Read Online Never Too Late for Love by Warren Adler - Free Book Online Page A

with salt. Not even a pinch.' But there was always too much salt. In
the pot roast. In the hamburger. In the vegetables."
    "He drove me crazy."
    "I couldn't understand how, if he hated salt, he liked
potato chips."
    "And they always gave him heartburn."
    "Always." They laughed, drank coffee, made
tuna-fish sandwiches.
    Sarah filled her in on various aspects of Sunset Village life. When she got home, she got a call from Eve Shapiro.
    "The game. You forgot the game."
    "I'm so sorry."
    "We were worried. We called. There was no answer.
Where were you?"
    "I had a problem." Sarah said, thinking quickly.
There was no need to tell her the story. The Yentas would ferret it out soon
enough. "Someone who just moved in from New York. They had a
problem."
    "Oh?" It was a signal for more information.
    "They needed help with the shopping. You know.
Details."
    "Enough to forget the game? Who was it?"
    "Someone from New York."
    "A relative?"
    "Yes."
    "A cousin?"
    "No. Not a cousin."
    "A what?" Eve Shapiro demanded.
    "A sister-in-law."
    "I didn't know you had one."
    "Yes. We weren't very close."
    "You're husband had a brother?"
    "Yes. But he lived in Queens. They weren't very
close."
    Barely satisfied, Eve's indignance would not abate.
    "You should at least have called."
    The next day, Yetta came over to Sarah's place to lunch.
    "You got a nice place here, Sarah."
    "Its not the Ritz. But its OK."
    "You've got such nice things." She touched a
grouping of little Wedgewood dishes.
    "I went on a B'nai B'rith tour to London once."
    "I never went anywhere. Nat didn't like to travel. Not
that we could afford it."
    "Don't forget, I worked for twenty years."
    "He didn't like to go anywhere," Yetta sighed.
"He came home. Went to sleep on the chair in front of the TV. Sometimes he
would snore so loud I couldn't hear it."
    "Then he would go to sleep and snore some more."
    "I never met anyone who could sleep so much."
    Sarah felt the necessity of telling Yetta what she had said
to Eve Shapiro.
    "I told her we were sisters-in-law." she said.
"But she's such a yenta, I didn't want her to find out. They'd make a big
joke about it?"
    "I was thinking about that."
    "If we don't tell them, they won't know."
    "But we're both Mrs. Nathaniel Z. Shankowitz."
    "No more. From now on I'm Mrs. Sarah. I'm going to
write to everybody, the mail, the phone company, the social security."
    "And I'll be Mrs. Yetta."
    "The Shankowitz girls."
    "That's us."
    "That would be something. Nat wouldn't think it's so
funny."
    "Nat is dead," Sarah said.
    "Poor Nat."
    "To me, he's not so poor."
    They continued to see each other every day. Sarah
introduced them to her friends and Yetta to hers.
    They went to the clubhouse together, watched the shows,
went shopping and sat together at the pool. Minor problems intruded only when
the subject of husbands came up.
    "Tomorrow is Abe's birthday," Eve Shapiro
announced one day as they sat around the pool. Impending birthdays of dead
husbands were special moments of self-pity. "He would have been
eighty-six."
    "An old man already," Sarah said.
    "He was twenty years older than me," Eve
responded.
    "How much?"
    "Eighteen, actually," Eve said. "And
yours?" The question was directed to Yetta.
    "Let's see." She held out her fingers, tapping
each one in turn.
    "Seventy-five," Sarah said quickly, too quickly.
    "You know so much about your brother-in-law?" Eve
probed.
    "Yes, that's right" Yetta added, as if to
buttress Sarah's revelation and deflect Eve's naturally suspicious nature.
    "He would actually be only seventy," Yetta
commented later.
    "No. He was seven years older than me."
    "You saw his birth certificate?"
    "No. But when we married he was twenty-five."
    "He said he was forty when we got married."
    "And how long were your married?"
    "Thirty years."
    "Then he would have to be at least seventy-five. We
were married twenty years."
    "You think he lied?"
    "Do I think he lied? I know he lied."
    Yetta pondered the matter.
    "Actually I lied, too, so I took