"Yes, but there is no 'just.' Friendship is the only thing that has the possibility of being pure--people who enjoy being in each other's company and admire each other without thinking about the advantages and opportunities to be gained in a merger, people who aren't needing the presence of some partner to get the addictive high of this love rush, and all the rest of it." She looked toward the front of the coffee shop where a teenager was squeaking the soles of his tennis shoes against the floor while he waited for his order. "That's a god awful sound," she said. "Do you think God is awful?" he asked. "I said that the squeaking sound that guy is making is god awful- 'God awful' is a colloquial expression. It just means very bad. The noise of those shoes is incessant." She smiled awkwardly at her irascibility, her innate peculiarities that weren't so pleasant and difficult to part from. "I'll turn the tables on you if I can. Do you think God is awful?" "I do, if He exists!" "You go to church." "With my sister, brother-in-law, and their family. We go on occasion. We aren't believers. Catholic Mass is similar to Russian Orthodox services and it makes my sister feel like she is back in St. Petersburg." "Not Christian or atheist, but a devout church going non-believer." She inadvertently mumbled the assessment of the man that she had meant to be an internal summary. She paused for a second and then decided to disclose the rest. "And one with a penchant for investments despite being one of the last vestiges of Russian communism." He didn't grasp her concept since it was muddled in large vocabulary that he did not understand; but he felt that he was being criticized. "Do you not like something about me?" "No, why would you think I'd feel that way? I like the mix. Still, let me be the Devil's advocate and ask what right you, a man, have in judging this potential God." "What?" "You said that you think God is awful if he exists. Tell me, now that you are in this one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all and the rest of this gunk how you, a mortal, indict this god. I mean you are a myopic person as we all are so what right have you or I to judge this bigger entity whom we presume to have created the two of us and everything else. Surely this God envisions a greater picture? Am I making sense--what right has a little man in judging a God who might understand the bigger picture on why things are the way that they are. Also, as a sociable animal, don't you feel the need to follow the herd? In this country the herd eats from the Christianity trough-- the Bible is like ground up bone marrow and the least edible parts of already decayed carcasses but these Americans devour it nonetheless. Don't you want to follow this God unquestioningly and eat the fables that are thrown in your trough?"