We’re here to tackle the big one. The mollification of the really unjustifiable. I’m sure this former Marine’s sergeant would be proud of the way he hits the beaches of suffering, rushing straight for the hardest section.

The Locketts are a young couple. Balvin is an unemployed jai-alai player and his wife, Nina wants to give up her job as a food-standards inspector to look after their three-year-old daughter, Esther, who has leukaemia and, they say, a few months to live.

There is of course, nothing the Hierophant or I can do to alter the injustice of their daughter dying, but he is good. As I listen to him pastor, I grow more confident and optimistic. Our ears 69

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tend to be more open to sentences we want to hear, and there is something soothing about someone telling us again and again, with confidence, that it may be all right.

The one problem with turning cynical and dishonest is that you can never succeed completely. I dislike children. I dislike children because they’re typically noisy and smelly; you have to spend your whole time escorting food in and out of their bodies, but you’re expected to be charmed by them.

The problem with Esther is that she is completely charming.

She sits quietly on her own, playing with some strange counters on a board, smiling, looking perfectly healthy and happy.

Why are we all equipped with such honest joy at the start?

It’s so radiant even I am momentarily invigorated by it, before knowledge of her illness defoliates me. I believe I would give her my life if I could (or at least I feel as if I would, who knows? I’d probably chicken out at the last moment if it could actually be arranged), mostly because I don’t have much left anyway, and because she is bright and good-natured and won’t mess up like the Hierophant or me.

We leave. I’m weighed down by how astonishingly hard life is, and my opinion of the Hierophant is considerably raised.

It’s easy to talk about benevolence when the sun is shining and bank accounts are full, not so easy when the torture’s going on.

He may have done some good, and if he didn’t, he was trying.

There is a season for bullshitters.

On our way back, the Hierophant suggests we do some shopping. We stop off at Publix. It’s important to keep your shopping holy at all times, because you never know who might snoop into your basket. The Hierophant is doing the weekly shop and his trolley is heaped with spare rib, but I have only a loaf of bread and some price-reduced papaya in my basket. Like 70

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everything else, if you make frugality a habit it’s quite easy, and it makes the splurges all the more enjoyable.

As we join the queue for the checkout, four aisles over, I spot the Krishna. A group of four. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a devotee solo. Probably they need one person who knows the way to the supermarket, one person who knows the way back from the supermarket, one to steer the trolley and one to deal with the cashier.

“Don’t look,” the Hierophant whispers to me. “Act natural.”

As our items are processed I wonder what acting natural in my case would involve? Act like an unemployed lighting salesman? Act like an unemployed lighting salesman acting like he’s God?

Outside, we load our goods into the car, but the Hierophant doesn’t start the car up. He smears some dirt on the number plates. He ushers me into the driver’s seat and then surveys the exit. He fiddles in the glove compartment and produces a Miami Heat cap and a pair of sunglasses which he dons; he fiddles some more and finds another one for me, and produces a pistol.

“Tyndale, I can’t see any cameras out here, can you?” I look around. If we’re on camera, I certainly can’t spot it. “Drive as I tell you,” he says ominously.

The Hare Krishna appear and load up their people carrier.

The Hierophant cocks the pistol and says, “The .22 is a weapon that is appropriate for a holy man.”

I’m shitting myself. I’ve already been courting decades in maximum security and if I end up behind bars I want it to be my fault and not someone else’s. We trail the Krishna and then the Hierophant leans out and fires three rounds through the length of their people carrier, rounds, I assume, designed to shatter the 71

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glass rear and front, to terrify rather than injure. We speed off in the opposite direction.

“I can’t help myself,” says the Hierophant. “You know how at school there’s always a kid that everyone beats on, and you feel sorry for the kid. And then there’s another type of kid at school everyone beats on, and you just want to get your licks in too.”

As far as I’m concerned (as long as I’m not jailed) the Hierophant could take a chainsaw to them, because I’m humouring the Hierophant, because I’m not hugely bothered by anything much these days and because I still have vivid memories of being overcharged for a dismal carrot salad at a Krishna restaurant.

“This poor sinner believes the Hierophant is right.”

G

Back at the church we prepare some turkey subs. We’re going to distribute some eats to the needy. “We don’t want to get there too early,” the Hierophant explains. “Hector takes care of people at 6.12.”

We arrive where the homeless congregate, round the back of the Omni, about twenty past six. Two guys are munching some enormous empanadas, which even from afar give off an irresistible meaty aroma. Half a dozen trolley-pushers gaze at them wistfully. “So where’s this Hector?” I ask.

“He was here at 6.12,” says the Hierophant. “He could feed a thousand people if they turned up at 6.12. You can have almost anything you want. One time he even had caviar and freshly buttered toast. But woe betide those who come at 6.16.

Some say he hates handing out food and some say he hates the unpunctual.”

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Hector had been in the open sea for two weeks on a raft from Cuba that had gone badly off course. He had been moments from death when he made a deal with the Santeria divinities: save me, and every day for the rest of my life I’ll feed anyone who needs it. He was picked up by a fishing boat at 6.12 p.m.

within a minute of making his pact.

“He kept his vow,” says the Hierophant. “But you have to with the Santeria divinities. They won’t take any shit. I don’t even believe in them, and they scare me. So Hector gives generously every day, though of course some also say that, while he gives generously every day, he never promised exactly how long he’d be generous for every day.”

I’ve been with the Hierophant now for over a month and I have to say I don’t really understand what his church is about, or rather how it differs from the mainstream churches, apart from the fact that it’s his church. He’s had a new leaflet printed with the catchy strapline “Affordable paradise: what are you waiting for?” I suggested handing out some of the leaflets along with the food, but the Hierophant wouldn’t let me.

“That’s cheating,” he said. “They know who I am if they want to find out more.”

The turkey subs are welcomed. The easiest way to spot the homeless or mad in Miami is to keep an eye out for winter clothing; those boys love to overdress (and it is mostly men, another testament to womankind). There are some old guys who badly need the food, some younger guys newer to destitution who are cooler about it; but it’s pleasant to do something helpful.

“Nice shoes,” says a simple-looking guy to me. My shoes aren’t especially fine, but you forget that you can sink to the point where an unruined set of footwear looks good.

A very tall black man comes up to me. I immediately christen 73

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him the Prophet. He’s wearing a headdress and carrying a magnificent walking stick, made out of some dark, gnarled wood. His clothes are ripped up so regularly you’d say some garment-grater had been at work. Sunglasses, and his most distinctive feature, a gas mask, hide his face. I doubt this is to protect himself from his stench, which pokes me in the eyes, since one of the great mercies of existence is that you’re immune to your own fug. I’d say the gas mask comes under the heading of inappropriate concern; when you have no job, no money, no home and only an approximation of clothing, car fumes shouldn’t worry you.

He is incredibly straight-backed though, which makes me push my shoulders back. The years accumulate a stoop on us. I pass him a turkey sub. He stares at this, perplexed, as if I’d given him a clockwork rabbit.

The turkey sub is very simple – turkey, lettuce, tomato, butter – but quite good if I say so myself. A white guy with an afro who’s sporting a black overcoat (although he’s naked underneath) asks me what it is.

“Turkey,” I respond.

“I want ham,” he says. I wonder if Christ had this problem with the fishes and loaves, the crowd at the back asking for cheese or spare rib.

There is a part of me that yearns to say, in the style of my erstwhile employer Mr Ansari, “Take the turkey or I’ll kill you.” But I can’t do that. I hand him another turkey sub, which is wrapped up so tight you can’t see the turkey. “There you go,”

I say. He walks off without opening it. Tell the hearers what they want to hear. It may not work for long, but it does work.

Only one of the recipients expresses thanks. “Great sub,”

he says. Young guy, doesn’t look homeless, he looks more like 74

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a student who’s stayed out late. “Hey Fash,” shouts the shoe-admirer, “let’s go. Let’s go.”

I’m surprised to see Dishonest Dave approaching us, and he’s a little surprised to see me.

“He’s not here,” says the Hierophant to Dave. As I suspected, Dishonest Dave is one of those people who knows everyone.

I sense from Dishonest Dave’s posturese he doesn’t want to talk about why he’s here. So I don’t.

“How are you?”

“Doing good. All going to plan?”

“Fine,” I say. The Hierophant has ambled off to issue the last subs. “There’s one thing I wanted to ask you. Do you know any corrupt doctors?” I’m confident Dishonest Dave will have a couple on the books.

“No.” He says. He then says nothing more. I feel he has said this too quickly. I want at least to hear something like, “Let me have a think…” or “Maybe…”.

“You don’t know any corrupt doctors?” In one way, you sound stupid asking the same question again, once it’s been unequivocally answered, but I have found that asking the same question three or four times on occasion can get you closer to the answer you want.

“No,” says Dishonest Dave, torpedoing my first attempt at a miracle. “Let’s go for a drink some time.”

G

Developing my deification has to be my top priority now. I’ve established myself as a mysterious, austere figure, who doesn’t drink, smoke, shoot up, chase women or boys; who hardly eats (in witness-heavy circumstances). Calm, patient, willing 75

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to clean windows and to hand out leaflets. A great sitter in church. Wholly holy.

God-grade worship starts with miracles. A few discreet, not too publicized miracles would get me going.

Curing the sick is a standard one. Curing Esther would be great, but for the problem I can’t do it, and even I wouldn’t want to engender any false hope. Curing the sick is in fact a very tough one. You see cripples bounding out of their wheelchairs or tumour sufferers boasting of remission, and a part of me thinks, well, I could be wheeled into a mass and then jump up, and as for the genuinely sick getting better, they do that all the time, despite the doctors (although not, apparently, if you have a persistent and extremely embarrassing condition like mine).

But healing is a real crowd-pleaser.

The easiest way to get rid of an illness, is to get rid of one that isn’t there. What I need is a sufferer, what I need rather than a straight fake who might flake, is someone upright, someone for whom the tumour is real and who will then love the cure.

Persuading someone they’re terminally ill is cruel and largely unforgivable, but not if you do it to a banker or a lawyer.

What I need is a morally depleted doctor who, when some unsuspecting banker or patient he hates comes in with a sniffle or rash, persuades him (and it will have to be him – no women, no kids) to take some tests. The test results are tweaked to be disastrous; more tests are done with equally doom-laden results. Then in steps a mysterious, austere figure recommended by the doctor as a spiritual counsellor. Hey presto. I must talk to Dishonest Dave again about his medical acquaintances.

I go downstairs where two attractive girls are mopping the floor. They are wearing skimpy bikini bottoms, and nothing 76

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else. It’s the scenario that you long for when you’re sixteen but you’ve given up on by the time you’re forty-something, because you know it’ll never happen, and even if it did you wouldn’t be able to do much about it.

“Are you the holy guy?” one asks.

It’s working. I’m pleased that I’m radiating, but I’m blowing it by gawping at their breasts. However, they are unembar-rassable.

“Sixto told us about you,” says the other. Bearing in mind the work I carry out for Sixto, I fear he’s having a laugh. “Do you really sleep on a door? I’m Trixi and this is Patti.”

In order to preserve my holiness, I retreat back to my room.

Later, when I’ve heard them leave, I return to the kitchen to fix a snack.

“Sixto, I’ve just met your cleaners,” I say when he appears.

“Yeah, I’m furious about that.”

“Why?”

“I told Patti she could clean up. I didn’t ask her to bring a friend.” Patti, Sixto elaborates, is the younger sister of his girlfriend, who had been hassling him month after month for some blow. Sixto judged it immoral to sell cocaine to his girlfriend’s younger sister. He judged it immoral to comp her even one line. But because she was so relentless, he agreed to let her earn some by doing housework.

“To instil the work ethic, you know?” Sixto had been taken aback when Patti had shown up with Trixi. He had also been taken aback when they stripped to keep their clothes clean.

“Man, I told them to put their clothes back on. I fucking begged them. But no, they were too worried about their clothes getting grungy. And you just don’t have any authority when you’re talking to fifteen-year-old breasts.”

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“Fifteen?”

Sixto inspects the ground. “Why did I do her a favour? Why did I want to help her out?”

I have visions of twenty topless fifteen-year-olds fighting over the right to clean the hob for a toot. The whole school rolling up.

It’s hard to be bitterly disappointed when you’re forty-something, because you have basically given up. But I do have that one-step-forwards, ten-steps-backwards sensation. I can’t conceive of any anger-diverting way of Sixto explaining to his girlfriend how her younger sister scouring his surfaces, coked-up and naked (and that’s how it will be in his girlfriend’s mind, it won’t be any use him highlighting the bikini bottoms as mitigation) was originally a disciplinary measure. We’re down for one of those five-hundred-year sentences in maximum security. This is what happens when you do favours.

