Besides, dirty talk was a part of our routine. It was something Dria, so wealthy, so continental, so devoutly soaped, required. She would get herself nice and loaded at a sorority party and call me Jew horn and matzo fucker and cum dreidl. And I, once I figured out the rules, called her pilgrim whore and Mayflower slut and snail pussy.

We’d called each other these things and press our bodies together, our naughty parts yearning for consummation and all the damp, chafing fabrics in between. So much drunken hope! Isn’t that a version of love also, some central, infant aspect of the thing: the dumb pulse, the warm seep? How else do we survive the rest of the bullshit?

Anyway, I’m not going to tell you here about how we met or how we broke up and the secret scars we acquired. That’s part of some other, duller story. I’m going to stick to this one Christmas Eve, all the sweet sickness that came rushing at me at once, along with the nutmeg and smoke and old leather.

Dria had promised me. “You want to get that horn up there, don’t you? All deep inside. It’s going to be ready for you. But you have to wait until Christmas Eve. You have to be a patient little Hebrew.”

Dinner was a massive rack of lamb, pale red slabs of muscle, spiced with Mrs. Dash and dressed with a neon mint jelly. The Blacets ate with grace and precision. I could never quite catch them chewing.

“Tell us about your winter holiday,” Suzanne said. “You celebrate Chanukah, I assume?”

“It’s Hanukkah,” Sandro said. He spoke with the towering boredom of a fifteen-year-old; it pained him to correct the world’s relentless ignorance.

“There are eight nights, and you light a candle for each. Why is that, Jacob?”

“Well,” I said, “it commemorates the Maccabeans, who were a tribe of rebel fighters in antiquity. They were trying to liberate the Jews from the Romans, and, at the same time, they were trying to keep the candles in the Temple, the Old Temple, lit, which I believe was a commandment, one of God’s, but they had only enough oil for one day, but the oil lasted for eight days. It was a miracle.”

The Blacets looked at me, nakedly disappointed: this was what the Jews were putting up against the birth of the savior?

“I think it’s a terrific story, Joseph,” Bud hollered. He’d been the top man in a steel forge, back before he married into the Blacet money.

“Jacob,” Sandro said. “The guy’s name is Jacob.”

“Yes, dear,” Suzanne said.

“Which one was Jacob?” Bud said. “The one with the rainbow coat?”

“That’s Joseph,” Sandro said.

“Did he wind up in the hole?”

“You’re thinking of Jeremiah, dear,” Suzanne said. “The prophet Jeremiah.”

“I thought Jeremiah was a bullfrog,” Bud said.