I haven’t been wasting my time completely. My tan is bone-deep and, in my shirt pocket, on a folded piece of paper, is Calvin’s home address. That I know where to find him is very comforting.
If you have to spend hours hanging around a street corner, Lincoln Road is definitely the place to do it. Intriguing pedestrians and good restaurants. An elderly man wearing only a white dressing gown and white slippers comes up to me. I doubt his outfit is a fashion statement.
He is brandishing two huge cigars and a box of matches. He cheerily offers me one of the cigars, saying something in Spanish I don’t understand… I refuse. He persists in a good-natured but firm manner. I accept.
We smoke the cigars while he yacks vivaciously, in Spanish, about the past, I assume. I can’t work out whether he knows 261
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I don’t understand a word or whether he has me down as a listening addict… My guess is he’s some Cuban who’s climbed out of a window at his daughter’s house or a hospital where he’s not allowed to light up. He maintains the gestureful monologue (although I can see he’s ill) for half an hour. Then he shakes my hand, thanks me and shuffles off.
I continue to watch the style warriors trooping by and mentally munch another grouper sandwich. Yesterday, I had a grouper sandwich at Books & Books, and I embarrassed myself by how much I enjoyed it. The grouper must have been swimming around a few hours earlier, it was that fresh. It was fried with mastery by someone who truly cared – although it was the accompanying aioli that made it so out of this world.
My pretensions of holiness have been dropped, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t enjoy a skilfully made grouper sandwich, but it’s bad for a grown man to be so moved by a sandwich. I am a little ashamed of myself for being preoccupied by the sandwich all day, and returning to this end of the Lincoln Road solely to have another.
But when I take my lunch break I discover it’s gone from the menu. I now see how wise I was to over-enjoy the grouper sandwich yesterday. Pig it up while you can. I settle for a tuna ceviche and my phone rings.
“You haven’t heard, have you?” says Dave.
“Heard what?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” he continues. “Do you want to guess what’s happened?”
It depends a great deal on who’s saying to you you’re not going to believe something; some people’s unbelievable is, actually, very believable and not interesting at all. Dishonest Dave’s unbelievable is certain to give the definition a good kicking.
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“Tell me.”
“No, no. You have a guess.”
“Just tell me.”
“News like this, you’ll have to beg. I want to hear some begging.”
“No.”
“Beg.”
“No. I’d say you want to tell me this news more than I want to hear it.”
“You want to hear this news.”
“So tell me.”
“No, you have to guess first.”
“Ludwig van Beethoven, Elvis Presley and Pablo Escobar are alive and well and running a dry-cleaning business with astonishing success in New Jersey.”
“Better than that. The Fixico sisters.” He pauses for me to say, “Yes?”
“The Fixico sisters…” He gives another long pause. “Have been arrested.”
I laugh loudly. For a long time. I can sense Dave is twitching to be asked what for, but I don’t.
“Do you want to guess what for?”
“Fraud?”
“We’ve got fraud. What’s better than fraud?”
“I don’t know, what’s better than fraud?”
“Murder.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I laugh uncontrollably.
“Wait. Wait,” says Dave. “I haven’t finished yet. What’s better than a murder charge?”
“I give up.”
“Twelve counts of murder.”
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In fact there is a bewildering armada of charges, from unpaid parking tickets through tax evasion to murder. The juiciest revelation was that the Fixicos’ start-up capital came from collecting on insurance policies. These insurance policies had been taken out on the homeless of Los Angeles who had a series of fatal accidents under the wheels of cars that didn’t stop and which were driven by drivers unknown. I find it hard to believe they managed to collect money like this, since I never managed to get my insurance company to pay for genuine holes in my roof.
“One charge of murder,” says Dave. “Any blockhead can dodge. Two or three charges of murder – a fancy lawyer can money you out. Twelve? Twelve? You’re kissing goodbye, saying sayonara, auf Wiedersehen, aloha and adieu to the world on the other side of the bars. Yeah. How long have you been working for them?”
“Almost three weeks.”
“Tyndale, you are too dangerous to know.”
Of course, you’ll say to me, Tyndale, my old china, the police must have been on their trail for years, building the case. Okay, but I know the truth.
I dry my eyes. Bitch all you want about life, we all get a few laughs. I drop the boombox and the leaflets in a bin. They’re not needed any more.
