A flash of irritation crossed his father's face. Joby hoped that didn't mean he'd changed his mind about the bike.

"You told Laura you'd take her to the dance, son. I'm sure she's gone to lots of trouble to get ready, just like you have." He gave Joby another reassuring smile. "Tell you what, sport. I'll call Laura's house and let them know we're going to be a little late. You just relax for a while. Let those darn hiccups settle down, and then we'll go. Okay?"

"Dad, I'm not doing this to get out of the dance," Joby said, suddenly realizing that's what his father was mad about. "I like Laura. It's just-" He was cut short by another loud, hard hiccup, and realized he didn't want to talk about this.

"It's just what, son? Eighth grade seems a little late to still be doing the cooties thing, doesn't it?"

"It's not that," Joby said. "I just don't think I like her like . . . you know . . . as a girlfriend. I-" He gulped in another hiccup. "I just like her more with"-another hiccup-"with my mind, I guess."

His father stood up, clearly more than irritated. "Son," he said, "you're not a little boy anymore, so let's just lay it on the table. You like a girl with this," he pointed at his chest, "or this," he pointed at his crotch. "Not with this!" He pointed at his forehead. "Is that clear?"

Joby hiccupped.

At that moment, Joby's mother came into the room, but his dad told her that they were having a "man-to-man chat" and that she wasn't needed.

"What on earth are you so angry about, Frank?" she demanded. "Are you trying to make his hiccups worse?" She turned a worried gaze toward Joby. "Look at him! He's scared to death!"

"Course he's scared!" his father snapped. "He's even scared of girls now, 'cause you've turned him into one!"

"Well, if you don't like how I'm raising him, maybe you should come home from that bar occasionally, and try your hand at it!" she snapped back.

To his horror, Joby hiccupped again.

His father turned toward him like a huge wave about to break, and said, very quietly, "Maybe your mother's right, Joby. Maybe we should be doing more things together. Next weekend," he paused, in angry contemplation, "we'll go hunting."

"What?" Joby's mother shrieked. "That's stupid! People get shot! Just last-"

"Listen to you!" his father shouted. "Is there anything he's not supposed to be afraid of?"

"I forbid it!" she yelled.

"Dad," Joby quavered, terrified to hear himself speaking, unable somehow to stop, "I . . . I don't want to kill anything."

His father went oddly rigid. For an instant, Joby was afraid his dad might hit him, but his father turned to his mother instead with a face full of pain that scared Joby even more. "Look what you've done to him!" his father rasped. Then he stepped past her, and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Joby's mother said.

"Out," his father replied without turning.

"Out where?" she demanded.

"Just out."

"To that bar?" his mother shrilled.

His father didn't even pause.

"Come back here!" she snapped. "Don't you dare walk out on me that way!"

Joby's dad turned in the doorway, and Joby suddenly knew with dreadful certainty that this time he would not be coming back. "I am going," his father said with terrible calm, "to tell Laura's parents that my invalid son will be unable to escort her to the dance tonight. Then I am going to have a drink, yes."

"Kallaystra!" Lucifer crowed as she materialized beside the obelisk in his office. "Congratulations! What a triumph, my dear!"

"It did turn out rather well, didn't it," she said, beaming. "I wish you could have seen his face when I-"

"But I did!" Lucifer enthused. "I watched the entire affair from here! It's you, I fear, who missed out on the wonderful scene at their home." He gestured toward the wall behind him and a flickering blue screen appeared. "Behold the marvelous harvest of all you've sown, my dear!"

They spent the next few minutes enjoying a surround-sound replay of the scene in Joby's bedroom. In this screening, Trephila could be quite clearly seen orchestrating Joby's hiccups, while Tique goaded Joby's father into a rage, and Eurodia shepherded Miriam in precisely on cue.

"Hiccups," Lucifer mused sardonically. "How like them."

