her voice and bellowed at the top of her lungs,
    “
SAM?
”
    The pantry rattled and the cat scuttled away, but there was no answer from below. Ruth sighed and scrabbled about among the items on the shelf.
    Something would have to be done about this pantry, she thought, as she always did when forced to find something. Just look at this. Old half-used containers of oatmeal (probably maggoty by now), sticky bottles of jam with the contents ossified beyond recognition, envelopes of instant soup mix, decades old. In fact, the whole thing could be reorganized as a kind of museum of how her children lived twenty years ago. And the sugar bowl nowhere to be seen.
    Well, she would just have to use something else in that cake batter. She descended from the chair and looked thoughtfully into the