Driving over to join the Hierophant, I consider how all these white-powder escapades could put an uncorrectable dent into my plans. I can’t believe we haven’t been arrested yet. It’s Friday afternoon. The cops will probably wait till Monday morning.

What can I do about it? Nothing.

I meet the Hierophant at the public swimming pool. The Hierophant did three tours of Vietnam (they wouldn’t let you do any more) and gets some military pension, so he could be taking it easy in a trailer somewhere less chic in Florida, hooking marlin and so on, but he ploughs most of his money into the church and has this part-time job at the pool working the ticket desk. His energy is remarkable, especially since I doubt the job pays enough to buy a newspaper.

Three rotund middle-aged ladies buy tickets. “Where are you from?” asks the Hierophant, because, naturally, they won’t be from Miami. “Toledo,” says one.

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“Do you pray hard in Toledo?”

The Hierophant is wearing a T-shirt with the inscription

“Work Harder – Millions of People on Welfare Are Depending on You” and a baseball cap. Some wear a baseball cap because of fashion or because it is the badge of a certain group. The Hierophant wears it because it’s cheap, useful headgear.

A woman comes up, carrying one kid, with four others, two very young, in tow. She’s horribly poor. She has to spend the whole day counting her money and recalculating her purchasing possibilities.

“Hi,” she says. “Do you have a family rate?” Of course, there isn’t one. The misery is caked on her. Her husband died somewhere struggling to make money in some foreign shithole, no insurance, leaving her with the creases of widowhood.

They’ve driven for days to have a holiday, to stay on someone’s floor. That’s why there’s so much stuff about being kind to widows and orphans in scripture, because it’s so fucking awful.

You get a taste of how hard life can be, and you also know that an insight like that is of no benefit, it’s like stepping into a squishy turd. You just want to wipe it off.

The Hierophant lets them in for the price of two kids. I’m proud of him. No one has been done out of anything. It was a little wink of decency.

“Everyone has a breaking point,” says the Hierophant, “and everyone’s wrong about where it is.”

This is what’s funny; the characters who go on about caring for others are nearly always the most selfish. I had some dealings with the union reps at work and they were all, almost without exception, the most greedy, self-centred and vile types you were ever likely to come across. You should see their expenses. Beware talk of brotherhood and justice. Whereas those, like the Hierophant who 79

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trumpet the stand-on-your-own-two-feet creed are the most likely to give you a hand…

G

I wake up with the dawn and I pray hard.

I pray hard for everyone. I don’t even pray for myself. That’s how pure my prayer is. I’ve been praying hard for some time, begging unashamedly for a better world, because I’m appalled by the one I’m in and I haven’t noticed any difference. It occurs to me that probably many others have been on the beseeching trail; surely if prayer had any effect we’d have noticed? On the other hand, just because something doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it’s not working somewhere else. If I had to start a fire by rubbing twigs, I’d be nowhere, and I’d have some chance of pulling off a stunt like that.

Breakfast restores my spine. How confidence-rich a doughnut can be, how character-forming coffee. Time for a miracle. Time to radiate.

The Hierophant needs to be seeded with intimations of my supremacy. He will serve as the chief witness of my divinity, so he has to be fed some amazing information, so first I need some amazing information.

I grab myself a terminal at Kafka’s, and see whether there’s some good stuff on the net. I immediately find an interview with the Hierophant conducted by a Virginia Hawthorn, the journalist at the Lama’s talk. She’s evidently hot on religion. I mark her down for cultivation.

Then I drive over to the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ, where I sweep up, even though since I swept up yesterday, there’s nothing to sweep up. I leave a terrifically phallic blue pen on a 80

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top shelf in the Hierophant’s office, which should garner me amazing information.

The next day, I arrive early to filter the mail, in case there’s any amazing information. Sadly there is no letter informing the Hierophant of a visit from a long-lost friend or relation.

There is no news of a large fortune bequeathed to him. There is nothing that could be even considered respectable information.

There are bills and ads for gardening equipment, and since I’ve opened the envelopes clumsily, I have to ditch all the mail to conceal my tampering.

I then plug in to my pen, which can record up to eight hours of conversation. The trouble with recording up to eight hours of conversation is that you then have to listen to it. The material is as junk as the mail.

I discover the Hierophant sighs a lot in private. Every few minutes or so a heartfelt “aaaah” is released. Papers are shuffled.

He sighs more. It’s reassuring to learn that the assured aren’t so assured, but the sighs rapidly become exasperating. There’s also a great deal of scratching, although I can’t identify which part of his body is getting the nail.

Finally, a conversation. The Hierophant explains to an unknown caller that he bought a watch that morning. He went into one shop, checked the price of the model he wanted, then went to another shop where the same model was a hundred dollars more. The Hierophant returned to the first shop and bought the watch.

Not a stunning anecdote, and the Hierophant doesn’t tell it well. He doesn’t tell it any better to caller “Mitchell” and caller “Ellen”. He pads it out explaining how he expressed his outrage to the assistant in the second shop that they were selling the watch for a hundred bucks less in the first, and expressing 81

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astonishment to the assistant in the first shop that they were selling the watch for a hundred more in the second (I’m précising here).

It’s unfair to knock someone’s repartee when you’re eaves-dropping, but I doubt if I can carry on bugging the Hierophant, not on account of any ethical discomfort, but because it’s so tedious. I’ve snooped on four and a half hours of the Hierophant’s privacy and I’m drained.

G

“See this watch?’’ the Hierophant asks me the next day, relating that it was one hundred dollars cheaper in the shop he bought it in than anywhere else. I resist the impulse to correct him by saying he only went to one other shop. Who knows, if he’d tried somewhere else he might have found it for a hundred and twenty dollars less, though I doubt it since the market does curb abuse.

But you don’t know. You don’t know whether there is another shop with a better deal. You don’t know whether there’s another shop. Laziness always wins. Sooner or later. How much roaming and asking should you do?

If you spent a week going to forty watch retailers and succeeded in saving a hundred dollars, or even a hundred and twenty, would it justify your effort? You don’t know. That’s what’s so frightening: you walk into one shop and they sell a watch for one price, and another shop sells that watch for another price.

There is a conspiracy. It’s called the world.

“Tyndale, it’s time for the Hierophant to hit the fan.”

The Hierophant requires me to hold a rickety ladder for him, while he climbs up to fix one of the fans. The church doesn’t 82

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have air conditioning (too expensive and troublesome), but five propeller-style fans (cheap but more troublesome). Holding the ladder while the Hierophant spouts some non-God-based profanity, I suffer a powerful attack of futility as I realize that I am holding a rickety ladder in a hut in a run-down part of Miami while a demented ex-Marine fumbles with a fan so old it should be gracing a museum.

That’s my job: rickety-ladder-holder. For which I’m not paid.

The despair grows so strong I can barely stand up.

I attempt to amuse myself by imagining killing, but it doesn’t work. I’m too aware that imagining killing is a trait of the defeated, and that my romps of violence will never happen. Not only will I never beat Loader to death with a handy bit of metal, I probably won’t so much as tread on his toe. I’ll never get to see him luckless and broken. You just don’t get an opportunity for revenge. I think of all the people who’ve shat on me and I’ve just never once had a chance to settle up; they’ve never once walked in front of my car on a dark, rainy, witness-poor night.

On the other hand, while I’ve never managed to get even with my malefactors, I’ve never been able to get even with my benefactors either. True, the latter category is dishearteningly small – family excepted – countable on the palms of my hands really. Bamford, for instance, who pulled me out of the shit, who saved me, all I could do was to say to him “thank you”. A sound isn’t much.

We nothing along with no real power to touch those we want to. I’m here now in Miami, holding a rickety ladder with a persistent and embarrassing medical condition, my other years of no consequence.

I arrived here with no baggage, nothing to help me or hinder me. Born again, the same start whether I had spent my previous 83

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life giving stray kittens milk and running errands for the elderly, or microwaving puppies and strangling the old. Your moral bank account is a currency that can’t buy you anything.

“What was Vietnam like?” I ask to make conversation.

“Hot,” replies the Hierophant. I wait for more detail, but it’s not coming.

“Did you get to the jungle?”

“Yes.”

I wait. After two more minutes of fan-fiddling, I try:

“So what happened?”

“My watchstrap rotted. Everything rots there. Your uniform.

Your nutsack. Everything.”

More silence follows. Finally, the fan jerks into motion.

The Hierophant packs away his tools. “Do you want to know the most astonishing thing I saw while I was in ’Nam?”

“Go on.”

“There were lots of bars and whorehouses. Lots. But one bar had this sign outside saying “Giant midgets”. I never went in.

But my question to you, Tyndale, is this: if they really were giant midgets, how could you tell?”

Picking up the pen, I leave the Hierophant. In my car, I suddenly get pangs of hunger. I should be holy and not bother with food, but I’m so beaten I hang up the holiness for the day.

I ponder where I should go for a meal.

There’s a greasy, hole-in-the-wall place on the next block I’ve noticed, with a greasy, sweaty guy surrounded by greasy bits of scrawled-on card listing his dishes that I’ve never tried because everything about the enterprise said don’t. I now realize I’m too hungry to venture further, so I saunter over and buy a chicken sandwich.

When I bite into the cheap sandwich, I learn how wrong I was.

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The fried chicken is unimprovable: happy chicken, ideal batter, fresh roll, one crisp leaf of lettuce. A simple but unbeatable sandwich, made with reverence for the reputation of the fried-chicken sandwich. A testament to good ingredients and the power of man to create tastiness.

In any job, it’s easier to go through the motions, and in any job going the extra mile rarely gets you anything. The roll could have been stale, the chicken stringy or oily, but they’re not. This guy gets up early to do the job right and it’s unlikely it’ll get him ahead of the stringy-chicken gang. Eventually he’ll get ill or old or broken and there will be no record, no memorial to his home-cooked triumph. I salute the valour, the unbowed courage of this lone chicken-sandwich seller.

“Great sandwich,” I say.

The sandwich-maker shrugs and wipes his counter.

This unforeseen attack by quality restores my faith in life. Part of my joy lies in the fact that I’m ahead. I’ve given the sandwich maker a small amount of money and he’s given me bliss.

As you get older you understand that emotion is like the weather: despair, rage, self-hatred, delight, they all pass (even if they leave some damage). Knowing this doesn’t help much, just as knowing on a cold, rainy day that the cold and rain won’t last for ever.

It’s embarrassing. Holding rickety ladder: down. Eating great fried-chicken sandwich: up.

I wish I could control my mood, spurning fried-chicken sandwiches, repelling rickety ladders, but I can’t. Perhaps that’s where holiness comes in. If you can have the fried-chicken bonus without the fried chicken. But if you could have the fried-chicken bonus without the fried chicken, what’s the point of fried chicken and what’s the point of skipping it?

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I buy two more sandwiches to take home, aware that the hit won’t be the same as the first.

G

Dawn kicks down the door of my unconsciousness and I pray hard. I pray hard for everyone before I get up, and then, gradually, the selfishness takes over.

How am I doing? That’s the question, but what’s the answer?

How am I doing? That’s what I’d like to know. Maybe I’m holding a rickety ladder for an eccentric ex-Marine, gratis, but maybe given the luck I’ve been allocated, maybe that’s the best I could do. Maybe I’m not a failure; perhaps I’m viewed as a failure by many, but to the contrary, I have triumphed over several realms of adversity.

You don’t know. It would be interesting to have a hotline to the Supreme Being to ask: how am I doing? But if you could, would you? What if the answer’s not one you want?

I’ve only ever made two mistakes: too much or not enough.

Too much determination or not enough determination. Too much trust, or not enough. Too much optimism or not enough.

Or, if you want, I’ve only ever made one mistake: not getting it right.

Victory, Bamford used to insist, was not achieved soaring joyfully over the winning line, with the competition in the distance. Victory, he said, was usually a matter of crawling on all fours, cursing and dribbling, your ankles gnawed by your enemies.

If so, I may be on the road to victory, as I’m definitely crawling.

I resolve to get into the church early to check the pen.

Out in the driveway I find a dog crapping. It’s an old corgi mix. The dog growls with gusto. Why do old, small dogs yearn 86

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to pick fights? I locate the owner standing several yards away, smoking a cigarette dreamily; one of those dog-owners too lazy to walk their dog, content to let it off the leash and let it crap everywhere.

I don’t know why I commit the error of being reasonable.

