“I’ve decided on the wallpaper I want for the kitchen,” Sherry said.
“Where are you buying it?”
“I’m ordering it from Amazon and having it sent to Bruce and Becky’s house in Texas. Becky says they’ll bring it when they’re here on vacation.”
“Good God!” I said, when she told me the price. “We’ll have to get a loan from the bank to pay for this stuff. How many rolls are you buying?”
“I’ll leave that up to you to figure out. I’m not that good with math.”
“Neither am I. Charlie just had the kitchen in his apartment wallpapered. I’ll ask him how much paper he bought.”
When we met on Wednesday, as we usually do, I asked, “Charlie, how much wallpaper did you buy for your kitchen last month?”
“Let me think a minute,” he said. “O,K. I remember now. I sent Mark to pick it up in Belize City. I had him buy nine rolls.”
Bruce and Becky brought the wallpaper with them last week. Yesterday, Mario, my sometimes yard man and handyman, came over to put it up.
“All finished,” Mr. Dennis, he said, after working all morning. “You got four rolls of paper left over.”
I checked his work and sure enough, I was stuck with four very expensive rolls of wallpaper. When I saw Charlie this Wednesday, I had to ask about it.
“We finished the wallpapering,” I told him. It looks great, with one small problem.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that I bought nine rolls of paper like you did but I only used five. I ended up with four rolls of very expensive wallpaper that I can’t use.”
“That’s odd,” he said. “That’s exactly what happened to me.”
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