"No se nada acerca de esta asunta. I don't know nothing about it. I just get it. Don't look at it." Gabriele didn't care what the woman purportedly hadn't done. It seemed to her that anyone who did a family's laundry had to develop some curiosity about them and she thought it would be rather unnatural to not scan the addresses on envelopes. It irritated her that the woman was so circumspect if not outright leery; and yet she was an illegal worker who needed a job. "That's professional of you," she said indifferently. "That's the type of woman I am." "Swell," said Gabriele indifferently as she perused each envelope. She mumbled aloud. "Ah, not unexpected. A Valentine's card from Rita Lily and one for Adagio from Peggy. Not unexpected there either." She sighed. "Esta desmasiado frio estar fuera. Necesito volver a mi trabajo. Tengo cosas hacer." "De acuerdo," said Gabriele and she watched the busy bee fly away from her cold Antarctic garden. Given her new awareness that claiming others in a mutable world was an innate human instinct whereas breathing people in and out of one's life was just a defensive anchor keeping one from being carried away by an instinctive reality to cling to someone, she felt regret that she hadn't taken an interest in her son's construction of a Valentine's day box. She told herself that that this year might be his last year of actually believing that the world was full of beautiful cards and sentiment exchanged with one's peers. She went inside to write letters of contrived gratitude to Rita/Lily and Peggy the way her son and his classmates made Valentine's Day cards for a world of virtual strangers. It wasn't totally contrived. She needed others. She loved others. Book Three: Alone "No good can come from chilling tears. This is the fate the gods have spun for poor mortal men, that we should live in misery, but they themselves have no sorrows. There are two jars standing on Zeus' floor which hold the gifts he gives us: one holds evils, the other blessings. When Zeus who delights in thunder mixes his gifts to a man, he meets now with evil, and now with good. But when Zeus gives from the jar of misery only, he brings a man to degradation, and vile starvation drives him over the holy earth" --Iliad Chapter Twenty-six