Good to Be God (16 page)

The area I’m patrolling is markedly downmarket to Sixto’s.

It’s not an area that would be the first choice for burglars or home-invaders, but I wonder if any of the residents would find my quest plausible. Having a dark thought was a mistake. It’s curious that optimistic thoughts such as “I will win the lottery”,

“that promotion’s mine”, “I must find that antique armoire perfect for the corner”, rarely bear fruit, but thoughts like “I’m going to get done” do.

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A stubby man is watering a lawn. I explain my mission and get looks of puzzlement. The Waterer doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak enough Spanish yet to spanglish a bridge. I show him the picture of Orinoco and, instead of shaking his head, he beckons me to follow him.

We walk round the back of the house, which is heavily vegetated, down a narrow path towards a shack. I’m now out of sight of the road, out of sight full stop. I’m uneasy about this, but I’ve asked about the cat, so it would be unreasonable to back out now.

I follow the Waterer into the shack. In a cardboard box are five ginger kittens. He picks up two of them and offers them to me in an all-yours gesture. The last thing I want are two kittens.

I smile, shake my head and utter the word “no”.

“No” is such a cosmopolitan word, at home up in Anchorage, or down in Cape Horn. A word understood by billions of earthlings. Understanding isn’t always such a good thing. I add

“thanks” to the “no”, but the “no” has done its work.

The Waterer is angry. So angry he must have been steaming about something before I inquisitioned onto the scene. He shouts. Then he has another round of shouting that makes the previous shouting tame. I can’t imagine he’d have been more furious or hate-contorted if I’d murdered his family. I am already backing off, smiling hard, when he produces a gun, grabs my hair and pushes the gun into my ear so forcefully it would have been painful if I hadn’t been numbed by terror.

There are a number of questions here. Why is he so angry?

Does he feel I have insulted his kittens and thus, by extension, him? That I have rummaged deep in my throat and spat the results on his generosity? Why exactly does he keep a gun in a shackful of kittens? Is he simply a far-sighted man who has 123

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firearms secreted all around his property in convenient, easy-to-grab locations?

I have never been so scared. I know I’m going to die and I shit myself, although I’m so busy with the terror I don’t mind.

The Waterer shouts for a long time, but eventually I figure out that the only reason he doesn’t shoot me is not any regard for life or fear of any penalty, but because if he shoots me he’ll have to spend time digging a hole or dragging me out to the Everglades. I can’t say I knew him well, but I knew that’s what he was thinking.

The walk home is unpleasant.

G

“What happened to you?” Gulin comments on my mashed ear the next day. I say nothing about my misadventure because I’m so shaken I don’t want to relive it. I doubt if I’ll live long enough to find it funny.

Sixto is quietly addressing the builders, “All I want are windows that look the same as the others. They don’t have to be atomically similar, but let’s say an averagely observant person couldn’t tell they’re different from twenty feet away.” It’s impossible to say whether his appeal is having any effect.

In addition to my sore ear, my underwear is moist because our tumble dryer has broken down. I am developing a new theory that no one enjoys life, that enjoyment is a unicorn, when Gamay and Muscat phone to provide me with more evidence.

“I said you’d have to wait.’

“Tyndale, this isn’t business. This is not, not business. We want a drink, socio. A cafecito or something.”

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A career in lying clearly isn’t lying in wait for Gamay. I’d anticipated they’d be off my back for at least a few weeks.

Perhaps I should do something decisive to get rid of the DJs and not just trust they will wither away.

I agree to meet Gamay and Muscat at a fancy hot-dog diner of their choice, Dogma
.

“Now for the dryer,” announces Sixto seizing the phone.

Making my coffee I hear a series of exclamations from Sixto:
how much
,
when
,
sorry
,
how much
. I feel for Sixto. I don’t know how people our age or younger are running countries.

Like Sixto, running a household is beyond me.

“I can’t believe what they want to charge,” Sixto says. “And they say the cocaine cowboys are destroying the country. The engineer’s coming tomorrow at three. Anyone at home?”

