by James Morrow
Michael knotted up; he sweated as if caught in the ersatz summer God had recently imposed on Manhattan. “I’m not free to discuss that particular project.”
“And Nimrod Mountain—another secret? Your boss fancies seeing his name on things, doesn’t he? He’s a man who likes to leave his mark.” God sat down on His revolving piano stool and began pecking out “Chopsticks” with His index fingers. “I want to meet with him. Face to face. Here.”
“He’ll be back from Japan in two weeks.” I’ve gone insane, Michael decided, retrieving a cowhide-bound appointments book from his valise. Only certifiable schizophrenics showed meetings with God on their calendars. “How does Saint Patrick’s Day sound?” he asked, scanning March. “We can squeeze You in at ten.”
“Fine.”
In the March 17 square Michael wrote, 10 A.M.—God. “May I inquire as to the topic?”
“Let me just say that if your boss doesn’t learn a bit of humility, a major and unprecedented disaster will befall him.”
To Michael Prete, “Chopsticks” had never sounded so sinister.
God knows why Michael experienced no trouble convincing his boss that he had an appointment with Me.
He experienced no trouble because being contacted by Yours Truly is a possibility that a man of Daniel Nimrod’s station never rules out entirely. Indeed, the first thing Michael’s boss wanted to know was why God was calling the shots—why couldn’t they meet at Sardi’s instead? Whereupon Michael attempted to explain how the skyscraper was intrinsically suitable to such a rendezvous: God might own the earth, the firmament, and the immediate cosmos, but Nimrod and Nimrod alone owned the Tower.
Never underestimate the power of words. When I appointed Adam chief biologist in Eden—when I allowed him to call the tiger “tiger,” the cobra “cobra,” the scorpion “scorpion”—I was giving him a kind of dominion over them. For the tiger, cobra, and scorpion, meanwhile, Adam and his kind remained utterly incomprehensible, that is to say, nameless.
Nimrod believed his secretary’s words. The meeting would occur when and where I wished.
Screw the Irish, thought Michael. Screw their crummy parade. Everywhere the chauffeur turned, a sawhorse-shaped barrier labeled NYPD blocked the way, channeling the limousine along a byzantine detour that eventually landed them in United Nations Plaza, a good ten blocks south of the Tower.
Mr. Nimrod, smooth, cool Mr. Nimrod, didn’t mind. As they started back uptown, he stretched out, sipped his Bloody Mary, and continued asking unanswerable questions.
“Do you suppose He’ll let us drop His name?” The boss’s boyish face broke into a stupendous grin—the first time Michael had seen him happy since the Yaku Shima deal fell through. “Word gets around Who’s up there on the sixty-third floor and bang, we can double everybody’s rent overnight.”
“I believe He prefers to retain a certain anonymity,” Michael replied.
“What do you think He’s selling?”
“I don’t think He’s selling anything.” Michael looked Nimrod in the eye. Such a vigorous young man, the secretary thought. How salutary, the effects of unimaginable wealth. “I got the impression He regards you as, well…”
“Yes?”
“Ambitious.”
The boss shrugged. “It’s a big universe,” he said, mixing a second Bloody Mary. “Hey, maybe it’s not stuff at all—maybe it’s a service. You think He’s selling a service, Michael?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know—immortality or something.”
“I wouldn’t want to guess.”
“Photosynthesis?”
“Don’t ask me, sir.”
Even after they exited the limo and started through the atrium, the boss continued to drive Michael crazy. Nimrod lingered in the stores, reveling in the clerks’ astonished gasps and bulging eyes: good God, it was he, the great man himself, strolling amid the goods like an ordinary Fifth Avenue shopper—like a common millionaire. At Beck’s he stopped to admire a $2,300 Nymphenburg chess set; at Asprey’s he inspected a $117,000 clock studded with cabochon rubies and lapis; at Botticellino’s he bought his newborn nephew an $85 pair of blue suede baby shoes. It seemed to Michael nothing short of a miracle that they arrived at the threshold of God’s pied-à-terre only thirty-two minutes behind schedule.
