She adored her fur coat. She felt so rich, she said, so secure inside it. She couldn’t wait for the weather to go to zero. It was muskrat, dyed beige. And once (before Michael, and of course long before me) she had known a man who was in the cemetery business. The man was fat, tall, married, his name was Ben, and he had explained to her that of all the possible businesses to be in, the cemetery business was the best. This was because in the cemetery business you bought it by the acre and sold it by the foot. Ben, she said, while I listened, was very nice even if he was tall and decidedly fat and thoroughly married and preferred taking her to the Stage Delicatessen and ordering a huge steaming hot pastrami sandwich to a chateaubriand at a fashionable place. He could afford the chateaubriand but he preferred the hot pastrami. When she made up her mind she had to have a fur coat or she’d just die she knew that she simply could not go to the tall fat man in the cemetery business and say I want a fur coat, Ben. Ben was delicate about things like that. He got awfully gruff if you ever said to Ben, Ben, I’m poor, I’ve a hundred and fifty dollars in the Amalgamated Savings and Loan but I want a fur coat, Ben. Ben hated being told you were poor or that anybody was poor. Ben thought it was bad taste to tell people in the cemetery business who sold it by the foot precisely how emaciated your bank account was. She knew she couldn’t just assault Ben like a fortified town garrisoned by money.

She waited until the weather got real zippy and the barometer started to come down and one afternoon when Ben was in town and had invited her to lunch she went to the Amalgamated Savings and Loan and drew out her hundred and fifty dollars. They had lunch. Ben was feeling particularly Roman by the time the dessert came and then she said, Ben, you know a lot of people, I mean in the wholesale business, do you know anybody in the wholesale fur business, Ben? Sure baby, Ben said, what are you looking for? Well, she said, it is getting cold, Ben, and I thought if you knew somebody in the wholesale fur business I might get an inexpensive fur coat. Well sure, baby, Ben said, we don’t want you freezing your pretty little ass off come December, do we?

I’ve got the money with me and all, she said, quickly picking up her handbag, and I thought if you’re not busy this afternoon you might call somebody, I mean you know so many people and go down with me to wherever it is and pick out a nice fur. Ben knew so much about furs and all. She did not say anything about Ben’s wife’s beaver or anything about how she wanted to look nice when she went some place with Ben because they might just be going to a delicatessen.