"I'd need a boyfriend first." She wondered if she had one, a hundred, or zero. She wasn't exactly sure what constituted a relationship with a man. Furthermore, she wasn't even remotely sure what a marriage was either: a couple of signatures on a sheet of paper, matching bath towels that said his and hers, or a declaration of two people as a unit which would then be naively believed and acknowledged by outsiders as having legitimacy. "You are so clever and smart. Clever and smart guys would die for someone like you." "What would I want with a man, Lily? I've already got the kid and he would fritter away my time every chance he could if he weren't in school. My god, after being a masseuse all day, it's bad enough to have one more male around here let alone two. I don't want to devote the time Adagio doesn't extract from me to fulfill more male demands. Then there are all those womanly things: to continually ask myself if some guy really loves me and how I can become slimmer and more desirable for him and all that crap. Worst of it all would be jealousy when he sleeps with someone else on a bad hair day. It always happens. I'd be eroded away and then I'd start asking myself who the hell I was" "But love--not being alone." "Perfect equation. Love is many selfish equations like that. I don't know. A female has to be a puppet taking back her own gossamer strings or she will follow the movements of love into the abyss. As for being alone, it is the only time to be free to sail in oneself without having to answer to anybody. A relationship is like trying to put on some fashionable pants that are a size too small with him trying to get into them too. No thanks." She spit out her tobacco in the trashcan and then drank the cola. "Is that stuff good?" asked Lily. "Snuff, Lilly. Not stuff! Do you want some chewing tobacco?" "No...that is I don't think so...well, maybe a little." She laughed. Gabriele shared the substance. Lily began to chew for a few seconds and then reached her finger in to extract it from the crevices of her teeth. "Do you have an empty beer can?" she panicked. She began to gag. Gabriele moved the trashcan near Lily and bent her face. She spit it out but didn't vomit. "Maybe you should wash out your mouth and then drink your coke." Rita/Lily ran to the bathroom, turned on the tap water, and then began gargling with water and then with mouthwash. "That minty stuff sure has a good taste, Rita," yelled Gabriele toward the bathroom. "Make sure you don't swallow the damned stuff or we'll be doing this again." Lily gargled, spat, repeated the process, and then yelled back toward Gabriele,"Do you miss Nathaniel, your Adagio?" "Lily, you ask the same old questions again and again forcing me to come up with new answers to everything from why I don't have a boyfriend to if I take a crap when I get up in the mornings."