Perhaps because I assume the owner is a neighbour and one wants cordiality on the block. Perhaps the holiness is getting to me.

“Might be a good idea to keep the dog on a lead,” I smile.

Always smile.

“My dog is no business of yours,” he says. Immediately I see him. Smug self-feaster. High on his I. Bureaucrat. Not gifted enough to be a banker or businessman, but safely ensconced somewhere doing something where results don’t matter, but you still get good holidays and reasonable pay: drugs counsellor, or human-rights monitor, so he can claim he’s not part of the system, while getting pumped full of comfortable blood.

He’ll have Congolese thumb-piano music to show how open he is to other (chiefly less affluent) cultures. He will bore you about the environment and the crimes of governments and multinationals, the sweatshops of Asia and the battle against malaria, but he smokes and lets his dog coil out a biggie on someone else’s driveway. Uncanny, how fast you can hate.

The dog, too fat and ailing to jump, half-jumps up on my leg and barks at me in the best frenzy it can muster.

“What’s wrong with you?” says the smoker to his dog in an amused, sing-song, talking-to-a-small-child tone. I’ve noticed this with dog-owners. They never apologize.

“If—” I start to raise the matter of the dog log, when the dog bites me. A nip, but still painful. I glare at the smoker waiting for an apology. I wait. He takes a drag on his cigarette.

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“Your dog just bit me.”

“No, it didn’t.”

Now he could have said this in a dishonest, I-don’t-want-to-accept-any-liability-for-this way, in case I had two lawyers hiding in a bush nearby, but no. Although his dog bit me in front of him, in excellent daylight, he sincerely doesn’t believe it. He is outraged by this vilification of his dog.

I’m so angry I can’t hit him properly, and I punch him in the face, which is a mistake, because you’ll only damage your fist.

But I suppose I go for the face because it’s the seat of the mouth.

My knuckles get a twinge of hot ash. After his dog shat in my driveway, attacked me and he called me a liar, it would have been a crime to just walk away.

Here’s the remarkable thing: as my fist closed in, there was an expression of surprise on his face. It’s also remarkable how much scheming can fit into a second: although I was exploding, there was that part of me, having grown up in a big city, that calculated it was safe to hit him.

My fist sits him down and, now that violence is being dispensed, the dog slinks off to a safe distance.

I get into my car and drive to the church, although I’m so angry I drive through a red light and almost do it again. I’m angry I’m on the same planet with idiots like that. I’m angry because I can’t win. If I hadn’t punched him, I’d be furious with myself for not hitting him, but I’m also angry because I hit him.

Hitting him makes me marginally less angry than not hitting him, but what makes me churn and churn is that the smoker will now be amassing sympathy by telling anyone who’ll listen how he was peacefully walking his dog when he was assaulted by a lunatic and what is the world coming to when a man can’t 88

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walk his dog in safety. Thinking about it makes me so angry I want to go back and thump him again.

Bulging with rage, I attempt to listen to the pen. This time the pen has captured something worthwhile. I hear the Hierophant talking about going up to Rhode Island and then an odd conversation about investing in cobia, apparently some deep-sea fish that loves to be farmed, that gets off on captivity, regular feeding and a warm tank. I was considering how to infiltrate this information into our dialogue in a godlike all-knowing manner when the Hierophant strolled in.

“Good morning, Tyndale, I may be going up to Rhode Island for a few days.” So much for two hours of listening to sighs.

I remember the newspaper profile said the Hierophant came from Rhode Island, so I decide to bowl that info.

“Back to your roots, Gene? You do have a Rhode Island air about you.”

“Hardly. I come from Cleveland.” Never believe anything you read in the paper. I take a breather, make some coffee and then take another route.

“Gene, I had this dream about you and fish. You were like Christ multiplying the fish and feeding everyone, but making lots of money. The fish had this weird name, kopia or something.”

The Hierophant sighs. He takes off his glasses and polishes them. “I knew this would happen. It always does. Tyndale, son, Miami’s full of it, you’ve got to stay away from that stuff. Okay?

Just stop. You can’t help out here if you’re on space patrol.”

“No—”

“Don’t say a word, Tyndale. I understand, I really do. We’re all weak. We all sin. Let’s pray.”

I have to sit through a lengthy, custom-built homily on narcotics, then we settle down to preparing sandwiches for the 89

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homeless. As we load up, across the road an argument starts up.

Two black guys, one black woman. It’s heated. Then one of the guys wallops the woman, open-handed, but we feel the boom.

It’s a real connecter.

The group is, however, far away enough from us for us to be able to pretend it’s not happening. In fact, there’s a couple of Sikhs unloading some boxes halfway between us and them, Sikhs who are giving the unloading of those boxes their deepest concentration. And we don’t know what’s going on. Maybe she deserved it (you never know). I have no interest in getting involved, because there’s nothing in it for me, but the Hierophant straightens up: “Let’s sort this out.”

He strides over purposefully. This is the last thing I want to do.

The two guys are door-sized and either one could turn me into pulp. Having grown up in a big city, I know heavy when I see it. But if I chicken out now, bang goes my credit with the Hierophant.

My jaw is tingling as if it’s already been jigsawed as I tag along behind the Hierophant, close enough for him to accept that I’m backing him up, but not so close that the yellers would automatically assume so. I tell myself the guys won’t beat us up.

They’ll probably just shoot us. I’m willing the Hierophant not to say anything foolish or provocative such as hitting women is wrong.

He smiles. “Do you need to pray by any chance? We have a church just across the way if you need one. We’re always open for hard prayer.” It’s the last line they’re expecting. The woman tells us to go to hell. The guys laugh: the engine’s been switched off.

As we walk back it occurs to me the Hierophant had the advantage of age. If he’d been twenty or so, the same age as the guys, no matter what he would have said would have been seen 90

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as a challenge, they would have had to mash him; but he’s a ghost from another world. Did the Hierophant know this?

Back home, I listen to the pen again. The exchange about the cobia is quite clear. They can’t wait to be farmed. The Hierophant has balls, but he’s losing his marbles.

G

I’m very tempted to give up on the omniscience front, but I have the inestimable gift of not being able to afford giving up; it’s God or bust. The following day, I return to the pen, and prod myself lightly with a knife to offset the tedium of listening to the sighs and scratching.

I hear an exchange about sigmoidoscopy. It sounds very serious and medical. The Hierophant’s voice is unprecedentedly dejected.

Googling, I discover that sigmoidoscopy is arse invasion. The Hierophant has gut problems. If he drops dead is that a help or hindrance? The callousness of my reflection pleases me.

I ruminate on some clever way to divulge this info, but can’t.

You either have spooky knowledge or you don’t.

“You know, Gene, I do get these premonitions. I wouldn’t say anything about it, but I had this dream and I’m worried about you. You had some stomach problems. I know you’ll think this crazy, but why don’t you have a check-up?” I say when he comes in.

“Had one a month ago,” he declares. “Scared the doctors with my health. You can forget about your premonitions. Thirty push-ups every morning and my turds are award-winners.

However, I’ve had some not so good news. My mother’s in a bad way.” Sigmoidoscopy, I’d wager. “Truth be told, she’s just about done.”

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His mother is bedridden, terminal. The Hierophant’s returning to Cleveland to care for her. It’s a situation where so many would find so many reasons for not rushing to the bedside. For sending money instead. The Hierophant has bad taste in clothes and jokes (Marine jokes pioneer new levels of tastelessness), but he has no fear. I really do admire him. He is a decency-heavy individual and that’s why he has a small, congregation-light church which he’s about to lose to me. It’s strange how when you’re getting what you want, you still try to ruin it.

“Can’t you bring her down here?” I suggest, realizing that would counter my progress.

“She’s never left Cleveland in her life. I doubt she has much idea where she is, but it would be wrong to move her. She’d want to end there.” Again, he shuns the easy road.

“This is very difficult for me,” he continues. “Her friends have been helping her, but she needs round-the-clock care now. I hate to leave my flock here, but I have to go. But in a way I’m lucky.

I’m very lucky because I have you. You know, Tyndale, I get lots of offers to help out, a lot, but they rarely translate into actions, but you’re the only who’s been a pillar. You’re here day after day, never asking for anything, always willing, you’re quite something. The only reason I can go to be with my mother is because you’ll be here ministering for me.”

So, it’s official. I have my Church. I feel enormous guilt. The Hierophant’s faith moves me. Tears breed in my eyes. Why is it you always get what you want in a way you don’t want it?

He makes me sub-Hierophant, the first in the history of the Church.

“Any advice you want to give me?” I ask.

“Yes. Don’t do it.”

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“Sorry?”

“Don’t be a pastor. Don’t run a church. That’s the best advice I can give. Don’t do it. One other very important thing. If Mrs Barrodale invites you to lunch, don’t go. Her food’s terrible.”

The next day I retrieve the pen and hit on a conversation.

The Hierophant is explaining he’s off to Cleveland to nurse his mother. “No, I’m not closing the church. There’s a follower who can run things for me. He’s a bit strange, and he may not be right, but I have to give him a chance.”

This is my punishment for bugging the office. We’re never quite as loved as we hope we are, but, mulling it over, it’s even more touching, if he has doubts about me, that he’s willing to praise me up and give me a chance.

Enough dabbling in omniscience.

G

I wake up in the dark, drenched in an unpleasant sweat. A giant hand is squeezing my guts and I curl up into a ball. I feel far from home, and utterly beaten. With a total lack of dignity, I moan. Perhaps we are all far from home and utterly beaten, and the trick is not to feel it. Lying on a door in an empty room, soon-to-be mentor to a handful of Miami’s foozlers, with a few hundred dollars to my name, I feel it keenly.

I pray hard. I pray hard for everybody, because there’s nothing else to do.

G

You should never study your congregation too closely. It’s often a dispiriting prospect. The Hierophant has entrusted me with 93

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his greatest hits to read out in his absence, which suits me fine, since I have no desire to sit around composing sermons.

Now that the Hierophant Graves is away, I not only conduct the services but I am responsible for the “surgery” afterwards.

As I go into the office I am a little disconcerted to see that half the congregation has stayed behind. Should this be interpreted as a vote of confidence in me or a lack of confidence in the Hierophant?

First in are Mrs Shepherd and her son, Peter. Mrs Shepherd is one of those dumpy, uninteresting women who do the sweeping and acquisition of flowers for churches, and let’s face it, it’s important work, even if you don’t want to do it. I’ve done the sweeping several times, when everyone was around, to demonstrate how humble I am, but that was enough.

Warmly, I offer her a seat as I want (and I’m sure the absent Hierophant wants) the sweeping and flower acquisition to carry on uninterrupted. She reintroduces me to her son, a powerfully built lad who hands out beach towels at a hotel. They are both extremely cheerful, so I can’t foresee major quagmire here.

“We were hoping you could help us.”

“Of course,” I reply. “That’s my job.” So far, so good. Assurance is easy and should always be swift.

“We asked the Hierophant before, but he said no.”

Terror lurches in me. This isn’t going to be a sunny walk in the park, this will be something nasty and is certain to be something that will get me in trouble with the Hierophant. This is a trap. I smile.

“And what exactly did he say no to?”

“Me and Peter would like to get married.” The family resemblance is so strong I find it hard to believe…

“Peter is adopted is he?”

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“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs Shepherd replies indignantly. I am stumped. The Shepherds’ indifference to millennia of global, ecclesiastical, cultural and legislative convention is word-removing. Is this a hoax? A test devised by the Hierophant?

Dodge.

“Why do you want to get married?”

“My husband died last year, and I’d like to get married again.”

I suddenly realize how ignorant I am. If you looked at the Shepherds you’d see nothing remarkable about them at all.

But there’s something going on here. Rock-solid stupidity?

Something I have no appetite to learn any more about. The world frightens me.

Smile. Always smile. “Rona, I’ll have to think about this,” I say.

In reality, I’ve already thought about it. If the Hierophant comes back in a week or two, it’s off my plate. If he’s away for longer, I may have to strike a deal with the Shepherds. I’d like the sweeping and flowers to carry on. Whatever is taking place in the Shepherd household is taking place, and a benediction from me isn’t going to make any difference.

As they leave I reflect that they probably have an important job. After some terrible planetocidal disaster you or I would be too distraught to carry on, too squeamish about survival, but the Shepherds would be out there repopulating, until nature reintroduced sophisticated features like intelligence again. Mrs Shepherd and her son are our backup.

