"What about the rest of the time?" he hollered after her. "Sexy? Irresistible? Beddable?" .

If indeed he'd secured the tickets as a way of bribing her between the sheets, he suffered for his lust. He concealed his boredom through the first act, but by intermission he was itching to be away to claim his prize.

"Do we really need to stay for the rest?" he asked her as they sipped coffee in the tiny foyer. "I mean, it's not like there's any mystery about it. The kid gets born, the kid grows up, the kid gets crucified."

"I'm enjoying it."

"But it doesn't make any sense," he complained, in deadly earnest. The show's eclecticism offended his rationalism deeply. "Why were the angels playing jazz?"

"Who knows what angels do?"

He shook his head. "I don't know whether it's a comedy or a satire or what the hell it is," he said. "Do you know what it is?"

"I think it's very funny."

"So you'd like to stay?"

"I'd like to stay."

The second half was even more of a grab bag than the first, the suspicion growing in Judc as she watched that the parody and pastiche was a smokescreen put up to cover the creators' embarrassment at their own sincerity. In the end, with Charlie Parker angels wailing on the stable roof and Santa crooning at the manger, the piece collapsed into high camp. But even that was oddly moving. The child was born. Light had come into the world again, even if it was to the accompaniment of tap-dancing elves.

When they exited, there was sleet in the wind.

"Cold, cold, cold," Marlin said. "I'd better take a leak."

He went back inside to join the line for the toilets, leaving Jude at the door, watching the blobs of wet snow pass through the lamplight. The theater was not large, and the bulk of the audience was out in a couple of minutes, umbrellas raised, heads dropped, darting off into the Village to look for their cars, or a place where they could put some drink in their systems and play critic.