"It is nearly 10. You aren't supposed to have visitors after 10. Isn't that what those group home counselors of yours tell you?" "He wants me to go to the convenience store and talk to him. He wants to meet me now. I told him I was in another call and that I'd call him at the number on his pay phone booth. I don't know what to say to him." "I think you want to see him, don't you?" "I want and I don't want." "So you want to stop wanting to see him." "Right. What do I do?" "I don't know. He'll only look as he does for a short period of years. If you really want to not want a man picture him in what will be his permanent state-the broken skeleton of another hundred and fifty years. That always works for me." "Oh, thank you, Gabriele." "Sure, Lily --- Rita/Lily. Bye now." She hung up the telephone and turned on the radio to keep herself awake. As she was listening to the classical music of Gabrieli's Canzoni and her own internal voice gabrieleishly, she left the table and began to warm the bottle containing the baby's formula. She fixed herself a large salad. She ate it and a piece of cold leftover pizza while feeding the baby the bottle of milk. As she was doing this she heard the news announcement of Saddam Hussein deliberately flooding the gulf with oil and igniting some of the Kuwaiti oil fields. Her mind was filled with the painful images of a whole ecosystem made into black and tarred corpses. She put her hand over her mouth and ran into the bathroom. She felt like vomiting and attempted to do so but nothing came up. It was nothing but heartburn from the pizza. She sat down and stayed emotionless in her director's chair until the heartburn subsided. And once it had she fell asleep. She dreamt of her Aunt Peggy. In the dream Peggy and Gabriele stepped inside a grocery store. Both were wearing oxygen masks. All the visible items of the store that were on the shelves were locked away behind glass. All of the cashiers, grocery stockmen, and other personnel were dead at their stations. Gabriele was around the age of five. She hid her face in Peggy's dragging skirt.