Sydney had been observing this scene from the bedroom, where she was crouched in the dark-like a burglar, out in the night, peering in someone else's warmly lit windows, waiting in the bushes for the chance to sneak in. To rob them. She may have felt afraid, touched by what she'd just witnessed and knowing that everything could change after something like this. She might have felt guilty, recognizing that it was she who had everything to gain and Hannah who had everything to lose. For whatever reason, she stood up and hurried for the door.

"I'm sorry," she said, rushing past them and out of the apartment. "Bye."

Hannah couldn't believe her eyes. Neither could Tom.

"I'll be right back," Hannah said, pressing her palm to his chest.

"Sydney, wait!" she said. But Sydney didn't stop. She was already halfway down the hall and within reach of the exit. "What's wrong? Hold on for a second, wait!"

When Sydney stopped walking, Hannah realized how desperately she wanted her to come back. And this was how she knew she had succeeded in finding the perfect gift. She had stepped into the kind of gesture that, like all inspired unselfish acts, had left her feeling more like she was receiving something than like she was giving something away.

Sydney stopped walking and turned around. Her eyes reflected the sad yellow light of the hallway.

"What's the matter?" Hannah said. She tilted her head. "C'mon. Come here."

"I don't know," Sydney said. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Hannah was walking toward her. She tried again. "It's just-he really loves you, you know?"

Before she could get to the rest, Hannah had taken her hand and was leading her back to the apartment. "March!" she said, stomping her feet. Tipsy and determined, she pulled Sydney-reluctant still, but willing to be led.

When they reached the doorway, Hannah stopped abruptly and Sydney b.u.mped up against her back. With Sydney right behind her, she put her key in the lock, but before she opened it, she turned. She turned around, and she kissed Sydney, kissed her soft, warm lips.

It was a delicate, grateful, exciting kiss, and when she pulled away, Sydney's eyes were still closed.

"I knew you'd be lovely," Hannah said, and opened the door.

PROOF OF LOVE.

Kelly loved Jesus, and she also loved Nash. Well, she didn't love Nash exactly, but she found him to be very intriguing. She felt she could love him. Nash worked at Whole Foods and had blue eyes that were so pale and bright they almost looked fake. She'd spotted him there five months ago, and they chatted while she was helping him bag the food. He held up her salsa.

"Watch yourself, this one's industrial strength."

"I keep cayenne pepper in my glove compartment," she said. "You can't get too spicy for me."

"In your glove compartment."

"For spice emergencies," she said.

The following week she caught herself reapplying her lipstick before she went in and waiting until his line was open to approach the cash registers.

"These look good," he said, scanning a box of coconut ice creams frozen in the half sh.e.l.l.

"They're from France," Kelly said. "They do things like that in France."

He smiled. "Indeed they do."

"I don't even like ice cream," she said. "I just liked the looks of them."

"You don't like ice cream? What is that, some kind of birth defect or something?"

"We've all got our flaws," she said.

A week and a half later she bought two bottles of wine. In line, she admitted that the salesmen at her local wineshop intimidated her. "It's not just the jargon; it's the way they seem so enlightened or something. Like they've shed all attachment to material things."

"All except the grape," he said.

"Well, if you're going to grant exceptions, the grape is a great place to start." She pretended to read his name off his shirt, but really she'd noted it weeks ago. "And you, Nash? Have you given up all earthly attachments?"

"Uh, my answer to that would have to be an unqualified no."

"Care to help me out with one of these?"

They got drunk on her back porch. It was the last balmy night of summer. Her dog loved him, sat in his lap, wouldn't leave him alone. She was a graphic artist for a magazine, and her dog's name was Pixel. She told him both these things, which were true. She also told him that she didn't like her job very much, which wasn't true.

"If I ever get fired, I'm coming to work at Whole Foods. If you people will have me, that is."

"I don't know-they're very selective. They can tell if you're only in it for the discount."

"Well, I wouldn't turn down the discount," she said. She took a sip of her wine. "You know, in Atlanta, they call Whole Foods 'Whole Paycheck.' " The previous weekend she'd left Chicago for Atlanta to visit her sister. Kelly was older than Mich.e.l.le, but because Mich.e.l.le had married and was procreating close to their parents' home in Buckhead, where they'd grown up, she was openly favored. Kelly was the only one in her family of science types who practiced the faith, a faith she'd learned on the sly from her Catholic grandmother, and for this and other reasons she was considered the odd duck in the family. The black sheep. The wet chicken.

