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whose futures need brightening. Perhaps you should promise to make everything rosy for all the people in the whole world, now and to come, in perpetuity. Perhaps you’re the Savior after all; it isn’t the Son of God at all. Forgive me, I’m being sarcastic. Sarcasm isn’t much help.”
    “No,” said Santa, “I understand.”
    The argument’s sharp edges had started to dull, and Rachel saw her entree: “I’m concerned mostly, I guess, about Wendy. Then I remind myself that inside she’s seventeen. And for all its heartache, seventeen's pretty resilient. I agree, Anya, that there’s no way Santa can do anything.” She looked at her husband. “But, I also agree with you that something must be done.”
    The hint of a smile played upon Santa’s face, not in triumph over Anya but in appreciation for Rachel.
    “It seems to me,” she went on, “that you and Wendy are too close to the shock of what you’ve witnessed to arrive at an easy conclusion. These are future events. If indeed there is a way to avert them, you have time to figure out how.”
    Santa, considering her words, approached the bed. He sat on its edge and took his wives’ hands. “You’re right of course. And Anya, you’re right too. Nothing either one of you has said hasn’t already occurred to me. This question needs sleeping on. Maybe I’m deluding myself. But I’m going to bang my head against the heavens anyway. I’ll either have a breakthrough or give up in defeat. But I’ll be okay, and so will Wendy, if it comes to that.”
    “If it’s any consolation,” said Anya, “I hope I’m wrong.”
    “Thank you, sweetheart.” He leaned in and gave his first wife a kiss. “And thank you, Rachel dear.” She took Santa’s generous lips onto hers, thrilled as always by his touch. “I do believe,” he said, honey in his voice, “it’s time to douse the lights, celebrate our holy union, and let Hypnos, the God of Sleep—what’s he called these days, the Sandman?—and his sons lure us into the land of dreams.”
    “Why you old satyr,” said Anya in mock scold. “You’re always ready, aren’t you?”
    “For my darling nymph and my once-mortal lover, yes yes and yes again.”
    Anya smiled. Then, leaning to her nightstand, she blew out her lantern, as Rachel did hers. And for a time, naught but giggles and sighs, gasps and caresses, and the sweet intimacies of love held sway in the Clausean marriage bed.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 5. Innocence and Shame
     
     
    WHEN HE ISN’T DELIVERING BASKETS on his special night each year, the Easter Bunny has time to kill. The colored eggs his hens lay roll down long ramps to be stored away, never spoiling or cracking, but hardboiled as they emerge. Likewise his well-lubricated, maintenance-free machines turn out an abundance of jellybeans, marshmallow chicks, chocolate bunnies, and clear, thin shreds of shiny green plastic. Without intervention of any kind, ingredients appear and are processed, their end products stored in spotless bins or upon shelves, to be miraculously assembled at unfathomable depths into baskets as Easter approaches. Come the night of delivery, into magic time he vanishes, reaching a paw into the void and pulling out just the right basket for the mortal whose life, at that moment, he graces. Then a tumble across carpet and a quick dive through permeable windows brings him out into the night air where he speeds to his next destination.
    So goes the Easter Bunny’s divinely decreed routine. Content he is, and more than content, with this.
    What then does he do after each morning’s look-in at the hens? He roams the earth, searching for loving couples in their moments of intimacy. Now you are not to think his voyeurism unholy, as indeed it had been before the Father’s neutering transformation of him. Though he recalled none of his past, he had been monstrous then, steeped in lust and envy and capable of monstrous deeds.