God Game

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Will it last?” her husband wondered.

  She smiled as only Irish women can when they’re not certain but intend to sound as if they are. “Of course.”

  Well, maybe, says I.

  They stopped over at our table on their way out, blissfully content and somehow grateful, though we had done nothing to help them and, like a lot of other folks on the beach, had written off their chances a couple of years ago.

  “What could have happened?” Terry Goggin wondered.

  “They’ve fallen in love again,” Gail said promptly.

  “It won’t work.” I helped myself to another spoonful of chocolate ice cream. “Unless they deal with the underlying problems.”

  “Maybe,” she replied, “they’ll be able to deal with them now.”

  I began to worry about it on our way home. Did the rebirth of passion to N’Rasia and Malvau, a second if very thin chance for their love, influence our neighbors? Or vice versa? Or were the two merely utterly unrelated coincidences? Or was there some complex interrelationship which could not be described by any pattern available to us? Note, by the way, that the last explanation is an academic copout.

  However, if there is a port between our cosmos and theirs and if that port happens to be, on our side, in the vicinity of Grand Beach, and if there are spiritual links through that port, ought not the relationships on one side to be possibly graceful for the relationships on the other?

  Or also possibly harmful?

  It was true that on our side the woman was blond and the man silver-haired, though he was not as tall as ’Vau and she not as attractive as ’Rasia. He was a political influential, though not the most important one of Grand Beach and certainly not of the high status of Malvau. Cognates, when you looked at the hope and the contentment in their eyes, rather closely linked cognates, but not the same. Not quite the same. And, as the next phases in both their lives would indicate, the processes were not the same.

  Strange, however, scary strange. I didn’t even share this part of it with Nathan, nor the encounter I would have that night.

  Anyway, how did Michele know Ranora’s song? Or was that vice versa too?

  In short, why do the ways of grace have to be so mysterious especially when you are, for the moment, in the grace-dispensing role?

  Maybe.

  After an Irish Cream at the Goggins’ I wandered by the Brennans’ to talk to Michele’s parents. Bobby and some of the young apes with whom he associates were in the other room listening to rock and talking about beer and broads, presumably. Michele was out with her latest date who, thank heavens, is not the courtier/scholar/poet type.

  But the news was that she was to sing her medley of Irish folk songs at a formal dinner dance at Long Beach the next night.

  I didn’t like that at all.

  Not so badly, however, as to refuse my third Baileys of the evening. Or a fourth.

  My head was whirling with possibilities and speculations, all jumbled up together with the two worlds rushing one upon another in exotic confusion. I was, however, now so deeply involved that I was determined I would work it all out myself.

  The confusion was not unpleasant. I was in fact having the time of my life. And in love with everyone.

  Just like God.

  I had a hard time falling asleep. I think I did, anyway, because now it gets really weird.

  Unable to sleep, I got up, climbed down the stairs, and sat on the deck by the beach, watching the stars on a moonless night and wondering how many other cosmoi there might be linked with each of them.

  I was now and would be for the rest of the game in an altered state of consciousness, or, as my friend Erika would say when I consulted her after the Lakeside seminar (she was unable to attend because she was lecturing in Zurich), I was in a number of different altered states: “an unusual but not unknown phenomenon.”

  I heard footsteps on the tiny beach. Someone had been walking along the sandbar a few yards out and was now coming ashore.

  “May I sit with you for a while?” A woman’s voice, familiar but yet not familiar.

  “What is it you want?” I demanded nervously. I mean, who knows what can happen to you on the beach at night?

  “I would like to talk to you.” She climbed up the steps and sat on the chair next to me. “At least I have the right to do that, after what you’ve done to me.”

  “What have I done to you?”

  “Come now. You know what you’ve done. I’m a grandmother, well into the middle years of life, at an age when passion cools. You have addicted me once again to my husband. It is a disgrace. I can think of nothing else. I want to be with him all the time, to make love with him every minute. I cannot stand to be separated from him.”

  Her low voice was intense with anger and embarrassment.

  “It was your fault, woman. Flaunting your breasts at him that way was bound to get to him eventually.”

  “Do you like my breasts?” She sounded bold and proud.

  “That is not the issue.”

  “But it is. Do I have good breasts?”

  “As I’ve already said…”

  “Heavy and conical, not as firm as they once were but still appealing. But that’s what you make my husband think.”

  “No, that’s what he makes me think. Anyway, you’re a vain woman if you want us both to praise your body.”

  “You both have.” She laughed. “I am vain and I do enjoy it.”

  I could now see her clearly enough in the starlight. N’Rasia, all right. Wearing the white swimsuit Joan Hagan sometimes struts down the beach in, but filling it out much more nicely.

  “What do you want? You’re on the wrong side of the wall, you shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’m part of your dream about me. I’m on the other side, but you’ve seen me, so I can come over here in your dreams. Simple, isn’t it?”