Next, the elderly Mrs Garcia hunches in. My job is about listening, but even I get tired of listening as she takes twenty minutes to get to her whinge. Her neighbour’s cat is making her miserable: shitting in her garden, trashing her plants, 95

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eating her hummingbirds. After the Shepherds I’m delighted to be presented with a simple feline matter. I advise Mrs Garcia to trust in the power of prayer and tell myself that if I can’t dispatch one rotten cat I might as well give up now. The cat’s description carefully noted, I hustle her out.

The Reinholds come in last. Mike and Sue. Regular, money-earning, middle-aged couple. Comfortingly uninsane. Mike is only a few inches away from a lucrative career as a dwarf, but he’s me. He works at the waterworks, and I know he will always be passed over for promotion. He’s certainly too assiduous.

Turns up early, gives it his all for a modest salary. Will never be promoted. I imagine he spends his evenings reading up on new theories of water management to be ahead of the game, but he will never be promoted.

Why do they attend this church? I have an urge to tell them to get some proper religion. What’s their problem? His promotion?

“Our daughter, Alexa…” Mike begins. He falls silent. “We don’t know what to do,” picks up Sue.

It’s that old perennial. The bad-boy problem. They have a sixteen-year old daughter Alexa who fallen for a bad element, three years older than her, the neighbourhood biker. The biker is always older because women tend to be more mature, and those extra years can seem very impressive in terms of greater experience in knowing where the seedy bars are and joint-rolling.

I am moved by the Reinholds. You spend sixteen years cherishing, bodyguarding your daughter, you read bedtime stories and help with homework when you’re exhausted, you forgo good golf clubs so you can pay for guitar lessons, you queue interminably to collect medicines, you make sacrifice 96

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after sacrifice, because you know your daughter will be the only value in a creation which refuses to promote you. Then your daughter drops school, and spends all her savings (Granny’s legacy) buying clothes for the neighbourhood biker and, worse, disappears for days to let him plant his principality wherever he wants.

The Reinholds have tried all the parental ruses, shouting, begging, bribery.

They’re in a difficult position. If Alexa were younger they could get legal. If they were better off they’d have a chance of buying her off with a three-month tour of Europe or India.

They’re also battling the most powerful force in the universe: pleasure, the old white eye. Chatting with your friends, listening to music, going shopping, all these pastimes (never mind education or volunteering to wash up) fade away when you discover intersecting loins.

I’m eager to help the Reinholds, although I doubt I can do much. Parleying with the daughter is a non-starter. If they can’t slow down her pleasure I have no chance. But her idol… they give me the telephone number for Cosmo, the injectioneer in question. I promise to have a heart-to-heart talk with him.

My first attempt to make contact with Cosmo fails. He’s “too busy” to see me. I knew I wouldn’t like Cosmo, but now, dislike seriously takes root. I can only have respect for those who tell the truth or who lie elaborately. I would have rated Cosmo more highly if he had told me to drop dead. The Reinholds have informed me that apart from feeding their daughter thrusts, Cosmo has no job and spends his time drifting from couch to couch, subsisting on others’ fridges.

Much to my surprise, a few days later, when I call again he agrees to meet me.

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“Don’t bore me,” he says. “And bring a bottle of Barbancourt Rum.” I suppose he has agreed because he’s flattered by the attention, that a spiritual advisor has been called in to wrangle his phallus. And because he doesn’t have much else to do. And could use a bottle of rum.

I drive to the address he gives me, (getting lost several times in the traditional Miami manner), but it doesn’t make sense.

It’s a brand-new money-shrieking block up on North Beach.

They say Miami is the hottest property market in the world and you can believe it as these colonies of giant jack-in-the-boxes spring up everywhere. I check my note twice, but it’s the place. Cosmo is either tending someone’s guppies or visiting a friend, because he couldn’t afford to live here. As I approach the building, an attractive realtor walks out.

When I buzz in, I have no idea what to say.

A half-dressed Cosmo admits me into a vast unfurnished condo. I immediately guess he is doing the realtor too and is taking advantage of unsold space. One of the few benefits of being a salesman is that you do get a knack for sizing people up quickly. I hope Cosmo will show some weakness or opening I can exploit, but he doesn’t. I see a shiny leather jacket on the floor, which cost (the Reinholds told me) a thousand dollars.

“Where’s the bottle?” Cosmo asks.

“I’m sorry,” I reply. “I’m not allowed any money.” I enjoy saying that because it sounds so pure and it’s so untrue. There’s no comeback.

“Don’t bore me, Your Holiness,” he says sauntering out onto the balcony. There’s another deadbeat perched on the balcony rail. On closer inspection, I perceive that his trousers have been lowered to his ankles. “Did he bring the rum?” he asks.

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Cosmo now drops his trousers, and manoeuvres his rear over the balcony rail, hanging on in a quite precarious way, considering that we are on the twelfth floor. He and his friend are shitting on two sports cars below, tough targets at this distance.

“Why are you wasting my time?” he demands, fine-tuning his position. For no good reason I respond with a subtle threat.

“You’re causing a lot of upset.”

“Not my problem. Couldn’t you get me a drink?” His face grimaces as he struggles to squeeze one out.

“Distress has a way of working around; if you cause distress, eventually the distress comes to you,” I say with my most mantic voice.

Cosmo grunts and voids one. “Big miss,” his spotter announces.

“Do the cars belong to anyone you know?”

“You’re boring me. You’ll have to go.”

Cosmo isn’t hard. He’s seen some rough things, he’s an accomplished delinquent, but in a city like this, where executions are gleefully carried out for a few hundred dollars, he’s froth. In Liberty City, they’d spread him on toast. He’s a skinny creature and I’d even fancy my chances in a fist fight, since I must have fifty pounds on him. That morning, when I had smacked the punchbag, I was again surprised by how enjoyable, how familiar… how righteous it was. I consider sucker-punching Cosmo.

“Do you love Alexa?’

“Woah, I’m not a one-woman man.” Of course not, his vasa deferentia must be on call round-the-clock. His sideshitter shakes his head, agog at my crass remark.

If it weren’t for his sideshitter, this would be the perfect solution to the Reinholds’ problem. Effortlessly, I could 99

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just upend Cosmo completely and over he’d go. I’m glad his companion’s there though, because I probably would have chickened out otherwise, and I’m glad I don’t have to worry about the probability of chickening out.

“You’d better not insult me by offering anything less than twenty grand to stop seeing her. She’s into expensive presents, and her pussy is pencil-sharpener-tight, yeah? I told them, twenty grand and I never take one of her calls again.”

I doubt the Reinholds have twenty grand to spare. Even if they danegelded Cosmo he would be unlikely to keep his side of the bargain.

“Why should they pay twenty thou, when a motorbike accident only costs one? A young man like you, you’d make a wonderful organ donor.” This is the first time I’ve ever threatened to kill anyone, and it’s fun. This is not what Cosmo’s expecting. He’s unnerved by the turn of the conversation.

“Alexa’s old man wouldn’t have the cojones to park illegally, let alone kill anyone.”

“You’re right. He wouldn’t. Others would.”

I can tell what Cosmo is thinking. He can’t believe this ancient old turd has just threatened to kill him. I may represent a strange church, but I appear to be a man of the cloth, a promoter of holy writ and instead of a dreary homily on fornication or a hug-in, he’s hearing about murder.

He’s furious, and I have to concede that I might not win a fist fight with him. But he’s not sure either. This is jungle stuff.

Okay, you have this ancient turd calling you out, the ancient turd probably can’t back it up, the ancient turd looks lame, but what, but what if he can? You guess wrong and you’re some teeth short.

A little belatedly it passes through my mind that Cosmo and his chum could do a good job of throwing me over the balcony. They 100

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wouldn’t do it deliberately – they’re too frothy for that – but they might want to scare me and mess it up. On the other hand, they’d have no ideological objections to giving me a thorough kicking.

I bet right however. Cosmo waves his hands and compresses ten minutes’ worth of abuse and obscenity into my leaving, cursing me as best he can with his limited vocabulary. But he keeps his distance. As he rages, I take stock of my new fondness for high-risk gambling. It’s not a good new hobby.

“Hey, I have friends. I have friends.” Cosmo keeps on shouting.

“No. You don’t,” I counter. This is always a good line to throw in, because even the biggest egos have a hairline crack on this one.

Outside, I switch on my phone. I acknowledge again what my mistake has been: too reasonable. The cat and Cosmo will have to be dealt with. But they’re no problem. When you’re God you can do anything.

G

I call DJs Gamay and Muscat. I had almost thrown their card away, because I couldn’t conceive of ever needing to talk to imbeciles of their magnitude again. Real water bottles. Walking water the pair of them. But that’s one lesson I learnt as a salesman: contacts are everything, and just because you don’t need an imbecile now doesn’t mean you won’t need one later.

Most importantly, they’re big, beefy imbeciles, much bigger and beefier than Cosmo, and you don’t tender your services to a major multinational criminal organization unless you’re prepared to get rough. And if they want to work for a major multinational criminal organization, that’s what I’ll let them believe.

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“That’s a great suit, Tyndale, you look so cool,” says Gamay as he and Muscat enter. As flattery, it’s feeble, but I acknowledge the effort. I give the DJs a pad of paper and tell them to write a one-thousand word autobiography, and to give me the names and addresses of at least twenty friends or relatives.

Apprehensive as they arrived, they now look freaked.

“Why?” Gamay spokespersons.

“Here’s the deal. The deal is non-negotiable. You don’t ask anything. You never ask anything. Ideally, you never say anything. You do. You do or you leave. Do or leave.”

“Okay. Totalism,” nods Muscat.

They settle down with the paper. This will be difficult. Are they appropriate vessels? I doubt if Gamay or Muscat have written anything longer than a cheque. Next, counting up to one thousand will be a challenge, and as they can’t be more than twenty-one, they can’t have too much life to recount. All application forms are designed to humiliate and subordinate the applicant, and I have added a touch of genius by giving Gamay and Muscat the additional burden of having to invent the questions.

Truthfully, I’m also inspired by one of my former neighbours, an Iraqi exile, who had been imprisoned, tortured, mock-executed and whose entire family, apart from his daughter, had been executed. He used to give me advice about torture which I never imagined I could put to good use. “Before they start the beatings, they make you write. They make you write about yourself and no matter how clever you are, you always give something away.” In the end he strangled his daughter, since he felt she wasn’t dressing demurely.

As I go out to the pool to do some laps, Patti and Trixi come in from their swim to resume their clothing. Gamay and Muscat’s 102

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limited compositional skills expire. They undergo a formidable stupefaction in the presence of The Dream… the big house, the nymphs gambolling around naked. Their imaginations weren’t lying. I make a point of not introducing them to the girls.

After my half-hour in the pool, I return to find little progress.

Even holding the pens stretches Gamay and Muscat.

“Tyndale, where should I expect to see myself in five years?”

asks Gamay.

“What did I say about asking?”

“I’m not asking. I’m only curioso. When do we get some major disfrooting?”

It’s recognized that part of the ageing process is viewing the young as useless, listening to terrible music and drivelling away in some outlandish cant, but no one will disconvince me that Gamay and Muscat are anything but useless strange drivellers and perpetrators of terrible music. I reinstruct them to do their bios and go out for a walk.

It’s at least two hours before I get back. Gamay and Muscat are as uncomfortable as two manatees in a sandpit. But that’s okay: to make people happy, it’s beneficial to make them unhappy first. Their autobiographies are woefully brief and Muscat has drawn a smiley face on his paper, presumably in an attempt to placate my wrath.

Can I trust them with solving even Mrs Garcia’s cat problem, never mind Cosmo? But they’re all I have. It’s easy to succeed with proper help. Buddha? Mohammed? Jesus Christ? Did they have to work with dumbos? You bet. Anyone can work with the talented. Can you do it with dumbos? It’s what sorts out the illuminators from the droners.

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take a shot of them with Sixto’s camera, then a real close-up, for purposes of iris recognition I explain. I warn them that they’ll probably end up dead or in jail, and they look unconcerned.

Stupid or tough? Stupid. I consider teaching them a secret handshake, but that would only get them into trouble.

“You have a long way to go before you’re in,” I say. “Remember, I’m the hopmaster: when I say hop, hop.” I make them hop up and down on one leg for three minutes. They’re bulky, and not in condition. By the end they’re gasping piteously.

I outline their tasks, simply and slowly, and emphasize how complete discretion and reliability is required.

“We won’t kennedy you,” says Gamay.

“We won’t kennedy you,” seconds Muscat. I think I understand what they mean. They sit there watching me watching them watching me.

“Okay. Off you go then.”

