Good to Be God (28 page)

“What does that prove?” sneers Dave.

“We can do it again.”

At McDonalds Dave is served in two minutes thirty seconds.

The server at my counter disappears for a full five minutes and it’s ten minutes before I get my burger. At the Sears in the Dadeland Mall it takes Dave thirty-five seconds to purchase a 223

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canary-yellow T-shirt. It takes me twenty-two minutes. I get Dave to choose numbers and buy two lottery tickets. Dave doesn’t win anything, but he has two numbers. The ticket he gave me has no hits.

“You’re sure you’re not doing it deliberately?” he asks. “This is very interesting.”

The next day we take a trip out on the gambling boat. I’ve always found gambling boring (unless you’re losing or winning huge sums of money, stakes I’m not prepared to play for). For most of us it’s about losing small sums of money steadily, in not very interesting circumstances.

We sit at the roulette table. I bet on black. Dave bets on red. I put down dollar chips to stretch my loss. Dave plays five dollar chips. I win twice, because as Dave says, no one can be unlucky all the time, and because it’s not just about my luck, but the luck of the others at the table. Dave wins sixteen times.

“We have to be careful with this,” he says. “We need an either-or bet. Basketball. The Miami Heat – we can have a bet on them when they play. But we can’t go too wild, because then your bad luck wouldn’t be bad luck any more, it would change to good luck so we wouldn’t win, if we had a massive bet.”

I think I understand him. We start betting on the matches. I choose the good odds, Dave takes the long shot. I lose, and Dave wins – modest amounts. He wants to give me half, but I tell him that will jinx our betting. Slipping me ten per cent seems to allow the system to work. I have an income.

G

“Okay, yes, so I have a history of uncontrollable violence. Let’s talk about that. I’m not going to hide that. But it’s a history, you 224

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know what I’m saying, a history, like in the past, when I was young, and I only did it for recognition and respect. It’s not like I did it for laughs or I enjoyed it. That uncontrollable-violence shit is draining. And people talk, people talk, they blow it up like a great big Zep balloon, know what I’m saying? What you’ve heard, you’ve got to divide by ten,” Saffron assures me.

I’ve decided we need more fun at the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ. You can go overboard on the holiness. What we need is an evening of fun, good food, barbecues. Barbecues with see-through tops. Now that I have some money in my pocket, I can hire someone to knock up food for the homeless, and entertain the congregation in style.

“I haven’t heard anything. Honestly,” I assure Saffron. He has an amazing number of tats.

“You must have heard about the blancmange?”

“No.”

“You must have heard about it. But remember, divide by ten.

At least. As a minimum.”

“When can you start?”

“I’m ready to go-go. This old ex-armed robber loves to work.”

“Tomorrow, say eight?”

“Man, I’d love to but it’s my anger-management group. And it’s important to manage that anger. It’s controllable anger, but you know, it needs to be controlled.”

“Friday?”

“Man, I’ve got this hospital appointment. I’ve got this funny feeling in my ankle, kinda hard to say what it is exactly and I’ve been waiting months to see a doctor. My ankle’s never been the same since that time, well, this is another thing you’ve got to divide by ten, cos even if I tell you it’s going to sound worse than it is.”

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“Saturday?”

“Normally, most weeks, no problem, but I’m waiting for a delivery of a new fridge and those delivery guys they lie worse than politicians, you never know when they’re going to turn up.

And you need a fridge in Miami.”

“You need a fridge in Miami. Sunday?”

“Well, I could do Sunday, but that’s the day I normally have my kids. Now, I don’t have to see them, but it’s the only chance I get to see them, and those young boys, they need a father to make sure they stay away from uncontrollable violence and armed robbery and shit. But if you want to insist, for you—”

“Monday?”

“Okay. Monday. Monday’s cool. I can’t wait to get started.

No, fuck. Wait. You’re not going to believe this. The electricity company’s coming Monday to reconnect the supply. There was a misunderstanding about the payments, and that company remembers what happened years ago. They never forget. It’s no use telling them that I’m reformed. Those utility guys, man, they’re worse than the delivery guys. There’s just no telling when they’ll turn up. Oh, wait, don’t give me that look. I know that look.”

“Look?”