  “How do I know I’m not part of your dream?” I demanded. The conversation, you will note, is utterly impossible—but nonetheless, given its impossibility, by no means irrational.

  “That’s possible, but then we both might be part of her dream, might we not?”

  “Whose dream?”

  “My counterpart, the woman I borrowed this swimsuit from so as not to shock you by appearing naked on your deck, though since it’s a dream you wouldn’t be shocked, would you?”

  “You don’t sound the way you do in the game.” I was trying to change the subject.

  “You think I’m a bit of a bitch in the game.”

  “You act like one.”

  “A woman acts like a bitch because she’s frightened.”

  “So frightened that she flaunts herself for a few seconds at her husband every night even though she’s treated him with indifference and contempt for the rest of the day.”

  “All right, I’m a real bitch,” she said disconsolately.

  “You still haven’t told me what you want.”

  “My husband,” she said firmly.

  “I gathered. Well, I gave him to you, didn’t I?”

  “And I’m very grateful.” She touched my hand. “Poor man took such a risk because you made him.”

  “Helped him.”

  She giggled. “We did it together.”

  “So?”

  “Do you know what I’m going to do tomorrow?”

  “Prepare for the Feast of the Two Moons dinner, I devoutly hope.”

  “Exactly. How?”

  “You tell me.”

  “All right. And then when it happens tomorrow you’ll know this isn’t merely a dream. I’m going to make him have an orgy with me. Hours and hours of love.”

  “He’ll need hormones.”

  “I won’t?”

  “Not if what you tell me is true.”

  “All right, you’re God, provide him with hormones. You see, a wonderful afternoon will make him self-confident and brilliant and it will make me glow with beauty and those degenerates we have to learn to love will love us. What else can I
do? I can’t understand all the political issues he talked to me about after you left.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” I insisted. “I’m not God.”

  “Sure you are,” she said confidently. “Who else could have done what you did for us? And,” she turned somber, “if it doesn’t work, it’s all your fault. You probably shouldn’t have messed in our lives anyway.”

  “Would you like a drink?” I deliberately changed the subject again.

  “I would love some of that Baileys you have with you. We haven’t developed it on the other side yet. Too many oviparous creatures you know.” She laughed at me.

  How did she know the name?

  I didn’t bring any Baileys down to the deck. But this was an altered state so there was a full bottle, and Powers-court tumblers to drink it from too.

  “Do you mind if I take off this horrible swimsuit?” she asked. “Your fabrics are not nearly as comfortable as ours.”

  “It’s your dream.” I handed her the glass of Baileys, filled to the rim. Ice cubes had appeared in it too. Another advantage of an altered state. “Do what you want.”

  She placed the glass on the rail of the deck, went through some awkward twisting movements, sighed with relief, and sat back on the chaise, Baileys in hand. “That’s better and uhmm … this is good.”

  “Glad you like it.”

  “Your health,” she said gravely and I saw the outline of an arm raised in the night. “If that’s appropriate for God.”

  “I’m not God.”

  “Sure you are. Do you love me?”

  “I thought I said that once.”

  “I know, but I’m not very lovable.”

  “You weren’t at first. Neither was his nibs. Then I became involved and got hung up on you.”

  “Would you believe I fell in love with him when I was ten and have loved him every day since?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I tried. He tried. You made us and the divil matched us.”

  “That’s my line.”

  “It’s your dream. May I have another drink?”

  “You can’t drink it that way.”

  “Maybe my metabolism is different. Maybe I have scales and seven feet.”

  “For all I know.”

  “I’m terribly grateful for the last chance with my man.” She was weeping now.

  “Not last. Only most recent. Anyway the Other Person made you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You love that bitch B’Mella more than me.”

  “She’s the leading character, I’ve got to love her more.”

  “And that teenaged demon. Of course, you have a thing for teenagers, don’t you?”

  “Regardless. She’s a leading character. You’re only a subplot.”

  “The story of my life.” Her tears were bitter now. “Always a subplot.”

  “In this story. That doesn’t mean there won’t be other stories.”

  “You’d destroy me and ’Vau,” her voice turned musical at the sound of his name, “if it fit your plot, wouldn’t you? In fact, you may still do that, just to prove that even God shouldn’t meddle in people’s lives. Isn’t that true? You’ll do all you can to make Lenrau and the bitch happy and you’ll let us go down the drain, just so there’ll be some contrast.”

  “You aren’t even important enough to be in my dream,” I responded cruelly.

  “I know, but I’m here because, damn you, I want to be important and not because I have “presentable’ breasts and a nice ass.”

  “I never wrote anything about your ass.”

  “I know, and that makes me mad. I think it’s nice. As nice as the little demon’s and you mentioned her ass.”

  “Yours is delightful too, ’Rasia.” I was lying because I hadn’t noticed but I’m sure it was. “The point about you, however, is not your physical aspects, though you do all right there, but your redemptive capacity.”

  “Oh,” she said in a tiny voice. “Really?”

