Good to Be God

by Tibor Fischer

  Gert is merely the warm-up act.

  G

  I consider how much of my life has been spent waiting, standing outside cinemas, twiddling my thumbs in restaurants, waiting for women. They owe me months, if not years of my life. If you’re punctual what it boils down to is that you’re going to spend much of your life waiting. Similarly, if you behave generously, you’re exposing yourself to ingratitude; but if you don’t help others, you can’t be disappointed, if you don’t lend money, they can’t fail to pay it back. In olden days, I suppose, if you lived in a small village, there was a chance people would remember, or not want to be seen as ungrateful or debtors, but not now.

  But I can’t work myself up into a real state, as Shy arrives after ten minutes.

  “What happened?”

  “With the lights off, it’s never so bad.”

  “And you told him it couldn’t work out?”

  219

  TIBOR FISCHER

  “No.”

  I get angry. Why can’t people carry out their orders? I paid a fortune for this.

  “But we agreed.”

  “I didn’t use the sob story, because he dumped me.”

  “How?”

  “He said, sorry, it couldn’t work out, no hard feelings.”

  “And you said?”

  “I said I was sorry, but I wished him well.”

  This stumps me.

  “Now,” she says. “You can do me a favour. Give me a good write-up on my website. Use your imagination.”

  She leaves as a large man with a shaved head is chatting with the boss. I now tune into their conversation.

  “Come on, give me a chance,” he says. He wants a job.

  “Sorry,” says the boss.

  “You’d be foolish not to give me a job,” says the man, “and you don’t look like a fool to me.” This line could have been delivered with charm, but it isn’t, and there’s nothing worse than failed wit or fumbled camaraderie. In the right place, at the right time, with the right delivery it could have worked. He’s an arsehole, but is it his fault? If you’re born with big ears is that your fault?

  “Sorry,” says the boss. The boss is good. He’s not giving a reason, because if you give a reason, you give someone something to refute.

  “Hey, look, this is how keen I am to work in your kitchen: I’ll work for free just to show you what a dynamite cook I am.”

  “Sorry,” says the boss, not embarrassed about walking off.

  Compassion is a disease. I want to help him. You see lots of people asking for handouts, you rarely see people fighting for a 220

  GOOD TO BE GOD

  job. Compassion may also be another form of arrogance. Christ knows I can’t even help myself, why do I think I can help someone else? He’s me. Another forty-something sinker, going down.

  It occurs to me that one area where the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ hasn’t made any effort is good, straight, unreligious fun. Why not have a purely social evening? A barbecue? A lunch? Some tasty food to lure pilgrims in?

  “I hear you’re looking for work,” I say.

  “I’m the original man looking for work. Everyone calls me Saffron.” He shakes my hand and writes down his number for me.

  “You’re a man who uses his own judgement,” he says to me.

  “That’s a very rare thing.” This is intended as a compliment, but it sounds to me like a flaw.

  “Oh, and it’s not true that I’ve attacked every one of my employers,” he assures me.

  On the way home, I spot a body lying next to the road. Its posture is odd. The raggedy clothes suggest it’s some wino sleeping it off. But what if it’s not? I drive on for a while. I want to drive on very badly, but I can’t. I turn round, stop and get out.

  I search for the old man’s pulse and can’t find any. The skin is cold and waxy.

  Three black kids lope past. “He’s dead isn’t he?” they laugh. I can comprehend the lack of interest in offering help, but is there any need to laugh about it? I call for an ambulance.

  The crew arrive after fifteen minutes and walk up suspiciously.

  “You called it in?” They ask accusingly. They look around constantly as if they’re expecting to be ambushed. Reluctantly, as if under duress, they circle the body. I feel obliged to stay.

  They fiddle with him, and after a few minutes his eyes blink into life. He’s not some heart-attack victim but a wino sleeping it off.

  221

  TIBOR FISCHER

  “This gentleman was worried about you,” the medic indicates me. The wino’s face is gratitude-free, and will remain so. The boys were right. They were right and I was wrong. Walk on and laugh. That’s the way.