They look at each other. “You know that stuff you want us to do?” says Gamay. “Would you write it down for us? And is that stuff about the woman and the cat… like some sort of code?”

G

Two days pass. I have given them all the information on Cosmo and the cat, and then I’ve been busy with holy work and thinking about some miracles. They’re relatively easy to fake, but hard to fake well.

I ask myself when Gamay and Muscat are going to check in.

I can’t chase after them – that would look undignified – but I have to say I’m annoyed at their failure to ring in and apologize for their failure. I doubt real criminal organizations would be tolerant of such slackness.

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But finally, out of curiosity, I phone Gamay.

“So?”

“Things are great, totally cool,” he says.

“You had a chat with Cosmo?’

“Not as such.”

“And the cat?”

“It’s right there on the list.”

“What have you been doing for two days?”

“Well, yesterday I was out of it. Someone must have spiked my drink, cos I was feeling bad all day. All day. Today I had to go and see my stylist, Roxanne, cos she’s going on vacation and she wanted to pass me over to Nourina, who’s great and all, while she’s away, but I said to Roxanne, only you can take care of my hair, I just can’t trust anyone else but you, great as Nourina is—”

“Can you hear me okay, Gamay?”

“Perfectomento.”

“You and your fellow DJ have twenty-four hours to deliver.”

“Hey this is the Big M.I.A., we can do it any-ee way.”

I’m so angry I have to lie down. True, they’re not really being auditioned by a major multinational criminal organization, but they don’t know that. When I look back on how much crawling I had to do to get a job interview, let alone a job, their waywardness cripples me with rage.

The next evening Gamay and Muscat report.

“Can we stop now?” Gamay enquires.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been waiting outside this shop for two hours.”

Gamay and Muscat have failed to find Cosmo. They have failed to find the cat and are exhausted after a few hours’ work.

I’m angry with myself for taking on two DJs whose inspiration was a wine list. What did I expect?

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“We ain’t kennedying you, but we can’t find him.”

“You can stop anytime you like, but then you’re out.” I have to remind myself that I’m not paying them.

Furious, I take a walk along the beach. I have to make my way round a group of teens discovering illegal beer and going wild, and congratulating themselves on it. Unaware of how unoriginal, how prescribed, how prepaid this all is. It’s so unoriginal it bores me and how, more than disappointment or sorrow at humanity’s antics, it must bore God. All this stuff we find so important, absorbing, exciting and maddening.

The first kiss. The discovery of cheating. The acceleration of the Norton Commando. The struggle to get a decent passport photograph. Marrying your son. Getting your whites really white. Fury at the uselessness of doctors. Rage at unreturned borrowables. The impossibility of overcooking goose. The investigation of sodomy. The return of a long-lost friend. Having to throw out your favourite jacket because it’s more holes than jacket. The pleasure of massacre. Squabbles about whether it’s a beech marten or a pine marten. Kohlrabi or mangelwurzel. The right turning or the left turning. Old song, new throng. Same babble, different rabble.

Later that evening, sweetened by a session on the punchbag, as I make my way down Washington Avenue with the collecting tin, I spy Gamay and Muscat in a crowded café, not looking for Cosmo, but laying siege to an attractive but visibly underage girl and her fat friend.

I’m too tired to be severely disappointed, but… One: don’t get caught. Two: if you’re fifteen and doing a fifteen-year-old, that’s nature; if you’re forty and you’re doing a fifteen-year-old, there’s a decadent, sick grandeur going on; if you’re twenty-one, you’re a dud. Worse, Gamay and Muscat are getting nowhere.

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They haven’t seen me, and I back off. In any real criminal organization, they would be kneecapped, but all I could do would be to rant and, generally, ranting just makes you look ridiculous. I back off. Sometimes it’s better to let others think they’ve had the better of you.

G

I’d given up on Gamay and Muscat. I hadn’t heard from them for days when, reading the Miami Herald, I chanced upon a small item about a gunburst in the neighbourhood Mrs Garcia lived in. Two unknown assailants had opened fire on the house of Mr Dag Solomon, 76, a retired tollgate consultant and amateur gun collector. Mr Solomon was quoted: “I’ve had to wait fifty-four years to protect my family, but it was worth it.” Mr Solomon went on to insist he had put thirty-four grouped rounds into the assailants’ vehicle as it fled the scene. Mr Solomon was uninjured and so was his family, as they were visiting relatives in Vermont.

I phone Mrs Garcia. As I feared, Mr Solomon is her neighbour and owner of the offending cat. I offer Mrs Garcia my sympathy.

I had envisioned a trap, a thirty-mile road trip for the cat, or at worst, some poisoned liver. I must learn to be more specific. The cat however is no longer a concern. Mrs Garcia has decided to move out.

Gamay and Muscat, I assume, must be dead or slipping away in an intensive-care unit or penal facility somewhere. I wait all day for the police to turn up and debate whether to mention to Sixto that I may have done a sterling job in attracting the forces of law and order into his multinational cocaine business.

This is the great dilemma about fucking up. Very often, an immediate and frank avowal of disaster will get you some credit 107

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and lessen the punishment. This is especially true of minor fuck-ups. Just say you’re sorry about forgetting someone’s birthday or an anniversary. Come clean. Be the big man.

However, with bigger fuck-ups, such as getting your wife’s sister pregnant, there’s always the temptation to keep quiet and hope you can euthanize the mishap without any wrath being spilt. It’s a gamble, because if you botch the euthanasia, then the wrath gets wrathier. I don’t sleep at all the next night, but I don’t tell Sixto.

G

The next morning, as I head for the kitchen to make my cup of tea, a dark, broad-shouldered woman is there fixing herself a sandwich.

“Hi, I’m Gulin,” she says with an accent I can’t place and a smile that’s both natural and a little forced. There are also, I notice, two piles of boxes that augur moving in.

Sixto explains to me that Gulin is a friend of his sister who lives in LA, but who had to leave. He is not thrilled by having another lodger. “My sister…” he fizzles, making strangling gestures.

“Does she know… about your business?” I ask.

“No,” says Sixto. “My sister doesn’t even know. But Gulin has more to worry about than I do. If she’d stayed in LA she’d be dead.”

In the garden, we can see the builders reappearing with new windows. Even at a distance of thirty feet we can see that the new windows don’t match. Sixto opens the window. “You’re not thinking of putting those windows in?” The builders look at the windows as if for the first time and make an exhibition 108

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of surprise at the lack of match. They give exaggerated sighs and retreat.

Then I see the cat. It’s black with white paws. I dislike cats.

They scratch, smell and make me sneeze. But this cat is wise. It keeps its distance and makes no attempt to be pally. Sixto does some more strangling.

When I get to the Hierophant’s office, the phone rings and to my surprise it’s Gamay.

“We got him,” he announces. I consider asking about the cat and the thirty-four grouped rounds, but then I realize I don’t care.

“Eight,” I say, referring to our prearranged interview spot. I get there early, excited by my fruitful machinations. At half-past eight, there’s no sign of Gamay and Muscat. I restrain myself from phoning them. When you’re kidnapping: time, traffic, whatever.

Just after nine they show up. “You’re late,” I say, not that bothered, but discipline for the disciples is important.

“We’re early,” says Gamay. “You said nine.” I could explode, but maybe I did say nine, although I have more faith in my recollection than Gamay’s. I will be taping my conversations from now on. The DJs have new transport; I assume the sharp-shooter trashed their barmonster.

“We ain’t kennedying you, it’s been hellacious these few days,”

continues Gamay. Naturally, I’m not in the least bit interested in Gamay’s whingeing about how hard his existence is. I’m reworking my sermon to Cosmo, delivered in my position as the fear-driver who will inform Cosmo this is his last warning, that if he doesn’t leave town he’ll be fed to the gators. A brimstoning that will cut Cosmo out of the picture. One prayer answered, courtesy of Tyndale.

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I strike a solemn pose and signal them to open up the trunk of the car where Cosmo has been stashed. They do my bidding.

A head rears up.

“Well,” I say to Gamay. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

“You want me to use your name, Tyndale?”

“Why not?”

“Tyndale – Cosmo. Uh, Cosmo – Tyndale.”

“This is not Cosmo,” I say.

“I’m not Cosmo,” says the Head. The Head doesn’t resemble Cosmo, but is remarkably composed for the victim of an abduction, more than composed in fact, quite mean. “I told them I’m not Cosmo.”

Gamay and Muscat gawk at each other as if they’ve been swindled. Then each thinks about blaming the other, but they haven’t got enough time to concoct a story.

“I’ve no idea how this happened,” says Gamay. I have some idea, but explaining to Gamay and Muscat that if a goldfish could move the pieces, it would beat them at chess, won’t improve anything.

“We really wanted to get Cosmo,’ says Muscat.

“We wanted Cosmo bad,” says Gamay. “I guess, I guess… we won’t be joining the organization today. Muscat, man you’re really disgracing us.”

“Me?”

“You’re just not good enough.”

“Excuse us,” I say to the Head as I close the trunk as courteously and gently as possible in the circumstances. I inform Gamay and Muscat, just in case they had any doubts, they are a long way from getting on the payroll.

“Tyndale, we’re going to have a chilli-off,” insists Gamay. “I’ll show you who’s the bad man here.” He produces a small jar and then fishes out a long green chilli and swallows it. He flinches 110

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slightly, but is composed. Muscat takes a chilli and, imitating Gamay’s gung-ho style, bites hard.

Without warning, Muscat collapses, and lies on the ground mewing faintly and crying. It’s undeniable there is something undignified about a man crying, and it takes him ten minutes to pull himself together.

“Let me hear it,” says Gamay. “Who’s badder?”

“You’re badder than me,” hoarses Muscat.

Gamay may be badder than Muscat (not such an achievement), but I sense he’s cheating. Although he’s stupid, he has aspirations to slyness. Somehow he’s picked out a milder chilli or one that’s been treated to lose its edge. You can see things as you get older, although I can’t say that being able to see that one dumbo is conning another dumbo about eating chillies is a wisdom that will get me anywhere.

I instruct them to turn out their pockets; I take their forty-two dollars and sixty cents and give them to the Head, and tell the DJs to drop the Head off somewhere out of the way, but where he’ll have a good chance of getting a taxi.

Back home, I’ve just fallen asleep when Gamay phones me.

“Tyndale, I just wanted to say… that Muscat… that Muscat…

I told that ’tard it was the wrong guy. Tyndale?”

“Yes?”

“If you want to me to uh… you know… to solve the Muscat problem, solve it, you know, like solve it finally, just give me the word, man.”

“Gamay, don’t ever phone me again.”

I’ve just got back to sleep when the phones rings again. It’s Muscat.

“Tyndale, man, I just wanted to say… that ’tard Gamay…

that fuckin ’tard, he’s always holding me back. I just wanted 111

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to say I’m on board. I’m a hundred and fifty fuckin’ per cent on board. I’m in this all the way… you know, if you want to make an example of Gamay, you can count on me a hundred and fifty per cent. Two hundred per cent.”

“Three hundred per cent?”

“Three hundred and ten, man, I ain’t kennedying you.”

“Muscat, don’t ever phone me again.” This time I make sure my phone is off.

G

Two days later, I come down to the kitchen to make some holy breakfast when I find the builders gathered around the television watching a sitcom. They are drinking what looks very much like Sixto’s beer.

I say nothing, but pick up a copy of the Miami Herald lying by the phone to read.

“Hey,” shouts one of the builders, “I’m reading that.” The impossibility of his reading a folded paper, two feet above and ten feet behind his eyes occurs to me. But in the mornings I prefer to be left alone, so I withdraw to my room.

When I leave at lunchtime, the builders are listening to some of Sixto’s compas collection. An hour later when I return they’re gone, and as I hydrate myself, I flick through the paper and notice a not-so-small item about the Mayor of Miami Beach’s son being abducted. Unsportingly, the taxi fare isn’t reported.

So, when Gamay phones up later and assures me they now have Cosmo (“we checked his ID”) I’m very tempted to say forget it. But, barely visible, ahead of me, is the glimmer of success. Be unidirectional.

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My car won’t start. I call Gamay and Muscat repeatedly, but only get voicemail.

When the taxi drops me off at the new interview site (“Are you sure you want to be left here?”) after a comically expensive ride, there is no sign of Gamay and Muscat. If I’d driven, I would have driven off by the time they roll in, an hour and a half late, claiming they couldn’t find the turning. I’m very tired and dissatisfied.

To my great surprise, they extricate Cosmo from the trunk.

