Light1: As much as humans strive to be individuals, they have one universal weakness: the susceptibility to temptation. As much as humans strive to be individuals, they have one universal weakness: the susceptibility to temptation.

BandHClay: You played me. You played me.

Light1: Like the two little eyes on a coconut, the perfect place to crack it open. Eat enough coconuts and you know. Like the two little eyes on a coconut, the perfect place to crack it open. Eat enough coconuts and you know.

BandHClay: You knew just how to do it, didn't you-how best to tempt me. Is that what you're saying? You knew just how to do it, didn't you-how best to tempt me. Is that what you're saying?

Light1: With what would I tempt you? With what would I tempt you?

I stared at the screen. Did he not think I would realize what he was doing? After several minutes, he sent:

Light1: Have you been writing? Have you been writing?

"When haven't I been?" I wanted to type in large, angry caps. I wanted to yell through that chat window that I was like a man possessed, that I was running on an average of four hours of sleep, Chinese takeout, coffee, and whatever happened to be in the office break room, that he had manipulated me, that I was never going to give the story to Helen, and that the sooner h.e.l.l was invented, the better.

BandHClay: As though I could help it, as you very well know. You know you could have written it all down and really submitted it to Katrina-or even here-yourself. As though I could help it, as you very well know. You know you could have written it all down and really submitted it to Katrina-or even here-yourself.

Light1: And languish in submission and publishing h.e.l.l? Please and no thank you. Besides, I told you: My story is ultimately about you. And languish in submission and publishing h.e.l.l? Please and no thank you. Besides, I told you: My story is ultimately about you.

BandHClay: I still don't understand! I still don't understand!

Light1: You will. You will.

I must have broken a sweat at the first appearance of the chat box. It beaded now against my nape, my hairline.

Light1: Distribute the proposal for next week's meeting. Distribute the proposal for next week's meeting.

BandHClay: What makes you think I have a proposal? I need a synopsis for that, and to write a synopsis, I need to know how it ends. What makes you think I have a proposal? I need a synopsis for that, and to write a synopsis, I need to know how it ends.

Light1: Just give her what you have. Helen will love it and ask for the full ma.n.u.script. Just give her what you have. Helen will love it and ask for the full ma.n.u.script.

BandHClay: Don't you get it? There isn't a full ma.n.u.script! Don't you get it? There isn't a full ma.n.u.script!

Light1: There will be. There will be.

19.

The old woman's scalp was just visible through the feathery curls of her hair. Beneath the fake fur collar of her wool coat, her back curved up into a b.u.mp at her nape, reminding me of the woman at Vittorio's as she blew out the candle on her cake. Over the tops of her gray boots, stockings a shade too tan bridged the distance to the hem of her skirt, the skin beneath as veined as pink marble.

I was shopping for my niece, studying an elaborate nativity scene. Aubrey had started Susanna's collection two years before we married, and that had been our gift to her every year since.

The woman's head swiveled on her bent neck as she looked from one Christmas tree to another, each of them crammed with ornaments like a chicken breast stuffed with bread crumbs. Above us, gla.s.s baubles hung from the ceiling in a fantasy rain of giant, multicolored drops.

"How I love the trappings of the season." She plucked an ornament from a nearby tree: a rendition of a snowman worthy of Dr. Seuss.

My happiest childhood memories were of Christmas, when a covert visit from Santa was the pinnacle of the season; before I learned that some children got more gifts than others, that visits from Santa cost money. Before I got my first job and the holiday got reduced to paycheck bonuses, unpleasant gatherings, and a pile of trash left out on the curb on January 2.

"And how I adore your nativity scenes. Porcelain and pristine, so pretty." Separating the syllables of "pretty" as my grandmother used to do, the demon pa.s.sed along the edge of the table, looking down at the nativity scene the price tag of which was quietly displayed on a corner of the stable: $2,499. She plunked the snowman down in the manger on top of baby Jesus.

Watching her, I could have sworn something moved behind the milky iris of her eyes.