  G

  I’ve arranged for Gert to come in on Sunday to talk about his mug. Late Saturday night, minutes before I close up the Church, he phones me to tell me he can’t make it.

  “Nothing personal, Tyndale. But with a miracle like this, I need a bigger church. I’ll be working with the Fixico Sisters.”

  “Who are the Fixico Sisters?”

  There’s no answer, Gert’s hung up.

  I walk out and I see that, outside the huge building next to the church, despite it being so late, there are still workmen fiddling around.

  The building’s of such a size and style it must have been a theatre back in the Twenties, and was last an unsuccessful camping-goods shop. Until recently it was derelict, and I had considered the possibility that when my act took off, it could be turned into a new, larger home for the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ. But then dozens of men in hard hats turned up to renovate with an astonishing, round-the-clock will. That’s Miami, blocks go from stone-dead to swinging in months. I’m curious who our new neighbours will be.

  A foreman gives an order and a giant neon sign lights up.

  The sign says in blue, “The Temple of Extreme Abundance”.

  Underneath, now made legible by the dropped light is a large poster on a noticeboard: “Wish large. The Fixico Sisters are God’s dealers”.

  222

  GOOD TO BE GOD

  G

  This time I invite Dave for a drink.

  “I’m not lucky.”

  “Everyone thinks that,” counters Dave. “Everyone thinks they’re dynamite in bed and that they haven’t had enough luck.”

  “But I am. I’m not unlucky in the sense that I break a leg every six months, or that I come home and find the house burnt down and my family eaten by wild animals. The really ugly stuff stays away. I’m just not allowed any luck.”

  “Don’t moan. Your lack of dignity is starting to pain me.”

  “Okay. I can prove it you.”

  We go to Publix where I pick up two cabbages. I tell Dave to choose a checkout for me and for him to go to another one.

  We both have two carts in front of us. Dave goes through the checkout with his cabbage in three minutes, while I haven’t moved an inch, and the lady at my checkout is arguing determinedly about the validity of the discount coupon she’s hoping to use.

  Dave beckons me to another checkout where there’s only one cart. The cash register goes down and the assistant looks in vain for a supervisor to sort out the malfunction. On the other side I study a mother and daughter: the daughter’s around eighteen, the mother forty. How your tastes change. I choose the mother for erotic speculation to while away the time. Fifteen minutes later I manage to pay for the cabbage.

  “What does that prove?” sneers Dave.

  “We can do it again.”

  At McDonalds Dave is served in two minutes thirty seconds.

  The server at my counter disappears for a full five minutes and it’s ten minutes before I get my burger. At the Sears in the Dadeland Mall it takes Dave thirty-five seconds to purchase a 223

  TIBOR FISCHER

  canary-yellow T-shirt. It takes me twenty-two minutes. I get Dave to choose numbers and buy two lottery tickets. Dave doesn’t win anything, but he has two numbers. The ticket he gave
me has no hits.

  “You’re sure you’re not doing it deliberately?” he asks. “This is very interesting.”

  The next day we take a trip out on the gambling boat. I’ve always found gambling boring (unless you’re losing or winning huge sums of money, stakes I’m not prepared to play for). For most of us it’s about losing small sums of money steadily, in not very interesting circumstances.

  We sit at the roulette table. I bet on black. Dave bets on red. I put down dollar chips to stretch my loss. Dave plays five dollar chips. I win twice, because as Dave says, no one can be unlucky all the time, and because it’s not just about my luck, but the luck of the others at the table. Dave wins sixteen times.

  “We have to be careful with this,” he says. “We need an either-or bet. Basketball. The Miami Heat – we can have a bet on them when they play. But we can’t go too wild, because then your bad luck wouldn’t be bad luck any more, it would change to good luck so we wouldn’t win, if we had a massive bet.”

