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purse and still no glasses.
    “Did either of you see my reading specs?” she asked.
    Both of the Moores shrugged.
    “Do either of you remember my wearing them? Usually I need them to read.”
    “Do you have another pair?” Bill asked. She did. There was a second pair in her purse. Or maybe, Essie confessed, it had been her first pair.
    “Sometimes I think I’d lose my head, too,” she offered in a rare moment of candor, “if it weren’t attached. It
is
attached, isn’t it?”
    The Moores smiled.
    “When you get to my age,” Essie continued, “the memory plays tricks sometimes. I guess I never had the red-framed pair here at all.” In any case, they weren’t there now. And there was more business to discuss.
    “What’s the neighborhood like?” Bill asked.
    “It’s lovely,” Essie answered quickly, although to those selling houses, any house they were in was in a lovely neighborhood.
    “It seems nice,” Rebecca said. “From what we saw of it.”
    “It used to be somewhat shabby, I won’t lie to you,” Mrs. Lewisohn explained. “But a lot of young professional people moved in the last ten years. Bought a lot of these old houses for a song, came in and spruced them up. So it’s definitely a neighborhood that’s up-and-coming.”
    “Even ten years later?” Bill pressed. “It’s still ‘up and coming’?”
    “I don’t think the values have peaked yet. I think they’ll go up steadily,” Esther Lewisohn said. “Even with the big recession we’re coming out of thank God. Take this house for an example. It’s the blight of the block. As soon as someone buys it and fixes it, everything on the block improves, including this house. Someone wins twice by playing Mr. and Mrs. Fix It.”
    Bill went to a window and peered out to the west. He saw nothing that would have made a liar out of his broker. Not here, anyway. The next home was Victorian, complete with turrets and curlicues and a splendid porch with a restored antique glider.
    The property was perfectly kept. And in the neighbors’ backyard, on deep green well-watered grass behind a wooden fence, was a child’s bicycle.
    “Who are the neighbors?” Rebecca asked.
    There was a family named Alvarez who lived in that house to the west, Essie said. She didn’t know much about them, other than that both parents worked.
    The next house in the other direction belonged to a childless couple named Kauffman. When the Moores went to the easterly windows they saw another Queen Anne, also immaculately kept. And the owners weren’t broke. There was a long sleek white Jaguar — the car, not the cat — sitting in the driveway.
    “Where are your children?” Essie asked. “Are they with you on this visit?”
    “No. They’re with their grandmother back East,” Bill said. “Westport, Connecticut. They’ll be joining us just as soon as we find a home.”
    “You mean you haven’t already?” Essie intoned with a smile and a raised eyebrow. “I can see what you’re thinking.”
    “Tell me about the schools,” Rebecca asked.
    “The elementary schools in this district are excellent,” she said. “People try to move into this neighborhood just so they can use the schools.”
    Rebecca nodded. Idly she wondered if any broker in the history of the world ever conceded that a school district was terrible, and that residents tried to move out just to avoid the schools.
    “Let’s take a look outside,” Bill suggested. He took his wife’s hand.
    “Of course,” Mrs. Lewisohn said.
    Essie led them through the kitchen to a back door. They left the house and found themselves first on an old-fashioned stone patio and then upon an unkempt lawn that cried out for both a landscaper and a gardener. But again, it also cried out with potential.
    The house was on a quarter of an acre, a generous plot for that area. Bill spent most of the tour looking at the foundations and the conditions of the woodwork on the side of the house. He was impressed with the