Afterward she said, “What’s with the candles and those little glass guys?”

Ig got up on all fours to crawl toward them, and she sat up quickly and gave him a full-palmed smack on the ass. He laughed and jumped and scrambled away from her.

He knelt at the end table. The menorah was set on a piece of dirty parchment with big block letters on it in Hebrew. The candles on the menorah had been melted down quite a bit, to leave a lacework of wax stalactites and stalagmites built up around the brass base. A china Mary-a really quite foxy Jewess in blue-was sunk down on one pious knee before an angel of the Lord, a tall, sinewy figure in robes arranged almost toga fashion. She was reaching up, presumably for his hand, although the figure had been maneuvered so she was touching his golden thigh and looked like she was getting ready to reach for his crank. The Lord’s messenger glared down at her with haughty disapproval. A second angel stood a little ways off from them, his face lifted to heaven, his back turned to the scene, mournfully blowing a golden trumpet.

Into this tableau some joker had stuck a gray-skinned alien with the black, multifaceted eyes of a fly. He was posed beside Mary, bent to whisper in her ear. This figure was not china but rubber, a posable figure from some movie; Ig thought maybe Close Encounters.

“Do you know what kind of writing this is?” Merrin asked. She had crawled over to kneel beside him.

“Hebrew,” Ig said. “It’s from a phylactery.”

“Good thing I’m on the pill,” she said. “You forgot to put on your phylactery when we just did it.”

“That’s not what a phylactery is.”

“I know it isn’t,” she said.

He waited. Smiling to himself.

“So what’s a phylactery?” she asked.

“You wear them on your head if you’re Jewish.”

“Oh. I thought that was a yarmulke.”

“No. This is a different thing Jews wear on their head. Or maybe sometimes their arm. I can’t remember.”

“So what’s it say?”

“I don’t know. It’s Scripture.”

She pointed at the angel with his horn. “Looks like your brother.”

“No it doesn’t,” Ig said…although, in fact, considering it again, it did rather resemble Terry playing his horn, with his broad, clear brow and princely features. Although Terry wouldn’t be caught dead in those robes, except maybe at a toga party.

“What is all this stuff?” Merrin asked.

“It’s a shrine,” Ig said.

“To what?” She nodded at the alien. “You think it’s the holy altar of E.T.?”

“I don’t know. Maybe these figures were important to someone. Maybe they’re a way to remember someone. I think someone made this to have a place to pray.”

“That’s what I think, too.”

“Do you want to pray?” Ig asked automatically, and then swallowed heavily, feeling he had requested some obscene act, something she might judge offensive.

She looked at him under half-lowered eyelids and smiled in a sly sort of way, and it struck him for the first time ever that Merrin thought he had a streak of crazy in him. She cast her gaze around, at the window with its view of rippling yellow leaves, at the sunlight painting the weathered old walls, then looked back and nodded.

“Sure,” she said. “Beats the heck out of praying at church.”

Ig put his hands together and lowered his head and opened his mouth to speak, but Merrin interrupted.

“Aren’t you going to light the candles?” she asked. “Don’t you think we ought to create an atmosphere of reverence? We just treated this place like the set for a porno.”

There was a stained, warped box in the shallow drawer that had matches in it with funny black heads. Ig struck one, and it lit with a hiss and a sputter of white flame. He moved it from wick to wick, lighting each of the candles on the menorah. He was as quick at it as he could be, and yet still the match sizzled down to his fingers as he lit the ninth wick. Merrin shouted his name as he shook it out.

“Christ, Ig,” she said. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, wiggling his fingertips. He really was. It didn’t hurt even a little.

Merrin slid the tray back into the matchbox and made to put them away, then hesitated to look at them.

“Hah,” she said.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said, and closed the drawer on them.

She bowed her head then, and put her hands together, and waited. Ig felt his breath go short at the sight of her, her taut, white, naked skin and smooth breasts and the dark red tumble of her hair. He had himself not felt so naked at any other time in his life, not even the first time he’d undressed before her. At the sight of her, patiently waiting for him to say his prayer, he felt a sweet, withering rush of emotion pass through him, almost more love than he could bear.

Naked together, they prayed. Ig asked God to help them be good to each other, to help them be kind to others. He was asking God to protect them from harm when he felt Merrin’s hand moving on his thigh, slipping gently up between his legs. It required a great deal of concentration to complete the prayer, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. When he was done, he said “Amen,” and Merrin turned toward him and whispered “Amen” herself as she placed her lips on his and drew him toward her. They made love again, and when they had finished with each other, they dozed off in each other’s arms, her lips against his neck.

When Merrin finally sat up-shifting his arm off her, rousing him in the process-some of the day’s warmth had fled, and the tree house was filled with gloom. She hunched, covering her bare breasts with an arm, fumbling for her clothes.

“Shit,” she said. “We need to go. My mom and dad were expecting us for dinner. They’ll wonder where we are.”

“Get dressed. I’ll blow out the candles.”

He bent sleepily in toward the menorah to blow out the candles-and then twitched unhappily, a weird, sick thrill passing through him.

He had missed one of the china figures. It was the devil. He was set on the base of the menorah and, like the tree house itself in its cloak of leaves, was easy to miss, half hidden behind the row of wax stalactites hanging from the candles above. Lucifer was convulsed with laughter, his gaunt red hands clenched into fists, his head thrown back to the sky. He seemed to be dancing on his little goaty hooves. His yellow eyes were rolled back in his head in an expression of delirious delight, a kind of rapture.

At the sight, Ig felt his arms and back prickle with cold gooseflesh. It should’ve been just another part of the kitschy scene arranged before him, and yet it wasn’t, and he hated it, and he wished he hadn’t seen it. That dancing little figurine was awful, a bad thing to see, a bad thing for someone to have left; not funny. He wished, suddenly, that he had not prayed here. He almost shivered, imagining it had dropped five degrees in the tree house. Only he wasn’t imagining. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and the room had darkened and chilled. A rough wind stirred in the branches.

“Too bad we have to go,” Merrin said, pulling on her shorts behind him. “Isn’t that air the sweetest thing?”

“Yes,” Ig said, although his voice was unexpectedly hoarse.

“So much for our little piece of heaven,” Merrin said, which was when something hit the trapdoor, with a loud crash that caused them both to scream.

The trap banged hard into the chair set on top of it, with so much force that the whole tree house seemed to shake.

“What was that?” Merrin cried.

“Hey!” Ig shouted. “Hey, is someone down there?”

The trap crashed into the chair again, and the chair hopped a few inches on its legs but remained on top of the hatch. Ig threw a wild look at Merrin, and then they were both grabbing at their clothes. Ig squirmed into his cutoffs while she refastened her bra. The trapdoor boomed against the underside of the chair again, harder than ever. The figurines on the end table jumped, and the Mary fell over. The devil peered hungrily out from amid his cave of melted wax.