"Hmm…I love your subtlety. Maybe with you if you care to be a vagabond and don't get in the way of me painting." "What is a vagabond?" "No Four Star hotels — living in little dumps that look like closets with no air conditioning and a shared shower. Kind of like Boy Scouts, but no camping out in the forest and bad ventilation in the rooms. Hotels for back packers that are worthy of demolition." "What's demolition?" "Anyhow, ugly old buildings that if you were to look at them you would puke on sight." "You can count me out of staying in slave rooms 'specially if there are shared bathrooms. That's nasty. I 'd scratch my toes and feet every minute morning, day, and night. I scratch my toes and feet for an hour every time I shower in the locker room after gym classes. I like four star hotels." "You've never been to four star hotels—just seen photographs of Rick staying in one while in Rome." "I want to go. You need to let me go! But there will be no vagabombing." "Aren't you the little male dictator. You sound like Michael. Do you like that guy?" "Better than nothing, I guess." "'Better than nothing, I guess,'" she mocked. "Glad to know that perspective. It makes it easier to know that you won't be upset when I tell you something. Well, how do I say this? There are 6 billion people on the planet each with his own personality, routine, and dreams to acquire this or that. Even lovers can't get along. It's an absolute miracle that we don't go around plucking each other's eyes out. It is good that we are smart enough to know that there would be ramifications for actions like that. Okay, here it is: better than nothing BEFORE, and NOW you have nothing. I've kicked out that rigid giraffe, Michael. At this house he is no more. Michael won't be living here any longer; and this trip to Euro-Asia, if I decide to do it, will be to celebrate not having that guy silently pull my strings any longer." "And Rick?" "And Rick." She sighed. "I guess he won't be here." "You gonna kick me out next?" "Don't be ridiculous. You are my son." "If I was to burn down the house would you keep me then." "If you were to burn down the house your butt would be as hot as the house but you would still be my son and no, I wouldn't throw you out of the house because there wouldn't be a house for either of us since you would have burnt it down." He laughed hysterically. His mother's clever sallies enthralled him. Then he smirked hatefully. "Men don't like you very well." She smiled widely. "It is a reciprocal thing—goes both ways. I don't care what these self-centered little beasts like or don't like. Three cheers for men not liking me and going their merry ways. Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray!" "I think you are strange. You aren't like other moms at all, you know." "What are they like?" "I don't know. When I go over to my friends' parents' houses and stuff they don't say weird shit all the time."