Good to Be God (30 page)

Bribery is like flattery. It works. Even if you know the flattery is totally insincere and ulterior, the mere act of someone taking the trouble to flatter you is flattering. Similarly, bribery always works – it might not work as well as you would like, it may not get anywhere near what you want, but it always gets through.

However, there has to be a discretion and a decorum to greasing palms. The head-counter should have a memorable meal, he 240

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should be pampered; but, but you don’t want to go somewhere where his conscience might be niggled by an absurdly priced bottle of wine.

Muscat bursts in and pulls out a gun from the back of his jeans.

I’m going to die.

I don’t have much time for regret or fear. Tears start to poke at my eyes and I notice that Gamay is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Hotties Expertly Fucked Here”, a slogan that will doubtless preclude that remote possibility of him becoming acquainted with a member of the opposite sex.

Despite the hurdle of his monumental stupidity, Muscat has figured out that I’m taking him for a ride, that I’ve been using him as slave labour (even though the results have been unsatisfactory in the extreme, and frankly if he had been my slave I would have sold him or traded him for any espresso machine). He is too dim and angry to foresee the consequences of murder and he’s going to kill me. I thought it would be Gamay, but wrong again. Muscat is going to shoot me, it’s in his eyes. Fair enough.

Then it isn’t. He’s lost his murder.

“I’m a bona-fide person, Tyndale,” he announces. I try to say something, but my voice is absent.

“I’m a bona-fide person, Tyndale,” he repeats. I welcome the repetition since I am unable to contribute anything to the conversation. “I have rights. You’ve got to let me go.”

“Whatever,” I croak, probably too faintly to be heard. I’d always hoped that I could confront danger without embarrassment, but my voice is really letting me down.

“You’ve got to let me go. I don’t want you coming after me. It’s over, okay, you’ve got to understand that, you’ve got to promise 241

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that you won’t come after me. Don’t try and drag me back. I promise I won’t squeal about your organization. Watch, my lips are sealed, I’ll never say a word. I just want to be happy, I’m going anyway, and I’m never coming back, so don’t try and stop me. Okay, just don’t stop me or I’ll have to hurt you.”

“Muscat, I’ve always liked you,” I say, as my voice has reassembled. This is a line that always works a little even if both parties suspect it’s not true. “If you can give me your word that you’ll leave, and that you’ll never, never come back, I should be able to square it with the powers up top. After all, you were never formally signed up. If you had been in on our secrets, well, that would be different.”

“Thanks, Tyndale, man, thanks, you’re a hero. I owe you big, I ain’t kennedying you,” he says, lowering the gun. He looks tearful. “Maybe we should stay in touch somehow, we have a very special relationship.”

“I’d like nothing more than to stay in touch, but that would be dangerous for you.”

“Okay. Cool. Cool. I’m sorry, Tyndale, I know you’re losing a unique soldier and you must be disappointed, but I’ve found something much better than ass-kicking wealth and respect on the streets. Wait.” He vanishes.

I’m hoping he might not come back, but he does, with a short, dark-haired girl. Young, but, actually, legal.

“This is Maria.” She shakes my hand with a genuine smile.

She seems perfectly pleasant – why she’s adopting Muscat is beyond me, but that’s her affair.

“I’m moving to Idaho to be with Maria. It’s the chicken business for us. It’s really interesting. The public doesn’t appreciate how interesting chickens are—”

“Muscat, it’s not a good idea for you to hang around.”

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“Sure. Have you ever tasted an egg from an old-school chicken that’s eaten plenty of nature?”

“It was nice meeting you, Maria.” As he ushers her out, I wonder if I should ask about Gamay, but I don’t want to delay him for a second on his trip to Idaho. It’s a rare occurrence, but sometimes your problems evaporate.

However, two minutes later Muscat returns:

“Tyndale, man, I just wanted to explain that this is the real thing.”

“No. I understand. I really do,” I say giving him a gentle push towards his new future.

“She’s just everything. I mean your cleaner, Trixi. Man, I had the hots for her. I was spanking the monkey like… like a monkey.

