WITH A TWINKLE IN HIS EYE

“He was a wonderful man,” the sweet old lady said.
“This whole apartment, I was tired of the way it looked. But I could have lived in it a lot longer. Thank you for coming.”
Sunny Calabash lived on the third floor. Her neighbor’s husband had died – they lived on the second floor, first apartment on the right of the elevator. Sunny was visiting her. The visit was part of the Jewish practice of sitting shiva when a beloved person died.
It was a nice apartment. Her neighbor told Sunny about it.
“We’ll go to buy furniture,” he said. “He” was her deceased husband.
“We were in the store. I loved the big couch. You’re sitting on it now.”
“It’s a nice couch.” Sunny said.
“Buy it” he said. “He could have said no, with a twinkle in his eye. His eye was always twinkling.  But he said buy it.”
“But you haven’t even sat in it,” I said.
“Buy it,” he said.
“And the chair. There by the window.” Sunny looked at the chair by the window.
“Buy it,” he said.
“The coffee table? He didn’t even look at it. Buy it.”
“The bedroom too. A new king-sized bed. That’s the one he died in. Our old one was only a queen. Buy it. This whole apartment is new. He didn’t care. His eyes always twinkled. Even though he was short. He was shorter than me and I’m not tall.”
“It’s a nice apartment,” Sunny said.
“We were both in the same concentration camp.”
“Did you meet there.”
“No.”  She had such a sweet smile. “We met here. Funny isn’t it, that we were both in the same concentration camp but we only found out when we met here?”
And only here did they find out about buying.