Read Online With Friends Like These: A Novel by Sally Koslow - Free Book Online

feel for him is not far behind. When I returned downstairs, he’d already arranged for a picnic to eat after a hike to the area’s main draw, a covered bridge. Arms around each other’s waist, my straw hat tickling his ear, we wandered down the inn’s driveway.
    We hadn’t gotten fifty feet past the gate when the trill of my phone competed with a moo. “What’s up, Horton?” I said.
    “Dr. Walter’s adviser thanks you for your offer but wonders if you’d be willing to increase it.”
    “Uh-huh,” I said feeling a familiar disappointment snake up from the pit of my stomach, grip my insides, and give them a good yank. Every other apartment bid had run along these lines. “We’ll discuss it and I’ll call you in a bit.” I clicked off and explained.
    “What it comes down to, is, do you really want this place?” Jake asked reasonably.
    I thought of all my addresses in thirty-some years—the solid, three-story house in the Minneapolis of my childhood; the rambling Manhattan apartment I’d shared with a boyfriend, and then with Jules, Talia, and Chloe; Jake’s cozy hovel, which I moved into when we became engaged; our current rental in a building that looked like a stack of ice cubes, its balcony the size of a coffin. In the Central Park West apartment, I felt as embraced as if I’d lived there in a previous life of extraordinary contentment.
    “My gut says go,” I admitted, “but maybe I’m getting carried away. I need a reality check.”
    We walked in silence until Jake sat down by a stream we’d been following. He began picking up pebbles and idly throwing them into the rushing water. A dozen pebbles later, he spoke. “Q, you’re not crazy. It’s a terrific apartment, and probably a pretty sure investment if we decide to move somewhere like this for good.” Whenever we got fifty miles outside of Manhattan, he invariably launched a Norman Rockwell fantasy, forgetting that he was well on his way to a prosperous career representing white-collar crooks, a species he’d find in short supply here in the land of the rake and the rooster. “If you want it, I want it. We can up the offer five percent, but that’s the limit. I draw the line at food stamps.”
    I hugged him as he left a message for Horton. Then Jake and I trundled off to the bridge, spread a quilt nearby, and feasted on sandwiches thick with turkey and Brie, washed down with sparkling lemonade. Stuffed, the two of us lay back hand in hand and counted clouds floating in the sort of pool party sky you never see in a city. Soon I began to doze. I dreamt of us unpacking boxes in our new apartment. Inexplicably, I was playing the cello, accompanied by Eloise Walter. After a bravura performance I retreated to a bedroom, where I discovered a door that Horton hadn’t shown us. It was locked. I didn’t have the key. I banged, again and again.
    I woke to Jake shaking my shoulder. “Q—you’re moaning.”
    “What did I say?” I asked, blinking in the light. I’ve been known to dream in convoluted, Spielberg-worthy plots, which I try to recount for Jake, who finds them considerably less captivating than I do.
    “I have no idea, except that you scared the nuts off me.” He stood and extended a hand. “C’mon, we have plans.”
    During my nap, Jake had read a borrowed guidebook and made a reservation at a nearby restaurant. Our dinner lived up to its billing—red snapper for him, duck breast for me—as did the brandy we sipped later in front of the inn’s hearth. It was nearly midnight when we tiptoed up the Black Cat’s stairs.
    On Sunday, the aroma of sizzling bacon woke us and we stumbled down to breakfast. I was at risk of taking a third helping of waffles, using up the owner’s entire winter store of maple syrup, when he said, “Do you two enjoy auctions?” That was like asking me if I, as a human being, enjoyed oxygen. In twenty minutes, Jake and I were in the back row of a crowded barn, listening to an auctioneer sell off the