"So the darker reefer is richer?," she asked. "You got it, Mama." "I don't know the difference really. Maybe you just better mix it all together and we'll hope for the best." "Sounds sensible. All right, I can do but with a bunch of the cheap stuff since you are getting a discount." "I want to know what is in this drink." "That's abita' mountain dew with some lemon juice, abita' water, tad bit of urine, and some truth serum. You feel that you want to tell the truth?" She was picked up and lifted off by a wind and it took him several minutes to call her back. "Gabriele? Gabriele? Gabriele?" "Who?" "You. I was wantin' to know if you are wantin' to be truthful and tell me your dark secrets. "Okay," she said. "Okay, start talking." "Okay, she said. "He slapped her cheeks with his fingertips. "Do you want to tell me all your secrets and be truthful with me?" His hands were now in her shirt unbuttoning the remaining buttons. "I am so inclined but have found the necessity of a facade." "Keep your dictionary closed, sister, and talk straight talk." "I like being honest even when it gets me into trouble unless I think it might be too disadvantageous. When I was a little girl I witnessed a beheading of a Turk in Istanbul." "Turk?" "In Turkey—the country…not the bird. Everyone was clapping and my parents were glad that justice had happened. I knew that justice was savagery and that crying about it wouldn't accomplish anything but just get people to loathe me. Loathe meaning hate and not love. I decided that if I asked questions and looked like I wasn't bothered by it all I would be left alone with my sensitivities intact. I did my consummate performance to look like an adult and appear as if I did not need them." "What would they have done to you if you cried?" "As I've said, they would have looked on it as weakness and they would have despised it. I didn't want to be hated or loved. I wanted to be a graduate from childhood that could only come from an adult action of pompous stoicism. You don't understand?" "Why did you become a whore with such fancy- dancy words?" "I wanted to know fancy-dancy words but I didn't want to get a job using fancy-dancy words. I didn't want to be one of those professional bureaucratic slaves. I decided that everything was a form of prostitution and that bodily prostitution was quicker than mental prostitution and with bodily prostitution I would never have to relinquish my thoughts. Does that make sense?" "Weird, Sister, but go on." " I didn't want to be there behind a desk working for an agency that represented societal interests. If all of society's institutions were a refined form of atavistic savagery I didn't want to be there contributing to any bit of it: writing documentation, red tape, bureaucracy of this and that sucking up my ideas." "You are one heavy, twisted sister." "You've got that right Candyman." The two began to kiss to et cetera.