“I was positively groggy as I made my way to Aunt Queen’s bedroom, and she looked up at me from her chaise lounge, where she was already under one of her white satin quilts with her feathered negligee stirring hither and thither with the motion of the overhead fan, and said:

“ ‘Darling boy, go to sleep. You’re white as a sheet. I slept on the plane, but you didn’t. You’re staggering.’

“ ‘Are you drinking champagne?’ I exclaimed. ‘You must, for we have something to celebrate.’

“ ‘You come here to me!’ Jasmine called out as she chased after me. But I wouldn’t be deterred.

“ ‘Champagne it is!’ I said, discovering the chilled bottle in the ice, and an extra glass, and that Aunt Queen was already happily swilling.

“What time was it? Who cared? I drank and then I told her all about Jerome, even as Jasmine dug her finely buffed fingernails into my arm and whispered curses into my ears to which I responded not one syllable.

“Aunt Queen was overcome with happiness! ‘Why, splendid!’ she declared. ‘And all this time, Tarquin, I thought you were a virgin! Bring this child to me. And Jasmine, you amaze me. Why on earth didn’t you write to us and tell us! This calls for child support among other things.’

“And so the handsome little infant was brought into the presence of the Queen, and groggily and happily I drank two more glasses of champagne before becoming totally incoherent. By then my son had been told that I was his father. And Tommy had received the news too, being advised by Aunt Queen that in this house we kept no secrets, a fact which would work to the betterment of all of us.

“I remember staggering to Aunt Queen’s bed, and someone, some very blessed individual, sweeping away her many fancy quilts and boudoir dolls so that I could fall facedown into the immaculate pillows, and that same someone, no doubt, pulled off my shoes, and I was soon under the heavenly weight of the quilts and in the chill of the air conditioner, fast asleep.

“I dreamed a dream of Goblin. It was an awful dream that he was suffering and couldn’t come to me. I saw him incomplete, a gaseous and hideous being, struggling to be solid, but without my will he was indistinct and loose and miserable. I knew myself in the dream as cold and cruel to him.

“I danced with Rebecca. She said, ‘I would not take you for my vengeance. You have been too good.’ ‘Who then would you have?’ I asked, and she answered me only with laughter. She went away and the music went with her. I opened my eyes.

“Aunt Queen lay beside me. She wore her silver-rimmed glasses. She was reading her paperback The Old Curiosity Shop, which I had given her on the plane, and she said to me:

“ ‘Quinn, Dickens is a madman.’