The telephone rang and God scooped up the receiver.
“Yeah, three o’clock’s good. Let’s just play nine this time, though. My back’s killing me.”
Raoul winked at Eliza. “Hey, pretty lady,” he said.
She turned away from the screen.
“Don’t worry about the tsunami,” God told her, holding his palm over the phone. “I’ve got everything taken care of.”
Eliza nodded wearily and shuffled across the carpet. She was almost out the door when she spotted something odd. In the corner of God’s office was a giant stack of papers, a towering column that was nearly as tall as she was. She squinted at the heap and noticed that the pages had a familiar red tint. It was a pile of prayers—all 7s.
Eliza suddenly felt dizzy. She slipped out the door, got into the elevator, and rode down to 17.
When the doors slid open, she cringed at the burst of fluorescent light. The floor was packed with Angels now, shouting into their BlackBerrys, pounding on their keyboards, chugging coffee from thermoses.
She went into her cubicle and noticed that her computer monitor was still flashing. The beeping had stopped, though.
Someone had turned off the sound.
“You went to God with a
code?
”
Craig clasped his scalp in disbelief. “What were you thinking?”
“I had to,” Eliza said. “The whole thing was my fault.”
She covered her face with her hands. “I was messing with currents,” she said, her voice muffled by her fingers. “I screwed everything up.”
“Don’t worry!” Craig said. “Stuff like that happens
all the time
. In my first year, when I was trying to figure out wind currents, I caused over a dozen tornadoes.”
Eliza spread her fingers a bit, peeking at Craig through the gap.
“Really?”
Craig nodded firmly. “Really.”
“What did you do?” she asked.
“There was nothing I
could
do. I just pressed F7.”
“Did that stop the tornadoes?”
Craig laughed. “No,” he said. “It stopped the beeping.”
Eliza’s hands began to tremble slightly.
“Are you all right?” Craig asked.
She shook her head.
“I spent years sorting those prayers. And he didn’t even read them. I mean, honestly, what kind of CEO is he? How incompetent can you get?”
Craig craned his neck around to make sure no one had witnessed her outburst.
“Look,” he said. “I know he isn’t much of a details guy. But you’ve got to give the man a little respect. I mean, this whole company was his idea. None of us would even be here without him. He deserves some credit.”
“We have ten Angels working full-time on Lynyrd Skynyrd.”
“Well, they’re a great band.” He ticked off their hits on his palm. “‘Free Bird,’ ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ ‘Simple Man’…those are all winners. Everyone can agree on those.”
Eliza did not respond.
“At least he told his prophet,” Craig offered. “That’s something, right?”
“God’s prophet is a naked homeless person! Every time he delivers a message, the humans think he’s schizophrenic!”
“Well, that’s not Raoul’s fault. You can’t put that on Raoul.”
The blood drained from Eliza’s face. “I feel sick,” she murmured.
She bolted to the bathroom, and Craig leapt spryly out of the way. He was in a good mood. He’d just received an e-mail from Angel Resources informing him that he’d clinched another Angel of the Month award. The prize was pretty good this time: a coupon for a medium pizza of his choice. There was some fine print on the back of the coupon: deep-dish pies cost extra, he couldn’t order more than three meat toppings, and the offer expired in fifteen days. Still, it was an excuse to ask Eliza to eat lunch with him.
He pictured them sitting together in the commissary, feasting on a pie topped with up to three meats.
“I can’t believe you just
won
this,” she’d say. “A whole pizza.”
“There’s more where that came from,” he’d say. And things would progress from there somehow.
When she emerged from the bathroom, Craig hopped out of his chair, determined to make his move. But her grim expression gave him pause. She looked exhausted and worn out. The last thing he wanted was to annoy her when she was already feeling down.
Besides, it’s not like he had anything that special to offer her. It was just a medium pizza, barely enough for two people. And what if she wanted more than three meats? It would be mortifying if his coupon was rejected.
“You know what?” Eliza told him. “I’m going to go back up there.”
Craig squinted at her. “Did you forget something?”
