Divine Misfortune (2010) (11 page)

“No, it just means that he’s faded into obscurity. Most of his power disappeared with the last of the Philistines.”

Quick said, “Just because he went underground, that doesn’t mean he disappeared. Or that there aren’t plenty of mortals out
there willing to follow him.”

“Mortal losers,” mumbled Lucky, “following a loser god. Do you know that he’s still using transfigured souls as personal agents?
Who does that anymore?”

“How do you know that?”

Lucky gritted his teeth.

“I might have run into one.”

Quick turned off the television.

“No shit?”

“Just one,” added Lucky hastily. “It wasn’t even a big one. And I smote it. End of story.”

“They deserve to know. For their own safety.”

“They’re not in any danger. Anyway, aren’t mortals supposed to die in service of their god? Isn’t that the way it’s supposed
to work?”

Quick squinted hard at Lucky.

“Don’t blame me.” Lucky picked up a magazine and pretended to read it. “Blame the system.”

The serpent god drained the last of his tomato juice and slithered into the kitchen to refill it. Lucky thumbed through the
magazine until Quick returned. He turned on the television, and neither of them said anything until the show ended.

“I used to think like you,” said Quick. “I used to think mortals were disposable commodities, to be used and discarded at
my whim. You lose a couple, you gain a couple. What did one or a hundred or even a thousand here or there really mean in the
end?”

“Hey now,” said Lucky. “I’m not advocating strapping anyone onto an altar and cutting out their still-beating heart.”

Quick shot him a dirty look. “That’s not fair. That was a different time.”

Lucky shrugged. “I’m just making the observation. That’s all.”

“I never asked them to do that,” said Quick. “They just started doing it on their own.”

“You didn’t stop them, though, did you?”

“No, I didn’t stop them. I should’ve, but I didn’t.”

Lucky tossed aside the magazine. “Aw, crap, Quick. I’m sorry. That was a cheap shot.”

“No, you’re right. I wanted the blood. I didn’t ask for it, but when they offered it, I didn’t complain.”

“Different time. Like you said.”

“Did you ever wonder how a handful of conquistadors managed to topple an empire? How I let that happen?”

“You always said you were on vacation when that business went down. By the time you came back, it was already over.”

“Come on now. What kind of god would I be if I didn’t check in on my followers now and then?” Quick blew a raspberry. “That
story was bull, and you always knew it. Everyone always knew it. We just play along because if there’s one thing we gods excel
at it’s avoiding responsibility.”

Lucky said, “Mortals kill each other. It’s not our job to solve all their problems.”

“Bullshit!” roared Quick. A clap of thunder shook the house. His glass of tomato juice spilled across the carpet, and the
sofa fell over, sending Lucky sprawling.

Quick transformed into his human shape. He stood twelve feet tall and had to hunch under the ceiling. Symbols in fresh blood
were painted on his flesh. In one hand, he held an onyx spear. In the other, he dangled a collection of skulls. He bared his
pointed teeth and glared with bloodshot, raging eyes.

“Take it easy, buddy,” said Lucky.

Quick glowered. “I saw it happening. I knew what was going on.” He lowered his head and wiped a tear from his cheek. “I watched
them die.

“They prayed for my intervention. But I thought, screw’em. Not my problem. If they couldn’t take care of a handful of Spaniards
with blunderbusses then why the hell should I bother? Let the weaker followers perish so that the stronger should thrive.
And if I lost them all, so what? I’d just start again. There were always more mortals, more followers. So I stood by and did
nothing. Nada. I just let them die. They offered rivers of blood in tribute that I gladly accepted, but when it came time
to do my part, I just walked away.”

Quick shrank into human proportions, and helped Lucky right the sofa.

“But you want to know the worst part about it?” asked Quick. “The worst part is that after it was all over, I still didn’t
care. Do you want to know when I started caring?”

“No,” said Lucky.

“It was about fifteen years later. I had a handful of followers, but nothing to get excited about. I couldn’t figure it out.
Here I was, the grand and revered Quetzalcoatl, and I was mostly forgotten. A few hundred thousand dead mortals didn’t mean
much to me, but they sure as hell made an impression on any potential followers. Guess they decided that if ol’ Quick wasn’t
powerful enough to save an empire, they’d be better off looking for divine intervention somewhere else. And damned if I didn’t
agree after I had a century to think about it.”