I reach into my shirt pocket. Calvin.
G
“Tyndale, how are you?” asks the Hierophant. He was always thin, but he’s still managed to lose some weight. However, the old marine swagger is back. He squeezes past the boxes in the hallway.
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The house has been sold and Sixto has crammed everything into boxes. He wanted a change of scenery and moving away will also help avoid awkward questions about money, should any emerge from Latin America. I don’t know what to do.
Having someone to destroy was nice, it provided a reason to get out of bed.
“For someone who died,” says the Hierophant, “you’re looking good.”
My resurrection made no incursion into the world. Only a few dozen people know about it: Sixto, Didsbury, Dr Greer, Virginia, the various journalists I pestered. I can’t see what I did wrong. Even now, every other day or so, there is a reference to Gert and his mug in a paper, magazine or website somewhere; but I’ve never found one line about me. Perhaps I should have tried to keep the whole thing secret, but you can’t appeal. I pulled off a miracle and no one cared.
“You’re looking good too, Gene,” I say, because it’s mostly true.
“I’m okay. I’m an old man. There’s no getting away from it.
You tell kids how tough old age is, but they won’t listen to you –
they keep on getting older. You get old, you get maudlin. I don’t watch television any more. I don’t read the papers any more. I can’t bear news, because it’s all about the suffering. I can’t take it any more. I see a poster for some kid’s missing dog and it breaks me up – that’s how old I am. I can’t even enjoy the sports channels any more, because sport at its worst means someone breaks a leg, and at its very best even sport means someone loses.”
He pulls out a copy of Scientific American from his jacket.
“This is all I read now. Science is safe. Muons don’t moan.”
Sixto’s been generous, I have a little capital. I have survival money for a year. I also still have my persistent and embarrassing 265
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medical condition. What I don’t have is any idea of what I should do next.
“We miss you at the Church, Tyndale,” says the Hierophant.
“What a man does with his time is his business. I don’t know why we haven’t seen you lately, but I came round to let you know that I’m not sore or disappointed with you for giving your services to the Fixicos. Lots of people were taken in. You’re always assured a warm welcome at the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ.
And we are now the seventy-second most happening church in the country.”
Fash’s money has helped of course. Air conditioning has been installed. Youth activiti
es established. Mike runs a boxing club which has proved popular. “Kids love organized violence.” The Hierophant has a science club, basic physics and chemistry (blowing things up). A weekend barbecue has provoked a huge turnout from the older worshippers, and the cakes at the new Bible-study class have received rave reviews in the local press and have helped a number of former muggers change their lives.
The Locketts have very publicly expressed their thanks to the Church for getting treatment for Esther, who seems to be in the clear.
“We’re looking at bigger premises,” explains the Hierophant.
“The Temple of Extreme Abundance will probably be moving on.”
“Gene, it was great working with you. I learnt a lot from you
– you helped me a lot, but I’ve got other plans now.”
I’m worried for a second that he’ll ask what my plans are, as I couldn’t make up anything convincing. He gives a smile and leaves.
Napalm has already moved out. Without saying goodbye. I’d like to pretend that I don’t care, and I don’t care a great deal, 266
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but it’s always disappointing when you’ve extended your hand to someone and it isn’t noticed. I shall take time to explore that disappointment more fully later on.
The door to Gulin’s room is opened, and her stuff is all neatly boxed up. I don’t have much in the way of packing to do, but it occurs to me it’s time to do it and to make a decision. I’m wondering whether I’ll see her before she leaves, when I hear steps and she appears.
“Hi,” she says, pleased to see me. It is a small, but real pleasure, to see that someone is pleased to see you. “How you doing?”
“Okay,” I reply. “When you moving?”
“Soon. Why don’t you ask me if I have any news?”
“Do you have any news?”
“Yes. I’m a millionaire.” I wait for the punchline, but there isn’t one. “My boss has left me a ranch. Fifty acres.”
I laugh. I don’t know why I find it so funny, but I do. I laugh and laugh. She’s beaten the system. It’s the best news I’ve heard for years.
I can see why he left her something so generous. He left his family in Illinois when he was sixteen, never had contact with them again, he came out to Florida on his own, built up a chain of movie theatres. That he was gay might have been a factor, because it was a different era, the Forties, when having a fruit for a son was worse than having him eaten by wolves, but maybe it wasn’t that. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. He saw himself in Gulin, someone who was completely unsupported, completely on her own, because very few of us are without some backup, some family, some membership, some savings. Very few of us have the courage to step right out into the unknown. I don’t.