They watched almost fondly as Frank raged into the Filling Station, ranting and moaning about having betrayed his family and destroyed all their lives. Kallaystra, in her well-worn role as Cally the wonder-barmaid, calmed him down and made him tell her the whole sordid story, heedless of the barely concealed attention afforded him by numerous scandalized patrons.

"Wait a minute," they watched "Cally" say incredulously at the end of his confession. "You accused your son of being queer? Frank! Are you out of your mind?"

Frank's mortified silence was just too rich. "No!" he stammered. "I never said that! I-I just-"

"Well, it sure sounds like that's what you meant!" Cally cut him off, shaking her head as if unable to fathom how such a smart man could be so horrendously foolish. "Frank, he's-what? Thirteen? All boys his age are afraid of girls. You know that!"

"Oh my!" Kallaystra laughed, fairly glowing with pride. "It's better than being there! Look at him! He'll never be able to go home now."

"Yes," Lucifer breathed. The replay zoomed in and froze on Frank's devastated expression. "Look at that!" Lucifer exclaimed, enraptured. He turned to her gleefully. "I can hardly express my appreciation. Just think, my dear! When we win, this small pleasure will be multiplied billions of times!"

"Will it?" she cooed seductively. "You must have such grand designs laid out in that relentless mind of yours." When he failed to take the bait, she asked, "What should our next move be?"

"Now that the child's father is securely out of the way, we must be sure to anchor the mother in place," he replied. "First, let's relieve her of those troubling nightmares. You might even arrange a few really nice dreams, just to hammer the point home."

"But, Bright One," Kallaystra objected, "she's this far from real madness! A few more well-placed frights, and-"

"I understand your disappointment," Lucifer soothed. "But we don't want Joby taken away from her. No one can hurt a boy as badly as his own mother can, after all."

"Oh." Kallaystra pouted. "I suppose you're right."

"Besides, she's been sneaking off to morning Mass recently. I'm thinking that with 'damned if you don't' nailed down nicely, it's time to work on 'damned if you do.' "

"Ahhhh," Kallaystra replied, with a begrudging smile.

"I believe Father Richter's tireless prayers for importance are finally about to be answered." He grinned, but his smile vanished as quickly as it had arrived. "We need to stop retarding his growth, however. I've never been very happy about that, actually. I instructed the triangle to make him physically inept. I said nothing about turning him into a dwarf."

"I will speak to them, if you wish, Bright One," Kallaystra said, always looking for opportunities to ingratiate, "but I don't think it's any of their doing. I asked them about it once, and they assured me his failure to bloom was just a happy accident."

"An accident!" Lucifer said skeptically. "The boy still has baby teeth, for heaven's sake! At fourteen? That seems a rather remarkable accident. If we're not doing it, who is?"

"He's a late bloomer." She shrugged. "It does happen, and you know better than I how usefully such conditions can be leveraged. Why should it concern you so?"

"Because having yanked him one way, I can hardly yank him the other now if he's not equipped to go there," Lucifer said irritably. "More than that, it makes me nervous to see something so oddly amiss in his life that we didn't instigate. Think about who we're up against here, Kallaystra, and ask yourself what He might be trying to accomplish by stunting the boy's maturity this way?"

"A point," she conceded. "So what do you suggest?"

"If we're not the one's who've been preserving all that baby fat, then let's make it leave," Lucifer said crossly. "Must I spell everything out-even to you, Kallaystra? Have your esteemed colleague, Malcephalon, continue to nurture shame and guilt within him, but on the outside, I want him growing. Within a year, I want him to be as attractive to his lusty adolescent peers as he is unprepared to deal with what they're after. And by all means, let's get him back to church before he strays beyond your pet priest's reach."

9.

