"That's probably the best life gets as an adult: secondhand experiences, reliving childhood." He ordered three corndogs and soft drinks from the vender and gave each their share. "Here!" She took the corndog and began to eat with them. She imagined the corndog as a vegetable. She imagined it as an important experience. "Good?" "Yes." "More ketchup?" "No." "Rick?" "Yes." And she watched the bloody substance squeezed onto the boy's phallic symbol. "See, you enjoyed it as a girl until you thought that your pet pig would be next. Associationism." "David Hume?" she chuckled. "John Locke/David Hume--I'm not sure which. " Rick had to go to the toilet and so Gabriele was left in awkwardness at being with Michael all alone. He grabbed her hand and led her to a bench. He kissed her and she liked it even though the nearness of him felt as if she were being stung by Houston fire ants. It was a sweet inimical sting. It was a contract of mouths and joint breath, of two becoming one but not of equal parts--more of a stronger company forcing a large competitor in a merger. And the days of the week proceeded on--that day closing most eventfully on a surrey, a four seated bicycle, peddling and encircling Roman sculpture at the Borghese Garden, and then watching a mock chariot match in a field known as the Circus Maximus. The ensuing days were of seeing the bones of 400 monks at the Cappuchin Cemetery, going to the ancient Pantheon temple of the gods with its open portal to the sky, sitting in outdoor restaurants near fountains still spurting from ancient aqueducts, St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, and the catacombs. Their final whole day was filled with Etruscan art, a return to the Coliseum, another meandering around the ancient statues at the Borghese Garden, and back to Laneur Parco di Luna amusement park for a ferris wheel ride and trampolines. For all her brooding on life she realized that such contemplation was just hiding from it. She thought that motion and community were natural and having opposed them all along had been foolish. Like diving into a pile of leaves, these simple pleasures were transcendence into the entity. When she was again alone at the airport showing her boarding pass she walked to the plane like a propped up cadaver. Chapter Twenty-nine Lightning flashed into Hispanic Betty's makeshift bedroom and she woke up to the artificiality of her life ensconced in a room that was not her own with things in it that she was a little uncomfortable to touch even with a dust rag. She was here and off the streets but the glitter of being such seemed dimmer as she woke up in the flashes of lightning.