She listens, standing there with her pink shoes and white legs mirrored upside down in the dark wood floor. Reflected deep in the wood, you can see the shadows inside her skirt.

With her free hand cupped over her forehead, she says, "Mona." She says, "We cannot afford to lose that listing. If they replace that house, chances are it will be off the market for good."

Then she's quiet again, listening.

And I have to wonder, since when can't you wear a blue tie with a brown coat?

I duck my head to meet her eyes, saying, Mrs. Boyle? I needed to see her someplace private, outside her office. It's about a story I'm researching.

But she waves her fingers between us. In another second, she walks over to a fireplace and leans into it, bracing her free hand against the mantel, whispering, "When the wrecking ball swings, the neighbors will probably stand and cheer."

A wide doorway opens from this room into another white room with wood floors and a complicated carved ceiling painted white. In the other direction, a doorway opens on a room lined with empty white bookshelves.

"Maybe we could start a protest," she says. "We could write some letters to the newspaper."

And I say, I'm from the newspaper.

Her perfume is the smell of leather car seats and old wilted roses and cedar chest lining.

And Helen Hoover Boyle says, "Mona, hold on."

And walking back to me, she says, "What were you saying, Mr. Streator?" Her eyelashes blink once, twice, fast. Waiting. Her eyes are blue.

I'm a reporter from the newspaper.

"The Exeter House is a lovely, historic house some people want to tear down," she says, with one hand cupped over her phone. "Seven bedrooms, six thousand square feet. All cherry paneling throughout the first floor."

The empty room is so quiet you can hear a tiny voice on the telephone saying, "Helen?"