‘When I reached puberty,’ Del said, ‘I began to acquire various extraordinary powers, and I suppose I might continue to acquire even more as the years go by.’

Tommy said, ‘So that’s what you meant when you said you’d have been able to save your father if he hadn’t gotten cancer before you reached puberty.’

Squeezing his hand, Del said, ‘It’s all right. Fate is fate.

Death is just a phase, just a transition between this and a higher existence.’

‘The David Letterman show.’

Grinning, Del said, ‘I love you, tofu man.’ Mother Phan sat as stone-faced as an Easter Island monument.

‘And Emmy, the little girl… the daughter of the guard at the gatehouse,’ Tommy said. ‘You have cured her.’

‘And gave you a massage on the carousel that means you’ll never need to sleep again.’

He raised one hand to the back of his neck, and as his heart began to race with exhilaration, he remembered the tingle of her fingers as they had probed his weary muscles.

She winked. ‘Who wants to sleep when we could use all that time to consummate?’

‘Don’t want you here,’ said Mother Phan. Turning to her mother-in-law again, Del said, ‘When the aliens returned Mom and Daddy to that highway south of Tonopah, they sent along one of their own as a guardian, in the form of a dog.’

Tommy would have thought that nothing on earth could have torn his attention away from Del at that moment, but he turned his head to Scootie so fast that he almost gave himself whiplash.

The dog grinned at him.

‘Scootie,’ Del explained, ‘has greater powers than I do—’

‘The flock of birds that distracted the demon,’ Tommy said.

‘—and with your indulgence, Mrs. Phan, I will ask him to give a little demonstration to confirm what I’ve told you.’

‘Insane crazy American maniac blond lunatic’ Mother Phan insisted.

The Labrador sprang onto the coffee table, ears pricked,

tail wagging, and gazed so intently at Mother Phan that she pressed back into her armchair in alarm.

Above the dog’s head, a sphere of soft orange light formed in the air. It hung there a moment, but when Scootie twitched one ear, the light spun away from him and whirled around the room. When it passed an open door, the door flew shut. When it passed a closed door, the door flew open. All the windows rose as if flung up by invisible hands, and balmy November air blew into the living room. A clock stopped ticking, unlighted lamps glowed, and the television switched on by itself.

The sphere of light returned to Scootie, hovered over his head for a moment, and then faded away.

Now Tommy knew how Del had started the yacht without keys and how she had hot-wired the Ferrari in two seconds flat.

The black Labrador got off the coffee table and padded to his mistress, putting his head on her lap.

To Tommy’s mother, Del said, ‘We’d like you and Mr. Phan and Tommy’s brothers and their wives, all his nieces and nephews, to come to our party tonight in Las Vegas and celebrate our marriage. We can’t fit you all in the LearJet, but Mother has leased a 747, which is standing by at the airport right now, and if you hurry, you can all be there with us tonight. It’s time for me to quit my job as a waitress and get on with my real work. Tommy and I are going to lead eventful lives, Mrs. Phan, and we’d like all of you to be a part of that.’

Tommy couldn’t read the wrenching series of emotions that passed across his mother’s face.

Having said her piece, Del stroked Scootie, scratched behind his ears, and murmured appreciatively to him:

‘Oh, him a good fella, him is, my cutie Scootie-wootums.’ After a while, Mother Phan got up from her chair. She

went to the television and turned it off.

She went to the Buddhist shrine in the corner, struck a match, and lit three sticks of incense.

For perhaps two or three minutes, the survivor of Saigon and the South China Sea stood staring at the shrine, inhaling the thin and fragrant smoke.

Del patted Tommy’s hand.

At last his mother turned away from the shrine, came to the sofa, and stood over him, scowling. ‘Tuong, you won’t be doctor when want you be doctor, won’t be baker when want you be baker, write stories about silly whiskey-drunk detective, won’t keep old ways, don’t even remember how speak language from Land of Seagull and Fox, buy Corvette and like cheeseburgers better than com tay cam, forget your roots, want to be something never can be... all bad, all bad. But you make best marriage any boy ever make in history of world, so I guess that got to count for something.’

By four-thirty that afternoon, Tommy, Del, and Scootie were back in their suite at the Mirage.

Scootie settled in his bedroom to crunch dog bis¬cuits and watch an old Bogart and Bacall movie on television.

Tommy and Del consummated.

Afterward, she didn’t bite his head off and devour him alive.

That evening at the reception, Mr. Sinatra called Mother Phan, ‘A great old broad,’ Mai danced with her father, Ton got tipsy for the first time in his life, Sheila Ingrid Julia Rosalyn Winona Lilith answered to three other names, and Del whispered to Tommy, as they did a fox-trot, ‘This is reality, tofu man, because reality is what we carry in our hearts, and my heart is full of beauty just for you.’