How Like A God

by Brenda W Clough

  For a second Rob’s mouth hung open, as his thought processes spun their wheels to catch up. “So I’m inconsistent—I’ve been dealing with this for less than a week! At the shoe department it was an emergency, okay? Just in and out of the guy’s head, nothing permanent. And I like to think I was performing a service to society at the prison, Jul. How does my leaning on your boss advance the common good?”

  “It’ll advance my good, and I’m your wife,” Julianne said firmly. “I told you how important it’ll be this month, to put up a good show for the Atlanta division. If I’m smart enough— if Debra doesn’t undo all my good work the second I turn my back—the whole department gets a gold star.”

  “That is not what you could call a broad-impact goal, Jul,” Rob protested. “Look, isn’t it time to start on back? We can discuss this on the way.”

  “Oh my god, yes—look at the time! You better let me drive, otherwise I’ll be late.”

  Rob willingly let her take the driver’s seat. When she was in a rush Julianne put even more energy than usual into her driving. She would have little attention to give to persuading him, which meant he could think. Now that she wasn’t prodding at him, it didn’t seem so unreasonable to lend her a hand. She needed help with Debra and had asked him for it. The cons in Lorton hadn’t even asked—he had just dumped a new mindset on them. And he wouldn’t do anything nearly so drastic to Debra. Just a very slight adjustment, so that she wouldn’t undercut Julianne so often. What could be the harm in that?

  So when they arrived at Julianne’s building he let her park the van in the basement parking lot and hustle him up to her office. The Association of Garment Design had the eighteenth and nineteenth floors in the building.

  Their suites were ostentatiously modern in decor and gave a fine view of the airplanes landing and taking off at National Airport. In his rumpled computer jockey clothing, Rob always felt underdressed at the Association. Operating anywhere in the garment industry seemed to demand very high fashion standards.

  Rob had met Debra several times before, at Christmas parties mostly, but he always had trouble recognizing her. Partly it was the disguising effect of changes in hair color, hairstyle, and makeup. The one year she had become a redhead had really shaken his confidence. And today his difficulties would be compounded by the certainty that Debra would be in ordinary business attire rather than a killer party dress. Fortunately he now had a powerful booster to his feeble social skills. He scanned the minds around him,

  hoping to pick her out. Immediately he tapped into excitement and anticipation. “Something’s going on today, huh?” he asked Julianne.

  “Oh, it’s Joubert. He’s in town getting the red-carpet tour of the Association.”

  “Who is Joubert?”

  “Oh, Rob! If you have to be a barbarian don’t announce it, okay? Joubert is the famous French couturier. But don’t worry. Mr. Rowe will keep him upstairs.”

  “Don’t you believe it, Jul. He’s just around the corner, over by the file cabinets.”

  Julianne shot him a quick surprised glance, but there was no time to talk about it. They came round the corner and the illustrious visitor was indeed there, dressed in green suede from head to toe and flirting with a delighted secretary. Mr. Rowe stood uncomfortably by, and hailed Julianne with relief. “Let me introduce one of our most energetic account execs, Phillipe. This is Julianne Lewis. And, er …” He looked at Rob in confusion.

  “Rob Lewis, her husband,” Rob said helpfully.

  “Enchante, madame,” Joubert said without taking his eyes off the secretary. “Enchante, m’sieur.” He was absurdly young, in his mid-twenties perhaps, with a carefully wild shock of dark hair. Mr. Rowe looked like his disapproving grandfather.

  From pure mischief Rob said, “I’ve always admired your work, Mr. Joubert. Is that suit your own design?”

  “Rob!” Julianne mouthed almost silently at him.

  “Surely,” Joubert said. He brushed his palms over the studs and fringes. “I hope to reform, revamp, American male fashions, as I have revolutionized the ladies’.” He raised one fastidious eyebrow at Rob’s beige sports jacket.

  “But suede will be so hot in the summertime,” Rob said.

  “So it is.” Surprised, Joubert glanced down at his own fringed sleeve. “Too oppressive! I shall remake this in silk!”

  “Green is all right, I guess,” Rob said with a straight face. “But I always liked yellow myself.”

