by anyone's count, and you feel immortal, for all your dark thoughts and desires to end your life, but you don't grasp that the immortal part of you is the true part of you, and that all the rest in time will fall away."
"I know these things," I whispered. "I know them." I didn't mean to sound impatient. I was telling the truth and I was dazed.
I turned, only half realizing what I was about, and went into the living room of my small home. I looked again at the walls lined in books. I looked at the desk where I often read. I looked at the book open on the green blotter. Something obscure, something theological, and the irony of this struck me with full force.
"Oh, yes, you're well prepared," he said beside me. It was as if we'd never moved apart from each other at all.
"And I'm supposed to believe you're The Right Man now?" I asked.
He smiled at that. I saw that much out of the corner of my eye. "The Right Man," he repeated softly. "No. I'm not The Right Man. I'm Malchiah and I'm a Seraph, I told you, and I'm here to give you your choice. It's the answer to your prayer, Lucky, but if you can't accept that, let's say it is the answer to your wildest dreams."
"What dreams?"
"All these years you've always prayed The Right Man was Interpol. He was with the FBI. He was with the good men and everything he told you to do was for the good. That's what you've always dreamed."
"Doesn't matter, and you know it. I killed them. I made the whole thing into a game."
"I know you did, but that was still your dream. You come with me and there will be no doubts, Lucky. You will be on the side of the angels, with me."
We looked at each other. I was trembling. My voice wasn't steady:
"If that were only true," I said, "I would do anything, anything you ask of me, for you, and for God in Heaven. I would suffer anything you demand." He smiled, but very slowly as if he was looking deep inside me to find the reservation, and then perhaps he found that there was none. Perhaps I realized there was none.
I sank down into the leather chair beside the couch. He sat opposite me.
"I'm going to show you your life now," he said, "not because I need to do it, but because you need to see it. And only after you see it, will you believe in me."
I nodded. "If you can do that," I said miserably, "well, I'll believe in anything that you say."
"Prepare yourself," he said. "You'll hear my voice and see what I mean to describe, more vividly perhaps than you've ever seen anything, but the order and organization will be mine, and often more difficult for you to bear than a simple chronology. It's the soul of Toby O'Dare we're examining here, not merely a young man's history. And remember, no matter what you see and what you feel, I'm truly here with you. I'll never abandon you."
Chapter Four - Malchiah Reveals My Life to Me
WHEN ANGELS CHOOSE A HELPER, THEY DON'T ALWAYSstart at the beginning. In scanning a human being's life, they might begin with the warm present, then move a good third of the way in, and work towards the earliest beginning and back towards the moment at hand, as they collect the data of their emotional attachment and strengthen it. And don't ever believe anyone who tells you that we have no such emotional attachment.
Our emotions are different but we have them. We never cast a cold eye on life or death. Don't misunderstand our seeming serenity. After all, we live in a world of perfect trust in The Maker, and we are keenly aware that humans often do not, and we feel an active sorrow for them.
But I couldn't help but notice, as soon as I began to investigate Toby O'Dare as a boy, anxious and burdened with countless cares, that he liked nothing better than to watch on late-night television the most brutal of detective shows, and they took his mind off the hideous realities of his own crumbling world, and the firing of bullets always produced a catharsis in him just as the producers of those shows wanted to do. He learned to read early, to finish his homework in study hall, and for pleasure he read the books they