( Sex ) Joby had ridden to St. Albee's that morning and hiked up through a wooded ravine behind the priory to celebrate his sixteenth birthday in blessed solitude. He'd grown quite accustomed to his parents' separation by now. Once the sound of muffled weeping had finally stopped leaking from his mother's room at nights, Joby's sense of guilt had faded some, and all their lives had settled into manageable, if somewhat lackluster, routines. Though often rather boring, his life was far from restful. An endless landslide of homework, after-school tutoring, student government, therapy appointments, and church youth group meetings left Joby always feeling as if swarms of urgent tasks were being shamefully neglected. With all of that finally on pause until September, there had been no birthday present Joby wanted more than to sit alone watching herds of cotton clouds graze lazily from horizon to horizon as the day passed in quiet, unrushed communion with nature.

His father had called before breakfast to say happy birthday, and confirm their celebration plans on Friday night. Joby's birthday had fallen on a Monday this year, and his father was buried in work. He'd started a small architectural firm of his own, which made Joby happy because it made his father happy, though the venture had rendered his father poorer and less available than ever. They got along much better now, though Joby felt no more "manly" these days than he ever had.

For all Father Richter's recurring warnings against the snare of vanity, Joby could not help wishing he looked, or even felt, more like all the other guys. By now, Ben was every inch the proverbial bronze god, but, while Joby had finally begun to grow again a few years back, he was headed for his junior year still looking fifteen at best. His mother kept assuring him that everyone would be jealous when he looked twenty-nine at forty, but that seemed cold comfort. To cap his woes, botched dental surgery to get rid of his persistent baby teeth had made it necessary to put braces on him just as everyone else was getting theirs off. Sometimes, it felt like he was growing backward.

A large, glossy raven flew over Joby's head, audibly slicing the air with its powerful wings, then stalled, banking on the breeze, and returned to perch on a nearby branch, where it stared at Joby, then croaked and rattled some kind of greeting. Over the years, Joby had come to feel an almost urgent kinship with animals, envying their lives out here beyond the paved confines of his own world. Animals suffered no one's expectations but their own. They did not belittle or shame. They did not make promises-or betray them. Doing his best to match the bird's percussive sounds, Joby cawed and clacked an answer to the raven's address. The bird cocked its head, stared at him with one dark marble eye, then took wing and glided away swiftly down the hillside, leaving Joby to wonder what rude or ridiculous things he'd said to the dignified bird.

A glance at his watch told him he had better leave if he were going to get back in time for the birthday dinner his mother was preparing. He stood reluctantly, brushed off his pants, and made his way down the grassy slope toward the ravine, then hiked through the cool oak woods to where he'd left his bike stashed behind the priory.

During the past few years, Joby had become a kind of honorary member of the priory community. In the company of St. Albee's priests, he had finally found something to trust and care about as he'd once cared about his Roundtable club. Only this was something real-something lasting. Under Father Richter's tutelage, Joby had come to see that the Arthur he had once searched for in fairy tales might be found, after all, in God. Joby had been baptized on Easter Sunday, the year before last, and often found himself talking to God these days as he had once talked to Arthur. God did not talk back, of course, as he'd once imagined Arthur did, but it was enough just to know that someone real was listening now.

Father Richter had taken a remarkable interest in Joby from the day his mother had reintroduced them, teaching him far more about scripture and theology than Ben seemed to have learned in his entire lifetime as a Catholic. The old priest had even shyly confessed to regarding Joby as the son he would never have-though Joby had never found, in Father Richter, the father he had lost. God had filled that gap. It was God's knight Joby aspired to be now, for in God alone had Joby found a mentor who seemed to harbor any greater ambition for him than that he be as little trouble as possible.

The bike ride back was long and peaceful until, several blocks from home, Joby glanced down Ben's street, and saw his oldest friend standing by the car his parents had just helped him buy, kissing Rebecca Medina. Joby pedaled quickly past, not wanting to be caught looking, but three blocks later his mind still clutched at that one brief glimpse into an alien life furnished with cars and girls and confidence.

Laura was going out with super-jock Kevin Branscom now, a senior with a build like Ben's, and a shiny red Camero. Joby didn't even have a permit. His mother had refused to allow it. Joby tried to imagine himself pedaling over to pick up Laura on his bike. That would sure have Kevin running scared.