“I can see that look in your eyes. I’ve seen that look before.

It’s that this reformed armed robber, he’s talking, he’s talking but he’s not serious about being a chef. See, something like that, when I was younger, man, that would have been like a demand, like a plea for uncontrollable violence. But I’m not that young man. I’m forty-four, I love my freedom, I love being out on the streets, so that’s why I’m not going to smash your face into the desk until the look is well and truly gone. Because that ain’t me.”

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“Saffron—”

“No. No, I can see you have doubts. No, I don’t want a man of God to tell a lie, I can see you have doubts. So here’s what I’m going do. Next Tuesday, I’m going to turn up, as long as my Mom’s feeling okay, and she hasn’t been feeling too good lately, you know, she hasn’t had an easy life. What with my history and all, but, but next Tuesday I’m going to cook you some dynamite food, and I’m going to volunteer. I’m volunteering my services, that means you don’t have to pay me, you’re just going to thank me.”

“See you Tuesday.”

“See you Tuesday.”

Saffron doesn’t turn up on Tuesday, or any other day. I was quite sure he wouldn’t. I’m pleased to be right, but as usual it doesn’t do me any good.

G

I buy Didsbury a beer.

We’re down in Coconut Grove, in an undistinguished bar. I don’t want Didsbury to think I’m made of money, but he should be able to help me pull off a miracle. What I need is one big stunt. Just one. Coming back from the dead should get me noticed. If that doesn’t get me some respect, I’m giving up.

“So when do you want the woewagon?” he asks.

“The woewagon’s not what I want. I have another business proposition to put to you. There’s something else I want you to help me with.”

“You’re not a body-jumper are you?” Didsbury gets up to leave.

“No. I’m not. All I need is to borrow a fresh corpse, one careful owner, for a few hours.”

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“What do you want the body for?”

“So I look dead.”

“Couldn’t you hold your breath or something?”

“I need a death certificate. There’s no rush with this. I’m willing to wait until you have a client who looks like me, more or less.

Then it’s just a question of getting a doctor to examine him.”

“Man, do you know the trouble I could get in for that?”

I name a price. It tells him I’m serious. His expression tells me that he’ll dither about it, but that he’s going to say yes.

He names another price. It’s not much higher than my figure, but negotiation isn’t just about the money – it’s about feeling you have the power to change things.

“I wouldn’t even think about this, but my mother’s ill, and those doctors.” This may be true or it may not. It makes no difference to me. Didsbury has huge hands – and he has the longest thumbs I’ve ever seen. His thumbs look as if they’ve had another pair of thumbs grafted onto them, long thumbs to boot. He’d make a great monkey, never falling out of the trees.

“And you promise you’re not into any sick stuff? I’m dextrous on the morals, but I ain’t going that far.”

“I promise; and you can be around to chaperone me.” Didsbury’s straining to convince himself, but he’ll succeed.

“I don’t know,” he says. “You sure I can’t interest you in the choking chariot for an evening?”

“No.”

“How about some solar-powered gravestones? I’ve got a load of those.”

“Not for me,” I say. “But I know a man who could take them off your hands.”

G

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When I walk through the sombre entrance of the funeral home, I ask myself how I will remember this moment. Will I remember walking through this entrance as the prelude to an exciting chapter of my life or as the descent to an even greater misery? Why couldn’t I like chocolate?

“Relax,” says Didsbury. My trepidation must be dangling.

“No one’s coming round. It’s total quiet. People don’t die during holidays.”

I’m going through with this although I’ve now reached the stage where I don’t want to, where I no longer see how it can help; I’m doing it because I feel I should. I’ve never taken a really big risk with a long, painful fall to the ground, and maybe this is why I’ve never got on. Plus chocolate.

I meet Mr Yates. Geologist new to Miami. New to death.

Don to his friends and embalmer. I can’t say he looks like me, but he definitely doesn’t
not
look like me, and he admirably does the job of being my height and short on hair.

We load him into a lightweight wardrobe, and I succumb to a momentary guilt about what we’re doing. Don can’t mind, but his family members might. Really, taking the body for a tour isn’t immoral or indeed illegal (it occurred to me if we were caught, there’s nothing they could actually charge me with since Don is being treated with respect).

