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"Where's that wife of yours?" he asked, without looking up from the nut he was tightening. She sure took off in a hurry?"
Ralph and Margaret had had a somewhat strained relationship, almost from the day we moved in. Ralph refused to have a TV in his house, as it would expose him to the dangers of a vast conspiracy of the liberal media elite, consisting of subliminal messages designed to turn him into a homosexual, broadcast even when the TV was off and unplugged from the wall. He did however like to watch the live-action cop shows broadcast on the Fox network, and every evening he strolled across the yard to our house and stayed late, drinking beer in front of the television, sometimes even after Margaret and I had gone to bed. This upset Margaret, but, as I explained to her, it was hard to see what I could do without being unneighborly. At last she had taken matters into her own hands, marching into the living room, snatching the controls and switching to PBS, which was broadcasting a modern dance recital from the New York Ballet. Ralph had left quickly, clutching his temples and humming loudly.
"She just went to her mother's," I said, as Ralph rose stiffly from the wheel. "She'll be back in a few days when I get the air conditioner fixed." I told him about how well she had responded to my delegation of the soap responsibility. I could see he was impressed.
Ralph cleaned his hands on an old rag, and I helped him carry the toilet paper into the house. Then we went to look at his shelter. The hole was bigger now and in it there were some large bags of cement.
"Are you going to have a toilet in the shelter?" I asked.
"I don't know. I thought I could just go in the house."
"Won't that be dangerous? Desperate men could surround your shelter and strike when you go to the toilet. Especially if they know you're carrying toilet paper."
I left Ralph stroking his chin thoughtfully and staring into his hole.
It was a pity that I wasn't able to find any information on the Internet that would have allowed me to fix the air conditioner myself. If I had, the ensuing catastrophe could no doubt have been avoided. As it was, I had to put myself in the hands of Ray, a technician from Acme Electrical Repair, who arrived, as promised three days later. Ray was a small thin man with wisps of greasy gray hair sticking out from under an oily black cap. As we watched him unload his truck, Ralph observed that he didn't look like the kind of man who would survive the coming apocalypse. I think Ralph scared him a little. He can be a bit intimidating, especially when he's carrying his gun At any rate, Ray seemed to know what he was doing, because he brought his bag of tools round to the back of the house and started to work on the air conditioner right away.
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