Lena rubbed her forehead as if she had a headache but mainly to cover her tears. "Okay, then."

"I'm going, then…"

"Good-bye, Tucker."

"You won't have anyone to sex up under the Christmas tree…"

Lena looked up. "Jeez, Tuck."

"Okay. I'm going now." And he did.

Lena Marquez went into her bedroom to call her friend Molly. Maybe crying over the phone to a girlfriend would bring a sense of normalcy back into her life.

Sour Nerds? Cinnamon Geeks? Or Gummy Boogers? Sam Applebaum's mom was picking out a «nice» reasonably priced Cabernet, and Sam was allowed one item of candy from the rack at Brine's Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines. Of course the Boogers would last the longest, but they were all mundane green-apple finish, while the Nerds proffered a fruity variety and an impudent little top note of tang. Cinnamon Geeks had a rich nose and a bit of a bite up front, but their tiny certified-public-accountant shape betrayed their bourgeois origins.

Sam was learning wine words. He was seven and he very much enjoyed unnerving adults with his wine-word vocabulary. Hanukkah had just ended and there had been a lot of dinners at Sam's house over the last week, with a lot of wine talk, and Sam had joyfully freaked out a whole table of his relatives by pronouncing after the blessing that the Manischewitz blackberry (the only wine he was allowed to taste) was a "tannacious little cunt of a red, but not without a certain buttery geranium charm." (He finished dinner in his room over that one — but it was tannacious. Philistines.)

"You are one of the Chosen?" said a voice up and to the right of Sam. "I destroyed the Canaanites so your people would have a homeland."

He looked up and saw a man with long blond hair wearing a long black duster. A jolt went through Sam like he'd just licked a battery. This was the guy that had scared his friend Josh so badly. He looked around and saw his mom was in the back of the store with Mr. Masterson, the owner.

"Can I get these with this?" asked the man. He had three candy bars in one hand, and a small silver coin about the size of a dime in the other. The coin looked very old.

"That's a foreign coin. I don't think they take it."

The man nodded thoughtfully and looked very sad at the news.

"But Nestle's Crunch is a fine choice," said Sam, trying to buy time, and keep the guy from going off on him. "A bit naive, but an undergrowth of ambergris and walnut gives it legs."

Sam looked around for his mom again. She was still talking wine with Mr. Masterson, flirting about it — Sam could be cut up in pieces and put away in freezer bags and she wouldn't notice. Maybe he could get the guy to leave.

"Look, they aren't looking. Why don't you just take them?"

"I can't," said the blond man.

"Why not?"

"Because no one has told me to."

Oh no. This guy looked like a grown-up, but actually he had the mind of a dumb little kid inside. Like that guy in Sling Blade, or the president.

"Then I'll tell you to, okay?" Sam said. "Go ahead. Take them. You'd better get going, though. It's going to rain." Sam couldn't remember ever talking to an adult like this before.

The blond man looked at his candy bars, then at Sam. "Thank you. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men. Merry Christmas."

"I'm Jewish, remember? We don't celebrate Christmas. We celebrate Hanukkah, the miracle of the lights."

"Oh, that wasn't a miracle."

"Sure it was."

"No, I remember. Someone snuck in and put more oil in the lamp. But I will grant a Christmas miracle tomorrow. I must go." With that, the blond man backed away, hugging his candy bars to his chest. "Shalom, child." And in an instant he was just gone.

"Great!" Sam said. "Just great. Throw that in my face!"

Kendra — the Warrior Babe of the Outland, combat mistress of the hot-oil arena, slayer of monsters, menace to mutants, scourge of the sand pirates, sworn protector of the cud-beast herdsmen of Lan, and intramural Blood Champion of the Termite People (mounds seven through twelve inclusive) — enjoyed cheese. So it came to pass, on that twenty-third of December, with her noodles wet and congealing in the colander, that she did raise her well-muscled arm to the sky and call the wrath of all the Furies down upon her higher power, Nigoth the Worm God, for allowing her to leave the mozzarella at the Thrifty-Mart checkout counter. But the gods do not concern themselves in the affairs of lasagna, so the sky did not explode with vengeful fire (or at least not that she could see from the kitchen window) to incinerate the mingy god who would dare desert her in her most dire hour of cheese. What happened was nothing at all.

"Curse be unto yon, Nigoth! Would that my blade was not broken, I would track you to the ends of the Outland and sever your thousand and one eyestalks, just to make sure I got your favorite. Then I would feed them raw to the most heinous —»

Then the phone rang.

"Helloo," Molly sang sweetly.

"Molly?" Lena said. "You sound out of breath. Are you okay?"

"Quick, think of something," said the Narrator, "Don't tell her what you were doing."

The Narrator had been with Molly almost constantly for the last two days, mostly an irritation, except that he had remembered how much oregano and thyme to use in the red sauce. Nevertheless, she knew that he was a sign she needed to get back on her meds ASAP.

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine, Lena. Just buffing the muffin.

You know, gray afternoon, storm coming in, Theo's a mutant — I thought I'd cheer myself up."

There was a long silence on the line, and Molly wondered if she'd sounded convincing.

"Completely convincing," said the Narrator. "If I wasn't here, I'd swear you were still doing it."

"You're not here!" Molly said.

"Pardon?" said Lena. "Molly, I can call back if this is a bad time."

"Oh, no, no, no. I'm okay. Just making lasagna."

"I've never heard it called that before."

"For the party."

"Oh, right. How's it going?"

"I forgot the mozzarella. Paid for it, then left it at the check stand." She looked at the three cartons of ricotta sitting on the counter, mocking her. Soft cheeses could be so smug.

"I'll go pick it up and bring it over."

"No!" Molly felt a jolt of adrenaline at the thought that she'd have to push through a long girlfriend session with Lena. Things were getting so blurry between Pine Cove and the Outland. "I mean, it's okay. I can do it. I enjoy cheese — shopping for cheese."

Molly heard a sniffle on the other end of the line.

"Mol, I really need to help you with the goddamn lasagna, okay? Really."

"Well, she sounds as nutty as you are," said the Narrator. Molly swatted at the air to shut him up — did a finger-to-lip emphatic rocking shush mime. "She's a crisis junkie if I ever saw one."

"I need to talk to someone," Lena said with a sniff. "I broke up with Tucker."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Lena. Who's Tucker?"

"The pilot I was seeing."

"The guy with the bat? You just met him, didn't you? Take a bath. Eat some ice cream. You've known him two days, right?"

"We shared a lot."

"Cowboy up, Lena. You fucked him and kicked him to the curb. It's not like he stole your design for a coldfusion reactor. You'll be okay."

"Molly! It's Christmas. You're supposed to be my friend."

Molly nodded at the phone, then realized that Lena couldn't hear her. True, she wasn't being a very good friend. After all, she was sworn protector of the cud-beast herdsmen of Lan, as well as a member of the Screen Actors Guild, it was her duty to pretend she cared about her friend's problems.

"Bring the cheese," she said. "We'll be here."

"We?"