Bible Stories for Adults (7 page)

As I said, I read the newspapers. I keep up. That's how I learned about my father. One week after they put me in this box, Harry Hines cheated at seven-card stud and was bludgeoned to death by the loser with a ball peen hammer. It made the front page of the
Centre County Democrat.

It's raining. The old people hoist their umbrellas; the fifth graders glom onto their teacher; the cub scouts march away like a platoon of midgets. Am I angry about
my
life? For many years, yes, I was furious, but then the eighties rolled around, mine and the century's, and I realized I'd be dead by now anyway. So I won't leave you with any bitter thoughts. I'll leave you with a pretty song.

Listen.

 

The mademoiselle from Is-sur-Tille, parlez-vous?

The mademoiselle from Is-sur-Tille, parlez-vous?

The mademoiselle from Is-sur-Tille
,

She can zig-zig-zig like a spinning wheel
,

Hinky Dinky, parlez-vous?

 

My keeper remains, facing east.

B
EING
G
OD
, I must choose My words carefully. People, I've noticed, tend to hang on to My every remark. It gets annoying, this servile and sycophantic streak in
Homo sapiens sapiens
. There's a difference, after all, between tasteful adulation and arrant toadyism, but they just don't get it.

I've always thought of Myself as a kind of parent. God the Father and all that. But an effective mom, dad, or Supreme Being is not necessarily a permissive mom, dad, or Supreme Being. Spare the rod, and you'll spoil the species. Sometimes it's best to be strict.

Was I too strict with Daniel Nimrod? Did I judge the man too harshly? My angels don't think so; they believe his overbearing vanity—Nimrod the enfant terrible of American real estate, slapping his name on everything from Atlantic City casinos to San Francisco condos—merited the very comeuppance he received. Hear My tale. Decide for yourself. I shall say this. As divine retributions go, it was surely My most creative work since the locusts, lice, flies, murrain, blood, boils, dead children, hail, frogs, and darkness. And here's the kicker, people: I did it with language alone.

As I said, I must choose My words carefully.

We all must.

Listen.

 

Like so many things in Michael Prete's safe, comfortable, and unenviable life, this began with the telephone. A crank call, he naturally assumed. Not that he was an atheist, nor even an agnostic. He attended Mass regularly. He voted for Republicans. But when a person rings you up claiming to be God Almighty, you are not automatically inclined to believe him.

There were ambiguities, though. For one thing, the call had come through on the private phone in Michael's bedroom and not on the corporation line in his study. (How could a common lunatic have acquired those seven heavily guarded digits?) For another, the caller was claiming to be the very same anonymous eccentric who, back in '83, had agreed to pay out twelve thousand dollars, twelve times a year, for the privilege of occupying the Nimrod Tower penthouse. The man had actually raised the rent on himself: an additional thousand a month, provided he could move in immediately, even though the Tower atrium was still festooned with scaffolding and cloaked in plywood panels.

“Come to the penthouse,” the mystery voice told Michael upon identifying himself as the Lord God of Hosts, the King of the Universe, the Architect of Reality, the Supreme Being, and so on. “Nine
P.M.
sharp.” The voice was high, brittle, and cosmopolitan, suffused with the accentless accent of the excessively educated. “We must talk, you and I.”

“About what?”

“Your boss,” the voice replied. “You know more about Daniel Nimrod than does anyone else on the planet, including that overdressed mistress of his. There's quite a lot at stake here: the destiny of the earth, the future of humankind, things like that. Bring a calendar.”

“If you're really who you say you are,” ventured Michael, intent on catching the crank in a manifest lapse of logic, “why are you living in Nimrod Tower?”

“You think God Almighty should be living in a lousy Holiday Inn? What kind of jerk do you think I am? Nine
P.M.
sharp. So long.”

Michael slipped into the green velvet suit he'd recently purchased at Napoleon's, snatched up his Spanish-leather valise from Loewe's, and descended fifteen floors to street level. Within seconds a Yellow Cab, dome lit, came rattling down Lexington Avenue, pushing through the squalls of snow. (Every year at this time, the same idea haunted Michael: I deserve my own chauffeur—I've earned it.) He flagged down the taxi and climbed into the cozy interior, its seats redolent of oiled leather and surreptitious sex. “Nimrod Tower,” he told the driver, a Rastafarian with a knitted cap and gold tooth. “Fifth Avenue and—”

“I
know
where it is, mon—why else you fine folks be paying me, if not to know? Why else you be giving me such a fat and juicy tip on top?”

