God Game

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Maybe.

  Only if she agreed, however.

  And the rest of the plot?

  Clearly we had to move the leading characters off their rear ends and towards a denouement. But that, on a late July Sunday in Grand Beach, could wait till Monday morning.

  I slept soundly, undisturbed by dream visitors—or at least by any I remembered—and awoke late for the ski crowd.

  “Well,” Michele complained, as she and Bob bounded into my Chevy. “Where were you?”

  “Asleep.”

  “If we overslept…”

  “It’s my boat.”

  “That totally does not make any difference.”

  I should note here that Michele’s nagging is never disrespectful. She either learned very early in life or was genetically programmed to be “half fun and full earnest” up to the last centimeter before shrewishness and then stop.

  “It sure does make a difference.”

  “Hmmp … all right. But you have to ski first this morning, no matter how cold the water is.”

  “All right.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot, ‘member that you asked me whether I ever played a horn?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, my mother reminded me that I once played a flute.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh; not for long though. I lost my breath blowing on it.”

  I didn’t want to know any more. After I’d returned the skiers to their respective daytime occupations the Hagans were waiting at my door.

  “Can we come in and chat a few minutes?”

  Sure. Bargain-basement summertime therapy.

  But it was not that simple.

  Tom was determined that the two of them should enter family therapy. Joan was vigorously against it. Usually it was the other way around—the Irish wife dragging the husband to therapy under threat of moving out of his bedroom. Moreover, the Grand Beach consensus was that she was the long-suffering woman, putting up with a selfish and inconsiderate, not to say monumentally unintelligent husband. (This was, to be fair, an Irish community’s official reaction to any troubled marriage, because, you see, the official reaction was always shaped by the women.) Now he was making sense and she was acting like a fink.

  “I’ve been to see Doctor Shanahan,” he explained, “and I was very impressed.”

  “Shanahan? Does she have a partner named Lamont?”

  “She does, as a matter of fact. Do you know them?”

  “No, just heard about them.”

  “I don’t know who this woman is at all.” When Joan screwed her pretty face in a frown it looked faded. “I know nothing about her marriage. Why should I trust her with my marriage? What gives her the right to tell me how to solve my problems when for all I know she’s not very good as a wife and mother?”

  “That’s not what it’s about, Joan.” The big ex-football lug gripped his hands tightly. “She doesn’t tell us what to do, she, uh, creates an environment in which we can talk to one another and solve our problems ourselves.”

  “I don’t see why we need another woman to help us talk.”

  Envy and jealousy mixed together.

  “We could find a male therapist. She mentioned a Doctor Orlick…”

  “Orlick?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “I think I’ve heard of him.”

  “Well, that would be a little better, but I don’t think either of us is mentally ill or anything like that.”

  “Therapy,” Tom continued doggedly, “is not for the ill, it’s for healthy people with problems that they can solve if they have some assistance.”

  “The psychiatrists were not able to help my Great Aunt Maude. She spent thirty years in Dunning.”

  You have to understand that Joan is a topflight account executive for a major LaSalle Street investment house, a smart, successful woman. Yet her attitudes on therapy could just as well have been expressed by her mother thirty years before. I had never met the mother, but I suspected I wouldn’t like her at all.

  “Their methods of treatment have improved since then. They can do wonders with medication.”

  “I will not take any drugs.”

  Mother probably said that too.

  “What do you think?” Tom interrupted their dialogue to turn to me. I had taken a leaf from the book of one of my favorite characters, Monsignor Blackie Ryan, and made them a pot of McNulty’s raspberry tea. Like Blackie, I filled their cups before answering the question.

  (Do authors imitate the behavior of their characters? I told you, didn’t I, that life imitates fiction?)

  “There’s no point in entering family therapy unless both parties want it. Everyone in the family, kids too.”

  “I just don’t think we need it,” Joan pleaded.

  Among the problems, I began to suspect, was frigidity and her resentment that Tom had not been able, probably didn’t know how, to help her overcome it. Not that she wanted to overcome it with any more than half of her personality.

