"Something else. Remember when I shared those dreams with Cullen James?"

She took a piece of apple off the plate. "Yes. I read Bones of the Moon."

"Cullen asked me not to talk about it, but I'll tell you this: For a few weeks in my life, I had a feeling for what the miraculous really is. It's not making films."

She was about to put the apple in her mouth when she stopped and looked at me. "Do you know what the miraculous is?"

"So far, all I've figured out is it's somewhere in real life, not in fantasy or art. You might be able to reach it through those things, but it's across the bridge."

She shook her head. "I don't know what you mean."

I took the salt and pepper shakers and put them near each other: the pylons of my bridge. "The only thing art can do is suggest how to cross this bridge. Better eyes than ours, better ears, have experienced things, maybe truths, that help instruct how to do it. What's on the other side? Salvation and peace.

"But you can find salvation without art. Sure, lots of artists like Van Gogh who had horrible lives found release through their art. But I don't think it was the art that saved them; it was the work, the love of the human act involved, that brought them peace. Their work just happened to be putting paint on a canvas, or whatever.

The miracle is somewhere in the human act. The only difference I see between an artist and a ditchdigger who loves his work is this: When the artist is working well, he's also able to control some of the chaos of his life through his work, besides enjoying the effort. The ditchdigger only moves dirt from here to there.

"But don't get me wrong – if he loves that movement, he's still a hell of a lot better off than many people."

She smiled. "You stopped making pictures because it didn't satisfy you anymore?"

"Hell, no! I loved making films. I still do. It's like having a conversation with someone you really like and admire. But when you run out of words or things to say, your listener can be the most fascinating person and you're still stuck.

"That's why I started the Cancer Theater Group. There's a million things to say there."

"Because the actors are dying?"

"No, because they're all hungry for whatever they can get. I feel that every day, and it makes me hungry too – for life, not art."

"What about art raising life to a higher level?"

"From my experience with this group, art at its best only raises life to an all-encompassing now. It forces us to forget time, or death, or anything and just allows us to live now. That's why the actors are so excited by what they're doing. For a couple of hours in their terminal day-today, they don't have to think about pills or chemotherapy. They're immortal."

"I have cancer too."

"That's what you said. Do you want to talk about it?" I didn't look up or change the tone of my voice.

"Not yet. Cancer, and I'm pregnant. Some combination, huh? Life and death living in one stomach, hand in hand! I don't even know where the baby came from."

"We can talk whenever you want. In the meantime, do you have any horseradish?"

When things are bad I often go into the nearest kitchen and cook. I try to make the acts of cutting and measuring, pouring and stirring, into little Zen masterpieces that, taken together, might someday metamorphose into mini-Satori. I don't close my eyes and shoot arrows into bull's-eyes, I stir-fry.

While I put things together, Sasha asked if it'd be all right to go in and lie down till lunch was ready. That was fine because good meals are temperamental – if, while preparing, you don't give them your full attention they often turn out flat and sulky, hiding in their room behind too much salt or spice.

About ten minutes later, deep into the secrets of shaving carrots, I didn't notice when she entered the room.

"Oh, carrots! Can I have one?" She wore a blue-and-white sailor-boy skirt and blouse, white knee socks, and patent leather shoes. The heart-breakers were the little white gloves and patent leather purse that looked brand new.

My first thought was to look beyond her, down the hall toward Sasha's bedroom.

Seeing this she spoke again, her voice pouty and hurt. "If you want me to go away, wake her up. That's all you have to do, if you don't want me around!"

"Come here!" Taking her small gloved hand, I pulled her into a room off the kitchen where Sasha kept a television and an old couch. "Where were you? Where have you been?"

"At the graveyard. I took Phil some flowers."

"Where did you go the other day? When we were up at his house?"

Snapping her shiny purse open and closed, open and closed, she just shrugged.

"Only one of you can be here at a time. Is that right?"

She looked at her purse, opened and closed it again, and nodded without looking at me.

"I don't understand something. You were around before Phil met Sasha. Why are you . . . in her now?"

"I don't know! I was with Phil when he was a little boy. I've been his friend a lot longer than she has!"

"Then why is she pregnant with you? She says she hadn't slept with him for months."

"What's 'slept with'? You mean in the same bed?"

"I mean have sex. They hadn't fucked for months!"

"What do you mean, 'fuck'?"

I glared at her, incredulous. Was it possible? To know so many things, to be pure magic, and not know that?

Yes, if she was really only a child.

"Sit down here. Sit next to me. I want you to tell me everything that's happened, from the minute you came back to be with Phil. Will you do that? I need to know everything, okay?"

Wonder belongs to children, so when they talk about it, it's usually in the relaxed, reasonable voice of long-time residents. More than real life, wonder is their home. They believe in miracles, people with successful wings, religion. "Impossible" is an enemy, gravity too, our mundane and inappropriate schedules for them. Many of their days aren't even spent on this earth with us. They are just very good at pretending they're here.

Pinsleepe said she was eight. I later assumed that meant Phil created her when he was eight and she never got older. But if that were true, how could she have written "Mr. Fiddlehead"?

"I didn't write it! I only saw it was Phil's and thought it was a good trick to change it. I touched the pages."

There was a pad of paper on the television set. I picked it up and riffled through the pages to make sure there was nothing on them. Completely blank. I needed some other irrefutable proof from her, another miracle to convince me that what Pinsleepe said was true.

"Touch this one. Do the same thing with this. Make 'Mr. Fiddlehead' again."

She took the pad, drummed her fingers on it once, handed it back.

Every page was filled with Phil's handwriting, on both sides. It must have been a very long story handwritten, because the entire pad was full. I put it down and looked at her.

"Did Phil make you up when you were children?"

"Sorta."