What in God's Name: A Novel

by Simon Rich

“He’s still got to lose weight,” Eliza said.

  “Yeah,” Craig murmured, sadly. “He looks like garbage.”

  He typed a new code into his computer.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ve got a backup plan.”

  Craig, like most Angels, was a master of self-delusion.

  When he jammed a patrolman’s radar gun to protect people from speeding tickets, he ignored the cop’s quota and the grief he would get back at the station. When he helped a group of Boy Scouts start a campfire, he tried not to think about the carcinogenic properties of roasted marshmallows.

  Craig spent twenty minutes a day crashing old people’s computers to prevent them from sending their credit card numbers to Nigerian scam artists. But he never thought about the scam artists themselves and the money and joy he was costing them.

  He was ecstatic when he helped St. Mary’s School for the Blind win its first-ever middle school wrestling match. But the victory dealt a major psychological blow to their sighted opponents, one of whom had lost to a blind child in front of his parents. Was it still a miracle if someone had to suffer?

  Craig was usually able to justify his actions with a cost-benefit analysis. As long as a miracle’s “good” outweighed its “bad,” he considered himself in the right. Surgeons had to make incisions; firemen had to smash doors. It was all part of the game.

  Still, he was finding it difficult to justify a salmonella attack.

  “Okay,” he said, his fingers fluttering over his keyboard. “That’s the Bombay Palace freezer…and that’s the vat where they keep the green sauce. It’s already crawling with bacteria. All I have to do is knock out the freezer’s power supply. It’ll create enough warmth for the microbes to replicate and turn the sauce into poison.”

  He looked over at Eliza. “Are you absolutely sure that this is necessary?”

  She nodded. “It’s for the best.”

  EARTH—TWENTY-FIVE DAYS UNTIL DOOMSDAY

  “This is first time all day you put on pants,” Raj said. “You were naked until the moment I arrive.”

  “That’s not true,” Sam lied.

  “Yes. You heard buzzer and put on pants, but before that you spend day naked. Admit this.”

  Sam looked down at his sockless feet.

  “Okay,” he admitted. “You’re right.”

  “You need to get out of slump,” Raj told him.

  “I know.”

  “Everything happens for a reason. If life is hard, you must take it by the horns.”

  “I know. Okay? I know!”

  Raj took a step back, surprised by Sam’s unusual eruption.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It is because I care about you, that I say these things.”

  Sam sighed. “I know, Raj. I didn’t mean to yell.”

  They stood for a moment in silence.

  “I give extra puri,” Raj said. “And the green sauce you love.”

  “Thanks, Raj. You’re the best.”

  Sam tipped him generously and made his way back to the couch. It took him a few bites to realize that his food tasted a bit strange. Had they hired a new chef? He dipped his spoon into the green sauce and sipped it. It wasn’t bad, he reflected—just different. He dumped the container onto his rice and finished his meal.

  Twelve hours later, Sam lay in a fetal position on his bathroom floor, shivering. He groped for his cell phone and dialed up his office.

  “I think it’s food poisoning,” he told a secretary. “Are you guys going to be all right without me?”

  The secretary laughed. “Yeah, I think we’ll manage.”

  Sam worked for a company called Chapman Consulting. He didn’t have any particular interest in consulting, but of the two hundred résumés he sent out senior year, it was the only place that had offered him a job. He’d been extremely frightened to start work; he knew nothing about finance and was terrified he’d be exposed as a fraud. But so far nobody had noticed his ineptitude.

  His boss was a friendly alcoholic named Mr. Dougan who wore the same pin-striped suit every day. He explained to Sam on his very first day of work that Chapman Consulting was something called a tax dodge. The financial specifics were over Sam’s head, but basically a billionaire named Mr. Chapman had founded the company in the 1980s to hide some of his money from the government. Chapman Consulting never actually “did” anything. The company was purely for show: a physical space that nosy IRS agents could visit.

