The rain continued to fall. Way up above us, the clouds—tired of the same old thing—were rapidly changing their patterns.

LIVE A LITTLE

We’re getting fat, I said. We need to go on a diet.

Not me, he said. I’m the perfect weight. I haven’t got a pound to lose.

We’ll see, I said.

In the kitchen, my cupboards were a mess. I kept buying cookware. I had duplicates of everything—quart pan, stockpot, deep fryer, double boiler. It had gotten so crowded in there I’d stopped cooking altogether. Instead, we ordered takeout and turned on the food channel. There was a show about baking we particularly enjoyed.

I exerted myself for an hour and emerged with the steam basket and the lidded pot it fit into. I’d also found the air popper, the blender, the strainer, and the big wooden salad bowl with the matching tongs we’d gotten as a wedding gift. The finish on the wood was tacky—like the range top after a bacon fry.

I washed everything in the sink and arranged it on a towel on the counter to dry. On the bookshelf, I found Staying Slim the Scandinavian Way, which I’d bought for its photographs of the Swedish author—a young model at the time of publication. In one photo, she sat at a dinette—barefoot, laughing, her long, tan legs crossed at the thigh—bringing a small chunk of melon to her mouth. In another, dressed in a thick white sweater, she cupped a mug tenderly.

According to the Swede, breakfast was black coffee with fruit. Lunch was a scoop of cottage cheese stuffed into a tomato. For dinner, there was a broth you made by dissolving a single cube of bouillon in boiling water.

I got into the car and drove to the grocery store. I pulled a cart from the queue and rolled it toward the produce aisle.

Mr. Lipincott, the produce manager, was there, stacking lemons.

Mr. Lipincott, I said—I need your help.

Oh? he said. He held the last lemon in his hand. He was attempting to place it, but it was a wobbler.

I need tomatoes, I said. A lot of them.

He turned to where the tomatoes were arrayed in a wide swath upon a tilted table.

Here are some very good ones, he said. They’ve just come in. Very juicy.

I’m sure they are, I said. They look wonderful. My problem is your price.

Three dollars a pound is a standard tomato price. Ask anyone, he said.

That’s news to me, I said. They’re about the easiest thing in the world to grow.

I wouldn’t know, he said.

Here’s another thing, I said. How do you look your neighbors in the face when you’re charging them a dollar each for these pears?

Those are excellent pears, ma’am, he said. They’re a very special variety. They get flown here on an airplane. Each one gets put in a little padded sleeve to protect it during shipment.

I had a pear tree once, and the thing was a nuisance, I said. It made a huge mess. Maybe you should’ve come over to my yard with your little sleeves and picked them up for me.