"Of course-" she picked through elaborately painted wise men, turning Joseph over as though to see what he had on beneath his robes-"it never really happened that way. The wise men didn't show up at a quarter 'til ten, the animals didn't gather round, and Mary didn't wear blue. She wasn't wearing much of anything, come to think of it."

"Lucian!" I hissed. The thought of a naked Mary offended even my vestigial religious sense.

"What? She was in labor." She dropped Joseph on his back in the middle of the sheep.

I left the nativity table, disgusted, wanting one sacred thing-even if it was an amalgamation of pagan feasts I would likely not take part in this year-to hold onto. I had come here under the guise of shopping but mostly to experience the holiday vicariously, to seek out the commercial trappings of a season that had once meant happiness.

"Your Christmas ditties, the ones about the actual incident and not about dancing snowmen, flying deer, or fat men in red, always make me chuckle."

To any pa.s.serby she might have been any little old lady talking about her grandchildren, her white hair fluffing around her head like the spun fibergla.s.s snow of the village display at the store's main entrance.

"Had it not been for the ident.i.ty of the baby, it would have been an otherwise unremarkable night, and your polite 'Greensleeves' would have been an appropriate soundtrack, after all. But it wasn't an ordinary baby. It wasn't an unremarkable night."

I felt, rather than heard, a suffocating silence close in around me like the endless void of s.p.a.ce. Then I saw the blinding flash of a star careen toward its zenith.

It wasn't silent at all! I was falling and seemed to fall forever. A deafening pulse filled my ears, reverberated through my body as if through the taut skin of a drum. I staggered, blinded by the throbbing in my head that jarred my vision as though with the beat of one giant heart. But then that thrum slowed and lengthened, stretching like a coil pulled straight until I thought I couldn't stand it, feeling that if it stopped I might die, as one dies with the last beat of a heart. And then it was not a sound at all but a wave of energy, surging as an ocean crashing upon a stony sh.o.r.e. I was falling and seemed to fall forever. A deafening pulse filled my ears, reverberated through my body as if through the taut skin of a drum. I staggered, blinded by the throbbing in my head that jarred my vision as though with the beat of one giant heart. But then that thrum slowed and lengthened, stretching like a coil pulled straight until I thought I couldn't stand it, feeling that if it stopped I might die, as one dies with the last beat of a heart. And then it was not a sound at all but a wave of energy, surging as an ocean crashing upon a stony sh.o.r.e.

As it receded, that rocking quickened, rolling over itself, picking up speed until it was a taut vibrato, until it had become the vibrant hum that was energy itself-there! A burst of light! A bright highway of light shot out before me like a ribbon road to eternity. And somewhere that was both above and below and behind me came the heralding din of horns that were not horns, having to them a stringed quality that could not be strings. It crescendoed until I thought my eardrums would burst-or that my heart would. And in that sound I heard the cadence of unrest, the meter of a ticking timepiece, fulminating seconds, the phrasing of an impending end.

It fell away sharply at the single cry of a baby.

I was grasping the edge of the table, my skull feeling too small to hold the sound that had just burst within it. I thought I might vomit.

Nearby, someone had opened a music box. It plinked away a toy version of "Greensleeves" one tin note at a time, but I could still hear the throbbing in my ears.

"You-you did this," I said to the demon as she put a surprisingly strong arm around me.

"No," she said. "You started to black out. Come on. We'll get you a cookie."

IN THE FOOD COURT I sipped soda and picked at a giant cookie. The nausea and light-headedness had left me, leaving me as weak as if I had vomited off and on for an hour.

"There had been rumors. Prophets ranting about saviors." The demon's perennial cup of tea sat steaming in front of her, neglected. "Well, we have prophets, too, and they spout plenty of things, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're all going to happen. Plenty of people have purported to be messiahs. So we didn't worry about it much. Regardless, some of the clay people watched for him, eyes to the world. They hailed him, sight unseen, as a king. They hoped, and the hope was disconcerting to us. Hope changes the hearts of a people, lengthens their vision beyond their petty, everyday lives."

