Bob at the Plaza Read Online Free PDF Page A

relationship still felt awkward.
    “Carnegie Hall?” Katie exclaimed in amazement and immediately peppered me with questions. “Your Avondale chorus will be singing at Carnegie Hall? That’s huge, Roz! And you’re going to do it? How exciting! Are you staying in the city? You can always stay with us, you know.”
    Pacing the kitchen, I said, “Thanks, Katie. I don’t know all the details yet. We just heard about it last night. I’ll keep you posted as we find out more.”
    “Is David going?”
    I paused in my walking for a second to consider what Katie really asked with her question, then resumed pacing. “It looks like he will. He’s going to pick up some extra hours at the winery to help out with the costs.”
    “Speaking of costs, are you getting enough work to be able to pay for this? Bill and I could help out.” Katie’s voice drifted off, probably worried that she might offend me with her kind offer.
    “Are you kidding?” I shot back, with more emphasis than I needed. “You with a daughter in college? Don’t be silly, Katie. If I can’t figure out a way to pay for it, I won’t go.” I paused for a second, then continued. “I might take you up on your offer to stay at your place, though. I’m still trying to think through all my options.”
    “Just let me know what we can do.”
    “I will, once I figure things out.”
    My phone stroll ended close to the microwave, so I warmed my coffee before ascending to my office. There, I double-checked each detail in the Topco entry and packed up the dummy binder for the overnight mail. Good thing I’d caught up on my shoveling. My afternoon promised a rare drive into Avondale.
    After a quick, late lunch I bundled up, trudged out to the car with my heavy carton of competition materials, and said a quick prayer as I cranked the ignition. After only two tries the frozen battery turned over, and I skittered the ten miles into town along salt-bleached roads.
    A winter mid-afternoon in Avondale. Piles of dirty gray snow lined each sidewalk, and sprinkles of sand crunched underfoot with every step. Cars and trucks lumbered like prehistoric mastodons down the middle of First Street. Layers of salt and grime covered every vehicle with a gray powder that brushed off on your coat each time you wandered near it. Pedestrians hunched against the bitter cold, the weight of their winter coats and sweaters, and the knowledge that weeks more of weather just like this might be on the way.
    Bright red and yellow shovels, de-icers, and car window scrapers decorated the front windows of the hardware store. From the apple shack wafted the alluring fragrance of frying cider doughnuts. I added a stop there to my mental to-do list. After I schlepped my large box up the post office stairs I emerged, ten minutes later, an unburdened woman with a big chore checked off her list.
    I hesitated for a minute at the top of the post office stairs, determined to have a little fun before I returned home to dig into my Ohio client’s entry. What next? A no-brainer. Fresh cinnamon-sugar cider doughnuts from the apple shack. Do stores like this exist anywhere but the northern states? Tiny seasonal places that sell mostly apples and apple products, like cider doughnuts and cider, and maybe some locally made cheeses and maple syrup on the side. Until I’d moved to New York, I’d never realized how many kinds of apples you could buy: McIntosh, Empire, Jonathan, McCoun, Delicious, Granny Smith, Crispin, Gala, and Cortland, to name but a few. And my latest favorite, Jonamacs.
    The variety of apples available from the apple shack amazed me.  When I’d lived in cities, I guess I’d always just, unthinkingly, picked up a bag of Macintoshes or Empires whenever I wanted the fruit. A few months ago, faced with a dozen different varieties in the apple shack, I’d had no idea what my favorite apple was. So, I decided to do some apple taste-testing. I selected and individually bagged and weighed eight