  “I don’t think,” I repressed a Blackie-like sigh, “that the issue of family therapy ought to be expressed in terms of need. Rather the question is whether a family might profit from it. I suppose that a majority of families would find it very helpful at some time in the course of their existence.”

  “Really?” I had made it respectable, which of course was the problem to begin with. Even respectable people sought family therapy.

  “I could name, oh, at least two dozen families here in Grand Beach.”

  Not a complete lie.

  “Really, well, if you think it’s a good idea…”

  OK, you need someone to blame if it doesn’t work. I’m used to that game too. “I said that it helps a lot of people.”

  Which isn’t the same thing, not that it matters.

  “Shall we call Doctor Orlick for an appointment?” Tom wanted to rush ahead the way he had always rushed through life.

  “Well, if you think this Shanahan woman is so good … it might be helpful to have a woman’s perspective.”

  Curiosity overcoming envy and jealousy, God bless it.

  Poor Joan, four kids, eighteen years of marriage and few if any orgasms. Sexual pleasure wouldn’t solve everything, not by a long shot. But it sure would help, maybe enough to make the other problems manageable. Maybe not too. However, with any luck they might end up at the Loyola sexual dysfunction clinic. Fortunately for her she was still sufficiently attractive that a man, once educated, would take almost any personal risk to help her.

  Damn her mother, anyway.

  “Is she pretty, Tom?” I asked, giving him a cue.

  “Not as pretty as my wife,” he took the cue.

  “I’ll do anything to save our marriage,” tears in her eyes. “I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Me too.” Tom was not too swift, as the kids would say, not nearly as intelligent as she, and, so far, long on enthusiasm but short on sensitivity. If goodwill were enough, there’d be no problem.

  Prognosis? I thought as I cleaned my teacups. Poor to terrible.

  Same as the prognosis for my friends in Nathan’s God Game. Same, maybe, for all of us.

  But, as I hope is clear, they were very different people from Malvau and N’Rasia. With different problems. No, finally, maybe the same problem we all have: fear of the vulnerability that intimacy demands.

  Maybe I could bring a tin whistle back from Dublin town and have Michele roam around Grand Beach blowing it.

  So, after a phone call to my agent Nat in which he told me Tor Books’ latest offer and I told him that it was not nearly enough, I returned to Nathan’s God Game.

  ACCESS DUCHESS.

  NEGATIVE.

  WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN? ACCESS DUCHESS.

  NEGATIVE. ACCESSING ILEL.

  Huh?

  “Well, where have you been?” She was standing by her private lake, fully clothed in red and white this time, her pipe tucked under one arm, foot tapping the ground impatiently, small jaw
jutting defiantly in my direction.

  I’VE OTHER WORLDS BESIDES THIS ONE TO WORRY ABOUT.

  “This one needs you now!”

  Yes, ma’am.

  “We have to do something about the Duke and the Duchess.”

  DO WE?

  You must understand that she was talking to me in remarkably Michele-like tones from the TV screen.

  “We do.” She folded her arms solemnly across her lovely young breasts. “They will never mate unless we push them.”

  DO WE WANT THEM TO MATE?

  She raised her hands in a “what can I tell you?” gesture. “Do you have any other suggestions? Unless they unite, the negotiations will last until the day after the last warrior kills the last nonwarrior. Malvau is sweet and Kaila” (did I note a tinge of embarrassment?) “is a dear,” wicked grin, “for a Protector I mean, but politics and wisdom won’t save this land. We need love.”

  “You mean lust.”

  “You yourself said they can’t be separated.”

  Yeah, I did, but not to you. Never mind.

  SUPPOSE THEY KILL ONE ANOTHER.

  “What other chance do we have?”

  NONE, I SUPPOSE.

  “It’s taking too long.”

  A story ought not to drag. You can keep hero and heroine out of each other’s arms just so long.

  ALL RIGHT. LET’S GET ON WITH THE STORY. WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE?

