"The one from aisle nine. With the girl in the fur coat."
"Yes, ma'am."
Dot took a coffee. She took a doughnut, a cruller, after careful consideration. She leaned against the brick wall and looked at him over her reading glasses, which had migrated from their chain to the end of her nose.
"Who's it for?" she said. "And don't tell me it's for your niece."
Graham told her.
He told her the whole thing, standing in the alley in the snow at eight-forty-five in the morning — about Sal Castellano and the second Saturday and GONE HUNTING in the window of a hardware store on Halsted. About the rule, win it first and figure out who needs it later. About the porch and the doorbell and the old man running down the steps, laughing. About how Gina had let go of the box on the fifth floor, for him, because she was embarrassed, and how forty minutes later every doll was gone and he'd seen her face when the announcement came over the speaker, and she'd said she was fine, and she had not been fine.
"I want her to have it," he said. "Not for her. She'd never keep it for herself. I want her to be able to do the hunt. To finish it. I want her to be able to win it first, the way he did, and then go find whoever needs it. I want her to get to ring the doorbell and run."
Dot didn't say anything for a long while. She finished the cruller. She brushed the sugar off her parka.