She eyed me. “I’m not enjoying this a bit.”
“I know you’re not.”
“It’s not doing anyone any good either.”
“It might. However. I figure I’ve got a dollar’s worth, so I’ll settle for two bucks if you insist.”
She turned her head and called, “Olga!” In a moment the Valkyrie came marching in, by no means silently. Mrs. Jaffee asked her if there was any coffee left, and she said there was and was requested to bring some. She went and soon was back with the order, this time on a tray without being told. Mrs. Jaffee wriggled to the edge of the divan, poured, and sipped.
“I can tell you how old I was,” she said, “when I first met Pris.”
I said I would appreciate it very much.
She sipped more coffee. “I was four years old. Pris was about two weeks. My father was in her father’s business, and the families were friends. Of course, with children four years is a big difference, but we liked each other all along, and when Pris’s mother died, and soon afterward her father, and Pris went to live with the Helmars, she and I got to be like sisters. We were apart a lot, since we went to different schools, and I graduated from college the year she started, but we wrote to each other — we must have written a thousand letters back and forth. Do you know about her leaving college and setting up a menage in the Village?”
I said I did.
“That was when we were closest. My father had died then, and my mother long before, and I practically lived with Pris, though I had a little place of my own. The trouble with Pris is she has too much money.”