"I'm ill, Michael." "Then have Betty take it." "She can't drive." "She should know how to sit in a taxi, don't you think?" "Well, I wouldn't know whether she knows how to sit or not," she retorted spitefully. His voice was a meat cleaver to her thoughts. "Why don't you ask her yourself? Tell me something: I want to know why you don't want me to paint." His face cringed. "Since when have I told you to not paint?" She was silent and taken back since it was true that he had not expressed anything like this. She told herself that she needed to acknowledge this fact to be truthful to herself. He had not made her into a wifely errand girl but it had occurred from following his subliminal promptings. It was her womanly love that had made her succumb to his every wish less enthusiastically than most women but with enthusiasm nonetheless. If she were a has-been artist she (not he) had made it so. "Sorry," she said. He was in the clothes closet, putting on a different jacket. "No problem." He looked on this slug hanging from a pillow with a bad smelling dog on its lap. Her lifelessness disgusted him. Then the next moment he was disgusted by the thought that she was there, dormant, as if waiting on a bed for her clients. Scrambled by a non-Christian desire to rape her and a bored yearning to leave, he spoke what he knew that he should not say. "Listen, Gabriele, there is something on my mind: my father and my aunt have asked when they can meet you. When I introduce you, of course, I want to say, 'This is my fiancZe, Gaw-bre-el spelled like Gabriel but with an E, loving mother to Rick and her own son, who talks mildly and politely with no fowl words, and she is a respectable teacher or she is an artist.' Of course I don't want to tell my parents 'This is my fiancZe. She lies in bed and gets headaches just as she did in her former profession.' 'What profession is that, dear son?' 'Dear mother and father, it is the oldest non-taxable profession which is somewhat illegal.'" "My heavens! -- can I say 'My heavens' without getting my head cut off like a bad Turk or aberrant Afghan woman not wearing her burka?" She took a deep breath and tried to maintain a supercilious dignity. "You certainly have been repressing your hatred of me, mister. I for one am certainly glad that you have had your little catharsis." She feigned a smile and spoke weakly. "Please! Leave me and my imagined sickness. You are hurting my head." "I don't hate you. I love you. I sleep in the same bed with you." "This grinding of sexual organs against each other, Mr. M.F. Quest is not the making of love."