Months passed. She could not think anything in particular about the owl or the dogs let alone anything else. They just existed along with her existence and as incommunicably as her reticence. The late April rains were making shallow ponds within her yard. Sodden as the mustard MF put on his eggs, or the streams rolling across her sidewalk, the turgid sediment brought turgid sentiments of desperation in her mind. Then out of nowhere came a chain of events as if a blessing. They offered a respite from the void by the clogging of one's days in myriad tasks. It was clutter devised by her bed partner's making and it beeped according to the schedule in a PDA/ pocket computer that he lent to her. It all started one numb day when Rick's dog was licking her face and she wasn't even cognizant of it doing so and the telephone was ringing but she wasn't aware of it either; a message on her old answering machine informing her about Nathaniel's truancy; the imbroglio discussed in pillow talk; and the smell of MF's breath cajoling her to withdraw the boys from public school and to home teach them until the private school opened. Eager to escape imprisonment in the void, her intransigence on the issue began to break down and there she was arguing with him playfully, agreeing with him silently, kissing him, needing the intoxication of his breath, and that tendentious male assertiveness of that one right perspective. Her tenuous arguments were playful and like any male he felt licentious flames from this clashing of wills, this electric and sexy friction, and this knowledge that by rubbing her in his arms and planting his seed in her he would conquer all resistance.