  “I stole the idea of a wife’s familiar breast as a sign of grace from David Lodge’s Small World.”

  “I haven’t read that.”

  “No matter. I’m trying to argue that you’re grace in a special way. And be nice to the ilel, she’s going to do something very special for you tomorrow.”

  “What?” she demanded like a little kid promised a present.

  “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  And I’ll have to figure it out.

  “Will it be nice?”

  “Very nice. And I don’t want you being harsh with the Lady B’Mella either. She has enormous respect for you. Why else did she invite you to the Meal of the Two Moons?”

  “Only because I made that damn councilor of hers human again,” she snapped.

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “So I’m a good screw for him? What does that matter?”

  “You know better than that.”

  “All right,” she sighed. “There’s no point in arguing with you, anyway. You will promise not to destroy what … what’s happened between my man and me?”

  “I have my story to tell.”

  “So we don’t have any chance at all.”

  “You haven’t been listening. A storyteller can’t make a character do what he or she doesn’t want to do. You have free will.”

  “You sound like a Jesuit.”

  “I’m not.”

  A long silence.

  “May I have another glass of Baileys? I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  “Do you have to swim over to your side?”

  “Of course not. The beach idea is your part of the dream. Your stories are filled with beach trysts. We don’t have lakes this size on our side. Or if we do I’ve never seen one.”

  I filled her glass, draining the Baileys bottle. I had had only one glass. She must be more than a little tuned by now. “I think you’ll be back,” I said. “You’ve intruded pretty deeply into my unconscious, more than I realized.”

  “You do have a weakness for handsome middle-aged women, don’t you?” she giggled tipsily.

  “I sure fell for you,” I agreed.

  “Are you sure you love me?” Now it was tipsy tears.

  “Yes, N’Rasia,” I said it straight out because she needed to hear it and it was true. “I do love you.”

  No questions about comparisons.

  “Do you enjoy it when my husband fucks me?”

  “You are picking up our bad language.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk that way with God … I know you’re not God, but I don’t believe that. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “More than he does.”

  “Differently.”

  “Do you want to make love with me now?” A shy, girlish offer.

  “I would love to, ’Rasia, but it wouldn’t be right.”

  “I’m only a dream figment.”

  “It still wouldn’t be right.”

  “I know. I thought I ought to offer. Maybe in another world. Anyway, I want to go back to our side and wake up my husband and persuade him to love me again.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be delighted.”

  “I can hug you?”

  “Why not?”

  So she hugged me, modestly enough, and was gone. Then she faded back in. “Don’t forget the hormones. It’s important.”

  I had. “Haven’t I taken good care of you so far?”

  “Oh yes. Please don’t stop.”

  This time she was gone for good.

  And I woke up. In my bed, of course.

  Still, the next morning I went down to the beach deck. There was a white swimming suit on the railing. I threw it in the trash can.

  I was deeply enough into the story by now that I had stopped trying to figure out what was happening. It was like being halfway through a novel. All that mattered was finishing it. This one was even more compelling because I couldn’t be sure how it would end
.

  I went skiing in the morning and was accused by Michele of not paying any attention when I was driving the boat. “You want to drive?” I asked her.

  “No way. Other people drive me.”

  “Then be quiet.”

  “All right!”

  Which means that it’s neither all nor right.

  We saw the Hagans strolling down the beach hand in hand. She was wearing a red swimsuit.

  “Isn’t it really excellent, how happy they are?” Michele enthused as she put on her ski jacket.

  “Hormones,” I said.

  “Huh?” she and Bobby exclaimed together.

  “Never mind, just trying to remind myself.”

  While she was spinning across the wake, I remembered that I should check my supply of Baileys when I returned to the house.

  “You remember Rick?” Bobby asked with a wink.

  “Herself’s boyfriend, the fierce linebacker with the gentle soul?” I grinned. How could you forget Rick?

  “‘Chele may go off to Ohio for a few days to see him,” Bobby offered as his sister wiped out for the third time.

  “So?”

  “And Heidi will be working mornings as lifeguard.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe I can bring one of my own chicks.”

  “What chicks?”

  “I don’t know. I can always find some. They really dig me.”

  “Funny, that’s not what I hear.”

  As far as I know there’s no cognate for Bobby on the other side, unless it be one of the sword wavers—a good-guy sword waver of course.

  I mention this conversation because it is necessary to plant some information here which will be pertinent later on. The difference with planting it in this story is that I didn’t know when I heard it that it would be pertinent. You see what I mean by this story being different from the others?

  As if someone else was planting things as part of my story.

  I checked the Baileys supply when I returned to the house. Sure enough, there was one bottle missing. I found it, quite empty, in the kitchen trash can.

  Also I discovered two of my Powerscourt tumblers in the dishwasher—strictly a “no-no.” Bitch, I thought, she’s smart enough to swim into my dreams, she should be smart enough to protect my glassware.

  Do I expect you to believe that any of this happened?