I came here because I had nothing to leave behind. I spoke the language. I had some money.
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“I’m a millionaire,” she says, “but I’m broke.” Gulin’s got the ranch, fifty miles outside of Miami, but no money to pay all the overheads. I’d sell the whole caboodle immediately, but as has been observed, I’m often in the company of the wrong decision. “I need to find a way of making money. There used to be a chicken farm on the property.”
One of the great shortcomings of life is the lack of captions, that there is no punctuation, no musical sting to warn you when something important is happening. The very important events usually appear as indistinct from the unimportant events.
Friends or relatives put on their coats and leave, they close the door quietly, as they have done hundreds or thousands of time before and you have no inkling that that will be the last time you’ll see them, that that particular walking-out, number three hundred and sixty-two, will be the one that will change everything, even though it looked exactly the same as the other three hundred and sixty-one.
I’m glad I have a chance to say goodbye to her properly.
“I could use a lodger. You interested, Tyndale?”
G
Orinoco is put on the back seat. Being boxed up upsets some cats, but Orinoco, as always, is calm and, while cooperative, dignified, like a celebrity signing an autograph. Orinoco has to be the reincarnation of some wisdomist. Every time I look at Orinoco I feel inferior – because the cat has clearly got things figured out.
Keep cool. That’s all you can do. Keep cool and wait. Wait for your opportunity. There’s always a danger that coolness can collapse into capitulation, but all you can do is keep cool 268
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and wait for your opportunity. Maybe I’ve missed some, and maybe the ones I’ve taken wouldn’t have been the ones I’d have chosen, but I’ve had some fun. Crusher of lighting companies, destroyer of multinational criminal organizations, swatter of sanctimonious swindlers, that’s me. At least one was a mission, and it’s nice to have a mission accomplished.
Keep cool. Or at least sham cool. Sham cool and true cool, they’re almost the same. What’s our future? Orinoco and I, we laugh. I finger the diamond I’ve had fitted in my left ear as a memento of Miami, and the lesson I hope I’ve learnt here: be cool, be hard, be patient as a diamond waiting in the ground.
“Is Orinoco any special breed?” I ask.
“Just your black cat. I got him from a rescue centre. Some heartless person had abandoned him,” says Gulin.
As I manoeuvre my suitcase in the car, I have a strange sensation, something I haven’t experienced for so long, I’ve almost forgotten it: I’m home.
We’ve said our goodbyes. Dishonest Dave gave me a compilation disc which we play as we head south towards Florida City. A singer I don’t know sings about being lucky. It occurs to me that perhaps bad luck, the nasty, unscenic sibling of good luck, can shepherd you to your destination too.
“Idiot,” comments Gulin, as an idiot cuts in front of us, but it’s an observation not a curse. Gulin is a gifted driver, effortless but masterful. There’s nothing like driving in a comfy, powerful car, in sunshine, to give you the feeling that you’re getting somewhere. Despite my persistent and embarrassing medical condition, I ponder my future and eternity with amusement.
My future? I’m wearing a sharp, short-sleeved silk shirt that Fash gave me, appropriate to an upender of realms, a man who has taken out entire empires single-handed, not that anyone 269
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will know or believe it; but I don’t care. The sun is shining, I don’t care. This might be extremely superficial, but the extremely superficial, like a tissue, can often get the job done.
I ponder eternity. If you think about it, eternity can’t be a long time, because time has been removed from the mix. Eternity might feel momentary, like putting on a pair of sunglasses, or like a drive in the sunshine, while you wear a sharp, short-sleeved silk shirt. Honestly, what good is the world? Why does it have to be so big, crowded and messy, when it boils down to a handful of characters, and maybe just one?
Somehow Gulin always cheers me up. There’s an infectious optimism about her. No, not that, not optimism, because it’s not that everything will be fine. She’s not that foolish. No, there’s a can-do will about her. Whatever comes, it can be managed
– and you really can’t ask for anything more than that.
Keeping her eyes on the road she asks:
“So, Tyndale. Have you ever thought about children?”
270
Document Outline
Cover
Praise for Good to Be God
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Halftitle Page
Text Start
Text End
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Good to Be God Page 26