"Too tired to read. Gabriele, why don't you get married?"
Gabriele brought the drinks and sat down in her director's chair.
"I'd need a boyfriend first." She wondered if she had one, a hundred, or zero. She wasn't exactly sure what constituted a relationship with a man. Furthermore, she wasn't even remotely sure what a marriage was either: a couple of signatures on a sheet of paper, matching bath towels that said his and hers, or a declaration of two people as a unit which would then be naively believed and acknowledged by outsiders as having legitimacy.
"You are so clever and smart. Clever and smart guys would die for someone like you."
"What would I want with a man, Lily? I've already got the kid and he would fritter away my time every chance he could if he weren't in school. My god, after being a masseuse all day, it's bad enough to have one more male around here let alone two. I don't want to devote the time Adagio doesn't extract from me to fulfill more male demands. Then there are all those womanly things: to continually ask myself if some guy really loves me and how I can become slimmer and more desirable for him and all that crap. Worst of it all would be jealousy when he sleeps with someone else on a bad hair day. It always happens. I'd be eroded away and then I'd start asking myself who the hell I was"
"But love—not being alone."
"Perfect equation. Love is many selfish equations like that. I don't know. A female has to be a puppet taking back her own gossamer strings or she will follow the movements of love into the abyss. As for being alone, it is the only time to be free to sail in oneself without having to answer to anybody. A relationship is like trying to put on some fashionable pants that are a size too small with him trying to get into them too. No thanks." She spit out her tobacco in the trashcan and then drank the cola.
"Is that stuff good?" asked Lily.
"Snuff, Lilly. Not stuff! Do you want some chewing tobacco?"
"No…that is I don't think so…well, maybe a little." She laughed. Gabriele shared the substance. Lily began to chew for a few seconds and then reached her finger in to extract it from the crevices of her teeth.