She laughed, put the back of her hand thoughtfully under her chin, and compressed her lips into a smile. She felt rejuvenated in this exchange of ideas that were as tangible, palpable, and succulent as sucking on lemon drops. They left and walked into a nearby park where the fountains splashed water into the air making a rainbow. "Are you still planning to go back to St. Petersburg?" she asked. "Yes, just for a couple months." "Are you still planning to go back next week?" "Actually, I changed the date to tomorrow." "So soon? Well, I'm sure you will be glad to see your family." Yes, but I'll miss our times together. I'll hurry back as quickly as I can." When she finally left the coffee shop she headed toward the nearest Wal-Mart, the shopping oasis for the underdeveloped bourgeois. Within this desert oasis she bought some sheets and, in an aisle for Halloween products, a witch's hat and some green gunk from which to soil her face. In the car she applied the paint and cut holes in one of the sheets. When she drove up to the house, she honked on the horn repeatedly until the boy finally came out of the house begrudgingly. She rolled down the window. "Did you lock the door?" she asked. "Yeah," he said, and got in the car lethargically. "All of them?" "All of them. They're locked," he said petulantly. "Do I need to check?" "No, quit bothering me!" he said insolently. "Poor Mr. Petulant--always doubted and examined in these unjust inquisitions. Okay, I won't doubt you this time; but I must tell you this: in the event that we are robbed I will hand you over to the man with the unmemorable name with an unburdened conscience. He has connections with slave labor camps in Siberia from the way I understand things." "I know that you don't understand anything. You are lying. There aren't any of these connections." "Lying, never! Fibbing, maybe or maybe not. How do you, Mr. Petulant, know what I know?" "How do you know that I don't know what you know?" he countered. It was an old argument that she had excavated from one of the many miscellaneous parables in the thickets of pages that comprised a Chinese literature anthology; however, she had never radiated the enlightenment of her findings onto him. Such was the brilliance of an original thought; and so her hope for him was restored. Strangely, this argument seemed like a means to a new dimension albeit a golden key to the nihilistic abyss; and she was a radiating mommy for the fact that he had coughed up such an instrument out of the static charge of one thought banging against another one--the being incessantly comparing, contrasting, and categorizing various thoughts silently inside itself. "To think that Benjamin Franklin brought down lightning with a key and Nathaniel has made a key out of lightening!" she thought facetiously. She smiled and reprimanded him banteringly. "Well, Adagio, you didn't tell me what you wanted to be or I would have bought a costume."