The three Animals stood and stared.

"What are those?" Asked Barry.

"Earrings," answered Troy. Indeed, there were seven earrings settling on the hardwood floor.

"Not those. Those!" Barry nodded toward two clear, cantaloupe-sized, gelatinous lozenges that quivered on the floor like stranded jellyfish.

Lash shivered. "I've seen them before. My brother used to work in a plant in Santa Barbara that made them."

"What the fuck are they?" Said Troy, squinting through a drunken haze.

"Those are breast implants," Lash said.

"What are those wormy things?" asked Barry. There were two translucent sluglike blobs of something stuck to the rug near the edge.

"Looks like window caulk," said Lash. He noticed that there was a fine blue powder near the edge of the rug. He ran his hand over it, pinched some on his fingers, and sniffed it. Nothing.

"Where'd she go?" asked Barry.

"No idea," said Lash.

Gustavo Chavez had been born the seventh child of a brick maker in a small village in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. At eighteen he married a local girl, the daughter of a farmer, herself a seventh child, and at twenty, with his second child on the way, he crossed the border into the United States, where he lived with a cousin in Oakland, along with a score of other relatives, and worked grueling, twelve-hour days as a laborer, making enough to feed himself and send more money home to his family than he could possibly have made in his father's brickyard. He did this because it was the responsible and right thing to do, and because he had been raised a good Catholic man who, like his father, would provide for his family and no more than two or three mistresses. Each year, about a month before Christmas, he would sneak back across the border to celebrate Christmas with his family, meet any new children that might been born, and make love with his wife, Maria, until they were both so sore it hurt to walk. In fact, the vision of Maria's inviting thighs would often begin haunting him around Halloween and the hapless night porter would find himself in a state of semiarousal as he swung his soapy mop, to and fro, across fifteen thousand square feet of linoleum every night.

Tonight he was in the store alone, and he was feeling far from aroused, for it was Christmas night, and he could not go to mass or take Communion until he confessed. He was feeling deeply ashamed. Christmas night and he hadn't even called Maria—hadn't spoken to her for weeks, because like the rest of the Animals, he had gone to Las Vegas, and had given all his money to the blue whore.

He had called, of course, after they'd first taken the vampire's art and sold it for so much money, but since then, his life had been a fog of tequila and marijuana and the evil attentions of the blue one. He, a good man, who cared for his family, had never hit his wife, had only cheated with a second cousin and never with a white woman, had been undone by the curse of the blue devil's pussy. La maldición de la cocha del diablo azul.

This is the saddest, loneliest Christmas ever, thought Gustavo as he dragged his mop past the canvas doors leading into the produce-department cooler. I am like the poor cabrón in that book The Pearl, where by simply trying to take advantage of some good fortune, I have lost all that I care about. Okay, I did get drunk for a week and my pearl was a blue whore who fucked the chimichangas out of me, but still, pretty sad. He thought these things in Spanish, so they sounded infinitely more tragic and romantic.

Then there came a noise from the cooler, and he was startled for a second. He wrung out his mop, so as to be ready for anything. He didn't like being in the store by himself, but with the front windows broken out, someone had to be here, and because he was far from home, had nowhere else to go, and the union would see that he was paid double time, Gustavo had volunteered. Perhaps if he sent home a little extra, Maria might forget the hundred thousand dollars he'd promised.

There, something was moving behind the plastic doors of the cooler, which were waving slightly. The stout Mexican crossed himself and backed out of the produce department, swinging his mop now in quick swaths, leaving barely a hint of dampness on the linoleum. He was by the dairy case now, and a stack of yogurts fell over inside the glass doors, as if someone had shoved them out of the way to look through.

Gustavo dropped the mop and ran to the back of the store, saying a Hail Mary peppered with swearwords as he went, wondering if those were footsteps he heard behind him, or the echoes of his own footfalls resounding through the deserted store.

Out the front door and away, he chanted in his head. Out the front door and away. He nearly fell rounding the turn at the meat case, his shoes still wet from the mop water. He caught himself on one hand and came up like a sprinter, while reaching back on his belt for his keys as he went.

There were footfalls behind him—light, slapping—bare feet on linoleum, but fast, and close. He couldn't stop to unlock the door when he got there, he couldn't look back, he couldn't turn to look—a second of hesitation and he would be lost. He exhaled a long wail and ran right through a rack of candy and gum by the registers. He tumbled over the first register in an avalanche of candy bars and magazines, many of which displayed headlines like I MARRIED BIGFOOT, or SPACE ALIEN CULT TAKES OVER HOLLYWOOD, or vampires hunt our streets, and other such nonsense.

Gustavo scrambled out of the pile and was crawling on his belly like a desert lizard scrambling to get across hot sand, when a heavy weight came down on his back, knocking the air out of him. He gasped, trying to get his breath, but something grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head backwards. He heard crackling noises in his ear, smelled something like rotten meat, and gagged. He saw the fluorescent lights, some canned hams, and a very happy cardboard elf making cookies as he was dragged down the aisle and through the doors into the dark back room of the deli like so much lunch meat.

Feliz navidad.

"Our first Christmas together," Jody said, kissing him on the cheek—giving his butt a little squeeze through his pj bottoms. "Did you get me something cute?"

"Hi, Mom," Tommy said into the phone. "It's Tommy."

"Tommy. Sweetheart. We've been calling all day. It just rang and rang. I thought you were going to come home for Christmas."

"Well, you know, Mom, I'm in management at the store now. Responsibilities."

"Are you working hard enough?"

"Oh yeah, Mom. I'm working ten—sixteen hours a day sometimes. Exhausted."

"Well good. And you have insurance?"

"The best, Mom. The best. I'm nearly bulletproof."

"Well, I suppose that's good. You're not still working that horrible night shift, are you?"

"Well, sort of. In the grocery business, that's where the money is."

"You need to get on the day shift. You're never going to meet a nice girl working those hours, son."

It was at this point, having heard Mother Flood's admonition, that Jody lifted her shirt and rubbed her bare breasts against him while batting her eyelashes coquettishly.

"But I have met a nice girl, Mom. Her name is Jody. She's studying to be a nun—er, teacher. She helps the poor."

It was then that Jody pantsed him, then ran into the bedroom giggling. He caught himself on the counter to keep from tumbling over.

"Whoa."

"What, son? What's the matter?"

"Nothing, nothing, Mom. I just had a little eggnog with the guys and started to feel it."

"You're not on the drugs, are you, honey?"

"No, no, no, nothing like that."