She bit into her thumbnail, gnawed on it briefly, and then tore off a giant sliver. Craig winced as she plucked the half-moon shard from her tongue and flicked it onto the floor. Some of her nails were so mangled, he noticed, they had started to bleed.
“I’m going back up there,” she said, “and I’m going to tell him to read those prayers. I spent three years sorting them. He doesn’t have to answer them, but the least he can do is read them.”
“Maybe you should go home? Get some sleep?”
“I’m not tired,” she snapped, inserting a pinkie into her mouth.
Craig felt a sudden bizarre urge to grab her hand so that she would stop biting her fingernails.
“Wish me luck,” she said.
There was nothing Craig could do. “Good luck,” he said miserably.
God liked to drink beer out of a glass. He couldn’t put his finger on why. It’s not like the glass changed the way the beer tasted or made it any colder. There was just something classy about it, something dignified. It made you feel good about drinking beer, even if you were alone in your office and it was the middle of the workday.
He topped off his drink and turned on his flat-screen TV. It felt like a good time to check in with his prophet. He found him by the side of a highway in Queens, waving a cardboard sign and wearing a suit made entirely of tinfoil.
“Hey, Raoul,” God said. “How’s it hanging?”
Raoul shrugged. “Low and lazy.”
God laughed. “Cool outfit,” he said. “Is it all foil?”
Raoul nodded. “It took six whole rolls. Everyone’s been calling me crazy. But I think
they’re
crazy.”
God grinned. He loved Raoul’s attitude, the way he let things roll right off his back. He was glad he’d picked him to be this century’s prophet.
“So what’s the word?” Raoul asked, taking out a fresh cardboard sign and a Sharpie.
“What do you mean?”
“What’s your message? For me to tell the other humans?”
God looked down at his lap. He didn’t actually
have
a message for the humans right now. But he didn’t want to confess the truth—that he’d only phoned Raoul because he was lonely. He took a slow sip of beer, stalling.
“‘The End Is Near,’ ” he said finally. “‘Repent.’ ”
Raoul nodded. “I’ll write it on my sign.”
“Great!” God said. “That’s great, Raoul. Take care.”
He turned off the television and glanced at his watch. It was more than two hours until his afternoon meeting, and he had absolutely nothing to do. He picked up his Rubik’s Cube and fooled around with it for a bit. He was almost finished with the yellow side, but he couldn’t make any progress without messing up the red side. And he didn’t want to do that—the red side was the only one he’d finished. After a few frustrating minutes, he twisted the cube back the way it had been and tossed it onto his desk.
God reclined listlessly in his chair. He couldn’t admit it to anyone, but lately he’d been feeling pretty down on himself. His numbers had been slipping for years. Yes, over 80 percent of humans still believed in him. But in some East Coast cities, he barely had a majority. The Archangels told him it was nothing to worry about, that these things were “cyclical,” but how could he trust them? They were just a bunch of slick-talking yes-men.
He knew it was unhealthy, but sometimes he looked himself up on the computer to see what people were saying about him. It was terrible for his self-esteem, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was like trying not to scratch a scab; you could only fight the urge for so long. Sooner or later you had to see what was going on beneath the surface.
He turned on his computer, took a swig of beer, and typed his name into the search box: G…O…D.
Within seconds, he was watching a conversation in a dirty college dormitory.
“If there is a God,” a girl human was saying, “like, sitting up there and watching all this on some cloud? Then he’s an
asshole.
”
A boy human nodded and handed her some marijuana, as if her comment was so clever it deserved a reward.
God winced as the two humans laughed and then, inexplicably, began to make out. He knew they were young and immature and that he shouldn’t put any stock in their opinions. But he couldn’t help but feel hurt. An asshole? How could you say that about someone you’d never even met? The boy had oral herpes, and God thought about trying to spread it to the girl as a punishment. But he didn’t want to make the humans suffer. He just wanted them to like him.
God double-clicked his mouse, closing the window. He wouldn’t do any more searches for the rest of the day, he told himself. After this last one.
