When they finished eating, she sent him out to play in the streets while she fornicated with a couple newly arrived clients. Following such extroverted activities that required all her acting abilities and social skills to be on target, she sank back into her hallowed, private domain. She drew a few freelance sketches for a local card company, cleaned the trailer hurriedly, and then began preparing lunch. It would be little bits of beef in gravy to be put on toast, which she so aptly and succinctly labeled as "shit on a shingle;" but for now it was butter in a skillet spewing anew in streams of orangish yellow sizzlings and sputterings like early components of galaxies swirling out into open space. "Over here, Miss Gabriele. Howdy and top of the morning to you!" She looked toward this strange Southern and Irish sound and saw her son walking back and forth on stilts before the kitchen window. She looked at this freakishly elongated creature of ostentatious movements doing its dance. In ways she was envious of his sense of celebration in the moments, hours, and days of being but she couldn't help asking herself if this gyrating form had actually come from her although indeed it had. "Howdy, over there," she said with the amicable indifference of cordiality. "When's that shit on a shingle stuff gonna be done?" "Don't know." She poured in her milk and flour. "What do you want with it?" "Lasagna." "Lasagna--always lasagna if not goulash. Well, we tried that last night." She thought of that mildly humiliating moment when his face had wrinkled and cringed. The face had crinkled like an old newspaper in the muscles of a palm. She, his heroine of all these years, had been regarded with disapproval. Sure, the pasta had been overcooked and the starch had dripped from it but she couldn't see that this was any more repugnant than a juicy hamburger. His repugnance had surprised her and his exaggerated expressions had not seemed a commensurate reaction. Yesterday the behavior struck her with its impudence. Even more, she was struck that just by living together as they did, she could feel a twinge of pain so easily and so preposterously. She was worried then that she was becoming as ridiculous a human being as everyone else. It was just a twinge of pain lasting a moment but it was too much. The whole foray into obeying a cookbook was an unsuccessful attempt at imitating school cuisine which she dumped in the trash in a choleric gesture lasting no longer than his facial grimace. She took the plate from him, removed her own as well, and scraped the contents away in five seconds. It had been a little thing but it was hard for her to forget it now that she was cooking another meal for him. "Rick's gonna come."