And why should he care, he asked himself. He set his mind upon the plate of cookies he had seen going out the front door, and went down to the stoop to munch absently while Marija bombarded their Baba with questions about her shul in Keterzyn and what it was like to be a young Jewess in Poland.

Ganny listened silently to their talk. There was a desire in him to tell Baba Irina about The c.o.c.kroach, to describe his peculiar conversation with Mr. Ouspensky. There was an equally strong desire to chalk the whole thing up to loneliness and an inherited tendency to believe in magic and miracle and to say nothing to anyone-least of all to his grandmother, who tended to take such things seriously.

So deep in thought was he that he didn't realize Marija had gotten up and gone in until Baba Irina asked: "So how is Ouspensky these days?"

Ganny jerked his head up. "He's...he's fine. You saw him at shul Friday night."

"That's different than the way you see him. He is not the same at temple as he is at a baseball game. People blozn fun zikh at temple. They want everyone to believe all is well."

Actually, in Ganady's experience, many of Rabbi Andrukh's flock were more likely to put on airs that implied all was not well and that they suffered all the trials of Job and then some. But he didn't say this.

"He's great. I like going to games with him because he knows so much. I learn a lot of history from him."

"He seems well to you?"

"Yeah. But..."

"But?"

"Do you think Mr. O is meshuggeh like Mr. Isaacson says?"

"Why would you ask that?"

"He says things sometimes..."

"About his ghost baseball games?"

"Oh...no, not that. I meant..." He stole a look at her out of the corner of his eye. "Do you believe in dreams, Baba?"

"I should hope so."

"I mean, do you... What do you believe they are?"

"I believe..." She paused to think, seeming to search the patterns woven by lamp-enamored moths for an answer. "I believe they are G.o.d's way of showing us things we should see."

"Mr. O..." Ganady began and stopped. Mr. O what? Mr. O sees into my dreams? "Remember I told you about that dream I had where Mr. Ouspensky and Svetlana talked to me about...things?"

"I do remember. I remember that you said you listened harder to the pretty girl than to the old man."

"I had another dream with Mr. O and Lana in it, and Mr. O talks like he remembers it. Like he was really there. He talked about the game and about meeting Svetlana."

Baba looked at Ganady so hard he thought his skin had suddenly gone transparent. If it had not, it most certainly now had twin holes in it. "And so now you think the old man is meshuggeh?"

"No." Ganny realized as he said the word that he really didn't believe his elderly friend was crazy. But what did that mean? He asked the question aloud.

"Perhaps you merely misunderstood him," suggested Baba Irina. "We old folks sometimes think of two things and say half of each."

"Yeah. Maybe I just misunderstood him. Or...or he misunderstood me."

"Or maybe you spoke of your dream to him and he was merely teasing you."

"I didn't tell him about that dream. I'm sure I didn't."

Baba shrugged, put her hand on Ganady's shoulder and pushed herself to her feet. "Then you must have had a mistake. I am for bed. I leave the cookies to you."

He was still nodding when the door closed. He sat perfectly still, contemplating the half-empty plate of cookies in the combined light of moon and streetlamp. He had not misunderstood Mr. Ouspensky. And he seriously doubted that the old man had misunderstood him.

"Oh, cookies! May I have one?"

Ganny blinked and raised his eyes to the spot his Baba had just vacated. Inevitably, Svetlana was there, her eyes and hair bright in the moonlight.

The cookie in Ganady's hand crumbled, he squeezed it so hard. And he could only nod and think: I've fallen asleep on the front stoop.

She picked up a cookie and bit into it. "Oh, these are good! They're pierniki, yes?"

"I guess." Ganady hesitated a moment, watching her nibble at her cookie, then said, "Mr. O thinks he's met you."

"Yes?"

"But I only dreamed you. I dreamed both of you."

"That's silly. Mr. Ouspensky's a real person."

"I mean, I dreamed of you in the same dream at a ghost baseball game, and now he says he knows you."

She finished the cookie. "It's sweet of him to remember."

Well. That was that. Ganady decided his search for answers was at an end. Clearly there were none to be had. Perhaps Svetlana and Mr. O and his ghost baseball games were real and Ganady was the dream and not the dreamer. Or maybe people-some people-could simply share dreams.

He rather liked that idea. He wondered what Baba Irina would think of it.

"So, how is Da?"

"He's okay. He gave me a nice chicken to bring home to Mama this week. Oh, and Boris was asking about you."

He felt her stiffen as if the evening air had suddenly congealed around her, and stopped himself from making any jokes about the Bagel Prince.

"You've met Boris?" Her voice was hushed and small.

"He came into the shop as I was leaving. Your Da introduced us."

"You talked to him?"

"Not exactly. He just sort of stared at me. He doesn't seem... I mean, he seems sort of..." Slow, he had wanted to say, but he stopped himself. It was entirely possible that Boris Bzikov was special to Svetlana. The thought was unexpectedly painful.

"You didn't say anything to him about me, did you?"

"No. Your Da sort of did, though. He said he'd heard from somebody that you're okay and then sort of rolled his eyes over at me."

He demonstrated with exaggerated abandon, but Svetlana wasn't laughing; she was looking at him with such a mixture of horror and sorrow in her eyes that he cried, "Lana, what's wrong?"

"Everything is wrong, Ganady Puzdrovsky. I'm wrong, you're wrong, my father is wrong, and Boris Bzikov is wrong. It's all wrong, wrong, wrong!" She leapt to her feet, fists clenched. "You shouldn't have gone there. I told you that, but you don't listen. You keep going. And now...now you've met Boris...the-the Bagel Boy!"