He transformed into his slouching serpent form.

“By then it was too late, of course. I’d blown my reputation. I’d lost all credibility. End of story. Game over.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Quick. You’ll get back on your feet… er, tail.”

“No, I’m finished. Just an old used-up god, a remnant from a different era, more of a novelty than a deity. Don’t make the
same mistakes I did, Lucky.”

Quick sighed and ran his tail around the tomato juice stain. “Teri is not going to be happy about that.”

“I’ll tell her I did it,” said Lucky. “It’ll be easier for her to take.”

“Thanks.”

Lucky slapped Quick on the shoulder. “I get what you’re saying about Phil and Teri.”

“So you’re going to tell them?”

“I’ll let them know. When the time is right.”

Quick shot Lucky a glare.

“I need some time to show them the benefits of my company. You can’t expect me to spring this other teeny little mostly unimportant
detail on them out of nowhere, can you?”

“No, I guess not,” agreed Quick. “But you should tell them. And tell them soon.”

“Oh, absolutely. Next week or the week after that. A month at the very most. In the meantime, I’m sure everything will be
fine.”

With a sigh, Quick slipped off the sofa and slithered away.

Phil stopped at a convenience store to buy a lottery ticket on the way to work. He didn’t normally waste his money but decided
it wouldn’t hurt to check the benefits of his new god. He figured that a lottery ticket was a good test for a minor prosperity
god, and Phil wasn’t taking anything on faith.

He won twenty bucks.

In the interest of science, he bought another five tickets. Three of them were winners, and one broke even. He ended up with
an extra hundred dollars. Under ordinary circumstances, he would’ve walked away, but he continued the experiment. He spent
the winnings on tickets. Some won. Some lost. And he ended up maxing out at the hundred-dollar threshold.

Phil would’ve purchased another round of tickets, but he had to get to work. His understanding of the god/follower relationship
told him there was a limit to the good fortune Lucky could provide. There was only so much prosperity to go around, and until
he earned more favor to raise his share, he figured a hundred bucks wasn’t bad. Just a little help. Exactly what Lucky had
promised.

There was a traffic jam on the expressway, and the navigation charm pulled off on its own. He didn’t fight it. The eyeball
hanging from his rearview mirror seemed to know what it was doing. It guided him down side streets and alleyways on a route
he would never have picked on his own. But it worked. Whatever lane he was in was the fastest. Every light was green. And
his car merged so smoothly, it was almost as if the other drivers had all signed an agreement to let him pass. Phil’s only
complaint was that the charm did such a great job that he found himself a little bored by the end. He’d remember to bring
some reading material tomorrow. Maybe he could get a DVD player installed.

There was a new computer waiting in his cubicle. He ran his hands along the monitor.

Elliot’s head appeared over the cubicle. “They found it in the back of a storeroom. Nobody even knew it was there. Must’ve
been misplaced. They offered it to Bob, but it’s kind of old so he turned them down. So lucky break for you, huh? And since
my car showed up at my apartment yesterday, all polished with a full tank of gas and a two-for-one coupon for Applebee’s pinned
under the wiper, and your shirt is devoid of jelly doughnut stains today, I can only assume that you’ve straightened things
out with your new god.”

“Yup. From now on, it’s smooth sailing.”

Phil leaned back. His chair collapsed, and he fell on the floor.

Elliot couldn’t stop laughing.

“That’s priceless,” he wheezed between guffaws.

Phil inspected the chair. The screws had all fallen out.

“That’s weird,” remarked Elliot needlessly. “You didn’t do anything to anger your god, did you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Eh, probably just a prank. They’ll do that sometimes. Or it could only be a coincidence. Things like that happen, even with
luck on your side.”

Phil inserted the screws back into place. He rattled the loose chair.

“Here, dude, this might come in handy.” Elliot reached over the cubicle wall and held up a screwdriver.

“Thanks,” said Phil. “Where did you get this?”

“Had it in my desk drawer. It was there when I moved into the cubicle. Funny coincidence, huh?” Elliot smiled devilishly.
“Or is it?”

