It’s three a.m. when Dagou and Brenda finally hoist the shopping bags of Christmas presents onto Brenda’s bed and open everything. There’s a beautiful cocktail shaker from Jerry Stern. Mary Wa has given them a ginormous, glossy gold box of chocolate truffles that Dagou suspects must have fallen off a truck, or else they must be fake chocolates, since she never spends an extra cent if she can help it. There’s a useless tourists’ blue and white china tea set with dragons. There’s a stuffed gray mouse, a fountain pen, a ballpoint pen, and a shaver. There’s a dragon wall clock from Maud Marcus, who doesn’t know the superstition about giving clocks of any kind (that your life is coming to an end), and an elegant designer umbrella from the architect’s American wife, who doesn’t know the superstition about giving umbrellas (that your life will fall apart). Brenda loves the silk scarf from Corey Chen’s shy Taiwanese boyfriend. Eric Braun, who either does or doesn’t know the superstition about knives, has given them an excellent chopping knife.
“What was that all about?” Dagou asks.
“I used to sleep with him,” says Brenda. “Senior year of high school. I haven’t seen him in years. He got rich, got married, had a kid. He fooled around, was kicked out by his wife, and had nowhere to go for Christmas Eve.” 144
Dagou considers this. He understands. In the transformation of the last few hours, his terrible jealousy has released itself into the night. He thinks of James and Alice, in his apartment, and a wild happiness and pride for James fills him. “Do you want one, too?” he asks. “A baby.”
“Not right now.”
“Maybe sometime?”
“Maybe.”
He reaches for her. They have sex again. Brenda sniffs Dagou’s hands and seems to find the odor of sesame, surprisingly, a little moving. As he watches her cry out, joy flows through him and into the world, hovering over them both, then releasing into the winter night. It’s Christmas morning. They’re together, joyful, in Brenda’s sweet, glowing bed, and it is like a marvelous dream, his best dream. The world is new at last. It doesn’t matter if the restaurant is theirs, or not: there could be other restaurants, whole other worlds, and he is in the center of splendid possibilities. He must forget about the past. He is free once more; the years-long desperation wanes (it doesn’t go away, it cannot entirely vanish), but for the present, everything is in its proper place.
Dagou sleeps. The bedroom door opens and Alf appears. He’s enormous, the size of a lion, and his round black eyes are as big as eight balls. He leaps onto the bed, planting his huge black paws on Dagou’s chest, and licks Dagou’s face with a tongue like a washcloth. Dagou puts his arms around Alf’s neck, grown as thick as a waist, and feels the comfort of his smooth, warm fur. He’s happy enough to weep. He climbs onto the dog’s back like a small boy and the enormous Alf pushes his way out of the room, trotting down the stairs. The front door opens and he bounds out into the night.
Down the dark street he goes, then turns the corner, loping energetically southward.
“Where are we going?” Dagou asks, gesturing behind them. “Go back!” Dagou directs. “Let’s go get Brenda, Alf! Turn back.”
But Alf carries Dagou through a series of alleyways opening away 145from Letter City, past the Spiritual House. Then, with a great bound, Alf’s paws leave the pavement, and they’re climbing into the air. Dagou looks down, but the streets have shut beneath him. He can no longer identify the houses.
“Turn back,” Dagou commands, but Alf plunges firmly ahead into the night. Dagou, holding on to the fur of Alf’s strong neck, can feel the dog’s thundering heartbeat. Now they’re high above Lakeside, over the penthouse. The city park is somewhere below, with its empty swimming pool, its carousel shut down and tented for winter. Dagou can just see the lights of Haven, at first glittering and then, as they continue on, receding, until below them there’s only the wide, dark lake. The lake that existed long before the lights, before the town; the lake encountered hundreds of years ago, renamed by the Americans.
Early in the morning, the distant bells of St. Ludmila ring three times. As he lies in bed with Alice, far above the restaurant, some other, distant sound nudges James awake.
Thump, thump.
James opens his eyes. He and Alice are curled together under Dagou’s furry comforter. In the moonlight, he glimpses Alice’s elf costume carefully folded on a chair.
Alice stirs. “What is it?” she murmurs.
Thump.
“I thought I heard something.” James props himself up on one elbow, but there’s nothing. “Maybe it’s just a tree branch, maybe the wind.”
He hasn’t slept in this apartment since childhood; its noises have grown strange to him. Still, he’s jolted by the unmistakable feeling of another consciousness intruding on his own, another soul.
Alice pulls him down to her. “It’s all right, James.”
He listens, struggling to stay awake; it’s quiet now. 146
“It’s probably nothing,” he mumbles. “Only—”
Only—for some reason, he remembers the sound of knocking from below, in the train station, as he led the old man, the stranger, up the staircase.
“Go to sleep, James.” Alice takes his hand.
Thump.
They sleep.