They crossed Madison, swung left onto Fifth. February already, but the city still seemed Christmasy: the red and green of the traffic lights, the swirling snow. At Fifty-sixth the Jamaican pulled over. “Door to door, eh, mon?” he said cheerfully, musically. Michael paid the $9.50 on the meter, adding a generous three-dollar gratuity.

He recognized the security force immediately, Manuel and George, the former a tall, spindly, grim Puerto Rican who spoke no English, the latter a self-confident and raffish African-American, both wearing the gaudy crimson tunics Mrs. Nimrod had imported from Baghdad. By day the Tower's guards functioned mainly as treats for the tourists, a touch of the Arabian Nights in midtown Manhattan, but after eight the show ended, and any underclass scum attempting to breach the skyscraper quickly discovered that these men were real guards equipped with genuine guns.

“
Buenas noches
, Señor Prete,” said Manuel morosely, his pith helmet shining in the roseate light spilling from the atrium.

“What's new with the Poobah?” asked George, grimacing. A two-foot-high bearskin busby sat atop his head like a treed possum.

“He's in Japan,” said Michael.

“Buying it?” asked George, sniggering.

“Not exactly,” said Michael, for it was merely the Island of Yaku Shima that Mr. Nimrod intended to buy.

Michael entered the atrium—a dazzling space, epic, echoey, and grand, agleam with polished bronze trimmings and florid Breccia Perniche marble. Boarding the escalator, he ascended though the tiers of polyglot shops. Level A, Loewe's of Spain; Level B, Jourdan's of France; Level C, Beck's of Germany; Level D, Pineider's of Italy. Michael's own stooped self glided by, caught in a gleaming copper panel—his hunched shoulders, receding hairline, pinched sad-eyed face. He got off on E, the floor from which the multispeed, indoor waterfall, at the moment set on Slow, commenced its perpetual plunge. Marching past Norman Crider Antiques, he flashed his corporation pass to the Vietnamese guard and stepped into the open elevator.

The penthouse commanded the entire sixty-third floor. A castle in the clouds, Michael mused as he rose, his eardrums tightening with the force of his ascent; a San Simeon of the sky, he decided, disembarking. The front door, a slab of glossy oak, held a bronze ring threaded through the nostrils of a minotaur. He grasped the ring and knocked.

God answered. At least, that was who the penthouse's occupant claimed to be. “Hi, I'm God,” he said amiably, “into macroevolution, quantum mechanics, and Jewish history.” Those cosmopolitan tones again, filtered this time through the pressure in Michael's ears.

“Michael Prete.”

“I know,” said the alleged deity. “Everything,” he added. With his dusky skin, Prince Valiant haircut, and deep chocolate eyes, he seemed of no particular nationality, and his age and gender were likewise indeterminate. A mildly feminine bosom swelled the breast of his white silk housecoat.

They shook hands.

“I suppose you'd like some sort of proof,” said the penthouse's owner in a subtly chiding voice. He led Michael into a parlor paved with carpeting so soft and thick it was like walking on a gigantic pat of butter. “I suppose you expect a sign.” They moved past a Steinway grand piano to a tract of window the size of a squash court.
“Viola,”
said the rich man, gesturing toward the storm-swept city below.

 

Being God, I was able to give Michael Prete several signs that night. First I made the blizzard disappear.
Whoosh, poof
, and suddenly it was a sweltering summer night in New York, not a smidgen of slush, not one snowflake. The thermometer read ninety-one degrees Fahrenheit.

Michael was impressed, but his skepticism vanished completely only after I filled the nocturnal sky with phosphorescent seraphim singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and the streets with platoons of cherubim giving out roast turkeys to homeless alcoholics.

I changed everything back, of course. Restored the season, recalled the turkeys, sent the angels home, wiped all trace of the event from the collective consciousness. If You intervene too profusely in Earth's affairs, I've noticed, the inhabitants become chronically distracted, and they forget to worship You.

