Last God Standing (15 page)

My laptop screen was blinking, announcing that I had a message. The flashing screen found its echo in my throbbing brain. The browser of the gods had added another entry to my list of gods who probably wanted to kill me. I changed my shirt. I’d had nosebeleeds before, but never as heavy as this one. I tossed the shirt into my dirty laundry basket, grabbed a clean T-shirt and logged on. My screen turned pearlescent as the entry loaded.

III. ARES.

Hates Yahweh for humiliating him and probably murdering his father/uncle, Zeus… and for diverting believers during the advent of Judeo-Christianity. Status… unknown.

Yes. Ares. The Greek war god’s hatred for me nearly matched his father’s. More importantly, I hadn’t seen him at the last few conventions. Centuries of bad blood between the pantheons had ensured low turnout from Zeus’ relatives. But Ares was hyper-confrontational – all too eager to pick up a bazooka or a Christian oil company executive and start blasting. Whoever my enemy was, He or She was more subtle, sending in dumber gods to wear me down, exploiting ancient resentments among my colleagues. My thoughts turned again to the one entity of whom I still wasn’t sure.

Where are you, Lucifer? What did you do to Agni?

I searched the Waring, but could find no trace of the Adversary. Lucifer had hidden himself so well that even the search engines of Divinity couldn’t find him.

Thoughts of the battle at Wacky World gave way to thoughts of Surabhi. What was she doing? What was she thinking?

Hungry.

I went downstairs to make pancakes: nothing like a condensed carbohydrate onslaught to set my abused neurons firing in the correct sequence. I was halfway to the kitchen steps when Missy Tang’s highpitched giggle percolated up from the kitchen.

“Is that my wayward son skulking around up there? Come on down here, Land Rover.”

Missy Tang giggled again.

“I call him ‘Land Rover’, which is really just the words ‘Land’ and ‘Over’ stuck together! See? It kind of rhymes with Lando! Isn’t that a pisser?”

The noise from their conjoined guffaws sent iron spikes through the bones in my skull. I considered giving them matching strokes. Small ones. Just lethal enough to kill off their speech centers.

“That would be wrong,”
Connie said.
“Hilarious. But wrong.”

“Now you show up. Where have you been?”

Our relationship was part of a premortality agreement I’d taken up with the Earth Goddess of the Navajo nation: a gradual divestment of divine power via the slow acquisition of a human soul. The essence of the Plan: act as my conscience, occupy the driver’s seat of my morality until I matured enough to regulate my actions. In return, Changing Woman would remain an active player in the human story. But the alliance was never easy.

“You’ve been handling things so well on your own lately I thought I’d go visit some new worshippers.”

“That’s odd.”

“What’s so odd about it, bigshot? I know your followers tried to wipe every trace of my pantheon from the world, but good gods are like cockroaches: you can’t kill ’em, no matter how hard you try.”

“I don’t want to fight, Connie.”

“My people held onto the Old Ways well into the Twentieth Century, despite genocide, Catholicism and Dick Clark. How’s that for faith, Mister Ten Commandments?”

“I’m sorry, Connie. Who did you go see?”

“There happens to be a little old lady named Esmeralda Sanchez, out of Santa Fe. She’s a tribal elder, which is unusual in Navajo culture. Anyway, Esmeralda’s been telling the
people the white god of the Americas is dead – no offense. She’s calling for a return to the old religions. She’s building a considerable following. I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.”

Connie sighed, loss and longing in the exhalation.
“Did I ever tell you about my family? My Husband? Sun Spirit Who Shines At Night? Now
there
was a sun god. So handsome. I remember…”

“Where the Hell’s my money?”

Herb was in my face. He was bulking up for a local Ironman competition, bingeing on protein drinks and vitamin supplements. They sometimes made him subject to fits of organic ’roid rage, usually whenever I was in the general vicinity.

“Earth to Lando: I want my money back.”

“What money?”

“See that, honey? Why do I even try?”

“Daddy’s a little sad, Lando,” Missy Tang squeaked from the stool at the center island. “He’s struggling with some deepseated resentments at the moment.”

Missy Tang was a pretty, KoreanAmerican woman. She was in her early thirties, but blessed with the body of a twenty year-old aerobics instructor. Missy took courses at a local community college, pursuing a double certification in Philosophy and Karmic Conflict Resolution, while dancing nights at the Shakedown, the “gentleman’s club” Herb owned with a silent Filipino business partner.

“Daddy’s disappointed because he feels you let him down. He’s also struggling with the growing suspicion that he can’t really trust you, leading to feelings of disconnectedness combined with increased awareness of his approaching mortality.”

