On the third day of Christmas he gave to her the reverberating cacophony of country music, torturing an already queasy stomach that had just experienced car-sickness earlier that afternoon. From the front row of the concert she managed to smile without wincing noticeably from this howling through nostrils via song. The discomfort from her own disingenuousness in maintaining this coerced smile was as reprehensible as the sound; and yet it was nothing to her who had seen a decapitation in early girlhood and spoke of it like an inquisitive little scholar. The bombardment of senseless noise was the stuff migraines were made of; although fortunately for her none ensued. On the fourth day of Christmas they were at this new business "of his." There was a ribbon cutting for this international gourmet supermarket which would soon be replicated in Japan. He showed her through the aisles and pointed out every item on the shelves as if the stuff one crammed down his or her gullet needed such elaboration. On the fifth day it was Christmas and so they decided to travel around the area of Eureka Springs. They drove up and down the niveous and tortuous hills in and out of the town. Tree gazing from the more scenic back roads was his truth beyond the corporeal greed and ambition of financial enterprises (this world) and unempirical religion (the make believe world), and she was pleased that he had it. As his woman, she wanted to nurture a greater purpose in him. As a somewhat solipsistic being she wanted to stake a purpose in being with him beyond more intense pleasures of shared experiences which she knew were erroneously pinned on mutable others instead of the constancy of self. During this car-bound time she held her loose stomach successfully, stifling its rebellion through the exertion of will. She again smiled: It was a complaisant facade of any common soldier. Then he took her to the town's shoddy replica of the statue of Jesus that was meant to duplicate the one that stood over Rio de Janeiro. The diminished Christ didn't have the efficacy of the original since it lacked omnipotent and sturdy immutability over the natural world and beauty. Still, with a hand pressed into his, she couldn't help but feel that specious illusion of God being up there in the sky caring about the ethical decisions of her little life. Of course, it was all conditioning: the warmth and strength of a man's hand being transmitted into her own, the sun upon her skin, and, from them, a glazed, ethereal staring at the statue as if it were radiating blessings upon her.