He’s even handcuffed. Something’s wrong I think. We’re in a dark, isolated, I don’t know… unused part of Florida and Cosmo is on all fours in front of me, handcuffed. It’s exactly how I wanted it. Cosmo is shaken, but seems emboldened by the sight of me.

“You,” he says, “you can’t do this.” A little humiliation is in order. Recalling another anecdote of my Iraqi neighbour I order the DJs to urinate on Cosmo. Muscat can’t go with everyone watching, and although Gamay manages a trickle, Cosmo keeps rolling out of range. If you fail, you always have the tactic of pretending you haven’t, so I carry on with the admonition.

“Cosmo, you should go. You can go where you want, but you have to leave Florida.” I then pull out the Hierophant’s .22. The drawback with the .22 is that it’s small and looks as if it came from a packet of cereal or a teenage girl’s handbag. Professional killers apparently are very fond of the .22, but I doubt Cosmo knows that.

“This is a holy gun,” I say, remixing the Hierophant’s shtick.

“The .22 is the choice of the godly, because it punishes the wrongdoer, but doesn’t, like a .44, go through the wrongdoer, three walls, a gardener and then kill a child on a bike half a mile away.”

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Our eyes meet and Cosmo sneers: “You won’t shoot me.” This is the trouble with religion in the present day. Too many wishy-washy pencil-necked hand-clasping do-gooding over-forgiving softies have given the cloth a limp image. Nevertheless I’m astonished by Cosmo’s front. If someone’s gone to the trouble of threatening you, it’s plain bad manners not to act threatened.

In his position, even if I didn’t take the threat seriously, I’d just say, sure whatever you want, and then, once de-handcuffed and de-waylaid, forget all about it.

“That was a rash thing to say Cosmo. You haven’t thought this through. Even if I didn’t want to shoot you before, now, to show you I’m not smoke, I really have to.”

“No, you won’t.”

He was nearly right. I missed three times. I wanted to shoot him just at the base of his right toes, so that it would be painful, but there would be no danger of him bleeding to death. I get Gamay and Muscat to sit on him so he’ll stop wriggling and I put one through his boot.

Surprisingly, Cosmo is surprised that I’ve shot him. On his face, incredulity tangles with pain. “Why did you shoot me?”

he wails.

As we drive off, I’m partly pleased with myself that I’ve taken decisive action, partly unhappy at having to live in a world with guns. We leave Cosmo stranded in the middle of nowhere, which may well turn out to be more punitive than being shot.

Will Cosmo skulk off or will he go berserk, get an automatic weapon and hose me down? He’s not incapable of it. But you don’t get anywhere without taking risks.

Five miles down the road we break down. The electrics are gone. Two hours later we’re still stuck there with the breakdown people phoning us every fifteen minutes telling us they can’t find 114

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us. There are one or two obvious things I know you can check for, and Muscat and Gamay have the same level of automotive knowledge as me. We stand there staring at the engine, because that’s what you do with an engine or piece of equipment that’s not working and you don’t know how to repair. You stare at it manfully as if you are pondering all sorts of solutions, whereas in reality you’re waiting for the breakdown people. It’s a bitchslap for our masculinity, and we do our best to pretend that it isn’t.

Far off in the distance I glimpse a bus. I just have the opportunity to see Cosmo being carried off towards Miami. It’s a bad moment. If I had anything to go back to, I’d give it up and go back.

It’s another two hours before we’re recovered. I suffer a powerful temptation to shoot the breakdown people, but I realize that, gratifying though it would be, and invaluable as it might be as feedback on the quality of their service, it won’t help my deification. Unidirectional, baby.

By the time I get back home it’s very late and I’m surprised to see one of the builders, the carpenter, sitting watching television with a half-naked cutie, drinking what again bears a strong resemblance to Sixto’s beer. The carpenter is angry at my entrance and, maintaining that he had forgotten a tool, leaves with the confused cutie. There are still two or three empty rooms in Sixto’s place and the carpenter must have been doing the “come back to my palatial pad” routine. I find it outrageous that someone not even living in the house is pretending to be the owner. Leave that to me.

G

I contemplate miracles. Walking on water I dismiss as too tricky, and also a bit redundant. Great effect, but what good does it 115

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do anyone? Sighting the blind, raising the dead: those are the miracles that get you noticed, those are the services that the public wants.

I go down to have a holy breakfast. In the kitchen, Gulin is wobbling on a chair struggling to change a strip light. I step in because it seems courteous and because, with fifteen years in the lighting business, this is one thing I can handle.

As it turns out, I can’t sort out the fitting which makes me glad I didn’t mention that I had fifteen years in the lighting business.

Over tea, Gulin and I trade biographies (I sold electrical goods). She is Turkish, a former primary school teacher who decided one day ten years ago to fly into LA, with no work permit, no job, no contacts, no friends, three hundred dollars and maybe that many words of English. Anyone who knows LA, I think, will stand and salute. She has numerous anecdotes about the rich and famous whose children she looked after, and who were naturally, very unpleasant to work for. Then she got married, to a Turk.

“We went to Las Vegas for our honeymoon. The honeymoon was a good idea, the marriage wasn’t.”

Her husband is a security guard. There are lots of stories about security guards, none of them good.

“Are you divorced?”

“I can’t divorce.” She explains she had to disappear without warning and leave LA, because otherwise her husband would kill her. Some women telling you this would be unconvincing but a young lady who soldiers into LA on her own isn’t one prone to panic or exaggeration.

“He’s an unhappy man. He wouldn’t accept me leaving.” I understand.

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He’s me. I can see it. You go to America, work your balls off, eat macaroni cheese and tinned spinach for years, and instead of making it like your fellow villagers who went to America, your cousin Mehmet, for example, you are in a dead-end job earning just enough for burgers, a movie at the weekend and a trip back home every two years should you care to admit to not having made it. The only plus is your wife, whom you can’t stand any more, but who is still your wife. When you realize that this life is over, that you haven’t been nominated for anything worthwhile, there are three standard responses: you give up and erase yourself in television or booze, have a mad roll of the dice like me, or choose to make someone pay.

Not for the first time, I recognize that women are tougher.

If their worldly progress doesn’t progress the way they like, women can handle it. Men, in general, can’t. Gulin’s solution, pure disappearance, is the only practical one. Going to the police? Has he threatened you? No. Has he beaten you? No.

Has he ever assaulted anyone? No. Why do you say he’ll kill you? Because I know him. The notepads would come out only once her brains were on the wall.

Gulin’s a very sturdy woman, so sturdily built that I can’t help speculating that you could slap away with her, hard, doggy-style, and not end up fifteen yards from your starting point.

But I consider this academically, theoretically, because this holy stuff truly grows on you. I’m getting quite above earthly matters and penile servitude.

Of course, this abstinence is abetted by age. When you’re eighteen and male, all you want to do is eat fried chicken and copulate until you pass out, but now I can take it or leave it, which is ironic because the whole point of my scheme is to have bountiful supplies of pleasure and to trinket up.

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G

Finally, I hear from the Hierophant.

“You have a servant heart,” he tells me, as I assure him his parishioners are all in good order. He’s calling from Cleveland and tells me that he won’t be back for some time yet. His mother is still very ill. He sounds tired and mentions that the Evangelists have been singing his praises.

“They’ve got the sixty-seventh most happening church here.

I always wanted to get on that list. Ah well, the Lord should be enough. It does no good to dwell on those most happening churches run by fornicators and coke fiends. The Lord should be enough for you and me, Tyndale. And you’ve proved to be a slowie rather than a showie.”

“Is that good?”

“I’ve had showies before. They come along, talk big and then vanish without doing what they promised. Or I’ve had to boot them out. You’re a tortoise slowie, reliable and you finish what you start.”

I’m rather moved by his faith. Slowie isn’t the praise I would have chosen for myself, but praise always gets through.

“We need to be doing more for the unchurched,” the Hierophant muses. “Perhaps we should start a young Christian organization. That’d be a good way to get onto that most-happening church list. To move forward.”

We? What he means is I can go out and bust a gut keeping kids away from all the things they’re most interested in.

“That’s a good idea, Gene. I was just saying to myself the other day that would be a good way forward.”

“That’s it, Tyndale, we’ve got to keep moving forward. Watch out for those giant midgets.”

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Why does everyone think going forward is such a great idea?

What if there’s a hundred-foot drop onto pointy rocks ahead of you? What if there’s a very comfortable bed behind you?

And what’s the deal with the most happening church? Why not just say your church is happening? Surely if you’re dealing with the churched, your word is good enough. Or if verification is obligatory, scare the congregation away for a few weeks, so it can rocket from four to forty-four. A thousand per cent increase.

Beat that growth, growers of congregations.

Will the Hierophant ever return? Or will the Evangelists sign him up? He’s a battler, but there comes that day when you get tired. It happens to athletes. One minute, they’re world champions, the next they won’t stir from bed. It’s the same for preachers.

The Hierophant’s sixty-six and, having been at the wheel in his absence, I can confirm his church is going nowhere. If the Evangelists in Ohio offer him a cushy post as drill sergeant, why not take it? It would suit me.

I ponder my failure back home, and how bizarre it is to be here, still penniless, but in the religion business. In the sunshine.

Why couldn’t I make it back home? You’ll say to me, Tyndale, my old china, why didn’t you do something about being stuck in a dreary job? What did you do about it? And I’ll say to you, I did do something. I did something a lot. I applied for all sorts of posts. I studied Arabic for three months in case I got a job in Dubai. I studied Czech for three months in case I got the job in the new office in Prague. I joined the right golf club, and bloody expensive it was. That’s what makes it so annoying. I could have done nothing, saved the fees, and still had the failure.

The Reinholds arrive to congratulate me on Cosmo’s depar-ture. “How did you do it?” they ask. I modestly shrug my 119

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shoulders. They’ve brought some flowers for the church, big, bright and expensive. I wish they’d brought some of the folding stuff instead. I need some new, more Miamian threads. But I’m pleased that I’ve done something good, however small.

When I get back to Sixto’s, a worried Gulin is patrolling outside.

Her cat, Orinoco, is nowhere to be found. Did a runner when the builders were changing a window. I’ve always disliked cats, but Orinoco is so well behaved and good-natured that I’ve been stroking him when no one is looking. Orinoco knows something.

There’s wisdom trapped inside that cat.

Despite not being a cat owner and having decades of cat contempt to my credit, I authoritatively assure Gulin there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t know why we all have this urge to talk confidently about subjects we have no knowledge of.

Gamay calls up on behalf of the DJs.

“Tyndale, listen man, I’m in the middle of sorting out my schedule. Should I leave a day aside for any joining ceremony?”

“You don’t listen, do you?”

“No, all I’m saying is, compañero, I wouldn’t want to make your life awkward by you arranging something and then me having arranged something.”

“Don’t phone me.”

“Okay. I get it. I get it. Totalism. But before I go, I only wanted to say if it’s an issue of space, like… there’s only room for one person… but not enough room for two, you know, that’s a problem that isn’t a problem. Muscat’s awful careless when he cleans his gun.”

“I’m going to hang up now. I’m telling you this so you understand when you don’t hear me any more that it’s not a technical glitch, it’s me hanging up on you.”

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He and Muscat are expecting a reward for having done something right? What do they expect? A badge? A uniform? A Multinational Crime for Beginners manual? I don’t know what to do with the DJs. Momentarily they became a good solution for getting rid of Cosmo; only now does it occur to me that they may develop into a bigger problem than Cosmo. People, I’ve noticed, can get really angry when they feel they’ve been cheated, particularly when they actually have. Should Gamay and Muscat discover I’m just a chancer from another continent, the ugliness would flow freely.

Muscat phones up.

“Tyndale, this is Muscat. You know Gamay and I, we did that work for you?”

As if I would forget ordering a kidnapping. It’s touching he views me so satanically.

“I just wanted to say we appreciate being given the chance.

Thank you for thinking of us and you know, if you need anyone, you know, terrorized with some serious terror, bear us… I mean bear me in mind. I know we never discussed money, but I’m able to start real basic—”

I tell Muscat that he will have to wait. “It’s easy to do something. Doing nothing’s harder. You may not hear from me for six months. If you can’t wait, if you can’t take the discipline, you’re out.” Perhaps they’ll get impatient or get arrested.

G

One of the few boons of having a job is that it gets you out of bed. If you have no obligation to get out of bed, it can sometimes be very hard to persuade yourself to rise. Most mornings I lie 121

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in bed praying as hard as I can, despite not believing in God.

Praying that everyone will be happy.

