Job: A Comedy of Justice (40 page)

“Well… Heaven’s okay, if you’re an angel. It’s not a planet; it’s an artificial place, like Manhattan. I’m not here to plug Heaven; I’m here to find Marga. Should I try to see this Mr. Ashmedai? Or would I be better off going directly to Satan?”

The monkey tried to whistle, produced a mouselike squeak. Rod shook his head. “Saint Alec, you keep surprising me. I’ve been here since 1588, whenever that was, and I’ve never laid eyes on the Owner. I’ve never thought of trying to see him. I wouldn’t know how to start. Bert, what do you think?”

“I think I need another beer.”

“Where do you put it? Since that lightning hit you, you aren’t big enough to put away one can of beer, let alone three.”

“Don’t be nosy and call the waiter.”

The quality of discourse did not improve, as every question I asked turned up more questions and no answers. The thaumaturgist arrived and bore off Bert on her shoulder, Bert chattering angrily over her fee—she wanted half of all his assets and demanded a contract signed in blood before she would get to work. He wanted her to accept ten percent and wanted me to pay half of that.

When they left, Rod said it was time we found a pad for me; he would take me to a good hotel nearby.

I pointed out that I was without funds. “No problem, Saint Alec. All our immigrants arrive broke, but American Express and Diners Club and Chase Manhattan vie for the chance to extend first credit, knowing that whoever signs an immigrant first has a strong chance of keeping his business forever and six weeks past.”

“Don’t they lose a lot, extending unsecured credit that way?”

“No. Here in Hell, everybody pays up, eventually. Bear in mind that here a deadbeat can’t even die to avoid his debts. So just sign in, and charge everything to room service until you set it up with one of the big three.”

The Sans Souci Sheraton is on the Plaza, straight across from the Palace. Rod took me to the desk; I signed a registration card and asked for a single with bath. The desk clerk, a small female devil with cute little horns, looked at the card I had signed and her eyes widened. “Uh,
Saint
Alexander?”

“I’m Alexander Hergensheimer, just as I registered. I am sometimes called ‘Saint Alexander,’ but I don’t think the title applies here.”

She was busy not listening while she thumbed through her reservations. “Here it is, Your Holiness—the reservation for your suite.”

“Huh? I don’t need a suite. And I probably couldn’t pay for it.”

“Compliments of the management, sir.”

“Compliments of the management!!”
How?
Nobody knew I was coming here until just before I was chucked out Judah Gate. Did Saint Peter have a hotline to Hell? Was there some sort of under-the-table cooperation with the Adversary? Brother, how that thought would scandalize the Board of Bishops back home!

Even more so,
why?
But I had no time to ponder it; the little devil—imp?—on duty slapped the desk bell and shouted, “Front!”

The bellhop who responded was human, and a very attractive youngster. I wondered how he had died so young and why he had missed going to Heaven. But it was none of my business so I did not ask. I did notice one thing: While he reminded me in his appearance of a Philip Morris ad, when he walked in front of me, leading me to my suite, I was reminded of another cigarette ad—“So round, so firm, so fully packed.” That lad had the sort of bottom that Hindu lechers write poetry about—could it have been that sort of sin that caused him to wind up here?

I forgot the matter when I entered that suite.

The living room was too small for football but large enough for tennis. The furnishings would be described as “adequate” by any well-heeled oriental potentate. The alcove called “the buttery” had a cold-table collation laid out ample for forty guests, with a few hot dishes on the end—roast pig with apple in mouth, baked peacock with feathers restored, a few such tidbits. Facing this display was a bar that was well stocked—the chief purser of
Konge Knut
would have been impressed by it.

My bellhop (“Call me ‘Pat.’”) was moving around, opening drapes, adjusting windows, changing thermostats, checking towels—all of those things bellhops do to encourage a liberal tip—while I was trying to figure out how to tip. Was there a way to charge a tip for a bellhop to room service? Well, I would have to ask Pat. I went through the bedroom (a Sabbath Day’s journey!) and tracked Pat down in the bath.

Undressing. Trousers at half-mast and about to be kicked off. Bare bottom facing me. I called out, “Here, lad!
No!
Thanks for the thought…but boys are not my weakness.”

“They’re my weakness,” Pat answered, “but I’m not a boy”—and turned around, facing me.

