In later days and weeks she avoided work and clients more than she should have done and took Nathaniel to Niagara Falls, tiny falls in rural Ithaca, and on little rides in amusement parks in different areas of the state. Except for the local falls, which were free, she just said, "Charge please" and handed out a credit card to venders, ticket salesmen, and hotels. She handed them her bit of plastic although she knew this action would make her, even more, into a slave of her own brothel. She wanted to take him to Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains too but common sense prevailed. She had second thoughts about the matter for she knew that she needed to cut back on her spending. She had done these other things with him from a gluttony to celebrate those rare whole days when mother and son were fully together because she knew that they would not be endless. In short it had been a desire to hold onto him. The poet, Lucretius, was in her head. It was he who said, "The generations of living things pass in a short time, and like runners hand on the torch of life." He was now nearly the age of six and the near emergence of the school year agitated her progressively. The vacations could not last forever and had not lasted forever. One reality after another budged into a human's life pushing the former one into a surreal dream. For an hour, each night, she would lock herself in her room, change into a black negligee, write her fears in a journal by the light of a candle, and often find her thoughts discombobulated by the sound of his voice. "Gabriele," he whined one night behind the door. She ignored him in the hope he would go away. She was trying to perfect the doggerel she had written in her journal the previous night. "Don't yell/for you can tell/I am myself/ to no one else/ and like an ocean that says I am,/ an ocean by the name of Pam/and an unmarried feminist named Sam,/ I am so large that you can't see all of me even if you are traveling in a Pan AM./I just slap my waves on the shore./ I behave according to my inner nature and don't ask for more./ I am an ocean and so sometimes with my unfathomable depth it seems as if nothing touches me/ but it does you will see./ Water evaporates from me./ Sailors sail in me./ It is my glee/although I'm sometimes saddened by what is me." She rather liked the alliteration and the variations of the feet. She thought that her word choice was rather masterful although she wondered if the rhyme scheme wasn't a bit excessive. "Gabriele. Will you play checkers with me?" he said through the door "I'm working," she said mildly "There's nobody in there with you." "I'm thinking. Thinking is working." "There's nobody in there with you. You're not working," he said loudly "Working can be thinking. It isn't always--" She stopped herself. She was about ready to say, "It isn't always fucking." "Mouse went to the bathroom in that fern thing and now there is shitty dirt everywhere." "Good God. Go clean it up."