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Grandma said. "If you marry Valerie we can celebrate some of those Jewish holidays. And we can get a set of the candlesticks. I always wanted one of those Jewish candlestick things. Isn't this something," Grandma said. "Wait until I tell the girls at the beauty parlor that we might get a Jew in our family. Everyone's going to be jealous."
    My father was still sitting lost in thought. His daughter might marry a Jewish guy. This wasn't a great thing to happen, in my father's view. Not that he had anything against Jewish guys. It was that chances were slim to nonexistent that Kloughn was Italian. In my father's scheme of things, there were Italians and then there was the rest of the world. "You wouldn't be of Italian descent, would you?" my father asked Kloughn.
    "My grandparents were German," Kloughn said. My father sighed and went back to concentrating on his lasagna. Yet another fuckup in the family.
    My mother was white-faced. Bad enough her daughters didn't attend church. The possibility of non-Catholic grandchildren was a disaster right up there with nuclear annihilation. "Maybe I need to put a couple more cookies on the plate," my mother said, pushing back from the table.
    One more cookie run and my mother was going to be passed out on the kitchen floor.
    At nine o'clock Angie and Mary Alice were tucked into bed. My grandmother was somewhere with her studmuffin, and my mother and father were in front of the television. Valerie and Albert Kloughn were discussing things in the kitchen. And Diesel and I were standing outside on the sidewalk in front of the CRV. It was cold and our breath made frost clouds.
    "So what happens now?" I asked. "Do you get beamed back up?"
    "Not tonight. Couldn't get a flight."
    My eyebrows raised a quarter of an inch.
    "I'm kidding," he said. "Boy, you'll believe anything."
    Apparently. "Well, it's been a real treat," I said, "but I've got to go now."
    "Sure. See you around." I got into the CRV, cranked the engine over, and took off. When I got to the corner I swiveled in my seat and looked back. Diesel was still standing exactly where I'd left him. I drove around the block, and when I returned to my parents' house the sidewalk was empty. Diesel had vanished without a trace.
    He didn't pop into my car when I was halfway home. He didn't appear in my apartment building hallway. He wasn't in my kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom.
    I dropped a piece of butter cookie into the hamster cage on my kitchen counter and watched Rex jump off his wheel and rush at the cookie. "We got rid of the alien," I said to Rex. "Good deal, hunh?"
    Rex looked like he was thinking, alien schmalien. I guess when you live in a glass cage you don't care a lot about aliens in the kitchen. When you're a woman alone in an apartment, aliens are pretty damn frightening. Except for Diesel. Diesel was inconvenient and confusing, and as much as I hate to admit it, Diesel was annoyingly likeable. Frightening had dropped low on the list. "So," I said to Rex, "why do you suppose I'm not afraid of Diesel? Probably some kind of alien magic, right?"
    Rex was working at getting the cookie into his cheek pouch.
    "And while we're having this discussion," I said to Rex, "I want to reassure you that I haven't forgotten about Christmas. I know it's only four days away, but I made cookies today. That's a good start, right?"
    Truth is, there wasn't a trace of Christmas in my apartment. Counting down four days and I didn't have a red bow or twinkle light in sight. Plus, I didn't have presents for anyone.
    "How did this happen?" I asked Rex. "It seemed like just yesterday that Christmas was months away."
     
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    I opened my eyes and shrieked. Diesel was standing beside my bed, staring down at me. I grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to my chin.
    "What? How?" I asked.
    He handed me a large-size take-out coffee. "Didn't we do this bit yesterday?"
    "I thought you were gone."
    "Yeah, but now I'm back. This is the part where you say, good morning, nice