  I think I understand him. We start betting on the matches. I choose the good odds, Dave takes the long shot. I lose, and Dave wins – modest amounts. He wants to give me half, but I tell him that will jinx our betting. Slipping me ten per cent seems to allow the system to work. I have an income.

  G

  “Okay, yes, so I have a history of uncontrollable violence. Let’s talk about that. I’m not going to hide that. But it’s a history, you 224

  GOOD TO BE GOD

  know what I’m saying, a history, like in the past, when I was young, and I only did it for recognition and respect. It’s not like I did it for laughs or I enjoyed it. That uncontrollable-violence shit is draining. And people talk, people talk, they blow it up like a great big Zep balloon, know what I’m saying? What you’ve heard, you’ve got to divide by ten,” Saffron assures me.

  I’ve decided we need more fun at the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ. You can go overboard on the holiness. What we need is an evening of fun, good food, barbecues. Barbecues with see-through tops. Now that I have some money in my pocket, I can hire someone to knock up food for the homeless, and entertain the congregation in style.

  “I haven’t heard anything. Honestly,” I assure Saffron. He has an amazing number of tats.

  “You must have heard about the blancmange?”

  “No.”

  “You must have heard about it. But remember, divide by ten.

  At least. As a minimum.”

  “When can you start?”

  “I’m ready to go-go. This old ex-armed robber loves to work.”

  “Tomorrow, say eight?”

  “Man, I’d love to but it’s my anger-management group. And it’s important to manage that anger. It’s controllable anger, but you know, it needs to be controlled.”

  “Friday?”

  “Man, I’ve got this hospital appointment. I’ve got this funny feeling in my ankle, kinda hard to say what it is exactly and I’ve been waiting months to see a doctor. My ankle’s never been the same since that time, well, this is another thing you’ve got to divide by ten, cos even if I tell you it’s going to sound worse than it is.”

  225

  TIBOR FISCHER

  “Saturday?”

  “Normally, most weeks, no problem, but I’m waiting for a delivery of a new fridge and those delivery guys they lie worse than politicians, you never know when they’re going to turn up.

  And you need a fridge in Miami.”

  “You need a fridge in Miami. Sunday?”

  “Well, I could do Sunday, but that’s the day I normally have my kids. Now, I don’t have to see them, but it’s the only chance I get to see them, and those young boys, they need a father to make sure they stay away from uncontrollable violence and armed robbery and shit. But if you want to insist, for you—”

  “Monday?”

  “Okay. Monday. Monday’s cool. I can’t wait to get started.

  No, fuck. Wait. You’re not going to believe this. The electricity company’s coming Monday to reconnect the supply. There was a misunderstanding about the payments, and that company remembers what happened years ago. They never forget. It’s no use telling them that I’m reformed. Those utility guys, man, they’re worse than the delivery guys. There’s just no telling when they’ll turn up. Oh, wait, don’t give me that look. I know that look.”

  “Look?”

  “I can see that look in your eyes. I’ve seen that look before.

  It’s that this reformed armed robber, he’s talking, he’s talking but he’s not serious about being a chef. See, something like that, when I was younger, man, that would have been like a demand, like a plea for uncontrollable violence. But I’m not that young man. I’m forty-four, I love my freedom, I love being out on the streets, so that’s why I’m not going to smash your face into the desk until the look is well and truly gone. Because that ain’t me.”

  226

  GOOD TO BE GOD

  “Saffron—”

  “No. No, I can see you have doubts. No, I don’t want a man of God to tell a lie, I can see you have doubts. So here’s what I’m going do. Next Tuesday, I’m going to turn up, as long as my Mom’s feeling okay, and she hasn’t been feeling too good lately, you know, she hasn’t had an easy life. What with my history and all, but, but next Tuesday I’m going to cook you some dynamite food, and I’m going to volunteer. I’m volunteering my services, that means you don’t have to pay me, you’re just going to thank me.”

  “See you Tuesday.”

  “See you Tuesday.”

  Saffron doesn’t turn up on Tuesday, or any other day. I was quite sure he wouldn’t. I’m pleased to be right, but as usual it doesn’t do me any good.

