Good to Be God (17 page)

I examine the gun. I don’t like guns. They say people kill people, not guns. That’s not right, people want to kill people, but the guns do it. I am quite tired of living, but this scares me. This is heaviness way beyond my abilities or interests. These containers contain illegality and danger out of all proportion to their volume.

“You boys really disappoint me,” I say. The DJs are hesitant.

Is this multinational criminal irony?

“These aren’t ours. I don’t know where you got these. But if I were you I’d take these back straight away, because the owners might be very angry. Buriers of guns aren’t known for their sense of humour. Or for that matter, hesitation in shooting former DJs.”

“Muscat, why are you disgracing us like this?” says Gamay.

“Me?” says Muscat. I, of course, have no interest in hearing the two of them volley the blame back and forth, but I hear it anyway.

“You shouldn’t be here wasting Tyndale’s time. You’re just too soft.” Gamay storms out and returns with a small box. “I thought we established who’s Mr Bad,” he continues, opening the box to reveal two scorpions. “Let’s see who’s hard.” He takes one scorpion and dangles it above the back of his trousers.

“You’re not doing that,” exclaims Muscat. But Gamay drops the hapless scorpion into buttockville and then sits down, with considerable gusto and a crunching sound. My heart goes out to the scorpion. Gamay whoops as if downing a tequila and extracts some squished remains from his nether regions.

When I was growing up I had many dreams, but I never had one where I was sitting in an ailing church, vainly striving to be 131

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mistaken for God, surrounded by stacks of firearms, while an oxygen thief crushes a scorpion with his backside in an attempt to be recruited by an non-existent multinational criminal organization. A round of applause for the Unexpected.

Let’s consider Gamay’s show. Who carries around two live scorpions? You’d only do this if you’re expecting to put on a show. Again, I can’t divine how Gamay has cheated, but I’m convinced he hasn’t exposed himself to any significant pain or toil – that’s not his style. That he chose the larger scorpion is for me confirmation of a con.

Scorpions vary in their toxicity and, furthermore, like snakes you can milk them for their venom. I can talk about this with some authority, because one of my neighbours invested in a company making scorpion restrainers. Also, since their attack depends on penetrating skin, if you were to cut even a tiny amount off the very tip of the sting, it would no longer be hypodermic. We weren’t given a chance to inspect the scorpion before it was arsed out of recognizability.

“You’re harder than me,” Muscat concedes, “harder and crazier.” Gamay has the cheek to offer me the other scorpion.

I instruct Gamay and Muscat to take the guns away. I know they’ll probably just stick them under their beds, but I want them gone. “This is on a need-to-know basis,” I say, “and I don’t need to know.” They get sulky about having to lug the containers back out. For big, strong lads they are extraordinarily lazy.

“Don’t phone me. I ain’t kennedying you,” I say, already picturing myself on flights out of the country; or, who knows, maybe my luck will change and I’ll get a nice situation in the prison library to see out my declining years?

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G

Sometimes a good night’s sleep makes prospects look better, but not when you’re strictly ruined. The misery is right there by the bedside table. I had to knock myself out by raiding Sixto’s drinks cabinet, but the great thing about being abstinent is that when you have a drink, you get your money’s worth.

I catch my reflection in the mirror. I look rather mad. I am probably going mad, but perhaps one of the consolations of going mad is that you don’t mind too much.

In a mechanical, lifeless way I head off to the church and do some pastoral acts in a mechanical, lifeless way. I’m hoping I can escape our parishioners for surgery as there’s no one around.

Just as I’m locking up, the Reinholds greet me. Have they come to give me a present in gratitude? Because no matter how much punishment you take there’s always a part of you that’s hoping someone will walk in and hand you a fat cheque.

They don’t look happy enough for my taste, and we have some pleasantries in the office before we get to the unzipping.

“We’re grateful, we’re very grateful for your help, Tyndale.

We don’t want you to think we’re ungrateful. And I know you’ll find this funny, but we need you to get Cosmo back.”