She noticed their gla.s.ses were empty and went to fetch another bottle. "How'd you end up working there?" she said.

"Lack of ambition," Nash said flatly. "The usual things don't inspire me."

"And which things might those be?"

"You know-money. Fame. Power." There was no hint of reprimand in his voice even though the answer now seemed obvious.

Kelly refilled their gla.s.ses, giving the bottle a little half-twist at the end. "So what does inspire you?" she said. She knew what she wanted him to say: Love. Truth. Beauty. But Nash didn't answer. "You don't fool me," she said, sitting back down. "I bet you secretly want to rule the world. I'm sure you have your plans." But Nash just looked at her with his sea blue eyes and said nothing.

"What's with all the G.o.d stuff?" he asked, indicating her wall with a lift of his chin. There was a profile of Jesus to the left of her fireplace, and next to the window hung some giant ivory rosary beads she'd picked up in Mexico. On various shelves and tables there were figurines, prayer cards, scapulars. She hadn't intended her decor to have a religious theme; it had just ended up that way.

"What can I say? I love the guy."

"What guy?"

"Jesus."

"Rrright," said Nash. "Jesus."

"I'm very religious," Kelly said. "But not in the usual way." It was true. Kelly was not formal with G.o.d. "Baby," she called him, as in, "Jesus, baby, you're the one for me." She deeply suspected G.o.d was a lot funnier and more hip than people gave him credit for. Everyone was always so lugubrious: the capital letters, the hair shirts. She tried to put herself in G.o.d's shoes. What would she want? Tenderness, intimacy. An unparalleled love. Someone whose loyalty was independent of circ.u.mstance. Someone who tried to be original, in addition to reciting prayers. So that's what she tried to give. Doing the dishes, ambling through the supermarket, she tossed little nuggets his way: "I love you, G. What's not to love?" She tried to keep it fresh and simple.

Her friend Gwen told her she was insane. Kelly thought this was harsh. "You could say eccentric and get your point across. You could say intense." But to be honest, she'd learned not to expect others to understand. At times, people in the pew beside her would begin to nod when the priest said something counterintuitive, such as that gays had no place in the kingdom of heaven, or that birth control was a sin. She heard what the priest was saying, but something inside her didn't believe it. She couldn't imagine those words on Jesus' lips. "I'm sorry," she would whisper. "We don't really know what we're doing here-we need help. We need you." She stole jokes from movies like Jerry Maguire. "Help us to help you. Help us to help you help us."

The air was thick with silence; Nash was waiting for her to speak. "I think the church gets a lot of things wrong," she said. "It's man who makes a fuss over what people do with their genitals. G.o.d cares more what people do with their hearts."

"The church gets more wrong than it gets right, if you ask me," Nash said. "The Crusades. The Spanish Inquisition."

"Yeah, well, Jesus is wildly misunderstood and always has been. What can I say?" She paused. "You should give him a chance."

Nash laughed. "First of all, you don't know what I have or haven't given him. Maybe I have given him a chance."

"You should give him a second chance."

Nash took a long drink of his wine. "I didn't know you were a Jesus freak," he said. "You don't seem all that conservative."

"I thought it was hilarious when the church said it was choosing a conservative pope, to remain true to its roots. Jesus was a radical."

"You are right about that, I suppose."

She felt encouraged by this concession, minor though it was. "C'mon," she said. "Give the guy another chance."

"You think you have it all figured out, don't you?" he said.

"No," Kelly said. She could feel the wine's heat in her cheeks. "Not really." She set down her gla.s.s and leaned closer to him. "But I secretly want to save the world," she said.

He slipped a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "It's not so secret," he said.

At the end of the night, he didn't kiss her-not even on the cheek. Nor did he kiss her when he rode his bike over two weeks later, although he did bring a jar of blackberry preserves, and tell her stories about how he'd been a philosophy major at Northwestern but had spent most of his time doing laps in the pool. He said it helped unclog his head. "The problem with philosophers is that most of them can't write clearly," he said. "I'd get to the end of a sentence that went on for a paragraph and realize I didn't know what the verb was."