  “Yellow!” Joubert seemed to be seeing heavenly visions. “Yellow, a Naples yellow with a lot of orange in it! I think of sunflowers, of sunsets, of marigolds—”

  “Plaid,” Rob suggested wickedly.

  “A piece of paper,” Joubert demanded feverishly. “I must draw!”

  The secretary handed the great man a pad. M-r. Rowe contributed his own fountain pen. Julianne seized Rob by the elbow and hauled him away. “How could you?” she whispered. “What have you done to him? What will his Paris collection look like next autumn?”

  “Heaven knows,” he laughed. “But anything’ll be an improvement over green suede.”

  “How you can shuffle Monsieur Joubert’s design inspirations around like that, and be so mealy-mouthed about Debra, I will never understand.”

  “Oh, but Julianne, couturier fashion design has absolutely no relationship to reality anyway!”

  “But—but the industry, the balance of trade, the—” She sputtered to a stop and then announced in despair., “Oh, you’re hopeless!”

  Rob knew he shouldn’t be surprised at how easy that had been. He no longer

  had to pronounce a comnrand, even in silent words, or to harness a strong emotion to get the weirdness moving. A mere suggestion was enough, when he put the muscle of his will behind it. That was what to call it, muscle. And maybe poor Joubert was the malleable type anyway? But when he confronted Debra, Rob felt a small nagging doubt. Yes, interference was easy to do and subtle to execute. The woman would never know, just as Joubert hadn’t noticed his interference. But Julianne would know. Rob couldn’t help wondering if that knowledge would be good for her.

  Julianne was saying, “You remember my husband Rob, don’t you? We sat together at the company picnic last fall.”

  “Of course I remember you,” Debra said cordially. “The father of those beautiful twins! Did you drop by to get a glimpse of Monsieur Joubert?”

  Rob stared in fascination at her new hair color, a sort of strawberry blonde. Even her eyebrows matched. “He’s just bringing me back from lunch,” Julianne interposed, “and wanted to say hi.” She frowned and nodded at Rob to get on with it.

  Again Rob felt an impulse to delay. “I’ve run into Monsieur Joubert already. Doesn’t he have a keen suit on, though!”

  Debra beamed at Julianne. “And you were telling us about his conservative taste in clothes!”

  “Office uniform,” Rob said airily.

  “A good-looking guy like you would really set off designer menswear,” Debra said.

  “I know what I’m getting you for Christmas,” Julianne threatened. “Green suede!”

  Rob stared soberly into Debra’s eyes—at least those were unchanged—and said, “Julianne’s always right about this sort of thing.” He gave the words the push, the muscle.

  Debra blinked. “Of course she is,” she assured him. “Why, without her nothing would get done around here!”

  “I’m so glad you think so,” Rob said uncomfortably.

  Julianne instantly seized the offensive. “Don’t you think we should send that fax off to Atlanta this afternoon?”

  “Oh, for sure—do you have the revised draft?”

  Rob didn’t feel like contributing to the conversation any more. He

  wondered, is this how a rapist feels? Someone who slinks around forcing weaker people to do things they have no intention of doing? Fiddling with Joubert’s clothing ideas had been a laugh riot, but would Joubert himself agree? By no stretch of the imagination could you argue that anyone wo
uld benefit from today’s meddling. At the first moment he could, Rob made a show of consulting his watch and said, “My gosh, I better get going. I’ll pick you up at the Metro station, okay, Jul?”

  “You got it, hon.” She blew him a kiss, her eyes sparkling with pleasure.

  Rob trundled gloomily off down the shiny modern hall to find the elevator. Had he ever seen that glitter in Julianne’s eye before?

  CHAPTER 6

  After all the crises of this past week the Lewises were deeply in hock to Miss Linda. Rob was well aware it wasn’t only a question of money. Miss Linda was irreplaceable and she knew it. No money in the world could have purchased a reliable and, above all, familiar sitter for the twins the other night, at such short notice. Rob knew that it would be only decent of him to apply the rest of this afternoon off to quality time with the twins.

  Miss Linda would get an unexpected holiday, thus giving the Lewis family a psychological leg up again.

