For questions 66 – 70, choose the answer (A, B, C, or D) which you think fits best according to the text.
Although party invitations no longer frightened me, I still found myself making careful preparations for this particular party. I got a haircut, laid out my best suit, selected a special, tie, and cuff links. I had recently gone on a diet, but because I didn’t want to look too thin. I discontinued it. What should I bring my hosts? Flowers? What kind of wine? Sherry? Or possibly even champagne? Meeting new people was still a major undertaking.
It was scheduled for this Saturday and I decided to take a cab to the suburb where it was being held. It was early autumn and the weather had been mild, but that morning it turned cold and rainy, and as I listened to the steam hissing in my radiator, it already felt like midwinter. Trees, visible from my window, covered will foliage only yesterday, had become bare overnight. Churning clouds augured a further change in the weather. From my new paper, I learned that a hurricane that had already struck another state was on its way to New York, though it might veer out to sea. The storm left destruction in its wake. In one village an entire cottage was sheared from its foundation and blown into the ocean together with its occupants.
As I lay in bed the morning of the party, I envisioned a change also taking place in me. A loose tooth that hadn’t bothered me suddenly sent a stabbing pain through my jaw. Ordinarily, I’m not too headaches, but I awoke with a dull ache on the left side of my head. Several disturbing dreams had given me a restless night, though 1 could only remember them vaguely. In one dream I recalled shouting at someone and being involved in a light. There was also something about an animal, but what it was I couldn’t recollect. What did stay with me afterward was the despairing knowledge that one leads a double – each part hermetically scaled off from the other.
Why was the narrator upset?
