She wondered if the homosexuals at the bar last night were free. She had enjoyed the men in colorful briefs-some who had danced on wooden platforms covering two juxtaposed pool tables to be more into the crowd. When someone of her own sex had introduced herself with lust in her eyes, Gabriele had wanted to sprint a quick exit through the wall but, instead of cowardice, gave her a quick kiss on one of her cheeks and declared, in her giggling, that this would be as far as she would go in that type of liaison. At the same time she wondered a little whether that woman felt more free by subconsciously choosing the type of sex she wanted to copulate and then following the dictates of her own hormones instead of having hormones dictated by social mores. She was almost at her apartment when she consciously noticed Betty's cigarette butts in her car ashtray. She chastised such vile and unaesthetic habits, but really it was her own maudlin oozing that she despised. Needing some time alone to sink into herself, she decided to procrastinate packing and her last meeting with Betty by going to Allen Parkway. She parked her car in a lot nearby and told herself it was time for her one-person celebration and to ensure that the past would not be left in abeyance suffocating her in sentimental mush. She wanted people of the fading present to depart from her like releasing a deep breath. She sat in an obscure area of the Buffalo Bayou away from the bike trail and a herd of morning bicyclists approaching the fountain. She sat in the grass and allowed her body to be prey to fire ants, which, like a goddess, she would then smash with her fingertips or gently remove to blades of grass. She meditated on the theme of chance that was so intricate in the fabric of all things. She picked clover and dismembered their leaves, gladdened that the little girl flattened out as she had been by the tank, still floated like a ghost in the ethereal parts of her imagination. She told herself that she would be an empty shell of an adult to be bereft of her.