  Mr. Dougan had been given his position as a reward for covering up some of Mr. Chapman’s investment crimes. He arrived at the office each morning at eight and began to drink immediately.

  Chapman Consulting occupied all three floors of a stunning midtown brownstone. There were about a dozen employees, women mostly, spread out all over the building. Since the company had no real business, they spent their days playing solitaire on their computers. When one of them won a game, her computer emitted a celebratory beep. Other than these beeps, the office was completely silent.

  Sam’s hours were nine to five. As soon as he arrived, Mr. Dougan called him into his office and ordered him to close the door. He then instructed him in a quiet voice to search through all the couch cushions in the building, collect all of the loose change he could find, and bring it back. This task usually took about thirty minutes. When Sam returned with the change, his boss had him divide the coins into two piles. He then dispatched him to Empire Bodega across the street with instructions to spend 50 percent of the change on beer and the other 50 percent on lottery tickets. When Sam returned with the purchases, Mr. Dougan hustled him back into his office, closed the door, and carefully divided the beers between them. When they were finished drinking them all, they took turns scratching off the lottery tickets. If any of the tickets were winners, Dougan immediately sent Sam back to the bodega with the same instructions as before. The cycle continued for as long as there was change to work with.

  Sam liked his job. Before Chapman Consulting, he’d worked as a Starbucks barista—and he was much better at this one. He had a good eye for finding coins, and he never made a mistake dividing them. Even better, his boss really seemed to like him.

  “You’re doing a great job,” Mr. Dougan often whispered to him when he came back with the beer and the tickets. “Close the door and drink your beers.”

  Sam felt a real fondness for his boss and hated to disappoint him. On days when the couches held little or no loose change, he supplemented his findings with coins from his own pockets. He felt bad about calling in sick and leaving Mr. Dougan on his own. But there was nothing he could do; he was too ill to stand. He’d spent the last eight hours within an arm’s reach of the toilet bowl. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but he was completely naked. His bathroom looked like a crime scene.

  It occurred to Sam that if he died, it would be several days before somebody found him. All his friends from college had scattered across the country after graduation. And he wasn’t really in touch with his parents. They’d gotten divorced during his freshman year, and by his sophomore year, they had both remarried. They had started new families with shocking speed—his mother in California, his father in Texas. In just five years, he’d gone from being an only child to the oldest of eight. He had two half sisters (so far) and five stepsiblings. Sometimes, when talking to his folks on the holidays, he confused one parent’s children with the other’s.

  Sam had planned to move back home after graduation, at least for a few months. But he wasn’t sure what “home” meant anymore. His childhood house, his mother once casually mentioned, had been bulldozed. And while he knew he was welcome to visit either parent, neither had a bedroom waiting for him.

  He gazed at his phone and noted with shock that it was almost 7 p.m. It was looking to be another no-pants day. He knew he should drink some water, but he didn’t have the strength to stand. His daydreams, he noticed, were increasingly hallucinatory. He kept seeing faces in the bathroom tiles, and the toilet had begun to remind him of Raj—a toweri
ng, upright presence, glaring down at him.

  “Take life by the horns,” he heard it say. “Get out of the slump.”

  “How?” he whispered.

  “Take life by the horns,” Raj repeated.

  Sam wiped the sweat from his brow. “Why did you poison me?”

  “Everything happens for a reason,” Raj said.

  Sam closed his eyes, drifting gratefully into unconsciousness.

  “I’m starting to get worried about him,” Craig said. “He hasn’t eaten anything in three days.”

  Eliza glanced at the screen. Sam had managed to crawl from his bathroom floor to his couch, but he was still in rough shape. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks a ghastly white. He’d attempted, at some point, to put on clothes. But he’d quickly abandoned the plan and was still naked except for a pair of mismatched socks. The television flashed in the darkness. A plastic bucket stood grimly by his side.

  “Let it ride a little longer,” Eliza said.

  “Seriously?”

  “It’s working.”