Although their Host came to the door wearing a relaxed and cheerful expression, Michael remained uneasy. God had dressed with dignity—mother-of-pearl business suit, white cotton shirt, beige moire tie—whereas Nimrod’s primrose linen trousers and turquoise silk shirt radiated a casualness that, Michael feared, bordered on the irreverent.
Nimrod shook the Almighty’s hand. “Your reputation precedes You.”
“As does yours,” said their Host, eyelids on a snide descent.
God guided His guests into the parlor. An array of hothouse orchids and force-fed dahlias now decorated the lid of the Steinway.
“I have a gift for You, God,” said Nimrod. “May I call you God?”
The Almighty nodded and asked, “May I call you Daniel?”
“Certainly.” Nimrod snapped his bejeweled fingers. Michael popped open his Spanish-leather valise and drew out a copy of Paydirt: How to Make Your Fortune in Real Estate. “Shall I include a personal message?” Nimrod asked.
“Please do,” said God. “And permit Me to reciprocate,” He added, removing a New International Bible from His mahogany bookshelves.
The two of them spent a protracted minute inscribing their respective books.
“Saturn,” said Nimrod at last.
“Huh?” said God.
“That’s the snazzy one, right? The one with the rings?”
“Jupiter’s got a ring too,” God noted. “Even the Wall Street Journal carried the news.”
“I’ll give You seven hundred and fifty,” said Nimrod. “Eight hundred if we can close the deal before the month is out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Saturn—Saturn for eight hundred million dollars.”
“Saturn?”
“I’m going to build on it,” Nimrod explained. “Once I nail down the Canaveral scheme, I’ll be jamming more tourists into space in a single day than Paris sees in a whole year.”
At which point Michael felt obliged to step in. “Correct me if I’m wrong, God, Sir, but isn’t Saturn merely a ball of gas?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘merely,’” He replied, a tad miffed, “but, yes, the terrain isn’t anything to get excited about. The idea behind Saturn was the rings.”
“Then the deal’s off,” said Nimrod, slamming his open palm on the Steinway.
“The deal was never on, you son of a bitch,” said God, striding toward His picture window. The glass was swathed in thick acetate drapes the color of pistachio nuts. “I didn’t ask you here to make any deals.”
Michael glanced furtively at Nimrod. The boss didn’t bat an eye. Damn, he was one nervy entrepreneur.
“I understand you have some big plans,” said God, yanking a gold rope. The drapes parted on a spectacular view of Saint Patrick’s Day celebrants lining Madison Avenue, waiting for the parade to appear. “I hear there’s a Nimrod Gorge in the works.”
The boss flashed Michael an angry, stabbing stare, a look to turn blood to ice, flesh to salt. “Certain people should learn to keep their mouths shuts,” Nimrod muttered.
“Your secretary divulged nothing,” insisted the Almighty.
Nimrod joined Him at the window. “You bet there’s a Nimrod Gorge in the works, God, and it’ll make the Grand Canyon look like a pothole. Listen, if You’re one of those environmental-impact fanatics, You should realize we’re using only conventional explosives for the excavation.”
The brassy, blaring forte of a marching band wafted into the room.
“There’s also going to be a Nimrod Mountain,” said God.
“Rather like the Gorge,” said the boss, “but in the opposite direction.”
Th
e Almighty laid His palm against the window. The parade was in sight now, sinuating down Madison like a long green python.
“I want you to drop all such plans,” He said.
Bending over slightly, Nimrod scowled and bobbed his head toward God, as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears. “Huh? Drop them? What do you mean?”
“You can start by shutting down this vulgar and arrogant Tower.”
“Vulgar?” Nimrod echoed defensively. “Vulgar?”
“Pink marble and burnished bronze—who do you think you’re kidding? This place makes Las Vegas look like a monastery.”
“God, I’ll have You know we’ve got nothing but raves so far. Raves. The Times architecture critic positively flipped.”