Herb was glaring at me with an expression that managed to convey everything Missy Tang had just described.

“We had an agreement, Mister. You shook my hand at the conclusion of that agreement and accepted monies from me. In exchange for said consideration, you promised certain services, to be rendered by you. When I pay monies collected by the sweat of my buttocks I expect you to hold up your end of the bargain.”

“Ah! The lawn.”

“You asked me for an advance, supposedly to pay for a hotel room to celebrate with your ‘girlfriend’.”

“I spent the money.”

“On what?”

“A ‘like new’ copy of
X-Men
#94. It’s the issue where Thunderbird dies while fighting Count Nefaria on the wing of his stolen evil jet fighter.”

“I couldn’t be more depressed.”

“Sorry. Things are crazy for me at the moment.”

“I’ll tell you what’s crazy: me, forever thinking one of my sons would have the simple common decency to… Why are you crying?”

“I’m not. I mean… I don’t… I don’t know!”

Herb jumped up like someone had just firebombed his petty cash account. “Missy, honey, can you leave us for just a minute?”

“But I can help! I can facilitate!”

“Man to man, honey. It’s a father-son thing.”

Missy nodded and tiptoed out of the kitchen. Then Herb reached out, grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into his arms.

“There, there, son,” he whispered, while pounding my back hard enough to induce coughing. “It’s OK, partner. Gonna be just fine. Here.”

Herb reached into a drawer and produced the inhaler I kept in the kitchen. I took a hit and felt the soothing coolness of albuterol loosen my airway.

“I’m OK.”

“Sit down.”

Herb sat on the other side of the kitchen table. “Alright. What’s up?”

“I don’t know. It’s just… I feel so stupid.”

Herb nodded. “I could use a good stiff drink. How ’bout you?”

“Please… No alcohol.”

“Who’s talkin’ about alcohol? I’m gonna make you one of Dad’s Blues Bustin’ Protein Shakes.”

While Herb worked the blender, I related the debacle with the Molokes, leaving out only the particulars concerning Dionysus and his enchanted wine. By the time I ended with Surabhi calling me from the airport, Herb set a tall glass on the table in front of me. It was filled with a thick green concoction that smelled strongly of garlic.

“There. That’ll grow hair on your nuts.”

“Agghhh. What is that?”

“Trust me. It gets better. Drink up.”

While I looked around for a place to dump the shake, Herb prepared one for himself.

“What you’ve got there is a loss of trust, son. It’s probably been festering inside Shaniqua’s mind for a while now. And with her old man pushing all her buttons, she probably doesn’t know her asscrack from a beaver’s burrow.”

“Usually it’s great between Surabhi and me. When we’re together, all the outside stuff, jobs, money… it all goes away.”

“I get it,” Herb said. “When you’re together it’s like you’re in a secret garden where nothing else matters, where the two of you can be who you truly are. You think your old dad doesn’t know that feeling? Wrong, son; I know it well.”

“Is that what you and Barbara felt for each other?”

“Oh no. Mom’s a castrating superbitch from Hell. Don’t get me wrong. I loved your mother. Man, I fell head over heels with her the moment we met. And the sex thing… that’s important, son, not all important but pretty damn close. But she was always an angry, punishing kind of woman. She kicked my ass all the way to the altar. It took me twenty-five years to understand that your mama wasn’t fighting me. She was fighting herself.”

“Who’s winning?”

“Your mother once told me her father never touched her. Never told her she was special, pretty, any of that jazz. Can you imagine? The son of a bitch. Thanks to his emotional neglect your mama’s a goddamned nightmare.”

“Pop, this is supposed to make me feel better.”

“Mom and I got straight with each other when I realized that her anger had nothing to do with me. I stopped using her self-loathing to punish myself for my own shortcomings. That’s when I stopped trying to take responsibility for her happiness. At that moment, we were both free.”

Herb slurped his shake thoughtfully.

“Of course it also cost us our marriage and placed us in the nightmare in which we coexist today. But I suppose that’s the price we pay for self-awareness.”

“What about us? Your children?”

Herb shrugged, and drained his cup in one gulp.

“Lemonade, son. The sweetest I ever made.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“You gotta let her in, son. But before you can be honest with her, you gotta get straight with you. After that, everything else’ll straighten out double quick. How’s that shake?”

My glass was empty – I’d drunk the whole thing.

“Wow. That was good.”

“Beautiful. Now how about that lawn?”

“I’m so proud of you guys!”

Missy Tang ran in and threw her arms around Herb’s shoulders. “You guys were so open and ‘in the moment!’ It was really adult and like… totally present! Oh, Lando, isn’t it exciting? Daddy’s almost as enlightened as I am!”