I don’t find it funny at all. I’m not that angry because if you’re being burned at the stake, you don’t get that upset if someone in the crowd throws on another bit of kindling, though you might be surprised to see who’s throwing it.

The Reinhold’s daughter has completely gone off the rails, her behaviour is even worse than before, so they want Cosmo back.

There is only one question in life worth asking: is it written or not? Is there anything I can do to change my fortune or should I give up now? Are losers losers, or winners-in-waiting?

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“I’ll do my best,” I say, because I want them gone. “But I can’t promise anything.”

Reinhold leaves his newspaper behind. Out of a desire to escape my life, I pick it up. On the front page of the
Miami
Herald
is a bizarre abduction story involving the Dade County Police Commissioner’s wife and teenage daughter. On a trip out to the Everglades, they were abducted by two powerfully built white males. Instead of being robbed or sexually assaulted as they feared, they were given spades and forced to dig holes for two days. Their abductors kept calling each other “Gammy”

and “Musky”. I don’t bother reading the rest of the article.

Never, never work with people.

G

I’m on the verge of getting comfortable with complete despair, when something good happens.

While I’m handing out turkey subs to the homeless, the young guy, Fash, taps me on the shoulder and hands me my wallet, which must have fallen out of my pocket. It surprises and annoys me. It’s so infuriating when you’ve settled into a doctrine of perfect misanthropy to have your philosophy challenged in this way, because you start asking the questions again: is there good?

You waste so much time thinking. One of the great strengths of religion is that it gives you answers, you’re ready with the thinking and saying. If nothing else it saves you so much time and energy. It’s like shopping: if you don’t know what you want you can spend the whole day looking at, say, trousers, whereas if you do you can buy them in ten minutes.

And it is pointless. One man exhibiting decency on the street in Miami isn’t going to change anything. But you feel guilty, 134

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you feel wrong about throwing away that act of decency, as if it doesn’t matter (although it doesn’t – does it?).

Back at the church, before I can close the doors, a fifty-something woman slides in. This is the one of the dangers of offering help: the needy come and ask for it. The unneedy too.

However, I feel better because it confirms my theory of swings and roundabouts. Someone hands me back my wallet, I get stuck with an irritating woman called Marysia.

I don’t remember seeing her at any of our services, and let’s face it, worshippers aren’t hard to spot at the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ. My guess is she is here because all the other, better, proper churches have shown her the door.

Everything about her is… irritating. She has a strange European accent, and emphasizes everything she says to underline how well she speaks English. Students of a language tend to fall into two main categories: the taxi-driver class where you have enough vocabulary to ask for the fare, and the show-off class.

“I was driving by when I saw your Church abutting on the…”

Abutting? When was the last time you heard anyone use the word abutting? Have I led a very sheltered life? Is abutting making a comeback?

I check the clock when she arrives, because I intend to accord her ten minutes before claiming urgent prior commitments.

When I repeatedly say things like “I must go” she ignores them so completely it’s evident she’s hardened to escape attempts.

Displeasure tumbles from my face in vain.

Her woe is her two-year-old grandson who has digestive problems. You’d think it’d be difficult to talk about a kid’s shit for fifty minutes. If you said to me, I’ll give you a hundred grand if you could talk about it for fifty minutes, I’d certainly try, but I’d run out after ten or so. Marysia gabbles on about 135

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it for fifty minutes without pause or hesitation, though with a great deal of repetition. She has mastered some technique of breathing while simultaneously talking. I time her on the clock.

Our bowels are a vital part of life, but even as a professional ear, I recoil at fifty minutes of a safari down the lower intestine of an infant so intricate I feel like an enzyme.

“The coprolith then proceeded…” I can guess what coprolith means, but I’m willing to bet the doctor that’s treating the kid has never heard the word. Marysia’s the sort of mother you’d move to the other side of the world to dodge.