 

“Would you like a drink?”

“Y-yes. A d-drink. Please.” Michael was so shaken he'd dropped his Spanish-leather valise on the rug. “Are You really
God?
God Himself?”

“Ever since I can remember.”

“This is hard to take. You can understand that, right? Do You have any brandy, God, Sir?”

The Almighty strolled to His mahogany bookshelves and took down two sparkling cognac glasses and a crystalline decanter containing a honey-colored liquid. “I want you to come clean about something. A confession, if you will. Given that you're a practicing Catholic, perhaps I should summon a priest . . .”

“Depends on the sin,” Michael mumbled, glumly pondering the possibility that he had lost his mind. “If it's venial—”

“You hate Daniel Nimrod, don't you?” God asked abruptly as He filled both glasses with brandy.

Michael gasped so profoundly his clogged ears popped. “It's not a bad situation, this life of mine. Really. Yes. I've got my own apartment on Lexington with a dishwasher and a rear-screen TV.”

“He makes you call him ‘sir.'”

“He doesn't
make
me.”

“He sounds pompous.”

Michael sipped cognac. “Anybody who's achieved as much as Mr. Nimrod—a person like that has a right to be keen on himself, don't You think?”

“You're envious. Your insides are bright green, I can see them. He's got his yacht and his concubines and his name in
Fortune
every month, and what have you got, Prete? You can't even get a
date.
Never mind. We'll change the subject. What can you tell me about Nimrod Gorge?”

Michael knotted up; he sweated as if caught in the ersatz summer God had recently imposed on Manhattan. “I'm not free to discuss that particular project.”

“And Nimrod Mountain—another secret? Your boss fancies seeing his name on things, doesn't he? He's a man who likes to leave his mark.” God sat down on His revolving piano stool and began pecking out “Chopsticks” with His index fingers. “I want to meet with him. Face to face. Here.”

“He'll be back from Japan in two weeks.” I've gone insane, Michael decided, retrieving a cowhide-bound appointments book from his valise. Only certifiable schizophrenics showed meetings with God on their calendars. “How does Saint Patrick's Day sound?” he asked, scanning March. “We can squeeze You in at ten.”

“Fine.”

In the March 17 square Michael wrote,
10
A.M.
—
God.
“May I inquire as to the topic?”

“Let me just say that if your boss doesn't learn a bit of humility, a major and unprecedented disaster will befall him.”

To Michael Prete, “Chopsticks” had never sounded so sinister.

 

God knows why Michael experienced no trouble convincing his boss that he had an appointment with Me.

He experienced no trouble because being contacted by Yours Truly is a possibility that a man of Daniel Nimrod's station never rules out entirely. Indeed, the first thing Michael's boss wanted to know was why
God
was calling the shots—why couldn't they meet at Sardi's instead? Whereupon Michael attempted to explain how the skyscraper was intrinsically suitable to such a rendezvous: God might own the earth, the firmament, and the immediate cosmos, but Nimrod and Nimrod alone owned the Tower.

Never underestimate the power of words. When I appointed Adam chief biologist in Eden—when I allowed him to call the tiger “tiger,” the cobra “cobra,” the scorpion “scorpion”—I was giving him a kind of dominion over them. For the tiger, cobra, and scorpion, meanwhile, Adam and his kind remained utterly incomprehensible, that is to say, nameless.

Nimrod believed his secretary's words. The meeting would occur when and where I wished.

 

Screw the Irish, thought Michael. Screw their crummy parade. Everywhere the chauffeur turned, a sawhorseshaped barrier labeled NYPD blocked the way, channeling the limousine along a byzantine detour that eventually landed them in United Nations Plaza, a good ten blocks south of the Tower.

Mr. Nimrod, smooth, cool Mr. Nimrod, didn't mind. As they started back uptown, he stretched out, sipped his Bloody Mary, and continued asking unanswerable questions.

“Do you suppose He'll let us drop His name?” The boss's boyish face broke into a stupendous grin—the first time Michael had seen him happy since the Yaku Shima deal fell through. “Word gets around Who's up there on the sixty-third floor and
bang
, we can double everybody's rent overnight.”