Lana only smiled secretly.

Ganady was impelled into the gap. "Svetlana is a circus performer-didn't I tell you? She's a-a magician-well, sure, you can see that, huh? That's-that's a-another reason why her parents are a little put out with her, see. And that's why you haven't met her before. She's been...touring. With the circus," he finished lamely.

"Oh, how exciting!" cried Nadezhda, clapping her hands.

"Could you teach us to do that?" asked Annie from her place next to Nikolai.

Svetlana's eyes sparkled in the candlelight as she took a second galobki from the platter and slipped it into the opposite sleeve, saying as she did: "I don't really know how I do it. I just put the 'little pigeon' up my sleeve and-" She flung her arms upward, scattering more live birds into the air. The a.s.semblage applauded.

Giggling like the schoolgirls they had lately been, Nadia and Annie each picked up a pair of galobki and stuffed them into their sleeves.

Wrinkling her nose in distaste, Annie asked, "Do we count or say abracadabra or anything?"

Svetlana c.o.c.ked her pert golden head and shrugged. "If you like."

The two other girls exchanged looks across the table.

"One," said Annie.

"Two," said Nadia.

"Three," they said together. In perfect unison, they flung their arms up and out.

Cabbage, rice, and meat sprayed everywhere.

Belatedly, the guests ducked and closed their eyes, hoping to dodge the hail of food.

When Ganady once again opened his eyes, they went reluctantly to his father's face.

Vitaly Puzdrovsky was as red as the cabbage on his plate, his eyes bugging out from his head as if he could not believe that his good Sabbath bow tie was now decorated with sauce and rice and ground meat. There was a truly horrible moment of silence, then Svetlana's bubbly laughter cascaded down the table.

Ganady held his breath, for Vitaly Puzdrovsky had begun to quiver, then to tremble, then to rattle like a boiling teakettle. Tears started from his eyes, and from between his compressed lips came a sound like the hiss of escaping steam.

And then, he uttered a sound Ganady had never heard before-he giggled. There was no other word for it. He giggled. He chortled. He chuckled. And then suddenly, he was laughing uproariously, his eyes streaming.

With the speed of waves chasing the wake of a harbor tug, the laughter circled the table, sweeping everyone away.

In the midst of it all, Svetlana cried: "Oh, but Papa Puzdrovsky, your pretty bow tie is ruined!"

And so saying, she reached out to the dessert tray with its mound of bow-shaped cruschiki, and lifted a fat, sugar-covered specimen from the top of the pile. She put this delicacy up her left sleeve then, with a grace that brought to mind enchanted swans or Sonja Henie, she shook out the sleeve and delivered into Vitaly Puzdrovsky's hands a big, beautiful red satin bow tie.

Smiling and wondering, Vitaly unclipped the soiled tie and replaced it with the new one.

Meanwhile, Annie and Nadia, giggling, scrambled after the cruschiki. But where Svetlana had used one, the other girls each grabbed a handful of the delicate pastries, stuffing them into their sleeves. Then they shook them out again in a cloud of confectioner's sugar and broken crumbs. The tablecloth and the guests looked as if they had been snowed upon.

Svetlana laughed. Everyone else laughed with her. Even the two embarra.s.sed would-be magicians.

And Ganady, for his part, fell twice as much in love with the flesh-and-blood woman (if that she was) as he had with the dream. Three times. Four.

As coffee, tea, and babka were pa.s.sed around in what to Ganady was a happy, warm, scented blur, Svetlana excused herself to go up to the powder room on the second floor.

Ganady thought nothing of it until his mother also went there and back, and still Svetlana was gone.

"Where is Lana?" Rebecca asked her son.

He could only say: "I was about to ask you. She wasn't in the ladies' room?"

Rebecca seemed surprised. "I didn't see her."

Ganady shrugged, trying to appear unconcerned. "Maybe she went to the kitchen...for something."

"For what would she go to the kitchen?"

"To find...recipe cards?"

Rebecca Puzdrovsky seemed to find that a reasonable idea and returned to her seat, but Ganady's insides were in a sick knot. Had she come to him only to disappear again? If they were indeed married, would she disappear still-once or twice a week? Every day?

He waited a moment more, then glanced about to make sure that everyone had returned to their celebrating. Everyone had, except for Baba Irina, who gave him a strange, veiled look and tilted her head toward the doors that opened into the service hallway and kitchen.