She’s really so, so irritating. And she didn’t start out that way. She was probably a pleasant kid. She didn’t set out to be irritating. She didn’t volunteer, or take a course. She may have made some bad decisions, but who hasn’t? Maybe she could have fought harder against the metamorphosis into a compulsive grouser, but who hasn’t given up? And if there’s no hope of redemption, there’s no hope. For a second, I’m sorry for her. But only one.

Normally when I get a moaner in, I can drift off, abandon time, have a me moment, if for no other reason than that the true moaner doesn’t notice you fleeing – the perpetual moaners really want to moan – but I can’t shut her out. I seriously consider feigning a heart attack to shut her off when her phone goes and it’s fortunately something significant requiring her presence elsewhere.

“Could you give me a prayer to help my grandson’s ster-coraceous fusillade?” she asks. I certainly can. I utter some words of respite for little Leon. Before she leaves Marysia gives me her card. I’m surprised. I expected her to be an assistant librarian in an outlying library, but she is Vice President of an oil company.

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A number of thoughts go through my mind.

First: she knows nothing about oil. You might judge me a little peremptory, a little sweeping in making a statement like that having spent a single hour with her where the only subject of conversation was constipation. However I know I know as much about oil as Marysia. She knows nothing about oil.

Second: you don’t want to tournamentize life, but there are victors and non-victors. Simple as that. She lucked out. Just because she knows nothing about oil, why shouldn’t she be the Vice President of an oil company? That’s the current style.

There’s so much movement in the job market, why should you be hampered by ignorance? I was almost a freak in staying at the same company for fifteen years. Of course, I tried to get out, but that’s another story. You find complete ignorance everywhere: lawyers who know nothing about the law, doctors who know nothing about medicine.

One of my neighbours’ daughters signed up to be a gofer in a public-relations company, one summer for two weeks. Within three months she was the boss, not because she was gifted or had a ruthless go-getting streak, but because there was a wave of resignations, accidents, pregnancies, stormings-out and, although she wasn’t at all interested in public relations, she ran the company because she felt someone ought to.

Marysia leaves. Maybe it’s the frequency of her voice.

G

Getting back home late one night, I notice across the road, framed by darkness, in a well-lit room, a couple getting fleshy.

Either they were too eager to bother with the curtains or they’re into the idea of an audience.

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The house is rented out to tourists for short stints. I recognize the man first: it’s my ex-wife’s new partner. I have a good view of him as he thrusts away, and he has a very distinctive high forehead and hair like a shaving brush. On further observation, I realize the woman receiving his attentions is my ex-wife. It takes me time to recognize her because my angle of vision isn’t good and because she’s changed her hairstyle. Women are always altering their appearance and then get upset when you don’t recognize them. The worst instance I know of this was Nelson picking up his wife’s younger sister (whom he’d only met briefly a couple of times) and getting as far as the hotel-room key. “Of course, I knew it was you,” he laughed when she revealed her identity, but his attempt to pass it off as a practical joke didn’t minimize his punishment.

In the kitchen, I prepare myself that staple of lone males, toast. When I go up to my room and check, they’re still at it.

I could get very angry about this. I could rage about the near impossibility of my ex-wife renting the house opposite my abode from the billions of rentable homes on offer. I could fall prey to the suspicion that she’s doing it deliberately, but for the knowledge that she’d be more horrified than me to discover our proximity. Somehow the total absurdity of the episode makes me feel this is a provocation, that this has been engineered by the universe to wind me up. Anything is better than chaos.

And if bad luck doesn’t upset you, it’s not really such bad luck; naturally that’s not such an easy trick to pull off, but there you are.

I have nothing against Dee’s new man. He runs a business breeding ladybirds, which initially made me think he was mentally ill, until I learnt that gardeners buy them for pest control. He has a staff of twenty. He’s never going to be rich in 138

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the having-your-own private-army way we dream of when we’re young. But he has enough for a foreign holiday twice a year and a big house with a garden. Dee would prefer to have a senior banker to brag about, because the comic element to breeding ladybirds is unavoidable, but you can’t have everything.