Aside from Colin there was his grandmother, who loved to talk about genetics and had written a novel about Mendel, Alice’s grandmother, a kid named Yura and his mother, Karma, a set of triplets on a neighboring street who sang in a chorus underneath my window whether I wanted it or not, and, of course, the apparition.

The apparition lived somewhere near the apple tree and was a quite recent arrival.

I was sitting with Alice on the terrace and waiting for the new house robot to finish my super. So far the robot had tried its hands at cooking twice, and failed, leaving two saucepans sitting on the kitchen counter with overdone maccaroni and burned rice, and Alice and I were cussing out the factory, but neither of us wanted to bother with the chore, and Alice’s grandmother had already set off for the theater, nor could we have called for instructions. Our house-com was broken and she had taken the pocket-com with her.

Alice said:

“He’ll come today.”

“Who — he?”

“My parition.”

“Ap-parition. One word.” I corrected her automatically, not taking my eyes from the robot.

“Okay.” Alice wasn’t going to argue. “So he’ll be my AP-parition. And Colin stole some nuts from the twins. Isn’t that remarkable?”

“Remarkable. What’s your apparition like?”

“He’s nice.”

“Everyone you know is nice.”

“Other than Colin.”

“All right, other than Colin…. I was thinking; if I brought you home a fire breathing dragon lizard would you be able to make friends with it too?”

“Sure. Is it nice?”

“No one’s been able to talk with it yet to find out. It comes from Mars and spits fiery venom.”