Good to Be God (27 page)

He waits for a response. I pretend I know what he is talking about by saying nothing and smiling.

At first I decided that as I was running a Church, I should take a look at the Bible, but then I came to the conclusion it wasn’t worth the effort, since there would always be hordes of pedants like Ben who’ve been at it for years and who could outscripture me. I’ve memorized one or two phrases so general they could be a response to any question from “Would you like a radish?” to

“Is there a hell?” But I save them for ecclesiastical emergencies.

“I’m a pastor as well,” says Ben, thus revealing that he’s irked about a confirmed space-waster like me having charge of a church, however ramshackle, and at the same time seeking to establish consanguinity – we both hover between the deity and the masses.

His complaint is about Georgia, the one attractive member of the congregation, who hardly ever appears, but who has saucer-sized areolae and a fondness for see-through tops. This is one question I have never been able to resolve: are there women who are honestly unaware that see-through tops are actually see-through and that they are a universal invitation to wanking?

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I nod sympathetically, but as far as I’m concerned we need more, not fewer see-through tops in this church. I restrain myself from counselling Ben to go home and ease one out. Self-service is, after all, quite possibly God’s greatest favour to us.

When I shake the hand of Mrs Barrodale, her young daughter comments: “God is boring.” Her mother is embarrassed. She could be embarrassed because her daughter might have said something untrue. But she is embarrassed because her daughter is quite right. Religion, regrettably, like our existence, is mostly dull. Until it isn’t. And then you start begging for it to be dull again.

I shouldn’t be here gossiping with my flock. I should be making miracles. While I’m locking up the church, Gert runs up.

“It’s a miracle,” he pants. He is holding a mug.

“What?”

“I was driving along the Palmetto, drinking my coffee when this truck changed lanes. If I hadn’t have been driving more slowly because of the coffee…”

He’s very shaken.

“What happened?”

“Most mornings I see this homeless guy, and I was always thinking I should buy him some food. I was in a rush, but I said to myself, you’re always in a rush, you’re always thinking you’re going to buy him a sandwich, but you never do. So I say today, today I will. I stop and say, ‘You want some food?’ ‘No man,’ he says, ‘what I need is a latte’. Okay, I buy him a latte, if he wants a latte, give him a latte, I’m already late now. But I buy myself a latte too, and I have it in my own mug, because I hate that styrofoam stuff. I’m not irresponsible. I’m driving real slowly and carefully because I’m drinking a coffee, because I don’t have proper control. Then this truck changes lanes and 216

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smashes into two cars. I slam on the brakes and stop inches from the burning wrecks. The coffee’s spilt, but this face forms on the side of the mug and I understand it’s a miracle – the coffee saved me.”

He shows me the mug. The foam has shaped itself into the face of a bearded, long-haired man. It does look like a work of art. It’s not one of those stains that might be something if you look at it from the right angle and a distance – it’s very much the traditional image of Christ; it’s curious that he’s portrayed that way. He’s never a short, paunchy, bald guy.

“You should tell the papers,” I say.

Gert nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah.” I was joking, but I can see he will. It occurs to me that we could contact the sour chronicler of religious affairs, Virginia. A bit of publicity for the Church can’t do any harm, and if some decoration on a mug was not the sort of miracle I was contemplating, well, we all have to start somewhere.

I let Gert make the call, because I can’t bring myself to recount the incident of the foam Jesus. To my surprise, Virginia comes round immediately. It must be a slow news day.

“So you think it’s divine intervention?” she asks. She looks sceptical and superior, but that’s her default setting. Gert doesn’t notice, or doesn’t mind. He’s a mixture of shock and mania. He regales her with his near miss which killed three people.

Virginia doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be on a big paper working on a big story, covering it a big distance from Miami. Fair enough. She’s smart and she’s ruthless, but even that’s not enough. Doubtless, she’s as smart and determined as most of the reporters who are covering wars, famines or the activities of presidential penises. Hard work just isn’t enough.

