Good to Be God (19 page)

The only solution would be if I could resurrect his wife.

“Don’t give up,” I say, even though I don’t believe it. If anyone is in the ideal position to give up, it’s Mike, but you can’t let someone go down the drain – well, not unless it’s someone you hate.

“Don’t give up. You never know what’s around the corner.”

“Let me tell you a story about my uncle,” says Dave. “He was a man with severe marital problems. He woke up one morning to find two dead men in his driveway.”

I don’t quite see why Dave tells us this story. The two dead men his uncle found had apparently stabbed each other to death. One he recognized as the contract killer he had hired to do his wife and, judging from his wife’s expression when she saw the bodies, the other body was presumably the contract killer she had hired to do him. This cleared the air and last year they celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary.

At two in the morning, Dave gets a call from a man with a freezer full of lamb chops, three tons of them. “This is 147

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the trouble with having a name like Dishonest Dave. I mean what can I do with three tons of lamb chops? Hang on.” He disappears into the club’s kitchen and on return announces with pleasure: “Our tab’s clear.”

As dawn manifests and I’m unshackled, Dave offers Mike to be his counsel and a compilation of Ornette Coleman. He also recommends South Beach police station as the best one to hand himself in at.

Dishonest Dave and I accompany Mike to his car as he has one putt returner with him. I had got round to mentioning my dissatisfaction with the putt returners I had encountered and embarrassingly Mike now insists I should take it off his hands as he won’t be needing it. It’s easier to agree and allow him this act of generosity as a start on the atonement, even though it’s awkward accepting a gift from a man who’s either going to be dead or locked up for good in a few hours – but nevertheless, a good putt returner…

I’m also concerned that the putt returner might be stuck in the back with his wife’s corpse. Mike has a huge SUV which he has parked on some wasteland three blocks away. Get this. He parked out there to save the parking fee: old habits die hard. He takes a putt returner off the back seat.

“I’m not a bad person, but give me those keys,” shouts a car-jacker with a gun. It’s now that I digest that we’re in a secluded stretch off the main strip, and while someone might take the trouble to report us getting shot, we can’t count on any passing observers to note the robbery.

I’m very nervous that Mike will have a go at the jacker, death by criminal, and I think if he had been alone, he would have; I’m also nervous that Dave will have a go.

“It is you,” I accuse Dave.

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“I told you,” says Dave, shrugging his shoulders.

“You don’t want to take this car, son,” Mike coaxes grandfatherly.

“You’re an expert on what I want, are you? You’ve made a study of me for years?”

Now you can’t really expect to like your car-jacker, but car-jacking is like everything else – it can be done professionally or it can be done imbecilely. Also, while some are driven to crime by desperation, he’s enjoying it.

“I can give you a good reason not to take this car,” says Mike.

“What’s that?” says the jacker. “Crime doesn’t pay? It looks pretty good from where I’m standing. Now, amuse me.”

“Sorry?” says Mike.

“Amuse me. Entertain me. Sing me a song or something or I’ll jink you good.”

Is it really necessary to have this much humiliation in life? It occurs to me that, apart from not being in good voice, I don’t know any songs, maybe a few first lines. Mike launches into something familiar – but which I can’t name – with a confident, practised bass tone. You can see the jacker wants to fuss, but unfortunately he’s got what he wanted.

“What’s that?” asks the jacker pointing at the putt returner.

“A putt returner,” I say. “It’s for—”

“Does it work? I’ve never found one that works right.”

“It’s not very good…” But he’s not falling for that. I hand it over. He gets in the car.

“Don’t you want our wallets?” Dave asks.

“Are you calling me stupid? If I’d wanted your wallets, I would have asked for your wallets.”

“Why don’t you want our wallets? You’re a joke. You forgot and now you’re pretending that you didn’t want them.” I say 149

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nothing. Dave takes a clutch of dollar bills from his wallet and waves them. Mike moves forward to make another entreaty, but Dave restrains him. “Let him take the car.”

The jacker has trouble with the ignition.

“That’s piss-poor, not being able to start the car, for a jacker,”

Dave comments. Mike has to show him how to jiggle the key.

