"Hey kid, stop that," said a clerk "It's not a merry-go-round." But in fact he had been imagining it as such and his mother strapped there by the clasp of Lilliputian schoolboys the way Shirley and her friends had fettered him on merry-go-rounds and besieged him with kisses. Only in this daydream there were classmate enemies from a couple years earlier accosting Gabriele directly with their ridicule. Simultaneously they reviled, scoffed, and guffawed the culprit instead of her son with, "Dirty lady bringing men to your trailer drinking their pee like a toilet. Our fathers know of you personally. In the Laundromats our mothers talk of rationing water because one of your spells has caused the lack of rain. " "Kid!" "I'm buying," said the boy with his mother's contumely. He pulled out a twenty-dollar bill waving its voluble greenness as the true emblem that conveyed everything about his country and his world. Restricted from spinning the rack, he sought less mindless thrills. He tried on various pairs of sunglasses before slipping one pair in his underwear and then walking up to the cash register to pay for the other pair. It was a test of nonchalance and despite palpitation and sweaty palms he passed it successfully. He waited at the movie theater for the form behind the emailed image to come to him. "Nathaniel?" asked the man. "Yeah," said the boy. "Hi, I'm Tom." The boy began to reach out his hand toward this urbane form of manhood he wistfully hoped would befriend him. A handshake was a guise of strangers with amicable intentions; but he had to withdraw his hand awkwardly when the man did not reciprocate. "Hope you haven't been waiting long--I went to get some snacks for us. Every boy likes chocolate." He smiled but it waned insincerely as he guardedly looked around the empty parking lot. "So you ran away from school?" He bantered and then shoved a cigarette in his mouth. It jiggled in his chuckle. " Sort of. So, you ran away from work?" "Sort of." Tom grinned sheepishly. "We've still got a few minutes until the movie. I'd offer you a smoke but I probably shouldn't out here." "I had one a few minutes ago." "Oh, okay-- take off the sunglasses. Can't use them in there." Nathaniel pulled them up on his head. "You look just like your photo minus the glasses. What about me?" "Older in person," said the boy. "Oh," said the man. His tone, as his word choice, was vapid as life, to him, was vapid. The thought of age slowly gnawing on him while he engaged in life unawares made him want to evade conversation and entomb himself with youth in the movement on a screen in a dark room. "Let's go in if we can. I've got the tickets already. You sure you can get into something R-rated this way?" "I've done it before. Here: I bought you a gift." He took them from his underwear. "Ah...Children's sunglasses with a ninety nine cent price tag on them. You shouldn't have." He sniffed them. "Although I do love the smell."