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She thinks she’s better than this, because she probably is. Not everyone who graduates from journalism school can make it: there are only so many chocolate bars to go round. That’s one of the problems, there aren’t enough chocolate bars, so people either have to accept something other than chocolate bars or they are going to be unhappy.

Close to distaste, she shakes my hand farewell.

Driving home later, I’m surprised to hear Gert on the radio, now claiming to be a habitual feeder and succourer of the down-and-out.

Napalm is watching the television when I get back home and again I hear a snatch of Gert’s voice as the miraculous mug is picked up by the local television. Napalm is watching television the way he watched television the week before.

I observe Napalm closely. I expect some posturese to signal that he has been transformed. A straighter gait. A bounce. A whistle. He goes to the fridge and takes out some pineapple juice and pours it as if he hasn’t just spent the weekend with one of Miami’s most accomplished prostitutes.

“How are things?” I ask.

“Fine,” he says shuffling off upstairs. Has something gone wrong? But even if something has gone wrong, there should be some debris of despair, some glinting shards of ecstasy, not this flatness. I want to probe further, but I don’t want to act suspiciously.

Everyone, whether they’re a fourteen-year-old living in a dreary provincial town where the greatest danger is aggressive gnats or a world-famous starlet with a stable of bodyguards, has the same weaknesses and challenges: meeting people, and meeting people they like. It’s just scale. We all have our ruts, some smaller, some larger. It just depends which league we play 218

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in. Everyone has done something bad, whether it’s drinking the last of the pineapple juice or murdering their spouse.

I don’t understand myself, so it’s no surprise I can’t understand others.

I call to arrange a meeting with Shy in a diner. I want a debrief.

I’m in bed when Sixto taps on my door to inform me that Gert has made the national channels.

That a simple stunt like this can generate so much hoo-ha surprises me and makes me quite angry. Why am I investing so much time in a major miracle when some spilt coffee can grab everyone’s attention? But I’m not entirely displeased. I repeat to myself that it’s all useful publicity for the church, and thus me.

Gert is merely the warm-up act.

G

I consider how much of my life has been spent waiting, standing outside cinemas, twiddling my thumbs in restaurants, waiting for women. They owe me months, if not years of my life. If you’re punctual what it boils down to is that you’re going to spend much of your life waiting. Similarly, if you behave generously, you’re exposing yourself to ingratitude; but if you don’t help others, you can’t be disappointed, if you don’t lend money, they can’t fail to pay it back. In olden days, I suppose, if you lived in a small village, there was a chance people would remember, or not want to be seen as ungrateful or debtors, but not now.

But I can’t work myself up into a real state, as Shy arrives after ten minutes.

“What happened?”

“With the lights off, it’s never so bad.”

“And you told him it couldn’t work out?”

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“No.”

I get angry. Why can’t people carry out their orders? I paid a fortune for this.

“But we agreed.”

“I didn’t use the sob story, because he dumped me.”

“How?”

“He said, sorry, it couldn’t work out, no hard feelings.”

“And you said?”

“I said I was sorry, but I wished him well.”

This stumps me.

“Now,” she says. “You can do me a favour. Give me a good write-up on my website. Use your imagination.”

She leaves as a large man with a shaved head is chatting with the boss. I now tune into their conversation.

“Come on, give me a chance,” he says. He wants a job.

“Sorry,” says the boss.

“You’d be foolish not to give me a job,” says the man, “and you don’t look like a fool to me.” This line could have been delivered with charm, but it isn’t, and there’s nothing worse than failed wit or fumbled camaraderie. In the right place, at the right time, with the right delivery it could have worked. He’s an arsehole, but is it his fault? If you’re born with big ears is that your fault?

“Sorry,” says the boss. The boss is good. He’s not giving a reason, because if you give a reason, you give someone something to refute.

“Hey, look, this is how keen I am to work in your kitchen: I’ll work for free just to show you what a dynamite cook I am.”

“Sorry,” says the boss, not embarrassed about walking off.