  “Well,” the words flew out at Concorde speed, “there is this old houseboat on a lake way into the forest and I’m going to have it repaired today and made real nice and I’m going to put food and drink in it and comfortable chairs and a big bed and a nice smell and tonight they will go to it and fall in love with each other and mate.”

  JUST LIKE THAT?

  “Just like that.”

  HOW DO WE GET THEM THERE?

  “We don’t,” loud snigger and hunched-up shoulders. “You do.”

  How?

  “I don’t know. Lust. Love. Whatever.” Another snigger.

  AND IF THEY TRY TO KILL EACH OTHER … THEY’RE WARRIORS BRED AND TRAINED, YOU KNOW.

  “Don’t let them … anyway, Kaila has warrior in him and he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  I’LL TRY.

  Did she read books? Romantic novels, maybe?

  Well, it was a common enough story line.

  So all day she presided over the rehabilitation of the “houseboat,” a cheerfully lemon-colored pavilion on a flat barge, floating by a dilapidated pier on a very small lake, maybe an hour’s walk into the forest. Lots of privacy.

  I don’t know where she recruited her help, but swarms of laborers descended upon the site and turned it into a nineteen-thirties Hollywood love nest. ‘Nora herself added the final touch by spraying the chamber inside with what must have been very strong perfume.

  Then she wandered around it, playing the Lenrau theme and the B’Mella theme in whimsical, mischievous, lascivious, and finally profoundly serious combinations.

  Next she boarded a red-and-white-striped skiff which was parked on the tiny beach and poled it out into the lake. Reaching into the hull she produced a large, floating lamp, lit it by flicking a switch and carefully cast it into the water like a young nun replacing a sanctuary lamp. She piped another tune, faintly comic, giggled, and tossing off her gown dove into the water (wearing this time her peppermint-candy bikini).

  She climbed back in the boat, almost overturning it, and still giggling, poled back to the shore.

  Then, slipping the gown over pasted-down blond hair, she knelt down in solemn respect and sounded my theme in peremptory tones—a monarch summoning a servant.

  “Please, Lord Our God, please help them. I love them both so much. They’re dear, sweet people. It’s probably the only chance they’ll ever have to be happy. I do so want them to be happy. What else is a silly little ilel like me for except to make people happy? I’m sorry if I told you off this morning. It was just that you wouldn’t come when I played your theme. Anyway, you know what’s best and I don’t. So it’s really all up to you. If you don’t want it to work out, I accept that. But please, please want it so they can be happy.”

  She scrambled to her feet and rushed off to the little chariot she sometimes used. On the chariot, reins in hand, after patting the horse creature and cooing to him how nice he was, she blew my tune again.

  “Please!”

  I wonder how good the Other Person is at resisting such appealing little connivers.

  As the sun—or was it two suns? I never was quite sure—sank behind the mountains I ordered the machine to scan for trouble:

  SEARCH FOR UNREST.

  It was a bad night with hints that the others would get worse. Little groups of warriors were strolling about singing marching songs and telling stories about the great warrior barons of the past. Clergy were scurrying about in their caves (where they always seemed to meet) plotting devious tricks and talking about whose back would be the target for the next knife. My friends the mad scientists were messing with some new concoction, this time in a tent near Lenrau’s pavilion. Kaila and Malvau were getting themselves quietly drunk, most unusual behavior for both of them, at the latter’s pavilion, while N’Rasia kept a disapproving distance.

  The center was not holding. Neither was everything else.

  OK, imp child. You win.

  My first visit was to the woman in the case. Somehow I thought she would be the more difficult of the two. No point in even trying with Lenrau if B’Mella was not interested.

  She had finished up a painting and thrown aside her brown smock, and was testing the water in her private bath.

  HEY, HAVEN’T YOU FORGOTTEN SOMETHING?

  She glared at me. “You don’t listen to my prayers anymore.”

