“Along those lines, darlin’. All I know is they don’t take over the damn house. Believe it. I’m a thief. I’m in a lot of kitchens in the dead of night and I hear refrigerators of every make and description, and at these times I’m glad they are loud, but I didn’t come over heah to steal and that thing is overbearin’. It’s audacious and it’s jes’ a kitchen appliance. An object. So where does it get off? What right do it have?”

Bobby hopped on the phone and started making calls. Placed “on hold,” he craned his neck around the corner and said, “America cannot make a refrigerator anymore. What are they but a damn box, a compressor an’ some shelves and trays? People graduating from Harvard with degrees in engineering—you would think they could make a better refrigerator! Somebody ought to look into it and develop a whisper-quiet line of kitchen appliances. That fridge you got is loud, darlin’. The German ones are much better an’ the Italian ones does look peachy but for a combination of quiet and style, my personal preference is Japanese. You know, the president of Japafreezor over they in Tokyo will bring every new model home and live with it. He will ask questions of the family. Say to the old lady, ‘How you liking this fridge, baby?’ Say to the kids, ‘How you liking this fridge, honorable son, honorable daughta?’ And these are not crude people, we dealin’ with. They won’t march directly forward with a bald statement lest they give offense. It’s like a damn tea ceremony gettin’ a straight answer since they are very civilized people. That’s the way of doin’ when you got seven million to the square mile. Maybe the son will get bold and say, “Why, it’s not a bad refrigerator, suh, but the ice does tastes like dishwatah, they is mold on the cheddar, the Popsicles is gooey, an’ the damn thing hums too much.’ ‘Just as I thought,’ Mr. Japafreezor will say before he hops into his Lexus su-preme dream and drives back to the factory at eleven o’clock at night, rolls up his sleeves and gets down to business. He is wishin’ someone would invent a pill so he never has to sleep; so he can work twenty-three hours a day. Make it better. Make it better! No ice in the Jell-O, no mold on the cheddar cheese. Make it quiet. Get the texture of the Popsicles right. Make it pretty. None of those avocado paint jobs that looked all right in 1968 but became the worst color in the world a year later. The only American that clever, industrious, and hardworking is yoah dope fiend with a two-thousand-dollar-a-day heroin habit.”