ON CHRISTMAS EVE MORNING I LISTENED TO WQXR, the classical station, as I sat with my cold milk and Valium. I heard something about a belief that Paganini had made a deal with the Devil. I heard something about the blood of Christ, something about eternal life. I made a mental note to watch Abbott and Costello Go to Mars that night. I felt loneliness go through me like a breath that had nothing to do with breathing. I saw those who had beckoned me to follow them down side paths that led away from loneliness. I wondered what those remembered beautiful faces looked like now after the passing of the years. I wondered what horrors, what miseries, what more doleful loneliness had lain hidden in wait at the end of those side paths. Or could it have been happiness?

I bundled up and walked against the cold wind down to Reade Street. It was Saturday, and I was hoping that the usual small weekend gathering would be there: Andy, Jim. Bill, Dewi, and the one or two or three others who constituted our convocation of kindred buddies. Maybe Musial would be there. Maybe even Bix, who was boycotting the joint in a one-man war of pique, would be stirred by some Christ-hating sort of Christmas spirit to put in a surprise appearance. It was a good bunch. Some of us drank, some of us didn’t, some of us went back and forth.

There was no one there when I got there. It was early, not quite eleven yet. It was too cold to sit outside on the bench for any good length of time, so I took my coffee inside, made some small talk with the bartender, and gazed out through the window. I asked myself why I had never called Lorna back, never had that breakfast with her.

One of the neighborhood girls passed by. I knew her father and remembered her when she was just a toddler. I had no idea how old she was now. Not quite twenty, I would say. Maybe eighteen, nineteen, or so. Dumb as dishwater, but, God, she was beautiful.

She too was bundled up against the cold. All you could see, besides her pretty face and soft windblown hair, was the nakedness of her knees between the bottom of her coat and her boot tops. It was all I could do to stay on that bar chair. I wanted to rush out, to watch the bend of those knees from behind as she continued down the street. But if I moved, I would miss what of those knees and what of her face were now mine to see if for only an instant more.

In that instant, I imagined her wiping blood with her soft, pale hand from the vermilion corner of her lips. I imagined her knees suddenly lacerated as if slashed by an eidolon of the wicked wind.

Then she was gone, and I shook it all away.