Dunny sees his friend holding the boy in his lap, in his arms, and he sees the boy holding as tightly as he is able to Ethan, but he sees far more than their wonder at his supernatural presence and more than their relief to be alive. He sees a surrogate father and the son whom he will unofficially adopt, sees two lives raised from despair by the complete commitment of each to the other, sees the years ahead of them, filled with the joy that is born of selfless love but marked also by the anguishes of life that in the end only love can heal. And Dunny knows that what he has done here is the best and cleanest thing that he has ever done or, ironically, ever will.
?The PT Cruiser, the truck,? Ethan wonders.
?You died a second time,? Dunny says, ?because destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be. Your death in Reynerd?s apartment came by your own free will, because of choices you made. In setting time back, I thwarted your self-made destiny. You don?t need to fully understand. You can?t. Just know that now destiny won?t reassert that pattern. By your choices and by your acts, you?ve now made another destiny for yourself.?
[594] ?The bells from the ambulance,? Ethan asks, ?all the games with them ??
Dunny smiles at Fric. ?What are the rules? How must we angels work??
?By indirection,? the boy says. ?Encourage, inspire, terrify, cajole, advise. You influence events by every means that is sly, slippery, and seductive.?
?See, there?s a thing you now know that most other people don?t,? Dunny says. ?More important perhaps than knowing that civet is squeezed from the anal glands of cats into perfume bottles.?
The boy has a smile to make his model mother?s fade from memory, and he has an inner light that shines without the help of spiritual advisers.
?Those people that that rose up out of the driveway and threw themselves at the car,? Ethan says with lingering bewilderment.
?Images of Moloch?s victims, which I conjured out of water and sent running at his car to frighten him,? Dunny explains.
?Damn, I missed that!? Fric says.
?Furthermore, we guardian angels don?t pull our white robes around us and just harp-strum ourselves from here to there the way movies would have you believe. How do we travel, Fric?? The boy starts well but falters: ?You travel by mirrors, by mist, by smoke, by doorways ?
?Doorways in water, by stairways made of shadows, on roads of moonlight,? Dunny prompts.
Fric picks up the thread of memory: ?By wish and hope and simple expectation.?
?Would you like one last exhibition of an angel flying in this way that angels really fly??
?Cool,? the boy says.
?Wait, ?Ethan says.
?There is no waiting,? Dunny says, for now he receives the call and must answer. ?I?m done here forever.?
[595] ?My friend,? Ethan says.
Grateful for those two words, grateful beyond expression, Dunny transforms his body by the power granted in his contract, becoming hundreds of luminous golden butterflies that rise gracefully into the rain and one by one, with flutter of wings, fold themselves into the night, away from the sight of mortal eyes.
CHAPTER 95
WHEN DUNNY MATERIALIZES ON THE THIRD floor of the great house, in answer to the call, Typhon steps through the double doors from Channing Manheim?s private suite, into the north hall, shaking his head in amazement. ?Dear boy, have you taken a tour of these rooms??
?No, sir.?
?Even I myself have not enjoyed quite such luxury. But then again, with all my traveling, I stay mostly in hotels, and even the finest of them offer no suites comparable to this.?
Sirens arise in the night outside.
?Mr. Hazard Yancy,? Typhon says, ?has sent the cavalry a tad too late, but I?m sure they?ll be welcome.?
Together they walk to the main elevator, which opens as they approach.
With his usual grace, Typhon indicates that Dunny should enter ahead of him.
As the doors close behind them and they begin to descend, Typhon says, ?Splendid work. Magnificent, really. I believe you achieved all you hoped and much more.?
?Much more,? Dunny admits, for between them he is required to speak only the truth.
[597] Merry eyes twinkling, Typhon says, ?You must acknowledge that I honored all the terms to which we agreed, and in fact I interpreted them with considerable elasticity.?
?I?m deeply grateful, sir, for the opportunity you gave me.?
Typhon pats Dunny?s shoulder affectionately. ?For a few years there, dear boy, we thought we?d lost you.?
?Not even close.?
?Oh, much closer than you think,? Typhon assures him. ?You were almost a goner. I?m so glad it worked out this way.?
Typhon pats his shoulder one more time, and Dunny?s body drops to the floor of the elevator, while still his spirit stands here in suit and tie, the very image of the corpse at its feet, but far less solid in appearance than the lifeless flesh.
After a moment, the body vanishes.
?Where?? Dunny wonders.
With a pleasant chuckle of delight, Typhon says, ?There?s going to be some shocked and confounded people in the garden room back at Our Lady of Angels. The naked cadaver they lost is suddenly found well-dressed, with folding money in its pockets.?
They have reached the ground floor. The garages wait below.
With that note of sweet concern that is so characteristic of him, Typhon asks, ?Dear boy, are you afraid??
?Yes.?
Afraid but not terrified. At this moment, in his immortal heart, Dunny has no room for terror.
Minutes ago, looking at Ethan and the boy on the stone bench, aware of the love between them and of the future they would share as father and son in everything but name, Dunny had been pierced by a regret sharper than any he had known before. The night that Hannah died, a sorrow flooded through him, almost swept him away, sorrow not only for her, not only at the loss of her, but sorrow for the mess he had made of his life. Sorrow had changed him but had not changed him enough, for it brought him no further than to the point of regret.
[598] This anguish that now comes upon him on the way from ground floor to garage is not, in fact, merely a keener regret, but is instead remorse so powerful that he feels sharply bitten and torn by guilt, which is the mother of remorse, feels a terrible gnawing in the bones of his spirit. He trembles, shakes, shakes violently with the first true realization of the hideous impact that his misled life has had on others.
Faces rise in memory, the faces of men he has broken, of women he has treated with unspeakable cruelty, of children who have found their way to a life of drugs and crime and ruin along the path that he has led them, and though these are faces painfully familiar, he sees them as if for the first time because he sees in each face now, as never he had seen before, an individual with hopes and dreams and the potential for good. In his life, all these people had been but the means with which he satisfied his desires and needs, not people at all to him, but merely sources of pleasure and tools to be used.