urinate as she was applying makeup in front of a mirror) had much legitimacy. Love was a commitment toward compromise and sacrifice. So, while the thick cloud of his flatulent odor was beginning to dissipate and a steak sauce commercial was interrupting the Tonight Show, she became drowsy. At one moment she heard him say, "That steak sure looks good on the TV, doesn't it Honey?" and then in the next she fell off a precipice into a vacuum of wind that made up dreams. Like women who when experiencing prenuptial jitters have nightmares of their wedding ceremonies being interrupted by dark revelations, she dreamed something similar to this belatedly. She dreamed that she and Michael were at a diner in the John F Kennedy International Airport. They were getting married there before departing to Tokyo. Suddenly the airport security guards, all of whom were Japanese, interrupted the ceremony, whispered something to the potential groom, and gave Polaroid photographs to the Catholic priest. She wasn't sure what they said but she did hear the words "airport bathroom graffiti" which made her grimace not for the ignorance of those who were part of this consensus (she didn't "give a flying fuck" about what they thought in the slightest) but that these bereft hollow heads epitomized what the droves of men would think. It didn't depress or upset her: it was just like being a sole life form on Mars. It was uncomfortable as hell but she was quite used to it. MF, after being shown the photographs, asked the priest if he should go through with a marriage to a woman who had drawn such unregenerate images on the doors of the women's toilet but the priest ignored his maudlin whining as if annoyed by any distraction that would delay his inquisition. Gabriele could sense this priest's yearning to put his fangs into her for she knew that the taste of blood was sweet and that the blood of a unique being would be envisaged by such savages as the sweetest yet. "Tell me, did you do this?" he asked the dark veiled woman but he did not give her time to respond. "Who is this black man that makes up the face and body of a savage God in this grotesque and blasphemous mural?" demanded the priest. Gabriele lifted the veil on her burka. "There isn't anything depraved or unregenerate in it," she averred. "I don't know who he is. It is just my imagination." Her lie was phlegmatic. She would have willingly given the truth but she wouldn't be goaded into it or humble herself to such pernicious and puritanical Taleban. She wouldn't even humble herself to God if she were to see him. She and God would just have to introduce themselves as two strangers, neither one better or worse than the other. "The larger image is whatever one wishes the larger image to be, I suppose." "What I want it to be?" mocked the priest acrimoniously. So, I suppose, if I want it to be the Virgin, Mary -- " "Then it is Mary."