Then we place the wardrobe in the van. The wardrobe is there to dispel notions that we’re carrying a body. I’ve always been a little disgruntled about being average: average height, average build and, for a while, average income (how I miss that). I always wished there was something outstanding about me, just one thing: able to put up straight shelves, cooking a great rack of lamb, knowing all the capitals of the world, having a fine tenor voice.

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Now as Didsbury and I struggle with Don, I’m very glad I’m not six foot two. We wheel the wardrobe most of the way on one of those wheely things, but some good old-fashioned shunting is required – Didsbury is beefy and is used to carrying heavy loads, but I’m not. I’m positively faint from the strain. It passes through my mind how comic it would be if I dropped dead in the middle of a bodysnatch.

“How do you like your job?” I ask as we drive off, to pass the crime cordially.

Didsbury shifts gear. “It’s okay, I guess. It’s pretty much like anywhere else. We all pretend to get on, but really we hate each other.”

I expect to be challenged, but we aren’t. That’s it. One of Didsbury’s colleagues could have come back to pick up a book he’d forgotten, but it didn’t happen. We might have been stopped by the police who might have insisted on searching the van, but it didn’t happen. You either get away with it or you don’t, and it doesn’t have anything to do with you.

We carry the wardrobe in as Didsbury whistles and I gasp and moan. He’s perfectly calm, although he’s the one who stands to lose something substantial. We lay Don out and I make a note to do something nice for him, send flowers or donate to his favourite charity.

“Remember,” says Didsbury. “Don doesn’t leave my sight.”

Didsbury’s a farmer’s boy – I don’t know why farmers are cast as simpletons or fools, because they’re not. To make it as a farmer you’ve got to be switched on: you’re dealing with nature, a very unforgiving employer.

Some adjustments have to be made. Don has bushy chest hair, so that has to go. He also gets a severe haircut. After I’ve hennaed a tattoo of a fish on his chest, and fitted Don with a 230

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pair of Miami Dolphins shorts, I leave in different clothes, with a baseball cap, dark glasses. Who was that you saw?

“You got six hours,” Didsbury reminds me, checking that the air conditioning is on full. Now Sixto, as a concerned friend, phones for an ambulance and the doctor. I’ve spent a fair amount of time cultivating Dr Greer, who has a reputation as the only doctor who makes house calls in Miami. Will he come? Or will it be some uninterested locum?

I go round the block to a bar and sit down. The portering and the nerves have made me desperate for a drink. The bar is empty and the barman is fussing with something round the back. I let out a couple of “hallos”.

“Have a bourbon,” urges a voice behind me.

“A water’s fine, thanks.”

“I didn’t say I was buying. I said have a bourbon. I can’t stand drinking alone, and Stan here’s barely human.”

The speaker is a wizened boozehound, and Stan is an even more wizened boozehound, who lets off a snotty snort of a laugh, revealing a mouth with two teeth. Stan slaps his thigh, in that well-known gesture, to confirm to any casual onlookers that he is suffering from hilarity.

Their pastiness suggests they belong in some chilly northern city, they look like third-generation lushes whom fresh air would kill: utterly out of place, like trouts in an armchair.

“A mineral water, please,” I say to the barman who has come within hailing distance. He is confused by this and stands in a contemplative pose.

“Stan. Stan! Stan! What we have here is a coward. What we have here is someone who wants to live… for ever.”

“No, I’m someone who wants to have a glass of water.”

Stan, if it weren’t for the dehydrating effects of alcohol, 231

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would be wetting himself by now. Another lengthy foghorn laugh rips out.

“No, I know your type,” continues the alpha boozehound.

“You want to live for ever, you want to temple your body. You’re a weaselly little wanter of immortality. You drink water and you nibble celery like the rabbit you are.”

The barman is taking an incredibly long time to manage the task of opening what I am sure will turn out to be an expensive bottle of mineral water, and finding a glass to pour the water into. I have a powerful urge to leave, but I badly need a drink.

“You don’t have the cojones for bourbon. You’re not man enough to raise a glass to the grim reaper. Stan and me, we just don’t care. We’re booze braves. Our balls are bigger than watermelons.” The force of his mirth tosses Stan around: he needs a seat belt to prevent himself from injury.