The opera La Boheme is, according to the Metropolitan Opera, the story of two people, Mimi and Rodolfo, who fall in love. Rodolfo, however, no longer wants to be with Mimi and the two separate, but the turning point is that Mimi secretly suffers from an illness that she hasn't told him about. Rodolfo manages to see her one last time before she dies, and is ultimately consumed by immense guilt for letting her go. The guilt that Rodolfo feels is the link that Gaitskill uses to foreshadow the guilt that Stew will feel later in the story because he only mentions the final act of the play, when Rodolfo feels guilty. The key to this allusion, however, is when Gaitskill uses it; the reference is first used after the paragraph immediately after Gaitskill first tells us that his daughter is a lesbian (230). This is important because up until this point the reader only knows that Kitty is a horrible daughter, but waiting until the third page to inform us that she is a lesbian changes the entire dynamic of the story. Should the reader still feel sorry towards Stew, it is because of Stew's views on homosexuals that caused the rift between them, these questions enter the reader's thoughts and parallel these thoughts with the sudden reference to La Boheme in the final act, when Mimi's illness is revealed and Rodolfo feels guilty, provides another clue that the whole truth has not yet been revealed. Subsequently the reference is taken up again but