Someone was saying his name in Berlin, over and over again, with increasing volume. He clicked on the link with excitement—maybe it was one of those soapbox preachers, praising his name in front of a giant crowd!
God leaned forward, an expectant smile on his face. But his grin quickly faded when the window finished loading: it was a businessman who’d walked into a puddle and was taking his name in vain.
“Oh my fucking God,” the man muttered, angrily shaking his foot out of a puddle. “What the fuck!”
God threw up his hands, exasperated. Why was this guy so mad at him? It’s not like he had put the puddle there; puddles were just something that happened when it rained. Honestly, what was he supposed to do? He could say “No more rain,” but that would probably cause even
more
problems for the humans and make them even angrier. He turned off the computer. Earth was just as frustrating as a Rubik’s Cube. It was impossible to fix something without making another thing even worse. He reached for his beer mug and noticed with mild surprise that it was empty. He cracked open another can and took a giant swig, forgetting about the glass this time.
God knew that criticism was part of the job. You couldn’t build something as successful as the world without hearing from some haters. But lately things had gotten out of hand. Recently one of the humans, Richard something, had written an entire book saying he didn’t exist. God didn’t mind at first; it was just some fancy-pants Oxford professor trying to get attention. But then the book had become an international bestseller. Now, it seemed like whenever he turned on human television, there the guy was, loudly holding forth on some talk show. God tried to read the book, but it hurt his feelings so much he had to stop after just a few pages. The blurb on the jacket said the author was a “fiery intellectual,” but really he was just plain mean. God thought idly about having him killed or burning his face off, but that seemed like making too big a deal out of things.
God knew that his obsession with the humans was insane. When he first built the universe, after all, he’d never even intended for it to be populated. He’d constructed the earth for one reason and one reason only: to manufacture xenon gas. It was an extremely valuable element—rare, clean, potent—and the earth’s atmosphere produced tons of it automatically. The Department of Xenon was the most important segment of God’s company—it occupied seventy-four of the eighty-two floors of corporate headquarters. But God rapidly grew bored with that side of the business. The profits were so steady, it was a waste of time to even check the numbers. So one day, for amusement, he’d had his staff invent mankind. The humans had no effect on the production of xenon gas and therefore served no real function. But God quickly became preoccupied with the tiny creatures. Soon, to the dismay of his business managers, they were taking up almost all of his time. He began to care about their sports and their wars and their songs and their discoveries; most of all, he cared about what they thought of him. He created whole departments to maintain their planet and improve their lives. He recruited former humans to serve as Angels, erasing their memories and giving them new identities so they could focus on helping mankind. There was just something about those humans; they reminded God of himself.
God thought wistfully about the past. In the beginning, the humans were so easy to please. Give them some fruit, some light, and they’d all be singing his praises. Life expectancy was thirty years, and everybody was cool with that. If you started to go bald, you didn’t curse God, you threw him a feast of thanks for allowing you to live so long.
These days nobody said thank you. God enjoyed all of the churches, especially the weirdo ones in the South. But it had been 5,127 years since anyone had offered him a proper ritual blood sacrifice. He never complained about it, because he didn’t want to be “that guy.” But it was definitely something that kept him up at night. It made him wonder if his best days were behind him; it made him wonder if it was time to retire.
He picked up his Rubik’s Cube and rotated it a few times in his palm. There was probably a way to fix things, to set the world right. But he was too exhausted to figure it out. He squinted at the cube, with its jumbled splotches of blue and green. And then, with a shrug, he tossed it into the garbage.
“I’m sorry,” Vince told God. “I told her you were busy.”
God put down his golf clubs. That strange girl was back, the tired one who’d forgotten his Tabasco.
“So you’re just going to play golf,” Eliza said, her voice raspy from fatigue. “You’re just going to ditch the office and hit the course.”
God nodded, confused. “Do you…want to come?”
“Those prayers in your office? I sorted them. It took me years to isolate those level sevens, and you’ve probably never even looked at them.”
God furrowed his brow, trying his best to conceal the fact that he didn’t know what a level 7 was.