  When Rob halted the van at the curb the twins shrieked with joy. Their sandbox was set up in the fenced side yard of a modest brick rambler. What with the kids and the scattered sand, almost all the grass was dead. Miss

  Linda rose from her seat on the porch swing and waved. Rob unlatched the chain-link gate and, slipping in quickly, shut it smartly behind himself to prevent escapes. Living with two active kids forced everyone involved into a kind of paranoia.

  Davey flung himself onto a leg and locked on, yelling, “Da!”

  Angela dashed up with a double handful of sand. “Here, Daddo! Annie give!”

  “No way, sugar pie, I’m on to that one. Hi, Miss Linda— I got the afternoon off, so I thought I’d give you a break.”

  “You feeling better, Mr. Rob? I saw that fire on TV.”

  “Sure, I’m fine. But it was scary, huh?” At this moment Angela dumped the handfuls of sand onto Rob’s feet. Since he was wearing loafers his shoes filled immediately. “Oh, no no, Angela!”

  “No no,” she replied, inspecting her work calmly.

  “You better let me fetch their diaper bags out to you,” Miss Linda said kindly. “Maybe you should just empty your shoes back into the sandbox again.”

  Rob did so. By the time he got his shoes and socks back on, and loaded both

  kids into the van. Miss Linda was back with the bags. “Use your afternoon wisely,” he urged her. “Watch Oprah. Go to the hairdressers. Have a good time.”

  “You can count on me, Mr. Rob. Good-bye, loveys, I’ll see you tomorrow!” She blew kisses to the kids through the window, and they enthusiastically blew kisses back.

  It would be shameful to waste such adorable toddler moods, and besides it was a glorious afternoon, full of birdsong and the green juicy smells of spring. Rob said, “Shall we go to the playground again, huh, kids?”

  The twins had nothing to say against it, so Rob drove to the park. Having had enough sand for the day, Angela tugged imperiously at a toddler swing. Rob lifted her up and fastened the lap belt, all the while keeping a sharp eye on Davey climbing the tot slide. “Now push,” Angela commanded.

  The park wore an entirely different aspect midweek. Last Saturday with Aunt Angela, there had been adults as well as kids. Today some local preschool had taken over. Two harried-looking women chased after maybe forty kids. And some of those boys should have been in kindergarten, Rob judged. They were huge. Luckily most of them were waving sticks and horsing around near the monkey bars. “Higher!” Angela squealed. “Go under!” Rob knew what that meant, and obediently ran with the swing until he dashed right under Angela’s high-kicking feet. She screamed with delight.

  He had only turned his back for a second, no more. But there was Davey, flat on his back at the foot of the slide, howling. A trio of bigger boys galloped past, heading for the teeter-totters. Rob ran over and picked Davey up. “Hey, poor little guy! Don’t cry, let me look you over!”

  Rob found nothing obviously wrong, no broken limbs or flowing blood, as he dusted his son off. Had those budding thugs knocked him off the slide?

  “What happened, sport?” Davey hiccuped and stuck a dirty thumb in his mouth. Rob gently pulled the hand down. “Davey, can you tell me how you fell?”

  Davey had inherited Julianne’s preposterously long eyelashes, but his eyes were blue-gray like Rob’s. When Rob looked into them he saw only a little-boy mind, not much more than a baby’s. He didn’t really expect Davey to answer. But suddenly Davey said, quite clearly, “The big boys ran by.

  They waved a stick at me. I got scared and my shoes slipped.”

  Rob’s jaw dropped. Three whole sentences: his son had never yet been so articulate. Angela was the chatterbox of the two. “Oh my god,” he whispered. “Davey, little guy, did I just make you say that?”

  He knelt in the dirt hugging the little torso to his chest, and felt cold all over. What was he doing, just with his powerful presence, to these tiny impressionable brains? Was he warping them, the way plutonium might mutate their DNA?

  There was no time to consider this now. Davey, already completely recovered, wiggled to be set free. The outraged Angela, trapped in her motionless swing, wailed, “Push, Daddo! Push!” at the top of her lungs. Rob staggered to his feet and pushed. He felt winded, as if he had taken a thunderous blow over the heart.