“You don’t need an engineer,” says Gulin. “You probably just need a new circuit board. I can get that for you.”

Sixto and I look at each other like kids whose homework has miraculously done itself.

“Well,” says Sixto.

“I’ll sort it out,” Gulin says.

Unusually, Gamay and Muscat are at Dogma waiting for me.

This is a bad sign. “I’m glad you called,” I say, when there is no one in earshot. “I’m glad you called” is precisely what to say when the opposite is true. I learnt this from Bamford. It’s a brilliant technique of wrong-footing. And you must avoid any hint of sarcasm or insincerity, otherwise it’s worthless. Smile.

Always smile and say thank you when someone hands you a basket of shit. They may doubt if they really gave you a basket of shit. You settle up later, when their backs are turned.

I look at Gamay and Muscat manfully and pausefully: “We may have to go to war.”

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Alarmingly, this prospect doesn’t alarm them at all.

“Imperative,” says Gamay.

“You know it,” says Muscat.

“I need you to dig up… some tools.” I give them a map purporting to show buried weapons in the Everglades. I debated long and hard about how vague to make the map. If it’s really vague, then even Gamay and Muscat might guess that I’m duping them. If on the other hand I put in too much detail, they might come back to me and say there’s no blasted oak three hundred yards past the alligator souvenir shop. What I want is for them to wade around in hazardous swamp for a few days until they get fed up or injured and give up.

Gamay and Muscat are excited. I suppose in all of us there is a desire to have secret knowledge, to lead a secret, outlaw life, particularly if it’s well paid.

“This is the big test, so don’t mess up,” I warn them, getting up with no intention of paying for the drinks. I hear myself adding, “I ain’t kennedying you.”

Back at Sixto’s, Gulin is in the garage, operating on the dryer.

The operation isn’t progressing smoothly – she is glaring at the new circuit board with disapproval – but you can tell that she will succeed. She’s wearing a purple vest which reveals a tattoo of a stylized bird on her right shoulder. Some symbol I suppose.

Living? Dead? You never ask about tattoos.

The tattoo surprises me; she struck me as someone who would regard tattoos as a frivolous expense. Her ears are unpierced and as far as my unexpert eye can tell cosmetics rarely reach her face.

“Here’s a new career,” I say as chatty encouragement. I am humbled by her endeavour. There are so many hurdles to clear before this stage. Knowing what a circuit board is. Finding a 126

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shop that sells circuit boards. Finding the circuit board in the shop that sells circuit boards. Buying the right one. Buying the right one at the right price. Buying the right one at the right price in working condition. Opening the dryer. And so on. I know I wouldn’t make it. This would beat me. But there’s a chance my divine project will work, because it doesn’t involve any wiring or unscrewing anything.

I can’t figure out what would be most helpful, to remain in a supportive role, or to leave her alone to fiddle it out with the dryer. I choose to allocate her a few smiling minutes as a nod to either option.

“It’s not difficult,’ she says. “Not that difficult.”

“How’s the job hunt going?”

“Slow. Contacts. Contacts.’

“What would you like to do?’

“What would I like to do?” Gulin consults the installation leaflet. “I’d like to be a journalist. But that’s not gonna happen.

Contacts. Contacts.”

It’s true. Of course, blaming and claiming is the refrain of the inert, the lazy, the dim, the moaner. I didn’t get the break. I didn’t have this. I didn’t have that. But it’s different with Gulin. I’m in the presence of someone very hard. Someone who delivers. How many times have you heard someone say I can sort that out and yet it remains unsorted? Four hours after her statement she’s here wielding the screwdriver. When she says contacts, it’s not a lament, it’s a statement of fact. And true. What’s the difference between standing in a dusty garage jousting with a circuit board (for no pay, to save someone else a few dollars) and sitting in an oak-lined office earning a car every hour, whether you do anything much or not? A school friend. An uncle. Someone you met on a train.

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Naturally, in order to win the lottery, you have to buy a lottery ticket. And you can work hard to buy lots of tickets, you can buy lots of tickets if you put your mind to it. You can buy lots of tickets and win nothing.

