Dillon looked away. He didn’t need to be reminded of how incomplete they were without Deanna—how incomplete he was.
“It’s the best we can do,” he said.
“So, if I’m seeing this right,” said Michael, “you want us all to bust our asses fixing whatever we can, and whoever we can . . . and that way, we might keep things from tanking?”
“Bail out the Titanic!” said Lourdes.
Dillon grinned. “With a big enough bucket.”
Tory came over to him. “You’ve changed, Dillon,” she said.
“I like to think so.” Then he picked up a cue stick, and stroked the cue ball. It struck the other balls, sending the solid colors ricocheting around the table, until they had all found a pocket. The eight ball was the last one to drop.
“Show-off,” mumbled Michael.
Dillon turned to Okoya. If Okoya had an opinion, he wasn’t sharing it. Their exotic guest offered little more than an enigmatic smile. Does he approve, or disapprove? Dillon wondered. And why do I care? That was the question that troubled him more.
If the world was winding down, it didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s spirit over dinner. Michael noted that the mood in the Refectory was more festive than foreboding, and he didn’t quite know what to make of it. A legion of Dillon’s Happy Campers did everything short of sponge-bathing them to make them feel comfortable, and although the attention felt odd at first, Michael found himself becoming accustomed to it remarkably quickly.
They sat together at a table large enough to seat two dozen, and were served a feast fit for kings. Michael had tried to sandwich himself between Dillon and Tory, but somehow Lourdes still managed to squeeze her seat next to his. Michael watched as she ate conspicuously small portions, and loudly denied seconds. It was all for Michael’s sake, of course—to let him know that her obesity, and any hints of gluttony were gone forever. As if her new blossomed beauty could tip the scales, and make him fall madly in love with her—which was about as unlikely as him falling in love with the reanimated Drew.
Michael tried to forget about it and listen to the dinner conversation.
“I hate to admit it,” Winston was saying, “but maybe Dillon’s started something here that should have happened as soon as we converged the first time. I mean, for the last year, all I’ve been doing is ‘dealing’ with things. The tree that uprooted my house, the branches growing through the windows, the neighbors who were afraid to look me in the face; and that’s all I did: deal.”
The door to the kitchen opened, and five dutiful workers brought in the next course, setting it before them on Hearst’s most expensive china.
“After the things we did today,” said Tory, “the things we did together—I can’t go back to living the way I did before. Okoya’s right; our time of hiding is over.”
Michael tried to imagine himself as the world’s Peace Bringer; a great soul sent to calm the skies and raise the spirits of the downtrodden. Certainly he had done some of that back home, but he was only playing, really. He wondered how far his power over the natures could go, if he allowed it. How many minds and emotions could he bring into harmony, if he set himself to the task?
“You know,” said Michael, “I could really get off, spending my life tweaking people into tune.”
“And what about you, Dillon?” said Tory. “I mean, look at all the people who died too young, who could change the world if you brought them back: Martin Luther King, JFK, Princess Di . . . Don’t you ever think about that?”
“Yes,” said Dillon, between bites of his steak. “Remind me to show you my list.”
Dillon left before dessert, and Michael used Dillon’s exit as a chance to escape the table as well. He took a plate of food with him.
Drew wasn’t in the Celestial Suite, and while the helpful hordes around Michael leapt at the opportunity to be of assistance, none of them knew where to find him.
Michael found Drew sitting on a stone bench in the basement, in a sort of self-imposed exile. It was a mournful place of unrestored artifacts—wounded statues, torn tapestries—and Michael wondered if Dillon’s presence in the halls up above would, in time, mend these forlorn relics the way his aura restored most everything else. Still, no amount of restoration would stop the basement from resembling a dungeon.
When Drew saw Michael, he quickly stood up and made himself look busy, studying the objects around him.
“Hearst must have been a maniac,” Drew said casually. “Half the art in the world is in this place.”
Michael reached the bottom of the steps, and handed Drew the plate of food.
“It’s cold,” Drew deadpanned, but Michael sensed his gratitude nonetheless. The food’s aroma chased away the mossy stench of the basement walls, and added the slightest degree of comfort to the situation. Still Michael kept a few feet of distance between them, lodging his hands firmly in his pockets, while Drew sat down to eat.
“So,” said Michael, “how’s life?”
Drew ate hungrily. “Better than death.”
Michael ventured a step closer. “What was it like?” asked Michael. “Being dead, I mean.”
“There was a lot of tofu and new-age music.”
Michael grinned. “You must have gone to Hell.”
Drew pondered his plate for a moment. “Actually, I don’t remember anything at all. It’s as if my mind went through an air lock between here and there. You know what they say: ‘You can’t take it with you.’ I suppose you can’t bring it back, either.”
Michael finally sat beside Drew on the steps, which was about as awkward as anything Michael had ever done. He kept trying to kill the silence with some meaningful words, something truthful that didn’t sound trite, but all that came out were false starts.
“You must hate me in a major way,” Drew finally said.
Michael tried to run a little mental subroutine to see if he could find hatred in there. But that was a feeling as absent as love.
“No,” Michael told him, “I just feel . . . tricked.”
“Yeah. I’m good at that,” said Drew. “I even trick myself sometimes.” Drew took a few moments to compose his thoughts, and became uncharacteristically serious.
“I never meant the mind-screw.” Drew said. “And if it means anything—I really am your friend. The other feeling . . . well, it slipped in when I wasn’t looking.”
“Yeah—well, as long as it doesn’t slip in while I’m not looking.”
Drew grimaced and chalked his finger in the air. “Point for you. I walked into that one with both feet, didn’t I?”
Drew picked through the remnants of his meal, then put the plate down. Even the gentle clatter of the plate on the bench echoed hollowly off the stone walls. Michael found himself filled with questions that he didn’t want answered, so he just sat there, looking down at the dusty floor.
“Hell, everyone’s got some glitch, right?” Drew said with a smile. “So I figure this is mine.”
“And I always thought you were glitchless.”
Drew chuckled. “Perfection on three legs, right? Big man on campus. The track coach would have a cow if he knew. Shit, he’d have a whole herd!”
“Your parents know?”
“For about a year.”
“Is it bad?”
Drew shrugged. “They kind of treat me like I’m the murderer of their future grandchildren, but most of the time it’s okay . . .” Drew looked up, turning his eyes to a faded tapestry, rather than looking at Michael. “Last week was bad, though,” he said. “My father, who never usually talks about it, starts telling me about some guy he found who could ‘straighten me out.’ You know— like all I need is a good chiropractor. Anyway, I went ballistic, he retaliated, and that’s how I ended up at your house that night.”