of bringing plates and knives and forks from the kitchen. Lillian was glad that Rose bought print butter. It came in little quarter-pound pieces and you could put a whole one on a plate. It was a nuisance when you had to slice off a chunk for the table. Lillian opened a can of evaporated milk and poured half of it into a pitcher.
"The steak's done," Rose announced.
"All right. Let's go." Lillian was hungry.
The Friedrich girls conversed mainly between themselves at the table. They had a lingerie and hosiery shop on Washington Heights. A small shop, but it kept them comfortably fixed. Lillian had rented a room in a Washington Heights apartment at one time. A tiny room. She had eaten her meals in a bakery. It had been a static, lonely existence. A frequent customer at the Syl-Rose Shop, she had fallen into the habit of chatting with the Friedrich girls over the purchase of sheer stockings, nude shade, size nine.
They "roomed" too and also found fault with that way of living. Rose had made the proposition to Lillian. She knew where she could get some furniture cheap. If she furnished an apartment would Lillian come live there and pay one-third of the rent and food and electricity and gas? Rose had found the apartment in Inwood. It was only ten minutes' ride to the shop, and the rent was cheap. Sixty dollars for four rooms. Lillian didn't buy her stockings at the Syl-Rose Shop any more. The Friedrich girls always wanted to sell them to her at cost.
"Listen, Sylvia, when you go back to the shop tonight watch that box of gun-metal dollar-eighty-nines.
