Somebody Else's Music Read Online Free PDF

birthday. You’ve been wonderful. Thank you, again.”
    Betsy turned around and went across the large open front section between the candy case and the front door, and then she was gone. For a moment, Emma could still see her through the windows, striding out onto the sidewalk. In no
time at all, though, she had disappeared, and Emma found herself counting it all up in her head: the yellow dress, real silk, and fully lined; the shoes; the handbag; the hair; the diamond engagement ring, backed as it was by a thick gold band more like the ones men wore than the ones women did. Emma looked down at her own shoes, good sensible canvas ones so that her feet wouldn’t hurt if she walked too much in the city. She looked at her own diamond engagement ring, which George had bought her when she had only been out of high school a year. She looked at the canvas tote bag she was carrying instead of a real purse, because she thought it would be better for carrying the things they bought when they went to the kind of places that really interested her, like the Tower of London.
    â€œWell,” George said. “ She’s changed a lot, hasn’t she?”
    â€œYou’ve given me ten cents too much change,” the old woman said, tapping her knuckles against the counter next to her brown paper bags. “I don’t think you’re paying attention. I don’t think you’ve heard a single word I’ve said the whole time I’ve been in here.”
    â€œSorry,” Emma said. “I’ve been a little distracted today.”
    â€œYou can’t expect to keep customers if you don’t listen to what they say,” the old woman said. “You take me, for instance. I won’t be back here again. You’ve got good stock, but I won’t go where I’m not being listened to. I’m a customer with money to spend. I have a right to be listened to.”
    â€œYes,” Emma said. “Of course.”
    â€œYou’re only saying ‘of course’ because you’re trying to humor me,” the old woman said. “I won’t be humored. I’m not some senile old cat.”
    â€œYes,” Emma said. Then she stopped. She had been about to say “of course.” “I hope you enjoy your things,” she said, instead.
    The old woman looked ready to start up again, but instead she just gathered up her bags, and looked Emma over — fat cow , Emma could almost hear her say—and left,
making her feet hit the floor with particular emphasis, and slamming the door as she went out.
    Emma took a chamois cloth and gave the counter a quick rub, just to give herself something to do. What bothered her about her talks with Belinda was that endless complaint: it isn’t fair . What frightened her, ever since she had first started hearing Betsy’s name on television, was that it might be very fair, there might be something about Betsy that really deserved to be famous, if only in a minor way, something about her that the rest of them, even Maris, did not have. It was not something that Emma herself wanted, but it was something that the rest of the world might easily judge to be better than what she had, and she hated the thought of that, much in the same way she had once hated the sight of Betsy in the hall at school with the top button of her blouse buttoned tight, even though everybody knew that when you wore a blouse that way you looked like a jerk. Now Betsy was coming home, moving back into that big brick house in Stony Hill, and everything would be ruined.
    4
    It had been a bad day, one of the worst Peggy Smith Kennedy could remember in at least six months, and that, she told herself, was why it bothered her so much that nobody had thought to call and tell her the news about Betsy Toliver. Of course, there wasn’t much news about Betsy Toliver. There wasn’t anything she didn’t know. Unlike most of the others, she didn’t try to hide