I would like everyone to be happy, apart from a few mass murderers, my former employers, bankers. I’d really like everyone to be happy. Why can’t happiness be granted to everyone or at least most of us? Why does everything have to be so hard? All the elements are there for a reasonable life. It’s like loneliness.

It’s ridiculous that it exists, because however deformed or weird you are, there’s someone out there like you; or, if you prefer, there’s someone out there not like you.

I pray hard, because there’s nothing else to do, but eventually I need a cup of tea. Downstairs Gulin is now despondent about Orinoco: “Four days he’s been missing.” Naturally, I assume that Orinoco has expired according to cat protocol: wheeled to death or eaten by some strange immigrant group. Gulin is touring the neighbourhood putting up posters and asking after Orinoco, to no avail.

“Whadya gonna do?” she sighs. She is so miserable and, precisely because she fights to hide it and doesn’t ask for help, I volunteer to join in the hunt. I am provided with a snap of Orinoco and guided to some blocks north of Sixto’s where she hasn’t yet canvassed. As I start my investigation, I realize that my wandering around asking about a cat might look a little suspect.

The area I’m patrolling is markedly downmarket to Sixto’s.

It’s not an area that would be the first choice for burglars or home-invaders, but I wonder if any of the residents would find my quest plausible. Having a dark thought was a mistake. It’s curious that optimistic thoughts such as “I will win the lottery”,

“that promotion’s mine”, “I must find that antique armoire perfect for the corner”, rarely bear fruit, but thoughts like “I’m going to get done” do.

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A stubby man is watering a lawn. I explain my mission and get looks of puzzlement. The Waterer doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak enough Spanish yet to spanglish a bridge. I show him the picture of Orinoco and, instead of shaking his head, he beckons me to follow him.

We walk round the back of the house, which is heavily vegetated, down a narrow path towards a shack. I’m now out of sight of the road, out of sight full stop. I’m uneasy about this, but I’ve asked about the cat, so it would be unreasonable to back out now.

I follow the Waterer into the shack. In a cardboard box are five ginger kittens. He picks up two of them and offers them to me in an all-yours gesture. The last thing I want are two kittens.

I smile, shake my head and utter the word “no”.

“No” is such a cosmopolitan word, at home up in Anchorage, or down in Cape Horn. A word understood by billions of earthlings. Understanding isn’t always such a good thing. I add

“thanks” to the “no”, but the “no” has done its work.

The Waterer is angry. So angry he must have been steaming about something before I inquisitioned onto the scene. He shouts. Then he has another round of shouting that makes the previous shouting tame. I can’t imagine he’d have been more furious or hate-contorted if I’d murdered his family. I am already backing off, smiling hard, when he produces a gun, grabs my hair and pushes the gun into my ear so forcefully it would have been painful if I hadn’t been numbed by terror.

There are a number of questions here. Why is he so angry?

Does he feel I have insulted his kittens and thus, by extension, him? That I have rummaged deep in my throat and spat the results on his generosity? Why exactly does he keep a gun in a shackful of kittens? Is he simply a far-sighted man who has 123

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firearms secreted all around his property in convenient, easy-to-grab locations?

I have never been so scared. I know I’m going to die and I shit myself, although I’m so busy with the terror I don’t mind.

The Waterer shouts for a long time, but eventually I figure out that the only reason he doesn’t shoot me is not any regard for life or fear of any penalty, but because if he shoots me he’ll have to spend time digging a hole or dragging me out to the Everglades. I can’t say I knew him well, but I knew that’s what he was thinking.

The walk home is unpleasant.

G

“What happened to you?” Gulin comments on my mashed ear the next day. I say nothing about my misadventure because I’m so shaken I don’t want to relive it. I doubt if I’ll live long enough to find it funny.

Sixto is quietly addressing the builders, “All I want are windows that look the same as the others. They don’t have to be atomically similar, but let’s say an averagely observant person couldn’t tell they’re different from twenty feet away.” It’s impossible to say whether his appeal is having any effect.

In addition to my sore ear, my underwear is moist because our tumble dryer has broken down. I am developing a new theory that no one enjoys life, that enjoyment is a unicorn, when Gamay and Muscat phone to provide me with more evidence.

“I said you’d have to wait.’

“Tyndale, this isn’t business. This is not, not business. We want a drink, socio. A cafecito or something.”

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A career in lying clearly isn’t lying in wait for Gamay. I’d anticipated they’d be off my back for at least a few weeks.

Perhaps I should do something decisive to get rid of the DJs and not just trust they will wither away.

I agree to meet Gamay and Muscat at a fancy hot-dog diner of their choice, Dogma .

“Now for the dryer,” announces Sixto seizing the phone.

Making my coffee I hear a series of exclamations from Sixto: how much, when, sorry, how much. I feel for Sixto. I don’t know how people our age or younger are running countries.

Like Sixto, running a household is beyond me.

“I can’t believe what they want to charge,” Sixto says. “And they say the cocaine cowboys are destroying the country. The engineer’s coming tomorrow at three. Anyone at home?”

“You don’t need an engineer,” says Gulin. “You probably just need a new circuit board. I can get that for you.”

Sixto and I look at each other like kids whose homework has miraculously done itself.

“Well,” says Sixto.

“I’ll sort it out,” Gulin says.

Unusually, Gamay and Muscat are at Dogma waiting for me.

This is a bad sign. “I’m glad you called,” I say, when there is no one in earshot. “I’m glad you called” is precisely what to say when the opposite is true. I learnt this from Bamford. It’s a brilliant technique of wrong-footing. And you must avoid any hint of sarcasm or insincerity, otherwise it’s worthless. Smile.

Always smile and say thank you when someone hands you a basket of shit. They may doubt if they really gave you a basket of shit. You settle up later, when their backs are turned.

I look at Gamay and Muscat manfully and pausefully: “We may have to go to war.”

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Alarmingly, this prospect doesn’t alarm them at all.

“Imperative,” says Gamay.

“You know it,” says Muscat.

“I need you to dig up… some tools.” I give them a map purporting to show buried weapons in the Everglades. I debated long and hard about how vague to make the map. If it’s really vague, then even Gamay and Muscat might guess that I’m duping them. If on the other hand I put in too much detail, they might come back to me and say there’s no blasted oak three hundred yards past the alligator souvenir shop. What I want is for them to wade around in hazardous swamp for a few days until they get fed up or injured and give up.

Gamay and Muscat are excited. I suppose in all of us there is a desire to have secret knowledge, to lead a secret, outlaw life, particularly if it’s well paid.

“This is the big test, so don’t mess up,” I warn them, getting up with no intention of paying for the drinks. I hear myself adding, “I ain’t kennedying you.”

Back at Sixto’s, Gulin is in the garage, operating on the dryer.

The operation isn’t progressing smoothly – she is glaring at the new circuit board with disapproval – but you can tell that she will succeed. She’s wearing a purple vest which reveals a tattoo of a stylized bird on her right shoulder. Some symbol I suppose.

Living? Dead? You never ask about tattoos.

The tattoo surprises me; she struck me as someone who would regard tattoos as a frivolous expense. Her ears are unpierced and as far as my unexpert eye can tell cosmetics rarely reach her face.

“Here’s a new career,” I say as chatty encouragement. I am humbled by her endeavour. There are so many hurdles to clear before this stage. Knowing what a circuit board is. Finding a 126

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shop that sells circuit boards. Finding the circuit board in the shop that sells circuit boards. Buying the right one. Buying the right one at the right price. Buying the right one at the right price in working condition. Opening the dryer. And so on. I know I wouldn’t make it. This would beat me. But there’s a chance my divine project will work, because it doesn’t involve any wiring or unscrewing anything.

I can’t figure out what would be most helpful, to remain in a supportive role, or to leave her alone to fiddle it out with the dryer. I choose to allocate her a few smiling minutes as a nod to either option.

“It’s not difficult,’ she says. “Not that difficult.”

“How’s the job hunt going?”

“Slow. Contacts. Contacts.’

“What would you like to do?’

“What would I like to do?” Gulin consults the installation leaflet. “I’d like to be a journalist. But that’s not gonna happen.

Contacts. Contacts.”

It’s true. Of course, blaming and claiming is the refrain of the inert, the lazy, the dim, the moaner. I didn’t get the break. I didn’t have this. I didn’t have that. But it’s different with Gulin. I’m in the presence of someone very hard. Someone who delivers. How many times have you heard someone say I can sort that out and yet it remains unsorted? Four hours after her statement she’s here wielding the screwdriver. When she says contacts, it’s not a lament, it’s a statement of fact. And true. What’s the difference between standing in a dusty garage jousting with a circuit board (for no pay, to save someone else a few dollars) and sitting in an oak-lined office earning a car every hour, whether you do anything much or not? A school friend. An uncle. Someone you met on a train.

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Naturally, in order to win the lottery, you have to buy a lottery ticket. And you can work hard to buy lots of tickets, you can buy lots of tickets if you put your mind to it. You can buy lots of tickets and win nothing.

G

Orinoco has returned, a little displeased. I’m not angry with the cat, because wherever it’s been, it’s definitely not the cat’s fault. Orinoco’s not that kind of cat. Gulin is cheered by Orinoco’s return, but annoyed because she has been offered a childminding job, but she has no car, and it will take a three-hour combination of bus and foot to get there. She is tough enough to take it, but she can’t arrive there early enough to satisfy her prospective employers, who aren’t willing to offer her a live-in position.

She hasn’t got enough money to get a closer place (Sixto’s letting her live rent-free until she gets a job). She left her car behind in LA on the basis that cars can be traced, and flew into Orlando, hired a car, drove down to Miami, dumped her stuff, then drove to Tampa to drop off the car, confident that should bury her tracks.

This is the stuff that infuriates me. Here you have someone decent, that rarity, someone who wants to work, someone at ease with hard, menial, poorly paid work, but who can’t get to the job, and until she gets there can’t scrape together the money to get there. Gulin is the only one in this house with an interest in honourable employment, but can’t reach it.

“You know, you can always borrow my car,” I say. Sixto has two cars but his spare is on loan and he doesn’t know when he’ll get it back.

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“No,” she says. Politely, she manages to refuse twice, but is so desperate that’s as far as she can go. Most of the places I need to get to I can reach by public transport, which isn’t bad at all but, like public transport everywhere, is much favoured by the mentally ill, junkies and the generally nasty. It is noticeable that wherever you travel the stupid and ignorant are always the loudest. They can’t talk, they have to shout, and are always to be found on public transport. Also, I have no hesitation in using my legs, unlike most Miamians, who would sooner drive half an hour to avoid a five-minute walk.

Gulin goes off to test the route to her job. Sixto then appears and studies the new windows. He strokes the paint.

“It’s like they had to reinvent the concept of the window. It’s taken them four months to change two windows. And these clowns came recommended.”

I don’t know why the thought comes to my mind, and as soon as I say it I regret it: “Have you checked if they open?”

Sixto’s not good at rage, which is a novelty in someone of a Cuban background. He doesn’t shout, swear, wave his hands or throw things. His mouth twitches a little and his breathing gets hard as the two of us are unable to get the windows to open even a fraction.

“You know, what’s the worst part of this? I could have these guys killed. One phone call, a solution architect would fly in, bang, bang. That’s what’s so hard. One phone call. One phone call. I could really have them killed, no questions asked. It’s so hard not to.”

He circulates around the kitchen, nodding and breathing hard, I suppose having conversations of an imaginary, hostile nature with window-fitters.

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G

On Collins Avenue, a bare-chested man who is a V of rocky pectorals and is wearing white naval bell-bottoms hands me a small plastic sachet. He is jigging around the sidewalk, handing out the sachets to passers-by. I usually accept proffered leaflets or items because if you’ve ever had to do a job like that, you will spend the rest of your life accepting proffered leaflets or items.

The sachet contains a clear substance which according to the packaging is personal lubricant. Since I have no immediate plans to bugger anyone, I’m not sure what to do with it.

Having enjoyed two lattes and an exceptionally good tuna Niçoise sandwich in the Loews Hotel I am about to leave without paying the bill, when I get a call from Gamay and Muscat. Not having heard from them for a week I had happily concluded that they had given up on joining an international criminal organization.

“We’ve got the tools,” Gamay announces with the sort of pride a sixteen-year-old would have after bedding three beauty queens in one night.

I’m perplexed. Unwisely I tell them to meet me at the church.

Gamay and Muscat struggle into the office carrying a large metal container they can barely carry. Then they go out and grunt back in with two more containers, dripping with sweat. They don’t say a word but look at me grinning.

I have to do it. I open the latches on the uppermost container.

