He woke with an earache and a sore throat. The radio said cold, and storm winds and snow in the mountains. He didn’t know about the snow but the radio was right about everything else.

He fed the cats. He got the big girl up and then he got the little one up and fed them and loaded them into the car and drove the big one to the train station. He drove the little one home and she said what shall we do and he said what about eat a proper breakfast and she wasn’t interested. She wanted to play a game. She had money burning a hole in her pocket and she wanted to go to the local store and spend it so they dressed warmly and went to the local store.

“I sure like this brand-new goose down anorak,” he said. “It sure is warm.”

He got a newspaper and a lottery ticket and she got some sort of yogurt product with crackly chocolate bits and probably pink glitter. Everything she gets has pink glitter. Then the low-fuel light came on in the car and he drove them to the gas station to fill the tank. He filled the tank with diesel and was topping it off, getting a drop more in and another drop and when he pulled the nozzle out of the tank it was dripping fuel and a gust of wind blew diesel fuel onto his brand-new goose down jacket. Just a few drops on the sleeve.

He said, fuck.

He went into the station to pay.

The lady rang up his purchase. “Get some on you, did you?”

“A bit.”

“Better soak that fast, or you’ll never get it out,” she said.

He said he would. On his way out, he noticed he’d gotten more on himself than he’d originally thought. It was all over the front of his anorak. It was all over his Doc Martens.

Fuck, he thought. He could really go for a cigarette right now, he thought.

Then he thought, maybe not such a good idea.

He drove them home and hand-washed his anorak in warm water with a gentle soap, as per instructions. It was the first time in his life he’d ever paid attention to those instructions.

It still smelled like diesel so he moved the jacket upstairs into the bathtub and washed it again but it still smelled like diesel. At that point he noticed he had diesel on his jeans and on his sweater. He got undressed and found diesel on his t-shirt as well. His socks and underpants were okay, though.

He washed his clothes. He washed his anorak again just for the sheer fun of it. His mother-in-law and father-in-law came over to pick up the little one and asked why he was washing clothes. He told them the truth, taking care to frame the story in such a way that he looked as intelligent as possible.

He blamed it on the wind.

After they left with the little one he didn’t have much time to go shopping so he just went back to the local shop and bought a few things, forgetting things like toothpaste and floss, and hair gel and after shave. Then he had to hurry to the local school to pick up a friend of the big one — yes, that friend — and rush her to Vienna to meet the big one who had bought three tickets to the Albrecht D