  She zoomed in on Sam’s pallid face. “See—he’s already lost the double chin.”

  Craig raised his eyebrows. He had to admit: Sam was starting to look less doughy.

  “Let’s do another five days,” Eliza suggested.

  “Four more,” Craig compromised. “We don’t want him to die.”

  “Okay, okay. Four more days, starting now.”

  She stuck out her hand and Craig shook it.

  EARTH—EIGHTEEN DAYS UNTIL DOOMSDAY

  Sam tried to call in sick, but nobody at the office would pick up. It took him a few more tries to figure out why: it was Saturday. He’d lost seven days—an entire week of his life.

  The strange thing, he realized, was that he didn’t blame Bombay Palace. He knew it was their food that had poisoned him. But his love for the restaurant was so intense and pure he couldn’t bear to find any fault with it. If anything, he felt guilty. Bombay Palace was not a popular restaurant, and Sam represented a sizable portion of its income. He was such a valued customer that Raj occasionally consulted with him before making changes to the menu. He hoped his seven-day absence hadn’t caused too much damage to their business.

  On Sunday morning he finally felt well enough to eat—and he immediately placed an order.

  “Just one mulligatawny soup?” Raj asked over the phone. “That’s it?”

  Sam deliberated. He was extremely hungry, but he knew he should start off slow. There was only so much his recovering body could handle.

  “Yes, thanks,” he said. “Just the soup.”

  There was a long pause on the other end.

  “Sam,” Raj murmured. “I notice you do not order all week. What is the reason for this?”

  Sam thought about telling Raj the truth, that his last delivery had badly sickened him. But he didn’t want to make him feel guilty.

  “I was on vacation,” he lied. “You know, visiting family?”

  “That is not true,” Raj said. “You were ill from our food. Admit this.”

  “Jesus,” Sam said. “How’d you know?”

  “Because you ate the green sauce.”

  He took a deep breath and continued in a low tone. “Sam…I must confess to you. Last week many people who ate our green sauce…they had bad problems. Your sickness…it was our fault.”

  “It’s okay, Raj. I don’t blame you.”

  “You must. You are angry at me. Admit this.”

  Sam laughed. “I’m not mad—I swear! I mean, when you look at the amount of food I’ve ordered from you guys, it’s amazing I’ve only been poisoned once. That’s a pretty good percentage.”

  “Yes, well, I feel very bad,” Raj said. “And so…the next three meals are free.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Please. I have thought about this. I knew you were sick, because you stop ordering. And so I talk to Rubaina, and I say to her, ‘I have sickened this man. What do I do?’ I talk to her, and we decide I will bring the next three meals to you for free and no tip.”

  “Raj, really, you don’t have to—”

  “Yes,” he interrupted. “Yes, I do! Please let me. I have bad sleep. I feel so bad…so bad to hurt my friend.”

  Sam started to respond, but his voice caught in his throat. He realized with shock that he was about to cry.

  “Hello?” Raj asked. “Sam?”

  Sam wiped his eyes. “That’s really nice of you. Thanks, Raj.”

  “I will bring extra puri,” he said. “And the red sauce this time.”

  Raj was at the door within ten minutes. They completed their customary handshake, and Raj handed Sam his food. The bag was oddly heavy, and when Sam peeked inside he noticed it contained extra soup. In addition to the mulligatawny he had ordered, there were three glass thermoses filled to the brim with pinkish broth.

  “Is special soup not on menu,” Raj explained. “Rubaina makes it for me when I am ill.”

  Sam noticed for the first time that Raj’s cheeks were unusually gaunt.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “Don’t tell me you were sick too?”

  “Everyone was sick,” Raj whispered. “It was like a plague at Bombay Palace.”

  His eyes took on a haunted look as he told the horrible tale.