  G

  I buy Didsbury a beer.

  We’re down in Coconut Grove, in an undistinguished bar. I don’t want Didsbury to think I’m made of money, but he should be able to help me pull off a miracle. What I need is one big stunt. Just one. Coming back from the dead should get me noticed. If that doesn’t get me some respect, I’m giving up.

  “So when do you want the woewagon?” he asks.

  “The woewagon’s not what I want. I have another business proposition to put to you. There’s something else I want you to help me with.”

  “You’re not a body-jumper are you?” Didsbury gets up to leave.

  “No. I’m not. All I need is to borrow a fresh corpse, one careful owner, for a few hours.”

  227

  TIBOR FISCHER

  “What do you want the body for?”

  “So I look dead.”

  “Couldn’t you hold your breath or something?”

  “I need a death certificate. There’s no rush with this. I’m willing to wait until you have a client who looks like me, more or less.

  Then it’s just a question of getting a doctor to examine him.”

  “Man, do you know the trouble I could get in for that?”

  I name a price. It tells him I’m serious. His expression tells me that he’ll dither about it, but that he’s going to say yes.

  He names another price. It’s not much higher than my figure, but negotiation isn’t just about the money – it’s about feeling you have the power to change things.

  “I wouldn’t even think about this, but my mother’s ill, and those doctors.” This may be true or it may not. It makes no difference to me. Didsbury has huge hands – and he has the longest thumbs I’ve ever seen. His thumbs look as if they’ve had another pair of thumbs grafted onto them, long thumbs to boot. He’d make a great monkey, never falling out of the trees.

  “And you promise you’re not into any sick stuff? I’m dextrous on the morals, but I ain’t going that far.”

  “I promise; and you can be around to chaperone me.” Didsbury’s straining to convince himself, but he’ll succeed.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “You sure I can’t interest you in the choking chariot for an evening?”

  “No.”

  “How about some solar-powered
gravestones? I’ve got a load of those.”

  “Not for me,” I say. “But I know a man who could take them off your hands.”

  G

  228

  GOOD TO BE GOD

  When I walk through the sombre entrance of the funeral home, I ask myself how I will remember this moment. Will I remember walking through this entrance as the prelude to an exciting chapter of my life or as the descent to an even greater misery? Why couldn’t I like chocolate?

  “Relax,” says Didsbury. My trepidation must be dangling.

  “No one’s coming round. It’s total quiet. People don’t die during holidays.”

  I’m going through with this although I’ve now reached the stage where I don’t want to, where I no longer see how it can help; I’m doing it because I feel I should. I’ve never taken a really big risk with a long, painful fall to the ground, and maybe this is why I’ve never got on. Plus chocolate.

  I meet Mr Yates. Geologist new to Miami. New to death.

  Don to his friends and embalmer. I can’t say he looks like me, but he definitely doesn’t not look like me, and he admirably does the job of being my height and short on hair.

  We load him into a lightweight wardrobe, and I succumb to a momentary guilt about what we’re doing. Don can’t mind, but his family members might. Really, taking the body for a tour isn’t immoral or indeed illegal (it occurred to me if we were caught, there’s nothing they could actually charge me with since Don is being treated with respect).

  Then we place the wardrobe in the van. The wardrobe is there to dispel notions that we’re carrying a body. I’ve always been a little disgruntled about being average: average height, average build and, for a while, average income (how I miss that). I always wished there was something outstanding about me, just one thing: able to put up straight shelves, cooking a great rack of lamb, knowing all the capitals of the world, having a fine tenor voice.

  229

  TIBOR FISCHER

  Now as Didsbury and I struggle with Don, I’m very glad I’m not six foot two. We wheel the wardrobe most of the way on one of those wheely things, but some good old-fashioned shunting is required – Didsbury is beefy and is used to carrying heavy loads, but I’m not. I’m positively faint from the strain. It passes through my mind how comic it would be if I dropped dead in the middle of a bodysnatch.