"I know what you mean," Kelly said. She toasted sesame-seed bagels for the jam and asked him to pick out some music. It was late afternoon, but ample sunlight still slanted through the windows of her kitchen. She could hear the neighborhood kids playing in the street. On weekdays, Chicago felt like a city, but on Sundays, it always felt like a small town.

"Don't you have any jazz?" he asked, thumbing through her CDs.

"I wish I liked jazz, because I think it's sort of cool to like, but actually I hate it. All that meandering around ... It's depressing."

Nash was shaking his head. "There's no real hope for you. You know that, right?"

"I know," she said, spreading jam on a bagel. "I'm a misfit. I also hate zoos and baths. And pesto."

"That's a lot of hate for one so young," he said, which she took as a compliment. She was thirty-six, and figured Nash to be at least a couple of years her junior. He selected an Ellis Paul CD. "What have you got against baths, anyway?"

"They're so boring. It's just being stationary and wet. You try to read, but the book gets all soggy. And the water gets cold. Then you get this crick in your neck, and you can never quite get comfortable-"

"At least now I know what to do if we ever need to torture you-forced bath time," he said. She loved his face; there was always a measure of sadness in it, even when he was smiling.

"How's Baby been treating you?" he said. Baby had become their code word for Jesus.

"Baby always treats me right," she said. "Next Monday is Yom Kippur, so I'll be fasting, like he would have done." Kelly had such respect for Judaism and so liked to remind people of Jesus' Jewishness that her boss had taken to calling her "Jesus for Jews over here." She set the plate in front of Nash. "On an entirely unrelated note, could I interest you in a mimosa?"

He looked pleased. "Twist my arm," he said.

She dug a bottle out from the back of the fridge. "I have this Champagne a friend brought me from a wedding she went to. I guess she felt bad because she'd called me at four in the morning to ask what brevity was the soul of. She was working on her toast, and just drew a blank." She could feel Nash's eyes on the back of her neck.

"If brevity's the soul of wit, what's verbosity the soul of?" he said.

She shrugged.

"Tenure," he said.

"That's a good one."

"My mom's a professor," he said. "She hates the bulls.h.i.t."

She handed him a mimosa and held up her gla.s.s. "To a world with less bulls.h.i.t," she said, to which he quickly added, "and other things that will never happen."

"We need a revolution," she said. "A less-bulls.h.i.t revolution."

Nash swallowed the sweet concoction and fake winced, as if he'd taken a hit of grappa. " 'All revolutions evaporate, leaving only the slime of bureaucracy,' " he said.

"Ain't it the truth."

"That's Kafka, of course. Not me."

"Gotta love Kafka," Kelly said. "We could use a few more Kafkas around here." She set her gla.s.s on the table and they both sat down. "What does your mom teach?"

"Psychiatry. She's at the med school."

"Oh," Kelly said. "Free therapy." Nash raised an eyebrow as if to say that free therapy from your mother is not something you want.

"How about your dad?" she said. Her own father was a molecular engineer, and was as honest and gentle as they came. He fell into a category of large-hearted nonbelievers whom she privately referred to as the Christlike non-Christians.

"My father killed himself when I was eleven," Nash said.

"I'm so sorry," she said softly. She had the impulse to touch him, but her arms felt as if they belonged to someone else. "What was he like?"

"I consider him to have been a professional sloganeer. He always had these sayings, like: Do today's work today and Neither hurry nor wait. Or my mom's favorite: Keep your words soft and tender, for tomorrow you might have to eat them. I don't remember that much about him, to be honest. He used to read me Shakespeare's plays as bedtime stories. Then he would stub his toe and say: 'Fie on't!' and I would laugh."

"He sounds wonderful."

Nash drained his gla.s.s. "Sometimes life just doesn't make sense, I guess."

"But we only see partially," Kelly said. "We don't see how it all plays out."

"No, I can tell you how it played out: He's dead."

"Right, but-"

He stood up and placed his hand on top of her head. "Sorry, kiddo, but I should hit the road," he said, and before she knew it, he'd pushed open the door, swung a leg over his bike, and was pedaling away.

"I love him," Kelly said. She and Gwen were having mochaccinos at an outdoor cafe and watching people pa.s.s by on their way to the independent movie theater or the Armenian restaurant. "I want to take his clothes off with my teeth."