"That's no way for a young lady to act," said Peggy as she reached over to the shelves, and conducting pantomime, bent her hand as if it were grasping an item, and then put it into a non-existent cart. She was trying to save money by purchasing invisible items. Stinginess was what had made them rich all of these years. "What is wrong with you?" condemned the aunt. Gabriele pulled away from her, once again realizing that only in reticent and hardened expressions would her inner sensitivities be fortified from the real world. Looking at her aunt's hardened expressions toward death that abounded everywhere she realized that she should not expect anything new and kind in the state of Kansas. After all, humans were adaptive animals. The world was survival of the fittest, and man surviving within the perils of his environment. Why should society be structured differently? Why should being in Kansas under the auspices of an aunt be different? She glanced down at the corpses at her feet unflinchingly and then over to where Peggy was supposedly picking up vegetables and fruit. She could see decapitated Turkish heads locked away behind glass. They were on the refrigerated shelf where the cantaloupes should have been. The more she looked at the Turkish heads the less impact they made upon her. They were no different than any other form of food.
"They are always locking up the cantaloupe. I don't know why they do that," complained the aunt. They moved toward where the pastry section should have been.
The aunt used gestures as if she were putting a large cake into an invisible cart. "They don't seem to have a chocolate cake with vanilla icing. It is vanilla and vanilla or chocolate and chocolate. Now, you remember that no one is to eat any of this cake until the dinner guests have not only arrived but have finished eating their dinner and any business conversation is completed. Some important people have scheduled a meeting with your uncle so they'll be at your birthday party. To wine and dine them, as our family should, is very little to do when they can help bring more business to your uncle. Don't pout over your friends not being allowed to come. Your uncle wouldn't have much luck with business if children were tearing through the place. No pouting about the fact that we can't find a chocolate cake with vanilla icing either. Cakes like this don't have any taste so I can't see how you'd know the difference if it hadn't been for you shopping with me now."
After they walked around the store using gestures of picking up items, they walked up to the cash register. Gabriele thought, "They're dead!" but she remained taciturn. Peggy put the invisible items on the belt of the counter that remained still. Peggy tilted up her chin toward nothing and smiled affectedly as if she were responding to a nonexistent cashier. "I'm very well. Thank you," said Peggy. Then her face tilted back toward the invisible items and the smile deadened. Gabriele felt the slapping of her back. Peggy put her mouth toward Gabriele's ear. She whispered, "Stand up straight. I don't want you to look like one of them" (meaning the cashier that was supposedly ringing up the purchases although her corpse was obviously rotting on the floor with maggots swarming in and out of it.
"Give me that candy bar," scolded Peggy. Gabriele looked at her right hand. It was curled with the fingers almost touching as if she had a candy bar in her hand. "You thought you would put a smart one on me. Hide it behind the laundry soap when I'm not looking. Nothing gets by me."
On their way home through the empty streets they quickly arrived at their neighborhood when suddenly Peggy honked on a horn and slammed on the brakes-ding-dong. A young Korean boy and his sister were on the road. Ding-dong. The girl had run in front of the car in an attempt to get the ball that her brother had overthrown. It was too late. The car slammed against her body. Peggy Peggy Ding-dong Peggy Ding-dong.
Gabriele woke to the sound of the doorbell. At first her mind tried to grasp a concrete image that could go with the sound. Then she knew it, and the cause of it. "Shit!" she said out loud. Now did she once again have to prostitute herself in the physical domain with some stranger at the door? She didn't want to work. People worked for money and they worked to escape the void. They abhorred the void that they would fall into if engaged in inaction. There were times that doing nothing did nothing for her either. There were days when she was a little lost in her lack of valid employment. But more times than not being completely paralyzed on what she needed to do or would like to do with her day was advantageous. Doing nothing but sitting in her living room staring up at the walls and letting the void overtake her made her all the wiser. She seemed to be unlike the rest of humanity who had to desperately see someone or go somewhere to escape slipping into themselves.
She did not want to see her clients any more than she wanted to return to work as a staff psychologist in a high security prison on the outskirts of Ithaca-a good job that she had taken upon graduating from Rice University and had brought her here. Eight months doing that had been enough. Eight weeks in a following job as an assistant director of a girl's home babysitting "women creatures" who, gaining their freedom at the age of 18 perpetuate the "classless undergrowth of society" had been worse than the prisoners. Girls and prisoners were often like comparing rotten apples and rotten oranges. There were times when she thought that the prisoners had been worse. Their sexual man-on-the-make innuendos had often frustrated parole assessments. In contrast, eight weekends with her clients (give or take a weekend) was a lesser prostitution. By the fifth ringing of the doorbell she decided to answer it so that it would stop ringing.
Two of them stood there: men. She knew she had an appointment with one client, but here were two of them. She gave a seductive smile and then informed them that she would only allow one of them at a time into her domain. The other would have to wait in the vehicle until his buddy came out. As one of them came in she thought to herself that she was really performing an important social function. Being a prison psychologist or a girl's group home supervisor had been paperwork jobs. The positions had not helped anyone. Here, at a discount since she was not beautiful, she relieved men of aggressive tendencies and stress. They were less likely to beat up on their wives or open fire in a McDonald's Restaurant as a consequence. She even argued to herself that by her service she was a bit like the Buddha who claimed that one should take the middle of the road. To her, that was the Buddha's tacit endorsement that a little bit of prostitution was needed to sustain oneself physically although it should never be taken to excesses.