"I'm not paying anything to you," he said.
"Is that so," she asked calmly. "Then really there is no reason to be up here, is there?"
"All right," he said and went away.
And then, in that evening of the third day of Migraines, her flow of energy was now a desiccated bed of rock and soot. She merely lay on the sofa near the billiard table with the cat sleeping on her lap and her eyes staring at the individual and collective tiles of the ceiling. She too had regressed for like a child she was afraid to make any movement lest the cat be disturbed; and this pathos, like a child's, was from discerning the vulnerability of all things that could only be peered from the scope of one's weakness. He again came to her. He was grinning complacently. She wondered why he was now moving beyond his boundary: and yet he was male, and no different than any Ghengis Khan who conquered new turf and made foreign natures submissive.
She wanted to say, "Hello, honey, could you give me a wet washcloth" but she did not want to approach him from weakness and so she said, "You've trespassed the agreed boundaries."
"Uh uh!" he negated. "You're down here in the family room, and down here is mine, isn't it? Maybe I should get the cops." He laughed. She didn't say anything. "Whose car is in the drive?" he asked.
"It's your graduation present. I bought it months ago. I had them bring it out today when I had a clear purpose."
"I'm not graduating."
"You are and I am," she said. "It is time."
"Time for what?"