Ooodelee-ooodelee-oo.
Maybe Mr. Truman had slipped and fallen and hit his head, and maybe he lay unconscious, oblivious of the ringing. Or maybe he had been carried off into a land beyond a mirror. Or maybe he had just forgotten to modify the system to receive Fric?s private calls.
The caller would not give up. After twenty-one repetitions of the stupid child-pleasing tones, Fric decided that if he didn?t pick up the phone, he would have to listen to it ringing all night.
The slight tremor in his voice dismayed him, but he persevered:
[305] ?Vinnie?s Soda Parlor and Vomitorium, home of the nine-pound ice-cream sundae, where you splurge and then purge.?
?Hello, Aelfric,? said Mysterious Caller.
?I can?t make up my mind whether you?re a pervert or a friend like you say. I?m leaning toward pervert.?
?You?re leaning wrong. Look around you for the truth, Aelfric.?
?Look around me at what??
?At what?s there with you in the library.?
?I?m in the kitchen.?
?By now you ought to realize that you can?t lie to me.?
?My deep and secret hiding place is going to be one of the bigger ovens. I?ll crawl inside and pull the door shut behind me.?
?You better baste yourself in butter, because Moloch will just turn on the gas.?
?Moloch has already been here,? Fric said.
?That wasn?t Moloch. That was me.?
Receiving this revelation, Fric almost slammed down the phone.
Mysterious Caller said, ?I paid you a visit because I wanted you to understand, Aelfric, that you really are at risk, and that time really is running out. If I?d been Moloch, you?d be toast.?
?You came out of a mirror,? said Fric, his curiosity and sense of wonder for the moment outweighing his fear.
?And I went back into one.?
?How can you come out of a mirror??
?For the answer, look around you, son.?
Fric surveyed the library.
?What do you see?? asked Mysterious Caller.
?Books.?
?Oh? You have a lot of books there in the kitchen??
?I?m in the library.?
?Ah, truth. There?s hope that you?ll avoid at least some misery, after all. What else do you see besides books??
?A writing desk. Chairs. A sofa.?
[306] ?Keep looking.?
?A Christmas tree.?
?There you go.?
?There I go where?? asked Fric.
?What dingles and what dangles??
?Huh??
?And is spelled almost like angles.?
?Angels,? Fric said, surveying the radiant white flock that gathered with trumpets and harps upon the tree.
?I travel by mirrors, by mist, by smoke, by doorways in water, by stairways made of shadows, on roads of moonlight, by wish and hope and simple expectation. I?ve given up my car.?
Amazed, Fric clenched the phone so hard that his hand ached, as if he might squeeze a few more revealing words from the mirror man.
Mysterious Caller met silence with silence, waited.
Of all the kinds of weirdness Fric had been expecting, this had not been on the list.
Finally, with a tremor of a different quality in his voice, he said, ?Are you telling me you?re an angel??
?Do you believe I could be??
?My guardian angel??
Instead of answering directly, the mirror man said, ?Believing is important in all this, Aelfric. In many ways, the world is what we make it, and our future is ours to shape.?
?My father says that our future is in the stars, our fate set when we?re born.?
?There?s much in your old man to admire, son, but as far as his thoughts on fate are concerned, he?s full of shit.?
?Wow,? said Fric, ?can angels say ?shit???
?I just did. But then I?m new at this, and I?m quite capable of making a mistake now and then.?
?You?re still wearing your training wings.?
?You could say that. Anyway, I don?t want to see any harm come [307] to you, Aelfric. But I alone can?t guarantee your safety. You?ve got to help save yourself from Moloch when he comes.?
Beetles, snails, foreskins
On Ethan?s desk with the other items stood the cookie-jar kitten filled with two hundred seventy tiles, ninety each of O, W, and E.
Owe. Woe. Wee woo. Ewe woo.
Beside the cookie jar lay Paws for Reflection, the hardcover book by Donald Gainsworth, who had trained guide dogs for the blind and service dogs for people in wheelchairs.
Beetles, snails, foreskins, cookie jar with tiles, book
Next to the book stood the sutured apple opened to reveal the doll?s eye. THE EYE IN THE APPLE? THE WATCHFUL WORM? THE WORM OF ORIGINAL SIN? DO WORDS HAVE ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN CONFUSION?
Ethan had a headache. He probably ought to be grateful that a headache was all he had, after dying twice.
Leaving the six gifts from Reynerd on the desk, he went into the bathroom. He took a bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet and shook a pair of tablets into his hand.
He intended to draw a glass of water from the bathroom sink and take the aspirin. When he glanced in the mirror, however, he found himself looking at his reflection only briefly, then searching for a shadowy form that shouldn?t be there, that might slide away from his eyes as he tried to pin it with his stare, as in the bathroom at Dunny?s penthouse apartment.
For the glass of water, he went into the kitchen, where no mirrors hung.
Curiously, his attention was drawn to the wall-mounted telephone near the refrigerator. None of the lines was in use. Not Line 24. Not Fric?s line.
He thought about the heavy breather. Even if the boy was the type to invent little dramas to focus attention on himself, which he was [308] not, this seemed a pale invention, not worth the effort of a lie. When kids made up stuff, they tended toward flamboyant details.
After taking the aspirin, Ethan went to the phone and picked up the handset. A light appeared at the first of his two private lines.
The house phones doubled as an intercom system. If he pressed the button marked INTERCOM and then the button for Fric?s line, he would be able to speak directly to the boy in his room.
He didn?t know what he would say or why he felt that he ought to seek out Fric at this late hour rather than in the morning. He stared at the boy?s line. He put one finger on the button, but hesitated to press it.
The kid was most likely asleep by now. If not asleep, he ought to be.
Ethan racked the handset.
He went to the refrigerator. Earlier, he had not been able to eat. The events of the day had left him with a stomach clenched as tight as a fist. For a while, all he?d wanted was good Scotch. Now, unexpectedly, the thought of a ham sandwich made his mouth water.
You got up every day, hoping for the best, but life threw crap at you, and you were shot in the gut and died, then you got up and went on, and life threw more crap at you, and you were run down in traffic and died again, and when you just tried, for God?s sake, to get on with it, life threw still more crap at you, so it shouldn?t be a surprise that eventually all this strenuous activity gave you the appetite of an Olympic power lifter.