Debra Pickett

First, there is Berg's partner/longtime companion (it's weird to say "boyfriend" for a grown-up, isn't it?), Bill Young. Young runs a book promotion company, and I'm constantly running into him as he escorts book-touring authors to their interviews around town. Though I've rarely gotten the chance to exchange more than a few words at a time with him, I have to confess to Berg that I've found him quite charming and that, in fact, I'd love to write a novel with him -- "literary escort," how great a job title is that? -- as the lead character.

In my obviously overworked imagination, I've envisioned their meeting and courtship, which, I've assumed, must have unfolded over the course of a book tour.

I ask Berg if my hyper-romantic version bears any resemblance to the real story of how they met.

"Oh yes," she says, with a lusty laugh, remembering the first time she encountered him, when he picked her up at the airport. He was standing there, holding a copy of her book.

"And, in fact, I believe the first thing I said to him was," she continues, lowering her voice to take on a mock-seductive tone, "'I think I'm the one you're looking for.'"

Green or yellow soup

Berg, who modestly describes herself as a "bottom feeder on the New York Times [best-sellers] list," seems not to have a pretentious or angst-ridden bone in her body, which is a remarkable -- almost frightening -- thing for a writer.

"Oh, believe me, I have my moments," she assures me, "but part of it is Bill. He just wakes up in a good mood. He's so positive, so even-keel. It's not really possible to be neurotic around him."

Berg and Young are wisecrack-trading regulars at this throwback of a diner, which Berg likes, she says, "because when you ask for soup, they ask you, 'green or yellow?'"

As she settles in, she gives me a voracious eater's tour of the extensive menu, recommending the chicken gyros, the Greek salad, or "if you can do it, a burger, fries and a milk shake."

She pauses for a moment when our waitress arrives, and then, after checking to find out what Bill ordered in her absence (she is trying to limit his gyros consumption), continues her recommendations, "Or, you know, you can't go wrong with breakfast."

Checking out the food at other tables around us, she also notes that the mac and cheese looks particularly good today. Eventually, she settles on a Greek omelet, with a side order of thick-cut Greek toast. And, though she sometimes asks them to hold the potatoes, this is not one of those days.

Instead, as she sits here by the window (a table preference that started because her dog was tied up outside and needed watching and now has simply become a habit), she seems to have settled in for an indulgently long and pleasant interlude.

Feeling at home in Oak Park

She has been traveling all over the country to promote her latest novel, We Are All Welcome Here (Random House: 187 pages, $22.95), and says her own airplane reading of choice includes "celebrity rags. So, if you need to get caught up on Brad and Angelina, I'm your woman."

And, if there is any thought that this is the just the slow, easy glamor of a famous writer's life, she would like to point out that the next item on her agenda for today is an oil change for her car.

Berg, who spent much of her adult life in the Boston area, has lived in Oak Park for five years now and has only lately begun to think of it as home.

"I was an Army brat," she says, "so I don't often feel at home in places, but I'm getting there."

But her easy banter with the waitress and hostess gives her away as far more rooted here than she lets on. She shares pictures of her newborn grandson with them, swaps diet stories and catches up on the local gossip. In the space of an hour, she has pulled me into their circle as well, telling them I'm pregnant and enlisting them in her campaign to persuade me not to find out the baby's sex until it's born.

Picture of inspiration

It feels almost unsporting to try to rope Berg into a more traditional author-interview conversation about the fascinating back story behind her novel. A reader, Marianne Raming Burke, sent Berg a photo of her late mother, Pat Raming, a polio victim who managed to raise children and live independently while paralyzed from the neck down. She was hoping Berg might somehow find a way to write about Raming's life.

"Look at this," she says, pointing at the copy of the photo the publisher had given me, "Look at how perfect her lipstick is."

Those well-painted lips were the inspiration for Paige Dunn, the heroic but flawed mother in the fictional We Are All Welcome Here, Berg says.

And then she takes a big, hot sauce-covered bite of her omelet and turns the conversation back to other topics.