  “First the waiters get sick. Then the busboy. Then everybody. Our chef—Raveesh—he had an attack in the middle of the restaurant. He could not make it to the staff toilet. There was no time. So he ran into the customer toilet, right in front of everybody. Can you imagine how that is for business? There are customers sitting at tables and they see the chef, wearing his chef’s hat, run into bathroom and begin to scream. Really scream—like he is a dying man. Many customers get up and leave.”

  “That sounds awful.”

  “Yes. I ask myself, ‘Why are we being punished? What crime have we committed to deserve such misfortune?’”

  He leaned in close and continued in a whisper, “But the universe is mysterious. We can never know its plan.”

  Sam nodded awkwardly. “I guess that’s true.”

  He thanked Raj again for the soups and promised to return the glass thermoses when he was done.

  “If missing,” Raj warned him, “my wife will become crazy.”

  “I understand,” Sam said.

  They said their good-byes and, for the first time ever, clumsily attempted an embrace.

  Sam closed the door and stared excitedly at the bag. It had been seven days since his last real meal, and he had no idea what his body could handle. But he was feeling unusually confident. He was ready to take a risk.

  He poured Rubaina’s soup into a bowl and tentatively dipped his spoon into the broth. It smelled like mulligatawny, but it had a completely different consistency. It was chunkier, more substantial. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and took a tiny sip. In an instant, the drop of soup seemed to ricochet all over his mouth, coating his tongue with flavor. There was a stab of spiciness in the back of his throat, and a rush of endorphins flooded his bloodstream. He leaned back on the couch, looked up at the ceiling, and laughed.

  He stood up suddenly. It was time, he decided.

  It was time to put on pants.

  “He’s on the move!”

  Craig scrambled into Eliza’s cubicle.

  “He’s just getting out of the shower now,” he told her breathlessly. “He’s got pants laid out. I think he’s going to leave the apartment.”

  Eliza pumped her fist. They’d been preparing for this moment all week, scanning hundreds of pages of data, producing countless lines of code. And now, after seven straight days of monotonous research, it was finally time to put their plan into action. It was finally time to answer the humans’ prayers.

  “Okay,” Craig said. “I’m initiating the sequence.”

  He extended an index finger and shakily dangled it over the enter key.

  “What are you waiting for?” Eliza demanded.

  “Just a little nervous,�
�� Craig admitted. “I’ve never done this kind of thing before.”

  Eliza glared at him. “I thought you said you’d arranged Chance Encounters!”

  “Of course I have!” he said. “Just…never in New York City.”

  They zoomed in on the dense street grid of the Lower East Side, swirling with cars and people.

  “Everything’s in place. If we mess up, we don’t get another shot.”

  “Just press the button,” Eliza shouted. “Press it!”

  Craig wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead and jabbed the button with his finger. There was nothing they could do but watch.

  Craig was no stranger to troubleshooting. In his years in the department, he’d designed thousands of miracles, some of them dizzyingly complex. But when it came to Chance Encounters, he was as nervous as anyone on the floor.

  Chance Encounters (or CE’s) were so hard to plan that few Angels even attempted them. In order to get two humans to converge at the exact same spot at the exact same time, you had to manipulate hundreds of variables. It took creativity, timing, and a hellish amount of research. And if you screwed up even a single detail, all was lost.

  Laura lived on Forsyth and Stanton; Sam on Delancey and Ludlow. They were barely six blocks from each other—but in New York City, six blocks might as well be six light-years. The humans were separated by 841 walls and more than 100,000 people.

  The Angels batted around dozens of strategies before eventually settling on a game plan. Like most twenty-three-year-old humans, Sam and Laura couldn’t function long without their iPhones. If their phones were broken, they’d have no choice but to leave their apartments and get them repaired. The Apple Store on Allen and Rivington was located halfway between Sam’s and Laura’s apartments. It was the perfect spot for a Chance Encounter.

  When Craig pressed enter, it simultaneously crashed both humans’ phones. Within five seconds, they were staring at their frozen screens, jabbing at them frantically and cursing under their breath. There was nothing they could do, they quickly realized; they’d have to pay a visit to the Apple Store.