“Couldn’t I just look at you for now?” he said. “Like that, against the dome, with those birds?”

She glanced over at them vaguely. “Dome?” Which presented her cheek to him, so he brushed it with his lips. “It’s just …” She turned back, bringing her lips to his. She held him off gently, her fingertips on his face. So he kissed her fingertips. “It’s just that people think … Men are always … There are just all these things I have to tell someone. About me. I have to …”

He gathered her up again, felt her tense again, yield again, and kissed her a long time, deeply. He was having an insight. An erection and an insight, both profound. No, no, his insight was saying, no, no. Not trolls. You idiot. How could you ever have thought it was trolls? This incredible, this resplendent city; this cathedral in the mists of night; this bracing winter breeze, those stars; this flesh, this flesh—this vehicle for bringing two souls together at the mouth, at the loins: it’s the work of fucking Santa Claus, Jackson! Even Death; even Death was sweet in that it made a moment out of this, which was too fabulous to last for more. That Claus, what a man, you could count on him to get the whole thing perfect.

“Then tell me,” he said, breaking away, coming up for air. She was hankering after him now, following after his lips with hers. “Tell me everything. Tell me why you tried to kill yourself. How could you? How could you do it, Sophie? I was so mad, I was so crazy. I wanted to slug you. I would’ve slugged you if you hadn’t slugged me first.”

She laughed at him, patted his cheek. They let each other go. She moved to the bridge railing, looked down into the streak of glimmering light on the black water. She shuddered once, so that he wanted to hold her again, but he restrained himself, waited.

“I have these black patches,” she said. She made a face. “That’s what we call them. In my family. Sophia’s black patches. It’s the oddest feeling. Everything gets very heavy and sort of brown and I feel thoroughly detached from it all and superior and miserable at the same time. I know everything’s the same as it was before, but it’s all just—blah somehow suddenly, yah? I feel funny telling you this. We never talk about it.”

Storm sniffed. His nose was beginning to run with the cold. “Who never talks about it?”