“Sure you are.”

“I’m serious about this.”

“Serious. Right.”

“I am.”

“Uh-huh. Listen, the reason I dropped in, I was thinkin’ about you just the other day. What it was, my wife was gettin’ on my back. You ever been married?”

“No.”

“You’re so busy gettin’ settled, maybe marriage is the next step. Nothin’ like it for settlin’ a man. What she wanted, here it’s October already and she’s expectin’ a long winter. You never met my wife, did you?”

“I talked to her on the phone once.”

“ ‘The leaves are turnin’ early, Ray. That means a cold winter.’ That’s what she tells me. If the trees don’t turn until late, then that means a cold winter.”

“She likes it cold?”

“What she likes is if it’s cold and she’s warm. What she’s drivin’ at is a fur coat.”

“Oh.”

“She goes about five-six, wears a size-sixteen dress. Sometimes she diets down to a twelve, sometimes she packs in the pasta and gets up to an eighteen. Fur coats, I don’t figure they got to fit like gloves anyway, right?”

“I don’t know much about them.”

“What she wants is mink. No wild furs or endangered species because she’s a fanatic on the subject. Minks, see, they grow the little bastards on these ranches, so there’s none of that sufferin’ in traps, and the animal’s not endangered or any of that stuff. All that they do is they gas ’em and skin ’em out.”

“How nice for the minks. It must be like going to the dentist.”

“Far as the color, I’d say she’s not gonna be too fussy. Just so it’s one of your up-to-date colors. Your platinum, your champagne. Not the old dark-brown shades.”

I nodded, conjuring up an image of Mrs. Kirschmann draped in fur. I didn’t know what she looked like, so I allowed myself to picture a sort of stout Edith Bunker.

“Oh,” I said suddenly. “There’s a reason you’re telling me this.”