  I pressed her key, typed in PRAY and held down the REPEAT button. Reluctantly she knelt down and buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.”

  You’re so beautiful, how could I do anything else?

  “I don’t know what to do,” she pleaded.

  YOU DO TOO.

  “I won’t do it.” She jumped up.

  WHY NOT?

  “I am afraid. Two good men have already died. I do not want to lose this one too.”

  YOU CAN’T SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE LOCKED IN YOUR CHAMBER.

  “I wish I were dead.”

  Worthless chitchat. She did not.

  It was, I told myself, only a story, a game, Nathan’s game. Besides, clever little Ranora saw the same ending.

  SEDUCE DUKE. I told the keyboard.

  “No!” she screamed. “I hate him.”

  I held down the REPEAT button.

  She jumped from her knees, threw off her undergarments and jumped into the bath. I’ve often thought since then that if she had been serious in her resistance, she would have turned on the cold water.

  She didn’t.

  I kept my finger on the REPEAT button.

  She looked up at me, appealing for escape.

  “You don’t mean it.”

  No more chitchat.

  “It might be interesting.” She smiled faintly. “I suppose I could still do that sort of thing.”

  I didn’t take my finger off the key.

  “It’s been so long.” She reached for a vial of what was probably some sort of bath scent and emptied it into her pool.

  “He is quite handsome.”

  Tell me about it.

  “You insist?”

  I wasn’t going to play that game either.

  “How?”

  Oh come on.

  “Where?”

  HOUSEBOAT IN WOODS.

  She nodded soberly. “It’s the only sensible strategy. The worst that can happen is that we both die. We will die anyway if there is another war. A night of warmth together … all right.”

  She prepared herself very carefully. As in all matters, when B’Mella made up her mind she proceeded ruthlessly.

  After the ointment and sce
nt were appropriately distributed, her long hair brushed so it glowed, and her face converted to a work of art, she searched among her clothes and removed a short brown tunic, mostly transparent, considered it carefully, held it up to the light, nodded, and pulled the gown over her head. Then she slipped a knife into the belt of her undergarment, and robed herself over the tunic with a brilliantly colorful rosy garment more like a shawl than a coat—what your local Duchess wears when she goes walking in the woods of an evening.

  She knelt again and said a short prayer. “Help me to be brave and to please him.”

  Strange sort of request, but sure, I’ll try. It’s mostly up to you now. I’ve unleashed the energies available to me.

  She pushed aside the screens which created her room—walls were portable and easily changeable in their pavilions, rather like those in Japanese homes—and slipped into the night.

  Then she crept back into her chamber, removed a vial from the table next to her couch, and doused herself with more scent.

  Vain little chit.

  The Duke was already asleep, much I daresay to Ranora’s fury, when I keyed into his chamber.

  Direct method with the male. GO TO HOUSEBOAT ON LAKE IN THE WOOD AND MAKE LOVE TO DUCHESS.

  He stirred in his sleep, restless with the sexual desire I was activating.

  I pressed the REPEAT key down and held it.

  He sat up, rubbed his face in his hands, and tried to decide whether he was awake or asleep.

  It was a warm night in spring turning to summer. The Lord Lenrau had not made love to a woman in a long time. He probably thought that sexual desire had left him forever. Now, suddenly and without warning, he was on fire with passion.

  “Why?” he asked sleepily.

  WHY NOT?

  “Why not, indeed? It would be good to be between her thighs—that little imp said that once, didn’t she?”

  I didn’t have all day. So I changed the instruction to LOVE DUCHESS and held the REPEAT key again.

  “She is most lovable. That night of the Two Moon Meal, I almost asked her if she would sleep with me and bring us all peace. I think she would have.”

  Damn right.

  “Life is short.” He stood up and stretched. “She is beautiful, and I need a woman. All simple enough.”

  LOVE HER.

  “I will try.”

  His preparations were even more elaborately vain than hers, short golden tunic for him, with a crimson robe—and lots of scent. No facial makeup but lots of time in arranging the hair properly.