But this is different. She’s changed me, she’s in charge, and it feels great. She chooses my clothes, she made me understand about chicken-farming. I wish my mother was still here to meet her, but I’m sure she’ll be looking down on us from a pearly seat when we get married.”

It’s remarkable how the deceased are supposed to be hovering around when there is a happy event: a wedding, a birth, a football match won, but no one ever contemplates the ancestors hanging around when you’re beating up someone much weaker than you, stealing a bottle of vodka from a supermarket, or rimming your best friend’s wife.

I’m now steering Muscat out the door, but he pushes back in.

“Tyndale, there’s one other thing, you might as well know.”

He gazes at his shoes. “Gamay, he won’t be joining your organization.”

“Farming chickens too?”

“No. He’s definitely in a real no-chicken-farming situation.”

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“Which is?”

“He’s kinda dead.”

“What happened?”

“That’s a reasonable question, Tyndale. It all depends on how you look at it. It’s funny you mentioned chickens. Basically, he won a game of chicken. You know, like nothing to do with chickens, the feathery things, but being chicken. He was jawing on about being badder than me etcetera. I was in the SUV and he was in the road. You know, I just wanted to see him jump, jump out the way, cos I thought he would. I mean if you had an SUV powering towards you, what would you do?”

“Get out of the way.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t. He’d driven first and I’d jumped. I jumped out of the way cos I could see for sure he wasn’t stopping. So I said to myself, I ain’t stopping either. He stood there. Looking sure I’d stop, real confident. Went right under the wheels looking real confident. Real confident to the end. Looked real confident after the end. Man, I was so furious with him. I had to spend the whole day with the police, explaining what happened. If he hadn’t been in the middle of the fucking road, where he had no business being, pumped full of coke n’ acid, I’d be in jail, for real. It could have been goodbye to my Idaho disfrooting.”

“That’s… unfortunate.” I choose my word carefully, because I find it hard to express any real regret. It’s dishonest to lie any more than is absolutely necessary. How much truth is Muscat telling me about Gamay’s accident?

“Yeah, he may have been tougher than me, but he wasn’t tougher than General Motors.”

I shake hands manfully with Muscat in a have-a-good-life way and he leaves. Cherishing that strange feeling of things going your way, I settle back in my chair.

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Incredibly, five minutes later, Muscat’s back again, clutching a picture of a chicken:

“Rhode Island Red. Seriously, you should try it.” Then he’s really gone.

G

There are huge lights. It looks more like a concert or some gala, red-carpet award ceremony than a church service. I am astonished by the numbers of the crowd streaming in, many of them openly affluent as well as the no-hopers and doormats who are the staple of any religion. I check out the sound system and the lighting, which alone cost more than the entire worth of the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ.

There’s something outrageous about this, especially as it’s only twelve yards from our front door: it would be impossible for it to be closer or more in our face. It would be worth throwing open our church, I reflect, since some of their worshippers would certainly spill into our place by accident.

I squeeze through parked cars and join the flow inside.

“Luxury for free”, says one sign. This isn’t the hard sell, this is the hard giveaway. As I enter I see the Locketts seated at the front, with their daughter, Esther.

I have to admit I thought of getting in touch with them, but was too afraid of bad news. Esther looks well, but the darkness cut into her parents’ face suggests that the problem is still there. There are four wheelchair-bound invalids placed up front next to the Locketts, and several others who manifestly aren’t full of the life force. The Fixico sisters have gathered a couple of hospital wards of the infirm.

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You can’t lose really. If they peg out, you’ve been a big-hearted wheelchair-lover, a comfort to the afflicted, and ill faces are quickly forgotten. If, on the other hand, someone overcomes their paralysis or terminal cancer, you’ve got an earner. It works on a percentage basis, the way you used to ask as many girls to parties as possible because at least one would get drunk, bored or stranded and decide on you.

As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing wrong with misleading healthy, employed individuals and taking their money in exchange for illusions, because a good illusion is a beautiful thing, but it’s wrong to feed off the sick.

