"Doesn't change a thing," I said. "I wish you luck. And speaking of luck, I want to tell you my real name. It's Toby O'Dare and I was born in New Orleans."
"What's happened to you, Son?"
"Did you know that was my name?"
"No. We were never able to trace you back before your New York friends. You don't have to be telling me these things. I won't pass them on. This is an organization you can quit, Son. You can walk away. I just want to know that you know where you're going."
I laughed.
For the first time since my return, I laughed.
"I love you, Son," he said.
"Yeah, I know, Boss. And in a way, I love you. That's the mystery of it. But I'm no good for what you want now. I'm going to do something worthwhile with my life, if it's only the writing of a book."
"Will you call me from time to time?"
"I don't think so, but you can always keep your eye on the bookstores, Boss. Who knows? Maybe you'll find my name on one of the covers someday. I gotta go now. I want to say ... well, it wasn't your fault what I became. It was all my doing. In a way, you saved me, Boss. Somebody much worse might have crossed my path, and that could have been worse than what actually happened. Good luck, Boss."
I closed the phone before he could say anything. For the next two weeks I lived at the Mission Inn. I typed on my laptop the entire story of what had happened.
I wrote about Malchiah's coming to me, and I wrote the version of my life that he had told me.
I wrote all about what I'd done, as best I could remember it. It hurt so bad to describe Fluria and Godwin that I could hardly endure it, but writing seemed the only thing that I could do and so I continued.
Finally, I included the notes on the true things I knew about the Jews of Norwich, the books that dealt with them, and that tantalizing fact that Meir, the poet of Norwich, had really existed.
Lastly, I wrote the title of the book, and that wasAngel Time.
It was four in the morning when I finally finished.
I went out on the veranda, found it completely dark and deserted, and sat at the iron table, merely thinking, waiting for the sky to get light, for the birds to start their inevitable singing.
I could have cried again, but it seemed for a moment I had no more tears.
What was real to me was this: I didn't know whether or not it had all happened. I didn't know whether it was a dream I'd made up, or someone else had made up to surround me. I only knew that I was completely altered and that I would do anything, anything, to see Malchiah again, to hear his voice, to just look into his eyes. To just know that it had all been real, or to lose the feeling that it had been undeniably real, which was driving me crazy.
I was on the verge of another thought, but I'll never remember what it was. I just started to pray. I prayed to God again to forgive me for all I'd done. I thought of the figures I'd seen in the crowd and I made a deep heartfelt Act of Contrition for every single one of them. That I could remember them all, even the men I'd first murdered so long ago, amazed me.
Then I prayed out loud:
"Malchiah, don't leave me. Come back, if it's just to give me some guidance as to what I should do now. I know I don't deserve for you to come back, any more than I deserved for you to come the first time. But I'm praying now: don't leave me. Angel of God, my guardian dear, I need you."
There was no one to hear me on the still, dark veranda. There was only the faint morning breeze, and the last sprinkling of stars in the misty sky above me.
"I'm longing for all those people I left," I went on talking to him, though he wasn't there. "I'm longing for the love I felt from you, and the love I felt for all of them, and the happiness, the sheer happiness I felt when I knelt in Notre Dame and thanked Heaven for what was given me. Malchiah, if it was real, or if it wasn't real, come back to me." I closed my eyes. I listened for the songs of the Seraphim. I tried to imagine them before the throne of God, to see that glorious blaze of light, and hear that glorious unending song of praise.
Maybe in the love I had felt for those people in that distant time I had heard something of that music. Maybe I'd heard it when Meir and Fluria and all the family had left Norwich safely.
It was a long time before I opened my eyes.
The daylight had come, and all the colors of the veranda were visible. I was staring at the purple geraniums that surrounded the orange trees in the Tuscan pots, and thinking how gloriously beautiful they were, when I realized that Malchiah was sitting at the table opposite me.
He was smiling at me. He looked exactly as he had the first time I ever saw him. Delicate build, soft mussed black hair, and blue eyes. He sat with his legs to one side, leaning on his elbow, merely looking at me, as if he'd been doing that for a long time.
I began to shake all over. I put my hands up, as if in prayer, to cover the gasp coming out of my mouth, and I whispered in a tremulous voice, "Thank Heaven."
He laughed softly. "You did a marvelous job of it," he said.
I dissolved into tears. I cried the way I had cried when I first came back.
A quote from Dickens came to my mind, and I said it out loud, because I'd long ago memorized it:
"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts."
He smiled at this, and he nodded.
"If I were human, I would cry too," he whispered. "That's more or less a quote from Shakespeare."
"Why are you here? Why did you come back?"
"Why do you think?" he asked. "We have another assignment and not much time to lose, but there's something you have to do before we start, and you should do it immediately. I've been waiting all these days for you to do it. But you've been writing a story you had to write, and what you have to do now isn't clear to you."
"What can it possibly be? Let me do it, and let us be gone on our next assignment!" I was too excited to even remain in the chair, but I did, staring eagerly at him.
"Did you learn nothing practical from Godwin's treatment of Fluria?" he asked.
"I don't know what you mean." "Call your old girlfriend in New Orleans, Toby O'Dare. You have a ten-year-old son. And he needs to hear from his father."
The End. 1:40p.m. July21 ,2008