Her shadow on a wall in the hallway when passing into the bathroom to vomit seemed fey and she somehow felt subordinate to its alien presence. She felt so needy and wanted the shadow that was Michael, the last vestige of something somewhat real, to merge into her shadow to give it pulp and tangibility that she, who was less than her shadow, entirely lacked. She wanted the virile male shadow to stifle her thoughts, to free her from ever becoming old, and to shoo away loneliness and meaninglessness — an aloneness pesky as that incessant fly landing on that shiny nose of hers and as meaningless as a sedentary stick insect spending its life camouflaged as an inanimate object. She vomited before she got the lid up and the colors looked like the hard, tactile brushstrokes of thick orange palpable paint of a Van Gogh. Both her trembling head and her strained and feral vomiting moans seemed to be to the rhythms of Chopin's Funeral March. She cleaned the bathroom for a few minutes and almost felt salubrious to be wiping with her sponge around the toilet; but, losing energy and feeling the heavier drumbeats of a migraine's gradual crescendo she realized that she was just passing out of one pain and going into something more intense. There were noticeable barricades to her thinking, checkpoints in the junctures of her thoughts, the looting of her ideas, and a forehead on fire like buildings in Sarajevo. Feeling extremely weak, she dried the floor, toilet, and sink with a towel, rinsed out the sponge, and lay on her bed. She felt startled to see Michael enter the bedroom. "Hey," he said. It was his version of 'hello' distorted as it was in an oxymoron of informal indifference. She wondered whether she could expect anything better than this as sick and listless as she was. All sick people were an ignominy to those who were well just as contemplation was an abhorrence to all that spun in action, and as death was an opprobrium to the living. She imagined the wraith of her higher authority saying, "Creatures of motion in their mortal frames unto their termination at death are incapable of true contemplation. Needing to subdue the earth, theirs are half-hearted prayers never to reach their destination …th never -- " "You have the dog in here," he reproached her with a gentle disdain. She now wanted to waive him away like a fly -- he who a few minutes earlier had been needed no less than air to breathe. She didn't say anything. "Huh?" he demanded "Yeah." It was her version of 'mind your own business.' "Come here, Roman." He clapped his hands and made a downward gesture to the dog. "He won't come. Look at him." His eyes are alarmed and his chest is heaving. Still, I think he knows that if I don't hold out as his aegis he can still elude you. He knows that you find it repugnant to pick him up so he's playing dumb." "You're spoiling him. Get him out of here. I'm not coming into the bedroom tonight if it smells like this." "I smell your farting."