Pat was right; she was emphatically not a boy.

I stood there with my chin hanging down, while she took off the rest of her clothes, dumped them into a hamper. “There!” she said, smiling. “Am I glad to get out of that monkey suit! I’ve been wearing it since you were reported as spotted on radar. What happened, Saint Alec? Did you stop for a beer?”

“Well…yes. Two or three beers.”

“I thought so. Bert Kinsey had the watch, did he not? If the Lake ever overflows and covers this part of town with lava, Bert will stop for a beer before he runs for it. Say, what are you looking troubled about? Did I say something wrong?”

“Uh, Miss. You are very pretty—but I didn’t ask for a girl, either.”

She stepped closer to me, looked up and patted my cheek. I could feel her breath on my chin, smell its sweetness. “Saint Alec,” she said softly, “I’m not trying to seduce you. Oh, I’m available, surely; a party girl, or two or three, comes with the territory for all our luxury suites. But I can do a lot more than make love to you.” She reached out, grabbed a bath towel, draped it around her hips. “
Ichiban
bath girl, too. Prease, you rike me wark arong spine?” She dimpled and tossed the towel aside. “I’m a number-one bartender, too. May I serve you a Danish zombie?”

“Who told you I liked Danish zombies?”

She had turned away to open a wardrobe. “Every saint I’ve ever
met
liked them. Do you like this?” She held up a robe that appeared to be woven from a light blue fog.

“It’s lovely. How many saints have you met?”

“One. You. No, two, but the other one didn’t drink zombies. I was just being flip. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not; it may be a clue. Did the information come from a Danish girl? A blonde, about your size, about your weight, too. Margrethe, or Marga. Sometimes ‘Margie.’”

“No. The scoop on you was in a printout I was given when I was assigned to you. This Margie—friend of yours?”

“Rather more than a friend. She’s the reason I’m in Hell. On Hell. In?”

“Either way. I’m fairly certain I’ve never met your Margie.”

“How does one go about finding another person here? Directories? Voting lists? What?”

“I’ve never seen either. Hell isn’t very organized. It’s an anarchy except for a touch of absolute monarchy on some points.”

“Do you suppose I could ask Satan?”

She looked dubious. “There’s no rule I know of that says you can’t write a letter to His Infernal Majesty. But there is no rule that says He has to read it, either. I think it would be opened and read by some secretary; they wouldn’t just dump it into the Lake. I don’t think they would.” She added, “Shall we go into the den? Or are you ready for bed?”

“Uh, I think I need a bath. I know I do.”

“Good! I’ve never bathed a saint before. Fun!”

“Oh, I don’t need help. I can bathe myself.”

She bathed me.

She gave me a manicure. She gave me a pedicure, and
tsk-tsked
over my toenails—“disgraceful” was the mildest term she used. She trimmed my hair. When I asked about razor blades, she showed me a cupboard in the bath stocking eight or nine different ways of coping with beards. “I recommend that electric razor with the three rotary heads but, if you will trust me, you will learn that I am quite competent with an old-fashioned straight razor.”

“I’m just looking for some Gillette blades.”

“I don’t know that brand but there are brand-new razors here to match all these sorts of blades.”

“Nor I want my own sort. Double-edged. Stainless.”

“Wilkinson Sword, double-edged lifetime?”

“Maybe. Oh, here we are!—‘Gillette Stainless—Buy Two Packs, Get One Free.’”

“Good. I’ll shave you.”

“No, I can do it.”

A half hour later I settled back against pillows in a bed fit for a king’s honeymoon. I had a fine Dagwood in my belly, a Danish zombie nightcap in my hand, and I was wearing brand-new silk pajamas in maroon and old gold. Pat took off that translucent peignoir in blue smoke that she had worn except while bathing me and got in beside me, placed a drink for herself, Glenlivet on rocks, where she could reach it.

(I said to myself, “Look, Marga, I didn’t choose this. There is only this one bed. But it’s a big bed and she’s not trying to snuggle up. You wouldn’t want me to kick her out, would you? She’s a nice kid; I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I’m tired; I’m going to drink this and go right to sleep.”)