“I’m a wonderful human being,” says the jacker as the engine revs. “But you have to do what you have to do. I have no problem with my self-esteem.” We watch the car move down the road.

“You know,” Dave says to Mike, “when you report this to the police, you don’t have to mention that your wife wasn’t alive when she left you.”

G

“My husband used to cry all the time,” says Gulin. She is making some pancakes, in good spirits. Her observation isn’t spiteful, rather regretful.

I sympathize with her husband. You have to act tough outside, but the main merit of home is to be able to curl up and weep, and there is nowhere to hide in marriage: the soiled underwear, the buckling, the strange habits, the embarrassing and persistent medical condition. They all get repeated, thorough viewing.

Despair. What good is despair? Pain, now the utility of pain is indisputable. Pain teaches you to stay away from fire, indigestible foodstuffs and not to jump out of third-storey windows. Despair gets in the way, an emotional weed that entangles you and that makes things harder by throwing blackness everywhere. I can’t see an upside to it.

Her marriage has gone down, her husband wants to kill her, and even if it was a doomed marriage it would be natural to be 150

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a little down about it, but if she’s in distress, it’s hidden. Most of us catch colds regularly, but there are hardy souls who don’t.

Gulin isn’t one for brooding.

Gulin serves Napalm and me. Her good spirits are partly down to her new job, which requires her to live in. Her new employer is paralysed on one side, terminally ill and already has a rota of nurses but needs a round-the-clock helper for his business. I’d find it profoundly depressing caring for someone that ill, but Gulin is unfazed: “Hey we’re all coming or going.”

Indeed, the prospect of non-stop, well-paid work pleases her.

I’m sure she does a good job too, but what will her efforts earn her? Her employer will be dead soon and she’ll have to look for another position, something that takes time and effort even if you’re good at it. That’s the trouble with that line of work as an assistant, you can’t move up, you can only move along and when the person providing the reference is dead it may not count for much. You want your job to be on a ladder, something where you can move up to be a senior something.

It’s rare for her to cook, because she hardly ever seems to eat.

She’s wearing a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt which look good, but they will have been the cheapest jeans and T-shirt available on the continent. It is a little shaming to encounter someone just much tougher, more frugal, more joyful, more able than you; someone quite simply a better person.

“We’ll miss you,” says Napalm, reaching for his fourth pancake.

“I’ll be back from time to time,” says Gulin. She’s keeping her room in case the arrangement doesn’t work out. Napalm has already volunteered to take care of Orinoco. I take my fifth pancake. I’m too occupied stuffing my face to make much conversation.

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“Why don’t you ask me a question, Tyndale?” asks Gulin.

“Tonight, but only tonight, you can ask me any question you like, and I won’t be offended. I promise. Any question.” This is definitely flirting.

What I want to ask is how can I be like you? How can I make myself like you? I know that there is no answer to that, or rather the answer is no.

“What’s the meaning of life?” I ask.

She laughs.

“Well?” I insist.

“I said you could ask any question. I didn’t say I’d answer it.”

Her face and build are too solid to be considered by most as beautiful for a woman. I suppose pleasant to the eye is the most accurate way of describing her. Beauty, of course, is nothing, but it takes a long time to learn that.

G

“I need to talk to you,” says Dishonest Dave. His tone alone communicates that something’s badly amiss. “I… need to ask a favour. You do this feeding-the-homeless stuff now for the Hierophant. I want you to look out for someone.”

“Sure.” Considering all he’s done for me, I’m delighted to do him a favour. He slides a photograph across my desk. “I want you to look out for him.” It’s a picture of a grinning man holding up a bottle of beer to the camera in a celebratory way.

“Who is it?”

“My brother.”

Now he says it, the resemblance springs out. His brother is much heavier, fat indeed, but the arched eyebrows are the same.

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“Yeah. My brother. He… he… well, he had a lot of problems.

A lot of problems. I don’t know where he is. I lost touch with him months ago. He may well be out there… so if you see him, I’d consider it a big favour if you’d let me know. A big favour.