They rubbed noses, Eskimo style.

“Group hug!”

“No thanks… I’m good.”

“Nonsense,” Herb growled. “Get in here, ya big homo.”

“Well. Looks like the gangbang’s just warming up.”

Barbara was standing at the back door with a man I didn’t recognize.

“I guess we’re just in time.”

The tall stranger was Caucasian, tanned, with thick brown hair shoved back from a high forehead. He appeared to be in his mid to late fifties, the beginnings of middle-age sag creeping ’round his cheek and jaw. He was tall, his eyes an odd, whitish-blue. He had the hard look that clings to freshly paroled hustlers; like a cowboy cardsharp who’d recently lost the use of his thumbs.

And he was holding my mother’s left hand.

“What are you three doing here?” Barbara said. “Lando, I thought you were off to one of your Star Track parties.”

“I got bored.”

“Oh. That’s too bad,” Barbara sighed. “Well, don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll have better luck next year.”

“Uhhh…Thanks?”

Barbara patted my shoulder, then turned and acknowledged Herb with a kind of smug appraisal. “Herbert.”

“Barbara-Jean.”

“And Misty… how are you this evening, dear?”

Missy flinched. “I’m not a whore!”

“Well, no one here called you a whore, dear,” Barbara said. “I certainly didn’t, nor would I ever dream of doing such a thing.”

“This morning you called me a festering little cooze–”

“No, Misty dear,” Barbara corrected. “I simply inquired as to your wellbeing… on this lovely evening that the Lord has sent.”

We might have been three people staring at a twoheaded dog giving birth to the cast of Will and Grace. Barbara stood taller, as if daring one of us to point out that under normal circumstances somebody would have been critically injured by now.

“What are you up to, Barbara-Jean?” Herb said. “Are you home-detoxing again?”

Barbara’s weird elation seemed to intensify. “I’d like you all to meet the Reverend Doctor Owen Holiday. Owen, this is our family friend, Misty and her boyfriend: my lawfully recognized estranged husband, Herb Cooper.”

Holiday strode across the kitchen and extended a big, leathery hand toward my father.

“Herb. I’ve enjoyed your commercials for years. It’s a pleasure to meet you face to face.”

Owen Holiday had a prosecutor’s voice. An actor’s voice.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Padre.”

“Man, I’m a little nervous, Herb. I used to watch you when I was stationed up at Great Lakes.”

“Navy man, huh?”

“I was base chaplain for nearly ten years before I resigned my commission. Sometimes we’d gather on Sunday nights after dinner and McLeish – that’s Bill McLeish. He was program manager for the Navy Motion Picture Service – well, McLeish would always show funny commercials or short films before the main feature. Yours always got the biggest laughs. The one where you wrestled that python in the hot tub was hilarious!”

I was still trying to put my finger on what it was about Holiday’s voice that bothered me when he turned and fixed me with his white-blue eyes.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lando. Barb talks about you all the time.”

“Pleasure.”

The headache that had apparently rented studio space in my skull was hammering at the backs of my eyes. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and vanish beneath the covers.

“You OK, Lando?”

“Migraine,” I mumbled. I didn’t like Owen Holiday. But something about his aged Mormon cowpoke good looks and easy avuncularity told me he was going to try to win me over. “I get them sometimes.”

“I am truly sorry to hear that. I suffer from the occasional migraine myself. They really suck.”

Holiday offered a warmish smile. Up close he looked older than he’d first appeared; his mouth a thin line where his lips should have been. “I find a large black coffee usually backs the pain off enough to make life worth living again.”

Barbara laughed.

Holiday didn’t strike me as the jolly type. His flesh resembled some heretofore undiscovered species of flexible stone, his expressions geared more toward sadism than humor. His face would only crack jolly while its owner dropped depleted uranium on an Iraqi wedding party or napalmed an Indian reservation.

“Owen is the pastor at my church.”

Herb spat garlic shake out his nose. “The pastor at your what?”

“Church, Herbert. It’s a big building with stained glass windows…”

Herb waved the rest away. “Sorry, Doc. Barb’s an old atheist. We both are. Religion is a crutch; I call it ‘the Great Separator’. It keeps people nice and stupid. Barb once said, ‘Organized religion is…’”

“Herbert, Owen doesn’t want to hear–”

“‘…the worst thing to come out of the human race since the first caveman stood up and took a crap’. Our shared skepticism is what brought us together, back in the mid-eighteen hundreds.”

Barbara’s right eye was fluttering; a warning that one of her signature thermonuclear wall crackers was imminent. For one crazy moment I thought she might reach for the Glock she carried in her Louis Vitton.