Ganady couldn't help himself. He simply burst out laughing. He laughed until his sides hurt, until tears ran from his eyes, until he was hiccupping. And suddenly, Svetlana was laughing too, her shoulders shaking and her eyes glinting. She tried to look severe, and covered her mouth with both hands, but he could still see the dimples in her cheeks. Could see them through his tears.

She collapsed back to the step, gasping. "It's...not... funny! Really! Ganny! It's...not!"

But he couldn't stop laughing, and neither could she, and she tried again, to speak, to scold. All that came out was: "Ga-ha-ha-ha-ny!"

So he laughed back: "La-ha-ha-na!"

"Ganny?"

He jerked his head around so violently, he nearly slipped from the step on which he sat. The front door had opened and his mother stood in it, silhouetted against the light from the living room.

A second later, she opened the screen door, and stepped out onto the top step. "Ganny, who were you talking to?"

Ganny swung back to the place where Lana had sat. Empty now. He looked up and down the street, wondering why he bothered. He wouldn't see her.

He picked up the plate of cookies and stood. "Uh...n.o.body, Mama."

"n.o.body? I heard laughing."

"I just thought of something funny, is all."

His mother tilted her head in an echo of Baba Irina and narrowed her eyes. "Ganady Puzdrovsky, what sort of nonsense are you telling me? I heard laughing. I heard a girl laughing. I think I know your laughter from a girl's, don't I? Who was she?"

He gripped the plate of cookies as if they were a life raft and he a drowning man. "You heard her?" he said, hiccupping so hard he squeaked.

"So now you think I'm deaf?"

"No, Mama. I just...it...she..."

She crossed her arms.

"It was Svetlana," he said. "She was just here, but she had to go."

"This is the girl your grandmother has spoken of, yes?"

"I...I guess. Yeah."

"And that you have not spoken of."

Ganady felt heat rising up the back of his neck to suffuse his cheeks. He stammered out syllables that were not even approximately words, and his mother reached out and brushed his cheek with one hand.

"This is the way of boys, yes? It would please me if you will not come home all beat up like Nikolai."

"Yes, Mama. I mean-no, Mama."

"I think it is good for children to have some secrets." She smiled, straightened his shirt collar, then went back into the house.

Ganady stood, clutching the plate of cookies, aware of one thing only: that he was not dreaming. His mother had heard Svetlana's laughter.

oOo Ganny puzzled over this new wrinkle in his already peculiar existence. He was still puzzling over it when he went to school Monday morning. It made him inattentive in cla.s.s and distracted in the hallways between, for he found himself looking for Svetlana everywhere, as if she might suddenly appear sitting at the desk next to him in cla.s.s, or giggling with a group of other girls by the lockers.

He was still puzzling about it, when he went to his next ghost baseball game on Wednesday night with Mr. Ouspensky. He'd hoped Lana would come too, and he could ask her directly what it meant that she had appeared outside a dream, but she wasn't there, and he realized that he had only ever seen her on Sabbath days-Jewish or Christian-which certainly blurred the boundary between magic and miracle, if indeed there was one.

He asked Mr. O the question: "What does it mean that she came outside my dream?"

The old man shrugged and said, "Perhaps it means she becomes more real to you. That's good, isn't it?"

Was it? Ganady certainly couldn't say. He could only meditate on the situation as he washed windows on Sat.u.r.day morning. Upon his return from synagogue, Mr. Joe tried only once or twice to entice him into conversation. Then he gave up and disappeared into the kitchen.

Ganady came to himself abruptly when he was suddenly overcome with a strange p.r.i.c.kling sensation between his shoulder blades. He was on his knees, wiping down the gleaming meat cases, his back to the door. He turned to find Boris Bzikov standing in the open doorway watching him.

"H-h.e.l.lo," Ganady said hesitantly. He was suddenly sweating, hot and cold at once. He thought his cheeks must be as red as filet mignon.

Boris merely nodded, lifting his chin then dropping it. His eyes never left Ganady's face. He spoke: "You are the one who brings Mr. Joe word of Svetlana?"

He could have said, No. Who's Svetlana? But he didn't. He said, "I guess that's me."

"How is it you know of her?"

"I...see her sometimes."

Boris took a step into the shop, looming above Ganady, who still knelt upon the floor. "Where? Where do you see her?"

It was not lost on Ganady that the other young man's hands were knotted into fists the size of ham hocks. He scrambled to his feet and was pleased to note that while Boris was a good deal brawnier than he, he was not taller.

"I've seen her at church and at the ballpark. And at Izzy's deli." Suddenly, Ganady Puzdrovsky wanted to impress this fellow with exactly how well he knew Svetlana Gusalev. "We go there for ice cream sometimes after games. Sometimes we just go walking together. And sometimes she comes to my house."

Boris's expression grew darker with every word that staggered from Ganny's lips. "To your house!" he cried. "Why should she come to your house?"

Ganny shrugged as if the whole thing were of no concern whatever. "She likes to hear me play clarinet. And she likes my mother's pierniki."

"How can this be?" Boris demanded. "How can she do these things with you when she has not spoken to her father or to me for a year or more?"

"I guess you'd have to ask her," Ganady said, trying to be nonchalant.

"I cannot ask her. How can I ask her when I don't know where she has gone? How can I speak to her if she will not hear me?"

The older boy took another step, which brought him nose to sweaty nose with Ganady. "You must speak to her for me. You must tell her that she must do her duty to her father-to her family. If she doesn't do this, there will be no empire."

Ganady could only stare at Boris blankly, feeling as if he had just stepped into the biggest b.o.o.beh myseh in the history of the world.

"I don't understand. What empire?"

Boris leaned forward, glancing pointedly toward the back of the store. "The empire of sandwiches. An empire built of bagels and sausages."