His name’s Horace.”

“Older brother?”

“Yeah. He… taught me how to box. We had no one else.

He… he looked after me, you know?” On the words “looked after me”, Dave’s voice trembles and he sobs. I pass him a tissue (the Hierophant’s office is always stocked with them). He takes a deep breath and pulls himself together.

“I can’t believe I did that. It’s unpardonable… absolutely unpardonable. What you must think of me.”

He does suspect I think less of him. On the contrary, I know in the league table of hardness he is well above me. He was keen to get into the boxing ring to fight strong, well-trained athletes whose uppermost desire was to seriously injure or kill him. He’s a survivor. I’m not. But these inconsistencies are interesting.

Out there in some corner of Miami will be someone willing to take the life of a stranger for small change, but who would be too tongue-tied to ask a girl onto the dance floor. Of course, if you’re worried about being hard you’re not. The world’s hardest man won’t think himself hard.

“Everyone breaks. And remember, I am a pastor.”

“No you’re not.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Horace was too generous. Most people who end up on the street have made a mistake. His was being too generous. He could have stayed with me, but he wouldn’t.”

Dave then offers to take me to a corrupt doctor, a Brazilian plastic surgeon. I don’t have the heart to tell Dave that, mulling 153

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over my miracle, I’ve changed my mind and concluded that what I need is not a corrupt doctor, but an honest one.

“This guy is so crooked, whatever you want him for you’d better be quick, because he won’t be out of jail long.”

I don’t see the dog until it’s right next to us. If I said to you what would you do if you were attacked by a large, aggressive dog, you would probably come up with some sensible suggestions for self-defence, but when you are actually attacked by a large, aggressive dog you don’t have those seconds of tranquillity in which to consider action.

The dog is four or five feet away from me, barking furiously.

It’s huge, a canine bodybuilder, stuffed with steak and steroids.

I gingerly back off, because dogs don’t like to attack from the front. As I move backwards, the dog matches me, maintaining the same distance. After a few yards of this retreat, I realize that the dog is not vicious or especially dangerous: it’s doing what’s expected of it. It’s got loose by negotiating some gap in a fence or wobbly gate, and now the street is part of its territory.

Dave, meanwhile, I’ve registered out of the corner of my eye, has flown up a tree which I wouldn’t be able to climb with the aid of a ladder.

“This, this is what happens when you leave your gun in the car.” We had parked round the corner and were walking to the Brazilian’s when the dog bounded up. The dog’s barking diminishes and it observes me.

I observe the dog. Its muscles are astonishingly large and defined. It must have escaped from some garden nearby, and to some extent I’m glad that Dave doesn’t have his gun, because this isn’t the dog’s fault. It’s the owner’s.

I like dogs. It’s stupid to say that because dogs have their characters; there are nasty, jumpy, useless dogs. But generally I 154

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like dogs, and not for the most cited reason, loyalty. I like them because most are willing to work, unlike cats, but above all because they’re willing to look stupid, unlike cats. Dogs don’t mind making fools of themselves, because they know it gives the pack a laugh. It’s what you want from your friends almost as much as their support: their folly. Got drunk and bedded someone incredibly ugly? Spent all your money on tatty sports memorabilia (which turns out to be counterfeit) without telling the wife? Rewired your home and set it on fire? We’re grateful for the laugh. Everyone should do their share of jestering.

The dog licks its chops and we regard each other. The dog is bored and neither of us knows what to do. I won’t attempt to go past this monster to get back to our car, and I can’t spend the rest of my life walking backwards.

“When I find the owner…” Dave hisses from his branch. I see his expression and I understand that what I rated as anger in myself isn’t. My wrath is only ambitious discontent: overgrown disappointment. A mountain range of rage is expanding behind Dave’s features. It’s rage you don’t want to be around, because its extremity makes little distinction between its target and anything else in sight.

In the garden to my left, safely behind a fence, a poodle, attracted by the brouhaha, doggedly yelps and leaps against the mesh. Our monster doesn’t even deign to look at it. After a while a woman emerges to lead the poodle away.