Page "fiction" Paragraph 903

He left his home the day after New Year's wearing a mackinaw and sheepskin mittens and without a hat.

He would wear this same costume in Florida, despite his wife Cleota's reminders over the past five days that he must take some cool clothes with him.

But he was too busy to hear what she was saying.

So they parted when she was in an impatient humor.

When he was bent over behind the wheel of the station wagon, feeling in his trouser cuffs for the ignition key which he had dropped a moment before, she came out of the house with an enormous Rumanian shawl over her head, which she had bought in that country during one of their trips abroad, and handed him a clean handkerchief through the window.

Finding the key under his shoe, he started the engine, and while it warmed up he turned to her standing there in the dripping fog, and said, `` Defrost the refrigerator ''.