Compassion is a disease. I want to help him. You see lots of people asking for handouts, you rarely see people fighting for a 220

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job. Compassion may also be another form of arrogance. Christ knows I can’t even help myself, why do I think I can help someone else? He’s me. Another forty-something sinker, going down.

It occurs to me that one area where the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ hasn’t made any effort is good, straight, unreligious fun. Why not have a purely social evening? A barbecue? A lunch? Some tasty food to lure pilgrims in?

“I hear you’re looking for work,” I say.

“I’m the original man looking for work. Everyone calls me Saffron.” He shakes my hand and writes down his number for me.

“You’re a man who uses his own judgement,” he says to me.

“That’s a very rare thing.” This is intended as a compliment, but it sounds to me like a flaw.

“Oh, and it’s not true that I’ve attacked every one of my employers,” he assures me.

On the way home, I spot a body lying next to the road. Its posture is odd. The raggedy clothes suggest it’s some wino sleeping it off. But what if it’s not? I drive on for a while. I want to drive on very badly, but I can’t. I turn round, stop and get out.

I search for the old man’s pulse and can’t find any. The skin is cold and waxy.

Three black kids lope past. “He’s dead isn’t he?” they laugh. I can comprehend the lack of interest in offering help, but is there any need to laugh about it? I call for an ambulance.

The crew arrive after fifteen minutes and walk up suspiciously.

“You called it in?” They ask accusingly. They look around constantly as if they’re expecting to be ambushed. Reluctantly, as if under duress, they circle the body. I feel obliged to stay.

They fiddle with him, and after a few minutes his eyes blink into life. He’s not some heart-attack victim but a wino sleeping it off.

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“This gentleman was worried about you,” the medic indicates me. The wino’s face is gratitude-free, and will remain so. The boys were right. They were right and I was wrong. Walk on and laugh. That’s the way.

G

I’ve arranged for Gert to come in on Sunday to talk about his mug. Late Saturday night, minutes before I close up the Church, he phones me to tell me he can’t make it.

“Nothing personal, Tyndale. But with a miracle like this, I need a bigger church. I’ll be working with the Fixico Sisters.”

“Who are the Fixico Sisters?”

There’s no answer, Gert’s hung up.

I walk out and I see that, outside the huge building next to the church, despite it being so late, there are still workmen fiddling around.

The building’s of such a size and style it must have been a theatre back in the Twenties, and was last an unsuccessful camping-goods shop. Until recently it was derelict, and I had considered the possibility that when my act took off, it could be turned into a new, larger home for the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ. But then dozens of men in hard hats turned up to renovate with an astonishing, round-the-clock will. That’s Miami, blocks go from stone-dead to swinging in months. I’m curious who our new neighbours will be.

A foreman gives an order and a giant neon sign lights up.

The sign says in blue, “The Temple of Extreme Abundance”.

Underneath, now made legible by the dropped light is a large poster on a noticeboard: “Wish large. The Fixico Sisters are God’s dealers”.

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G

This time I invite Dave for a drink.

“I’m not lucky.”

“Everyone thinks that,” counters Dave. “Everyone thinks they’re dynamite in bed and that they haven’t had enough luck.”

“But I am. I’m not unlucky in the sense that I break a leg every six months, or that I come home and find the house burnt down and my family eaten by wild animals. The really ugly stuff stays away. I’m just not allowed any luck.”

“Don’t moan. Your lack of dignity is starting to pain me.”

“Okay. I can prove it you.”

We go to Publix where I pick up two cabbages. I tell Dave to choose a checkout for me and for him to go to another one.

We both have two carts in front of us. Dave goes through the checkout with his cabbage in three minutes, while I haven’t moved an inch, and the lady at my checkout is arguing determinedly about the validity of the discount coupon she’s hoping to use.

Dave beckons me to another checkout where there’s only one cart. The cash register goes down and the assistant looks in vain for a supervisor to sort out the malfunction. On the other side I study a mother and daughter: the daughter’s around eighteen, the mother forty. How your tastes change. I choose the mother for erotic speculation to while away the time. Fifteen minutes later I manage to pay for the cabbage.