The Almighty removed His palm from the glass, leaving a mark suggesting a fortune-teller’s logo. “Have you checked the prices down there lately? Thirty-five dollars for a T-shirt from Linda Lee’s, three hundred and fifty for a salt-and-pepper set from Asprey’s, twenty-one thousand for a gold evening bag from Winston’s—really, Daniel, it’s offensive.”
“Merchants charge what they can get,” Nimrod explained. “That’s how the system works.”
“So you refuse to close up shop?”
“What’s the matter—don’t You believe in progress?”
“No,” said God. “I don’t.” He tapped the gift Bible in Nimrod’s hand. “The last time your species got out of line, I was moved to sow seeds of discord. I gave you all different languages.”
“Yes, and the whole arrangement’s been a complete pain in the ass, if You want my opinion,” said Nimrod, brandishing his Bible, “especially when it comes to dealing with Asians.”
“I sympathize with your frustration,” said God, sidling onto His piano stool. “In fact, there’s probably only one thing worse than not being able to understand a person.”
“What’s that?” asked Nimrod.
“Being able to understand him completely.”
A thoughtful frown crinkled the boss’s brow. “Oh?” Pivoting, God faced Michael and stretched out His right hand, eyes burning like two meteors smashing into air. The slightest brush from the Almighty’s extended index finger was all it took, the merest touché, and a white, viscous light flowed through Michael’s brain, seeping into his cortical crannies and illuminating his powers of articulation.
“Go ahead,” God commanded Michael. “Speak.”
“What should I say?”
“Just talk.”
“D-Daniel…” Michael winced: he’d never called the boss Daniel before. “Daniel, the plain fact is that you harbor feelings of insecurity bordering on paranoia,” he found himself saying. Complete understanding…total lucidity…yes, it was really happening—for the first time in his life, Michael could truly communicate.
“Feelings of what?” said Nimrod.
“Insecurity.”
The boss’s puckish features grew tense and flushed, as if he were suffering from apoplexy. “Well, this day’s certainly shaping up to be a pisser,” he said, tugging on the fourteen-karat gold chain around his neck. “First He turns against me, now you. Really, Michael, after all I’ve—”
A froggish glunk issued from Nimrod’s throat as the Almighty laid a divine hand on his shoulder. Nimrod squeezed his head between his palms and, stumbling across the lush carpet, dropped to his knees as if intending to pray.
God said, “Your turn, bigshot.”
The boss lifted his thickly tufted head and gave a meandering smile. Slowly, cautiously, he planted his two-hundred-dollar wingtips from Biagiotti’s on the carpet and rose to full height. “If Freud were here, he might infer my problems have a sexual etiology,” said Nimrod in measured tones. “He would probably note the phallic implications of my skyscraper. I hope I’m being clear.”
“You’re being extremely clear,” said Michael, putting on his overcoat.
“Clarity—that’s the whole idea,” said God.
“Where’re you going?” asked Nimrod.
“I’m afraid that in a teleological cosmos such as the one we evidently occupy,” said Michael, tucking the valise under his arm, “I can no longer rehabilitate any actual truth from the highly circumscribed domain of financial speculation.” He started into the foyer. “And so I’m off into the great wide world, where I hope to gain some insight into the nature of ultimate reality.”
“The fact is, I’ve never been entirely certain I love my mother,” said Nimrod, scowling profoundly. “Jung, of course, would project the discourse onto a more mythic plane.”
“Daniel, I know exactly what you mean,” said Michael.
And he did.
Last night I reread Genesis. On the whole, I find it well-written and poetic. I particularly like My use of the Omniscient Narrator.
Don’t ask Me why I found the Shinarites’ Tower so threatening. I simply did. “And now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do,” I prophesied. My famous curse followed forthwith. “Let Us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
But that didn’t stop them, did it? They still did whatever they liked.
This time around, I got it right.
Hopping aboard the escalator, Michael began his descent. As the shops glided by, he realized that an uncanny anomie had overtaken the atrium. Instead of selling Italian sportswear, the employees of Biagiotti’s had convened a colloquy on Dante. Instead of purchasing French shoes, the crowd in Jourdan’s was holding an impromptu encounter group. “The thing of it is,” a teary-eyed young man croaked as Michael bustled past, “I still love her.” To which an aging matron replied, “We could tell, Warren—we could just tell.”