I didn’t go right to sleep. Pat was not the least bit aggressive. But she was
very
cooperative. I found one part of my mind devoting itself intensely to what Pat had to offer (plenty!) while another part of my mind was explaining to Marga that this wasn’t anything serious; I don’t love her; I love you and only you and always will…but I haven’t been able to sleep and—

Then we slept for a while. Then we watched a living hollow gram that Pat said was “X rated” and I learned about things I had never heard of, but it turned out that Pat had and could do them and could teach me, and this time I paused just long enough to tell Marga I was learning them for both of us, then I turned my whole attention to learning.

Then we napped again.

It was some time later that Pat reached out and touched my shoulder. “Turn over this way, dear; let me see your face. I thought so. Alec, I know you’re carrying the torch for your sweetheart; that’s why I’m here: to make it easier. But I can’t if you won’t try. What did she do for you that I haven’t done and can’t do? Does she have that famous left-hand thread? Or what? Name it, describe it. I’ll either do it, or fake it, or send out for it. Please, dear. You’re beginning to hurt my professional pride.”

“You’re doing just fine.” I patted her hand.

“I wonder. More girls like me, maybe, in various flavors? Drown you in tits?—chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, tutti-frutti. ‘Tutti-frutti’—hmm… Maybe you’d like a San Francisco sandwich? Or some other Sodom-and-Gomorrah fancy? I have a male friend from Berkeley who isn’t all that male; he has a delicious, playful imagination; I’ve teamed with him many times. And he has on call others like him; he’s a member of both Aleister Crowley Associates and Nero’s Heroes and Zeroes. If you fancy a mob scene, Donny and I can cast it any way you like, and the Sans Souci will orchestrate it to suit your taste. Persian Garden, sorority house, Turkish harem, jungle drums with obscene rites, nunnery—‘Nunnery’—did I tell you what I did before I died?”

“I wasn’t certain you had died.”

“Oh, certainly. I’m not an imp faking human; I’m human. You don’t think anyone could get a job like this without human experience, do you? You have to be human right down to your toes to please a fellow human most; that stuff about the superior erotic ability of succubi is just their advertising. I was a nun, Alec, from adolescence to death, most of it spent teaching grammar and arithmetic to children who didn’t want to learn.

“I soon learned that my vocation had not been a true one. What I did not know was how to get out of it. So I stayed. At about thirty I discovered just how miserably awful my mistake had been; my sexuality reached maturity. Mean to say I got horny, Saint Alec, and stayed horny and got more so every year.

“The worst thing about my predicament was not that I was subjected to temptation but that I was
not
subjected to temptation—as I would have grabbed any opportunity. Fat chance! My confessor might have looked upon me with lust had I been a choir boy—as it was, he sometimes snored while I was confessing. Not surprising; my sins were dull, even to me.”

“What were your sins, Pat?”

“Carnal thoughts, most of which I did not confess. Not being forgiven, they went straight into Saint Peter’s computers. Blasphemous adulterous fornication.”

“Huh? Pat, you have quite an imagination.”

“Not especially, just horny. You probably don’t know just how hemmed in a nun is. She is a bride of Christ; that’s the contract. So even to
think
about the joys of sex makes of her an adulterous wife in the worst possible way.”

“Be darned. Pat, I recently met two nuns, in Heaven. Both seemed like hearty wenches, one especially. Yet there they were.”

“No inconsistency. Most nuns confess their sins regularly, are forgiven. Then they usually die in the bosom of their Family, with its chaplain or confessor at hand. So she gets the last rites with her sins all forgiven and she’s shipped straight to Heaven, pure as Ivory soap.

“But not me!” She grinned. “I’m being punished for my sins and enjoying every wicked minute of it. I died a virgin in 1918, during the big flu epidemic, and so many died so fast that no priest got to me in time to grease me into Heaven. So I wound up here. At the end of my thousand-year apprenticeship—”

“Hold it! You died in 1918?”

“Yes. The great Spanish Influenza epidemic. Born in 1878, died in 1918, on my fourtieth birthday. Would you prefer for me to look forty? I can, you know.”

“No, you look just fine. Beautiful.”

“I wasn’t sure. Some men—Lots of eager motherhumpers around here and most of them never got a chance to do it while they were alive. It’s one of my easier entertainments. I simply lead you into hypnotizing yourself, you supply the data. Then I look and sound exactly like your mother. Smell like her, too. Everything. Except that I am available to you in ways that your mother probably was not. I—”