  Another thing Rob felt obliged to do with an afternoon off was to cook some real food. The family was forced to do far too much carryout and TV dinner. Rob had only two menus in his repertoire, chicken a la king and spaghetti.

  Since chicken was on sale when he got to the store, the choice was easy. He knew the recipe by heart, which was good. Speed was essential when shopping with the twins. He had to seat them side by side in the body of the shopping cart, and then dash through the store tossing cream of mushroom soup and frozen peas into the small front area. By the time the kids were bored enough to try climbing out, Rob was breezing through the checkout line.

  At home there was time to get the chicken going, change diapers, and feed the kids a snack. The child-care books didn’t approve of TV as a babysitter, but Sesame Street kept them quiet and happy while he cooked.

  Then he piled them back into the van to go to the station to fetch Julianne. “Have you had a lovely restful afternoon?” she greeted him.

  “No, I haven’t,” Rob groaned. “I’ve been running around doing things till my tongue’s hanging out.”

  “Well, I had a great day! Come on, let’s get it in gear—I’m dying for a drink, and I bet you are too.”

  She almost sparkled in the front seat beside him, her bell of blonde hair throwing back the last of the day’s sunshine. In her sharp hound’s-tooth jacket and green skirt she looked like a model, not at all like the mother of two. How on earth did such a beautiful girl marry me? Rob wondered idly, as he sometimes did. But quickly he caught himself up. He was too strong now. If he pursued that line of thought he’d find the answer.

  When Rob unlocked the front door the smell of cooking chicken was marvelous, filling the house. Suddenly he knew he’d feel better after dinner. On his arm Davey remarked, “Hungry.”

  “Your wish is my command, sport! Into the highchair with you!”

  “This is so nice!” Julianne exclaimed as she came in with Angela. “The table set, dinner cooking—I love it!”

  “Makes a nice change from pizza, doesn’t it? By the time you get your shoes off, the food’ll be on the table.”

  A scattering of Cheerios on their trays as an appetizer kept the twins busy as Rob dished up and poured some beer. Julianne came clattering downstairs again in jeans, and took her seat. She raised her glass to him. “To the chef, long may he wave!”

  “Thank you, thank you.” Rob bowed to an imaginary audience on either side. “And what’s your discerning assessment, madame?” he asked Angela, as he spooned chicken onto her dinosaur plate.

  “Yum!” She squelched the food through her fingers.

  “Thank god for bibs,” Julianne said shuddering. “All right, baby boy, here’s yo
ur peas, Davey’s favorite!”

  The twins gobbled their usual fast and messy meal, while their parents cut up chicken as quickly as possible and kept the plates filled. Once fully fed, they could be cleaned off, lifted down, and allowed to roister with toys underfoot. Then an adult meal became possible at last. Rob heaped his plate with chicken for himself this time, and asked, “So what’s the story with Debra now?”

  “Oh, you won’t believe what a difference!” Julianne piled her fork with noodles and chicken. “You remember those graph slides? Well, she told me all about it. It was Gordon Rowe’s fault after all! He took the graphs and had the graphics people transfer them without telling a soul, just boom!

  Like that… “

  Rob’s attention drifted a little. He had heard this sort of thing before.

  Directly between his ankles Angela was playing with her new bongo drum. At least it felt like the drum, whacking irregularly against his instep. He put his foot on it, casually pinning it against the rug, but she jerked it away, exclaiming, “Naughty Daddo!” Now, was it normal for an eighteen-month-old to be so assertive?

  Suddenly he focused on Julianne again. The flavor and tone of her complaint was powerfully familiar, and it only took him a second to recognize it from lunchtime. She was working up to a demand. Resigned, he waited for it.

  “—the simplest thing, all things considered, would be for me to take over Rowe’s position, when he retires next year.”

  “What, become director of the Association? I thought the garment designer members got to vote on the director.”

  “Why shouldn’t they choose me? You could tell them to do it.”

  Rob concentrated on scraping food up with his fork. “And Rowe has been promising to retire next year since the Reagan Administration. What makes you think he’s serious this time?”

  “He’s going to have to bite the bullet some time.” Julianne said it as if this were the most obvious fact in the world. “He’s never there anyway, except when someone important comes by. All he does is work on his golf