G

Orinoco has returned, a little displeased. I’m not angry with the cat, because wherever it’s been, it’s definitely not the cat’s fault. Orinoco’s not that kind of cat. Gulin is cheered by Orinoco’s return, but annoyed because she has been offered a childminding job, but she has no car, and it will take a three-hour combination of bus and foot to get there. She is tough enough to take it, but she can’t arrive there early enough to satisfy her prospective employers, who aren’t willing to offer her a live-in position.

She hasn’t got enough money to get a closer place (Sixto’s letting her live rent-free until she gets a job). She left her car behind in LA on the basis that cars can be traced, and flew into Orlando, hired a car, drove down to Miami, dumped her stuff, then drove to Tampa to drop off the car, confident that should bury her tracks.

This is the stuff that infuriates me. Here you have someone decent, that rarity, someone who wants to work, someone at ease with hard, menial, poorly paid work, but who can’t get to the job, and until she gets there can’t scrape together the money to get there. Gulin is the only one in this house with an interest in honourable employment, but can’t reach it.

“You know, you can always borrow my car,” I say. Sixto has two cars but his spare is on loan and he doesn’t know when he’ll get it back.

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“No,” she says. Politely, she manages to refuse twice, but is so desperate that’s as far as she can go. Most of the places I need to get to I can reach by public transport, which isn’t bad at all but, like public transport everywhere, is much favoured by the mentally ill, junkies and the generally nasty. It is noticeable that wherever you travel the stupid and ignorant are always the loudest. They can’t talk, they have to shout, and are always to be found on public transport. Also, I have no hesitation in using my legs, unlike most Miamians, who would sooner drive half an hour to avoid a five-minute walk.

Gulin goes off to test the route to her job. Sixto then appears and studies the new windows. He strokes the paint.

“It’s like they had to reinvent the concept of the window. It’s taken them four months to change two windows. And these clowns came
recommended
.”

I don’t know why the thought comes to my mind, and as soon as I say it I regret it: “Have you checked if they open?”

Sixto’s not good at rage, which is a novelty in someone of a Cuban background. He doesn’t shout, swear, wave his hands or throw things. His mouth twitches a little and his breathing gets hard as the two of us are unable to get the windows to open even a fraction.

“You know, what’s the worst part of this? I could have these guys killed. One phone call, a solution architect would fly in, bang, bang. That’s what’s so hard. One phone call. One phone call. I could really have them killed, no questions asked. It’s so hard not to.”

He circulates around the kitchen, nodding and breathing hard, I suppose having conversations of an imaginary, hostile nature with window-fitters.

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G

On Collins Avenue, a bare-chested man who is a V of rocky pectorals and is wearing white naval bell-bottoms hands me a small plastic sachet. He is jigging around the sidewalk, handing out the sachets to passers-by. I usually accept proffered leaflets or items because if you’ve ever had to do a job like that, you will spend the rest of your life accepting proffered leaflets or items.

The sachet contains a clear substance which according to the packaging is personal lubricant. Since I have no immediate plans to bugger anyone, I’m not sure what to do with it.

Having enjoyed two lattes and an exceptionally good tuna Niçoise sandwich in the Loews Hotel I am about to leave without paying the bill, when I get a call from Gamay and Muscat. Not having heard from them for a week I had happily concluded that they had given up on joining an international criminal organization.

“We’ve got the tools,” Gamay announces with the sort of pride a sixteen-year-old would have after bedding three beauty queens in one night.

I’m perplexed. Unwisely I tell them to meet me at the church.

Gamay and Muscat struggle into the office carrying a large metal container they can barely carry. Then they go out and grunt back in with two more containers, dripping with sweat. They don’t say a word but look at me grinning.

I have to do it. I open the latches on the uppermost container.

Inside is an abundance of black sacking material, which contains a weighty object. I unfurl the material, and find myself holding an automatic weapon. If all the containers are full, there must be three dozen of them. I like to consider myself a man with a ready retort, but I’m unworded.

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“It wasn’t easy,” beams Gamay. “Socio, your map wasn’t that good. But hey, delivery is us.”