At home, he parked his bike in the side yard and went in the back door, careful to wipe his shoes clean on the mat. The scents of cooking drew him toward the kitchen.

"Smell's awesome, Mom!"

"Hi, honey!" She turned to give him a hug. "Have a nice day?"

"Great." He smiled. "You?"

"Wonderful," she said. "Why don't you go wash up. This is just about ready."

Walking through the dining room, Joby saw that his mother had hung crepe paper and balloons everywhere, and set the table as if for two visiting dignitaries, but despite the festive decorations, the house seemed full of gloom. Joby told himself it came of staying so long out in the bright sunlight, and went to wash his hands.

"Well, Karen, Kevin may be dating his car, but I'm not." Laura looked at her watch. "Oh my God! If I don't hang up, my parents will call the phone police."

"They can't," Karen laughed. "You're on the phone. So, are you telling me you're dumping Kevin?"

"No," Laura sighed. "I'm just saying . . . he's wearing a little thin, that's all."

"You poor thing," Karen scoffed. "Kevin Branscom's hands all over everything. I'm sure there's not a girl at school who doesn't thank God every night she's not you."

"Shut up, Karen. At least your boyfriend's idea of intelligent conversation isn't debating the weight-gain benefits of burgers versus Mexican food. That's the only thing Kevin seems to think about, besides his car . . . and getting . . . you know."

"Yes, I do," Karen vamped. "And, FYI, Brian's interests aren't nearly as broad as you seem to think, which suits me fine."

"What!" Laura demanded. "You're not doing that with Brian!"

There was a somehow smirky silence on Karen's end.

"I don't believe it!" Laura gasped.

"Laura, grow up!" Karen scoffed. "We're not little kids anymore. Brian's graduating next year! Besides, he knows perfectly well we don't even get started until I see his little stash of Trojans. I can't believe you and Kevin really never-"

"With Kevin?!!" Laura blurted out. "Where? On the hood of his Camero-in between mouthfuls of burger? Don't make me retch!"

"Well, then with someone else," Karen said impatiently. "We're not gonna be beautiful forever, you know. Better get it while we're hot, I say."

"Oh, please!" Laura scoffed. "We're only seventeen!"

"It's your call," Karen said, "but I'm not just going to wait around for Mr. Perfect."

Laura shook her head, and turned to look out her bedroom window. "I wish Joby had a clue."

"Joby Peterson?" Karen said incredulously. "He's got pretty eyes, and nice hair-for a twelve-year-old. . . . Brian says he's gay."

"Joby's not gay!" Laura snapped. "Where does Brian get off spreading such bullshit?!" She heard Karen laugh quietly. "Look, Karen. He's into church, okay? He has a whole set of values. If you don't know what those are, you can look it up under 'make the world a better place.' That prob'ly seems gay to Brian the stud-wonder, but I-"

"You don't need to get nasty, Laura," Karen said frostily.

"You don't call what you said about Joby nasty?" Laura asked.

"Okay! I'm sorry! I had no idea you were in love with this guy."

Laura slammed the phone down without caring what Karen would think. "You can be such a bitch," she muttered, then went to her bedroom window to watch shadows stretch across her lawn in the last clear light of day, and wonder what had ever happened to the Joby she still remembered from so long ago.

Disguised as a mourning cloak butterfly, Gabriel perched tenuously atop a wreath of chrysanthemums someone had left at the feet of a marble angel, then fluttered into the air again in Miriam's wake as she moved slowly through the Mt. Madonna Cemetery toward her parents' grave site. Her head was bowed, her hands thrust into the pockets of her coat, and her shoulders hunched as if against a cold wind, despite the pleasant summer morning. At the grave site, she pulled a handkerchief from her purse, and bent down to clean the black granite headstone's polished face. When she had finished, she remained hunched over and motionless, gazing at the simple inscription: IN LOVING MEMORY:.

ABIGAIL MARY EMERSON.

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