A shocking sight awaited Michael as he swung through the revolving door and stepped onto Madison Avenue. The crowd had turned against the parade—against Saint Patrick’s Day per se, it seemed. They were attacking the marchers with bricks, showering them with broken bottles, beating them with lead pipes. Screams zagged through the frigid air. Wounds blossomed like red carnations.
From his post by the Fifty-sixth Street entrance, the security man, Manuel, contemplated the chaos with bemusement.
“With what meaning do you invest this disturbance?” Michael asked, rushing up.
The Irishmen were fighting back now, employing every weapon at hand—batons, harps, trumpets, ceremonial shillelaghs. “The spectators have deciphered the parade’s subtext,” Manuel replied. He had shed his accent—or, rather, he had traded his Puerto Rican lilt for a nondescript succession of nasal, mid-Atlantic inflections. “Such a festivity says, implicitly, ‘At some non-relativistic level we Irish believe ourselves to possess a superior culture.’”
“I didn’t know you spoke English,” said Michael.
“A sea change has overtaken me.” Manuel adjusted his pith helmet. “I have become mysteriously competent at encrypting and decoding verbal messages.”
At which point a refugee from the besieged parade—a drum major in a white serge uniform decorated with green shamrocks—staggered toward the Tower entrance. Pain twisted his face. Blood slicked his forehead.
Manuel leveled a hostile glance at the intruder, then lightly touched the sleeve of Michael’s overcoat. “Now please excuse me while I shoot this approaching drum major in the head. You see, Mr. Prete, I find myself in fundamental agreement with the mob’s interpretation, and I take concomitant offense at the tacit ethnocentrism of this event.”
“Excuse me,” said the drum major, “but I couldn’t help overhearing your last remark. Do you really intend to shoot me?”
“I understand how, from your perspective, that is not justifiable praxis on my part.” Manuel drew out his Smith & Wesson.
“Let me hasten to aver I am no longer conspicuously ethnic.” The drum major wiped the gore from his brow. “You’ll note, for example, that I’ve lost my brogue. In fact, I’ve started talking like some self-important Englishman.”
“The issue, I sup
pose, is whether our newfound homogeneity truly mitigates the nationalistic fanaticism I was about to counter via my revolver.”
“Surely you no longer have a case against me.”
“Am contraire, do you not see that I am suddenly free to hate your very essence, not merely your customs, clothing, and speech? I still feel obligated to fire this gun, acting out of those pathological instincts that are the inevitable Darwinian heritage of all carnivorous primates.”
“Now that you put it that way…”
“Ergo…”
As soon as the bullet departed the barrel of the revolver, messily separating the Irishman from his cranium, Michael began a mad dash down Fifth Avenue.
“I wish to effect an immediate exit!” he yelled, hopping into a waiting taxi. “Please cross the Hudson posthaste.”
The Rastafarian driver looked Michael squarely in the eye. Amazingly, he was the same cabbie who’d shuttled Michael to his initial interview with the Almighty.
“Judging by the desperation in your voice,” said the Jamaican, “I surmise it is not New Jersey per se you seek, but, rather, the idea of New Jersey”—the man’s musical accent had completely vanished—“a psychological construct you associate with the possibility of escape from the linguistic maelstrom in which we currently reside. Am I making sense?”
“Entirely,” said Michael. All around him, the air rang with the clamor of coherence and riot. “Nevertheless, I earnestly hope you will convey me to South Hoboken.”
“The Holland Tunnel is probably our best option.”
“Agreed.”
The cabbie peeled out, catching a succession of green lights that brought the vehicle through the Forties and Thirties, all the way to Twenty-ninth Street, where he cut over to Seventh Avenue and continued south. Another lucky run of greens followed, and suddenly the tunnel loomed up. No toll, of course, not on this side. The city did everything it could to encourage emigration.