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Show 30* In fact, my new routine was horrible, I hated that early rising on bleak cold mornings, neither of us particularly cheerful, but I wasn't going to back down on it. I was the first one up, putting on trousers and shirt and slippers, washing, and not until I was in the kitchen did she roll out. She liked a decent breakfast, I did too, our farm pasts showing, so I would make it while she got ready for work. After she left, I would clean up, then read through the morning. Because she didn't have to get her own breakfast she now Yet got to sleep fifteen minutes later but she didn't much appreciate it. /I made it a point of honor not to go back to bed after she left. So there I was on a bleak November morning, the first snow on the ground and a cold wind blowing, in the kitchen cooking oatmeal. The kitchen was bright and warm though, and I liked oatmeal, particularly with honey on it the way my father used to eat it, the amber honey melting on the hot steamy mush, and I was feeling proud of myself for making the stuff because it is harder to clean up even than eggs or hotcakes. I really put myself out for her. I made coffee and RKX had her toast ready just as she came into the kitchen. She didn't feel so great I could tell, in that morning silence while she prepared to face the day. She was dressed for work but without makeup, her face wan and drawn, and we ate in silence. Wnen I don't talk or read at breakfast I eat fast and I had soon finished an extra toast and jelly and had lit a cigarette with my coffee. She waved the smoke away from her face, got up and without a word went back to finish getting ready. When I finished my cigarette I went to find her, in the bathroom, out of her slippers and into her heels, wearing the kind of skirt fashionable then, long to mid-calf, like many fashions clumsy and disfiguring -- though some of those skirts did cling appealingly to ladies' butts, including hers. "We don't have any dessert for tonight," I said. "Do you want to pick up something at $ Bernie Brothers?" "Is it too much trouble for you?" |