Phil smiled as if amused, but the smile was accompanied by the dawning realization that perhaps life wasn’t so simple when
you followed a luck god. The idea kept popping into his head. It was easy to ignore at first, but as the day progressed it
started occupying more of his thoughts until it proved to be a distraction noticeable not just to him but to those around
him.

Without a god watching over you, it was safe to assume that things just happened. Finding twenty bucks on the sidewalk was
good luck, and having a pigeon crap on your shoulder was merely ill fortune. There was an advantage to being subject to the
whims of an indifferent universe. You didn’t have to interpret every little thing that happened to you during your day.

If Phil had picked a patron of gardening then it would be a lot easier to blow off these little occurrences unless they involved
making sure the tomatoes grew properly or keeping gophers from eating the carrots. If his deity’s domain had been automobiles,
Phil could know a leaking radiator was probably a sign he’d fallen short in his tribute and a lack of bugs on his windshield
was a divine thumbs-up. In either case, it would be easy to ignore a sprained ankle or a cracked foundation as just a random
event.

Phil’s god was a god of luck, and everything was in his province. All the little things, anyway. And Phil was beginning to
understand that life often hinged on those moments.

The support of the gods wasn’t absolute. At least once a year a foolhardy disciple of Zeus was struck by lightning on the
assumption that he was immune to thunderbolts. The truth was that with Zeus on your side, the odds of getting zapped went
down significantly, but no god, not even a big leaguer like the King of Olympus, could immunize all his followers against
every stray bolt of lightning from the sky. And Lucky couldn’t protect Phil from every possible bit of bad luck.

But Phil couldn’t help but see a conspiracy of heavenly disapproval behind every touch of ill fortune. The supreme irony was
that with Lucky at his side such moments were rare, and that just made them more obvious. And it wasn’t Phil’s imagination
that those unlucky moments were a bit more unusual now.

For five minutes, he couldn’t find a working pen. Even the pens given to him by coworkers were inexplicably dry once he took
them in hand.

At lunch, the waiter dropped Phil’s food three times and had to send it back to the kitchen. The waiter apologized. The restaurant
waived the check. But Phil wasn’t certain their incompetence was the problem.

For about an hour, his shoelaces kept coming untied. He tried knotting and double-knotting, but nothing could stop them from
hanging loose. He didn’t trip, but he came close a few times.

He ignored the pen incident, and he tried not to make too much of the dropped food. But after the shoelace problem he nearly
called Lucky. Phil didn’t follow through on that impulse. He did not want to be one of those people who saw the work of divine
powers in every little thing. Or even worse, one of those other types of people who appealed for divine intervention at the
slightest inconvenience. Favor was supposed to make his life easier, but only an idiot expected it to solve all his problems.

He resolved to stop thinking about it. He couldn’t quite succeed, but he did manage to stop focusing on it so much. By quitting
time, it occupied only a little corner of his mind, and he was able to ignore that corner for the most part.

Elliot and Phil were leaving at the same time. They ascended the stairway to the top level of the parking garage, where they
parked out of habit. They weren’t really friends so much as two guys who spent eight hours beside each other five days a week.
Neither disliked the other, but they never saw each other outside the office.

“One more day closer to death,” remarked Elliot with a grin. “At least when I get to Tartarus, I’ll be used to the grind.
Pushing a boulder up a hill for eternity almost sounds relaxing compared to another boring meeting on”—he shuddered—“teamwork
dynamics.”

Phil chuckled as they exited onto the garage roof. Half the spaces were empty, leaving the place wide open. The fading heat
of the day rose from the black asphalt. A flock of finches perched on Phil’s car. And only Phil’s car.

Every bird was red with black spots and bright blue eyes. They were eerily silent and almost unmoving. They’d also caked his
car with bird crap. Elliot’s car, right beside Phil’s, was untouched.

As one, the birds turned their blue eyes in Phil’s direction. Then, without a screech or a warble, the flock launched itself
in Phil’s direction. It whirled around Phil and Elliot like a cyclone. The chirping grew into a ghastly chorus. Phil covered
his ears. But it wasn’t the sound that drove a wedge into his brain. It was something supernatural underneath it, a psychic
assault. The static made it hard to think, but it didn’t stop him from pondering just how painful it would be to be pecked
to death by a hundred little bird beaks.