He rose, patted his mouth with his napkin and excused himself from the table. He would go to the ladies' room first, he reasoned, because that's where she said she was going. That was his intention. But as he entered the hallway and found the kitchen doors facing him, curiosity overcame logic.

He pa.s.sed through the doors. The kitchen was empty. Still, he made a slow circuit of the central island, eyes flitting here and there, drawn to the floor.

It was on the windowsill that he found it-the empty black-cherry husk of a huge c.o.c.kroach. He stared at it for a long moment, terrified at first, then wondering.

It was impossible, of course. Impossible that his beautiful Svetlana had... Had what? Slipped out of this carapace as a normal woman (a real woman?) might slip out of a coat?

But if it were so-if-what might happen should the coat be destroyed? Might the wearer be forced to do without?

The reasoning (if it could be called that) seemed sound from a dreamer's point of view...or from the point of view of someone in one of Baba's b.o.o.beh mysehs.

And he was not yet convinced he didn't dream.

He picked up the carapace between thumb and forefinger and carried it to the great, gleaming stove. His hand shook and the heat of the oven, propped open to cool, all but melted his resolve. But at last he grasped a k.n.o.b, and turned on one of the burners. Blue flame erupted from it, licking up through the cast iron cover.

He flung the carapace into the flame. It vanished in a puff of smoke and flame with a tiny sound like a sigh.

Behind him, the sigh was echoed and he knew his strange actions had been observed. He turned, readying some explanation that involved his Mama's fear of insects, but it was Svetlana who stood in the doorway watching him with sad eyes.

"What have you done?" she asked.

"I...I...I meant," he finally got out, "to free you. I thought if I burned it, you wouldn't have any place to go back to and you'd have to stay...like this."

He'd already started the gesture toward her before he realized what it implied. What it meant he believed-and had believed for sometime, if he was honest. His face burned so hot, he thought he must be glowing red.

"Oh, Ganny," she said. "If it were that easy, don't you think I would have destroyed it myself by now?"

"I figured there must be some sort of rule about it. I thought maybe I had to do it."

She sighed again. "You'd already done it, Ganny. You'd already saved me. But now... Well, I've got to go back."

"But...how? Why? I mean, how did this happen?"

What he was really asking was whether she was a c.o.c.kroach turned woman, or a woman turned c.o.c.kroach. Not that it mattered to him, because he would have loved her either way. He wasn't certain, but he suspected there was a mitzvot for it.

Svetlana's mouth pulled up at one corner. "It's a long story."

"I'd really like to know."

She shrugged and slipped up onto a kitchen stool, hooking her ankles around the legs. Her shoes slipped from her feet to clatter on the black and white tiles. They were pumps-or so Marija, who had just begun to care for such things, had informed him. They were the same color as her dress-darkest green-and had little satin bows on each toe.

She tucked her dress around her knees. "It was my Da, the Sausage King of South Philly. Da, he's a very shrewd businessman. A self-made businessman. He's always had this dream of having a chain of shops here in Philly, over the river in Camden, maybe other places as well."

"A Sausage Empire," said Ganny.

She nodded. "He'd build it and pa.s.s it down to his sons. But he didn't have sons, he had me-the Sausage Princess."

"And he wants you to run the stores, right?"

She cupped her knees with her hands. "Ever since I was a little girl, he's been trying to get me to take an interest in the family business. But, I gotta tell you, Ganny, my only interest in meat is cooking and eating it. But he kept at it anyway-buying new stores, looking for ways to expand the business. And, you know, I'd do it for him-run the stores-if it were that simple. But it's not."

She took a deep breath then said, "Once upon a time, he was happy with the idea that his daughter would inherit the stores instead of a son, but that all changed when he met the Bagel King-Yuli Bzikov (a pompous shmegegi if ever I met one). And it hit him: what if, instead of just cutting meat up and sending it home in little white parcels, he sent it home inside bagels? Sausage bagels, galobki bagels, all different kinds of meat-stuffed bagels.

"To Papa, it was a marriage made in heaven. They'd merge the two businesses, become legal partners. He'd get dough for his sausage-breads, Bzikov would get meat for his pierogies. And best of all, Bzikov had a twenty-year-old son named Boris. Pompous shmegegi junior."

Boris. Ganady's hair stood on end. He did not at all like where this was going.

