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suddenness. Well, there’d be only four more days of it, anyway, he thought.
    His feet were getting cold; there was no time to waste. Between the barren hulks of paint cans he walked until he’d reached the body-thick rope that hung down in twisted loops from the top of the refrigerator.
    A stroke of fortune. He found a crumpled pink rag lying next to a towering brown bottle of turpentine. Impulsively he drew part of it around himself, tucked it under his feet, then sank back into the rest of its wrinkled softness. The cloth reeked of paint and turpentine, butthat didn’t matter. The held-in warmth of his body began surrounding him comfortingly.
    Reclining there, he squinted up at the distant refrigerator top. There was still the equivalent of a seventy-five foot climb to make, and without footholds except for those he could manage to find on the rope itself. He would, virtually, have to pull himself all the way up.
    His eyes closed and he lay there for a while, breathing slowly, his body as relaxed as possible. If the hunger pangs had not been so severe, he might have gone to sleep. But hunger was a wavelike pressure at his stomach walls, causing it to rumble emptily. He wondered if it could possibly be as empty as it felt.
    When he discovered himself beginning to dwell on thoughts of food—of gravy-dripping roasts and broiled steaks inundated with brown-edged mushrooms and onions—he knew it was time to get up. With a last wiggle of his warmed toes, he threw off the smooth covering and stood.
    That was when he recognized the cloth.
    It was part of Louise’s slip, an old one that she’d torn up and thrown into the rag box. He picked up a corner of it and fingered its softness, a strange, yearning pain in his chest and stomach that was not hunger.
    “Lou.” He whispered it, staring at the cloth that had once rested against her warm, fragrant flesh.
    Angrily he flung away the cloth edge, his face a hardened mask. He kicked at it.
    Shaken, he turned from the cloth, walked stiffly to the edge of the table, and grabbed hold of the rope. It was too thick to get his hands around; he’d have to use his arms. Luckily, it was hanging in such a way that he could almost crawl up the first section of it.
    He pulled down on it as hard as he could to see if it was secure. It gave a trifle, then tautened. He pulled again. There was no further give. That ended any chance of dragging the cracker box off the refrigerator. The box was resting on top of the rope coils up there, and he’d thought it a vague possibility that he might pull it down.
    “Well,” he said.
    And, taking a deep breath, he started climbing again.
    He modeled his ascent on the method South Sea natives use in climbing coconut trees—knees high, body arched out, feet gripping atthe rope, arms curled around it, fingers clutching. He kept himself moving upward steadily, not looking down.
    He gasped and stiffened against the rope spasmodically as it slipped down a few inches—to him, a few feet. Then it stopped and he hung there trembling, the rope swinging back and forth in little arcs.
    After a few moments the motion stopped and he began climbing again, this time more cautiously.
    Five minutes later he reached the first loop of the hanging rope and eased himself into it. As if it were a swing, he sat there, holding on tightly, leaning back against the refrigerator. The surface of it was cold, but his robe was thick enough to prevent the coldness from penetrating to his skin.
    He looked out across the broad vista of the cellar kingdom in which he lived. Far across—almost a mile away—he saw the cliff edge, the stacked lawn chairs, the croquet set. His gaze shifted. There was the vast cavern of the water pump, there the mammoth water heater; underneath it one edge of his box-top shield was visible.
    His gaze moved and he saw the magazine cover.
    It was lying on a cushion on top of the cross-legged metal table that stood beside the one whose top he’d just left.