I wave to the Reinholds. They return my greeting with that artificial naturality of those caught with their pants down.

Virginia scowls there with her notepad. She hasn’t returned my calls. I waited a day or two for her article to appear. Nothing.

Did I give up? No. I phoned. I caught her once, she said she didn’t know when it would run. Her editor wouldn’t give her an answer, she said. Surely a stock fuck-off.

I left three more messages for her. One message can easily get waylaid or forgotten about. In stressful times so can two.

Four messages: you’re desperate or a nuisance. So I left three.

Nothing.

Did I give up? No. I introduced myself to local radio and television. I talked to a couple of people who sounded interested in the story, but nothing. I had a leaflet printed up about my resurrection, which I distributed to the handful of parishioners at the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ: nothing.

It’s as if the Fixico sisters are giving away free money. I now catch a glimpse of Georgia a few rows ahead. The Temple of Extreme Abundance has no problem with see-through tops.

Luis is next to her.

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I’ve lost. My miracle has had less coverage and impact than a missing dog. My flock has deserted en masse. I’ve lost, I’m finished, but I don’t mind. I don’t mind, because I have enough character and backbone to be manful for a few hours. Tomorrow, I’ll be sobbing and suicidal.

Very often when you look at things with hindsight you can see where you went wrong, but sometimes you look at things and you can’t see where you went wrong. Why couldn’t I achieve even a fifth of a congregation like this?

Which is worse? To lose badly or to lose by a whisker? Even as a connoisseur of failure I can’t make up my mind. Being thrashed is especially humiliating and painful at the time, but you can put that out of your mind by consigning the whole episode to oblivion, but losing by just one point can give you the twinges of if-onlys in perpetuity.

Some guy beckons me over. I recognize Fash, the homeless guy who didn’t look homeless, because he had a self-awareness instead of the out-to-lunch sign the others displayed.

His hand, I notice as we shake, is immaculately clean. I sit next to him because it’s the holy thing to frequent the unfortunate.

Although he’s not doing unfortunate tonight. He’s very smart, looking distinctly unstreet. His shirt, on closer inspection, looks like silk and a distinct, appealing aroma of soap or moisturizer wafts around him.

I sit next to Fash although I can’t help thinking that who you hang with tells you who you are. Look at who sits opposite you at your dinner party and you’ll have a good idea of who you are. One of my neighbours was really successful and I kept on inviting him over for supper but, while never actually refusing, he never made it.

Fash is definitely too groomed, and his shirt has shop-newness 247

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– he can’t be out on the street any more. I’m about to ask about his change of fortune when the show starts.

As the music swirls around us, I concede that there’s no way we can even attempt to compete with this; the Hierophant and I are not outclassed: we’re not even good enough to be outclassed.

The preacher comes out and starts his stuff. Great diction, great teeth, great suit. The two Fixico sisters, Margi and Argi, are enthroned behind, watching him. I suspected that the two old dears might have been recruited by a more unscrupulous version of myself to act as a white-haired-granny, crochet-knitting, tea-pouring, everything’s-fine front, but I can see I was wrong and it’s the other way around.

The preacher is the froth, and the ladies are the power. However rarely, there are those individuals you come across, even if you only exchange a hello, whom you immediately sense are decent, they seep goodness (and it is heartening that you will get to encounter some decent people who, nevertheless, being decent, will be unprosperous and unpowerful). The reverse of this warming phenomenon is that, equally, there are souls who simply sprout evil.

The Fixico sisters scare me.

Clichéd little old ladies, complete with horn-rimmed glasses, their eyes have an insect glint. They would eat you alive, and they wouldn’t even show any pleasure. They aren’t just here to bamboozle the invertebrates, there is something not merely dishonest, but very unwholesome here. What’s also interesting is that no one else but me is aware of this.

Rapture and respect are all I witness around me, and I begin to question my judgement as you always do when the herd goes against you.

“God spoke to Margi and Argi,” says the preacher.

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This is a good one. God spoke. The ultimate name-dropping.

The supreme being, a close personal friend of mine, always dropping round for a chat. The supreme being giving me tips.