"Lengthens their vision." I considered that.

The old woman sat forward. "The day Adam ate mortal judgment to his body, he also ate scales to his eyes and myopia to his soul and to that of his children as well. Like one who views stars through the lens of astigmatism or through Depression gla.s.s, you can't see clearly. It's why you wonder why bad things happen to so-called good people, why there is violence, disease, the senseless things on the news, what have you. You're shortsighted, focused only on your immediate surroundings, your immediate timeframe. Is it any wonder that the world doesn't make sense to you?"

"Speaking of which," I said. "How are your cataracts?"

"Quite the annoyance," she said with a smirk, as though to say, "Touche."

She propped her elbow on the table then and leaned her chin on a wrinkled but soft-looking hand covered with random liver spots like stars.

"I had a frightening thought the other day. Even though I never ate from that tree, I wonder if I've fallen as surely as your first man. I wonder if I, too, am not quite seeing the world as it is, if my vision plays me false at times without my knowing it. I wonder even now if I'm looking through some watery gla.s.s of an eye, like a mirror hung too long on the wall." She squinted one eye shut and peered past me with the other. "If it, too, has warped in the age since my innocence." The lone eye turned on me.

"Then we're even."

"Oh no." She opened her other eye and sat back, reaching up to pat her feathery hair. "We may carry a great grudge and misplaced alliance, but being around since the beginning has a way of giving one insight. But it's so difficult for you to venture beyond the boundaries of your mortal world and comprehend the scope of truth-truth and eternity. After all, your life transpires in a blink. You're driven by the things you see, that you can touch and smell. By what you feel. Things as temporal as you are.

"But with all this talk of a messiah, a few Jews began to see beyond their everyday lives. And the longer they waited, the more we wondered. After all, if you watch someone look expectantly at the door long enough, you eventually start to wonder if someone is going to walk through it. So, in spite of ourselves, we started to watch, too. And then the news came: A messiah was imminent."

"How did you feel about that?"

She folded her hands on the table and smiled. "Oh, I wanted to see it! After all, it had to be a Herculean job, being a savior; it didn't seem possible for one man. And we began to speculate among ourselves which of his favorites El would raise up. Perhaps he'd be a man of breeding and education. A leader of men. A great general-a soldier, in the very least. A conqueror. But Lucifer . . ." She shook her head so faintly and so repeatedly that it seemed to wag on her neck like a doll's. "He wasn't interested in trying to outguess El. He wanted a preemptive strike. So he raised up a Jewish king, a man ruthless enough to tolerate no threat to his own power. And he, too, watched for this Messiah. This King of the Jews."

"This guy in Bethlehem."

"Worse. A carpenter's kid born of a teenage pregnancy." She covered her eyes with her hand and shook her head. "It was so ridiculous we wondered if the report was wrong. But no, the scout had seen the girl with Gabriel. Gabriel." She half spat the name, and I wondered, for the first time, what kind of history must exist between siblings, comrades, who have experienced eternity and parted to opposite sides in the conflict that ended it.

"El was making a clay child in the womb of some ordinary girl with a boring name. Not a queen, this mother of the new king. Not even a princess or woman of stature. An unremarkable virgin-and not even the best-looking girl I'd ever seen-pledged to marry some carpenter or another in some insignificant town. Suffice it to say, it didn't look promising." I felt now a strange tension in her, in the stooped back and the milky gaze, a tautness at odds with the withering body. "I thought Lucifer would laugh himself silly, would find this insanely funny. It became the brunt of our jokes. Really, El had gone too far with this one. He was making a buffoon of himself."

"He didn't laugh, did he?" Never once had the demon portrayed Lucifer as anything other than brilliant.

"No." She rubbed and then picked at an age spot on her hand. "He stood off, alone, silent. I had never seen him like this before. As he stared with fixed eyes, his hauteur slipped from his shoulders like a robe. And as the reason finally became clear, we realized El's plan was far more extravagant and unimaginable than anything we could have fathomed."

I felt the faintest aftershock of that rush of energy, the echo of that deafening roar.