"And Boris liked me. So Papa got it into his head that the Sausage and Bagel Empires should be joined by ties of matrimony. He had a big party to announce my betrothal to the Son of the Bagel King."

"The Pierogi Prince," said Ganady, apropos of nothing.

"Exactly. But I didn't want to marry Boris Bzikov, even if he was a Prince. I was only fifteen-I didn't want to marry anybody. So when Papa made this big announcement-which, by the way, was a surprise to the bride-to-be-I was so shocked I jumped up and said... Well, I said what I was thinking, which wasn't very nice. And the Bzikovs were understandably offended, and Papa was outraged. He demanded I take it back."

"What you said?"

"What I said-which I'm not going to tell you, by the way. But I didn't. So first, Papa complains about how America is having a pernicious effect on the behavior of young women-"

"He said 'pernicious?'"

"He tries to learn a new English word every week. 'Pernicious' was the word that week. Anyway, next he set a curse on me."

Ganady blinked. "A curse? A real curse?"

"A real curse."

"That curse?" He pointed to the burner upon which the c.o.c.kroach carapace had recently expired.

"The same. He said-and I quote-'That I should have sp.a.w.ned such an ingrate. May I be accursed for sp.a.w.ning such a child. ('Sp.a.w.n,' was the word the week before.) May your mother, G.o.d bless her, be accursed for giving breath to such a child.' Then he smote his forehead"-she ill.u.s.trated sonorously, smacking her brow with the heel of her hand-"and cried, 'What am I saying? We've already been cursed, your poor parents, to have such an ungrateful girl. Now, it's your turn.' Then he cursed me."

Ganady, caught in the middle of reflection that he had never seen anyone smite their forehead, asked: "Just like that? He just said, 'You're cursed?'"

Svetlana tilted her head and shrugged. "Well, not so much. He had Aunt Beyle do it. She's my mother's sister. Aunt Beyle's a witch-at least that's what Da calls her. One evening he comes home from work with a little box tied up with string, like you might put giblets in. And he comes up to me and says: 'This is yours until such time as you learn to obey or until a man loves you in spite of your low estate. Only then will you be free of my curse.'

"So then he hands me this little box. And he crosses his arms and glares at me like so"-she demonstrated-"and says, 'So open it, already.'"

She shrugged. "So I opened it."

"A c.o.c.kroach?"

"A c.o.c.kroach sh.e.l.l."

"Then what? You just-poof?"

"No. I tossed it out-box, c.o.c.kroach, the megillah. Then I went to bed, thinking Papa must've been at the vodka. And when I woke up, I was in this white room with no furniture and no ceiling. I climbed out and found myself in the alley behind our building and every thing looked very, very big. I was there for a long time. And that's where you found me. And after a while, I got to come back to this..." She made a graceful gesture at her own body. "But only a little at a time."

She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, pressing the silky fabric of her dress against them, and Ganady's heart all but broke at the look on her face.

"I guess I really messed up, huh?"

"Well, the curse was mostly off. I could do something like this once a month when the moon was full, and I could be in your dreams on the Sabbath. But now...you kind of gave the c.o.c.kroach Curse a new life."

Her grin was lopsided and sad and Ganny wanted to cry.

"Why a c.o.c.kroach?"

She slid off the stool. "Aunt Beyle was reading Kafka."

She was moving toward the door and Ganny leapt to stop her. He reached out and put a hand on her arm. Beneath the silky fabric, the flesh was soft and warm, very un-c.o.c.kroach-like.

"What can I do?"

She looked into his eyes, breaking his heart all over again, and shrugged. "That's up to you," she said, then added, in Yiddish, "Khop nit der fish far du nets."

Before he could respond, she kissed him softly on the lips and slipped out through the kitchen doors.

He froze for only a second, then pushed through after her. The short hallway was empty. He opened the second set of double doors and peered through into the dining room. Her seat was empty, too.

He stood in the doorway, bereft, staring at that empty seat, letting the sounds of celebration wash over him until be became aware that someone was standing very near him. Someone short, who smelled of rosewater and lavender.

"Oh, Baba..." he whimpered.

"What is it, Ganny?" his Baba asked him. "Where is she?"

He had no need to ask who she meant. He hung his head. "Gone. She's gone."

"What? What did you do?"

He certainly couldn't tell her that. Even Baba Irina could not believe that tale. He swallowed painfully. "She said, 'Khop nit dir fish far du nets.'"