Inside is an abundance of black sacking material, which contains a weighty object. I unfurl the material, and find myself holding an automatic weapon. If all the containers are full, there must be three dozen of them. I like to consider myself a man with a ready retort, but I’m unworded.

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“It wasn’t easy,” beams Gamay. “Socio, your map wasn’t that good. But hey, delivery is us.”

I examine the gun. I don’t like guns. They say people kill people, not guns. That’s not right, people want to kill people, but the guns do it. I am quite tired of living, but this scares me. This is heaviness way beyond my abilities or interests. These containers contain illegality and danger out of all proportion to their volume.

“You boys really disappoint me,” I say. The DJs are hesitant.

Is this multinational criminal irony?

“These aren’t ours. I don’t know where you got these. But if I were you I’d take these back straight away, because the owners might be very angry. Buriers of guns aren’t known for their sense of humour. Or for that matter, hesitation in shooting former DJs.”

“Muscat, why are you disgracing us like this?” says Gamay.

“Me?” says Muscat. I, of course, have no interest in hearing the two of them volley the blame back and forth, but I hear it anyway.

“You shouldn’t be here wasting Tyndale’s time. You’re just too soft.” Gamay storms out and returns with a small box. “I thought we established who’s Mr Bad,” he continues, opening the box to reveal two scorpions. “Let’s see who’s hard.” He takes one scorpion and dangles it above the back of his trousers.

“You’re not doing that,” exclaims Muscat. But Gamay drops the hapless scorpion into buttockville and then sits down, with considerable gusto and a crunching sound. My heart goes out to the scorpion. Gamay whoops as if downing a tequila and extracts some squished remains from his nether regions.

When I was growing up I had many dreams, but I never had one where I was sitting in an ailing church, vainly striving to be 131

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mistaken for God, surrounded by stacks of firearms, while an oxygen thief crushes a scorpion with his backside in an attempt to be recruited by an non-existent multinational criminal organization. A round of applause for the Unexpected.

Let’s consider Gamay’s show. Who carries around two live scorpions? You’d only do this if you’re expecting to put on a show. Again, I can’t divine how Gamay has cheated, but I’m convinced he hasn’t exposed himself to any significant pain or toil – that’s not his style. That he chose the larger scorpion is for me confirmation of a con.

Scorpions vary in their toxicity and, furthermore, like snakes you can milk them for their venom. I can talk about this with some authority, because one of my neighbours invested in a company making scorpion restrainers. Also, since their attack depends on penetrating skin, if you were to cut even a tiny amount off the very tip of the sting, it would no longer be hypodermic. We weren’t given a chance to inspect the scorpion before it was arsed out of recognizability.

“You’re harder than me,” Muscat concedes, “harder and crazier.” Gamay has the cheek to offer me the other scorpion.

I instruct Gamay and Muscat to take the guns away. I know they’ll probably just stick them under their beds, but I want them gone. “This is on a need-to-know basis,” I say, “and I don’t need to know.” They get sulky about having to lug the containers back out. For big, strong lads they are extraordinarily lazy.

“Don’t phone me. I ain’t kennedying you,” I say, already picturing myself on flights out of the country; or, who knows, maybe my luck will change and I’ll get a nice situation in the prison library to see out my declining years?

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G

Sometimes a good night’s sleep makes prospects look better, but not when you’re strictly ruined. The misery is right there by the bedside table. I had to knock myself out by raiding Sixto’s drinks cabinet, but the great thing about being abstinent is that when you have a drink, you get your money’s worth.

I catch my reflection in the mirror. I look rather mad. I am probably going mad, but perhaps one of the consolations of going mad is that you don’t mind too much.

In a mechanical, lifeless way I head off to the church and do some pastoral acts in a mechanical, lifeless way. I’m hoping I can escape our parishioners for surgery as there’s no one around.

Just as I’m locking up, the Reinholds greet me. Have they come to give me a present in gratitude? Because no matter how much punishment you take there’s always a part of you that’s hoping someone will walk in and hand you a fat cheque.

They don’t look happy enough for my taste, and we have some pleasantries in the office before we get to the unzipping.

“We’re grateful, we’re very grateful for your help, Tyndale.

We don’t want you to think we’re ungrateful. And I know you’ll find this funny, but we need you to get Cosmo back.”

I don’t find it funny at all. I’m not that angry because if you’re being burned at the stake, you don’t get that upset if someone in the crowd throws on another bit of kindling, though you might be surprised to see who’s throwing it.

The Reinhold’s daughter has completely gone off the rails, her behaviour is even worse than before, so they want Cosmo back.

There is only one question in life worth asking: is it written or not? Is there anything I can do to change my fortune or should I give up now? Are losers losers, or winners-in-waiting?

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“I’ll do my best,” I say, because I want them gone. “But I can’t promise anything.”

Reinhold leaves his newspaper behind. Out of a desire to escape my life, I pick it up. On the front page of the Miami Herald is a bizarre abduction story involving the Dade County Police Commissioner’s wife and teenage daughter. On a trip out to the Everglades, they were abducted by two powerfully built white males. Instead of being robbed or sexually assaulted as they feared, they were given spades and forced to dig holes for two days. Their abductors kept calling each other “Gammy”

and “Musky”. I don’t bother reading the rest of the article.

Never, never work with people.

G

I’m on the verge of getting comfortable with complete despair, when something good happens.

While I’m handing out turkey subs to the homeless, the young guy, Fash, taps me on the shoulder and hands me my wallet, which must have fallen out of my pocket. It surprises and annoys me. It’s so infuriating when you’ve settled into a doctrine of perfect misanthropy to have your philosophy challenged in this way, because you start asking the questions again: is there good?

You waste so much time thinking. One of the great strengths of religion is that it gives you answers, you’re ready with the thinking and saying. If nothing else it saves you so much time and energy. It’s like shopping: if you don’t know what you want you can spend the whole day looking at, say, trousers, whereas if you do you can buy them in ten minutes.

And it is pointless. One man exhibiting decency on the street in Miami isn’t going to change anything. But you feel guilty, 134

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you feel wrong about throwing away that act of decency, as if it doesn’t matter (although it doesn’t – does it?).

Back at the church, before I can close the doors, a fifty-something woman slides in. This is the one of the dangers of offering help: the needy come and ask for it. The unneedy too.

However, I feel better because it confirms my theory of swings and roundabouts. Someone hands me back my wallet, I get stuck with an irritating woman called Marysia.

I don’t remember seeing her at any of our services, and let’s face it, worshippers aren’t hard to spot at the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ. My guess is she is here because all the other, better, proper churches have shown her the door.

Everything about her is… irritating. She has a strange European accent, and emphasizes everything she says to underline how well she speaks English. Students of a language tend to fall into two main categories: the taxi-driver class where you have enough vocabulary to ask for the fare, and the show-off class.

“I was driving by when I saw your Church abutting on the…”

Abutting? When was the last time you heard anyone use the word abutting? Have I led a very sheltered life? Is abutting making a comeback?

I check the clock when she arrives, because I intend to accord her ten minutes before claiming urgent prior commitments.

When I repeatedly say things like “I must go” she ignores them so completely it’s evident she’s hardened to escape attempts.

Displeasure tumbles from my face in vain.

Her woe is her two-year-old grandson who has digestive problems. You’d think it’d be difficult to talk about a kid’s shit for fifty minutes. If you said to me, I’ll give you a hundred grand if you could talk about it for fifty minutes, I’d certainly try, but I’d run out after ten or so. Marysia gabbles on about 135

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it for fifty minutes without pause or hesitation, though with a great deal of repetition. She has mastered some technique of breathing while simultaneously talking. I time her on the clock.

Our bowels are a vital part of life, but even as a professional ear, I recoil at fifty minutes of a safari down the lower intestine of an infant so intricate I feel like an enzyme.

“The coprolith then proceeded…” I can guess what coprolith means, but I’m willing to bet the doctor that’s treating the kid has never heard the word. Marysia’s the sort of mother you’d move to the other side of the world to dodge.

She’s really so, so irritating. And she didn’t start out that way. She was probably a pleasant kid. She didn’t set out to be irritating. She didn’t volunteer, or take a course. She may have made some bad decisions, but who hasn’t? Maybe she could have fought harder against the metamorphosis into a compulsive grouser, but who hasn’t given up? And if there’s no hope of redemption, there’s no hope. For a second, I’m sorry for her. But only one.

Normally when I get a moaner in, I can drift off, abandon time, have a me moment, if for no other reason than that the true moaner doesn’t notice you fleeing – the perpetual moaners really want to moan – but I can’t shut her out. I seriously consider feigning a heart attack to shut her off when her phone goes and it’s fortunately something significant requiring her presence elsewhere.

“Could you give me a prayer to help my grandson’s ster-coraceous fusillade?” she asks. I certainly can. I utter some words of respite for little Leon. Before she leaves Marysia gives me her card. I’m surprised. I expected her to be an assistant librarian in an outlying library, but she is Vice President of an oil company.

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A number of thoughts go through my mind.

First: she knows nothing about oil. You might judge me a little peremptory, a little sweeping in making a statement like that having spent a single hour with her where the only subject of conversation was constipation. However I know I know as much about oil as Marysia. She knows nothing about oil.

Second: you don’t want to tournamentize life, but there are victors and non-victors. Simple as that. She lucked out. Just because she knows nothing about oil, why shouldn’t she be the Vice President of an oil company? That’s the current style.

There’s so much movement in the job market, why should you be hampered by ignorance? I was almost a freak in staying at the same company for fifteen years. Of course, I tried to get out, but that’s another story. You find complete ignorance everywhere: lawyers who know nothing about the law, doctors who know nothing about medicine.

One of my neighbours’ daughters signed up to be a gofer in a public-relations company, one summer for two weeks. Within three months she was the boss, not because she was gifted or had a ruthless go-getting streak, but because there was a wave of resignations, accidents, pregnancies, stormings-out and, although she wasn’t at all interested in public relations, she ran the company because she felt someone ought to.

Marysia leaves. Maybe it’s the frequency of her voice.

G

Getting back home late one night, I notice across the road, framed by darkness, in a well-lit room, a couple getting fleshy.

Either they were too eager to bother with the curtains or they’re into the idea of an audience.

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The house is rented out to tourists for short stints. I recognize the man first: it’s my ex-wife’s new partner. I have a good view of him as he thrusts away, and he has a very distinctive high forehead and hair like a shaving brush. On further observation, I realize the woman receiving his attentions is my ex-wife. It takes me time to recognize her because my angle of vision isn’t good and because she’s changed her hairstyle. Women are always altering their appearance and then get upset when you don’t recognize them. The worst instance I know of this was Nelson picking up his wife’s younger sister (whom he’d only met briefly a couple of times) and getting as far as the hotel-room key. “Of course, I knew it was you,” he laughed when she revealed her identity, but his attempt to pass it off as a practical joke didn’t minimize his punishment.

In the kitchen, I prepare myself that staple of lone males, toast. When I go up to my room and check, they’re still at it.

I could get very angry about this. I could rage about the near impossibility of my ex-wife renting the house opposite my abode from the billions of rentable homes on offer. I could fall prey to the suspicion that she’s doing it deliberately, but for the knowledge that she’d be more horrified than me to discover our proximity. Somehow the total absurdity of the episode makes me feel this is a provocation, that this has been engineered by the universe to wind me up. Anything is better than chaos.

And if bad luck doesn’t upset you, it’s not really such bad luck; naturally that’s not such an easy trick to pull off, but there you are.

I have nothing against Dee’s new man. He runs a business breeding ladybirds, which initially made me think he was mentally ill, until I learnt that gardeners buy them for pest control. He has a staff of twenty. He’s never going to be rich in 138

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the having-your-own private-army way we dream of when we’re young. But he has enough for a foreign holiday twice a year and a big house with a garden. Dee would prefer to have a senior banker to brag about, because the comic element to breeding ladybirds is unavoidable, but you can’t have everything.

I’m not angry with Dee either. She wants to be happy. That’s not unreasonable. I didn’t appear like the path to happiness. I’m disappointed, and I feel sad because I have nothing to say to her and we can’t even go out for a quick drink. There are few people I can relive the past with and there are going to be even fewer. I don’t mind that they’re happy. Because the happier the world is, the better off we all are.

The saddest thing is you can’t even make someone like you, let alone love you.

G

Is the problem me? For years now, I’ve been pondering this.

Earlier on you think, when I leave school, it’ll be all right.

When I get that girlfriend, it’ll be all right. When I get that job, it’ll be all right. When I get married, it’ll be all right, and of course it isn’t. I’ve been trying to figure out what it is. Is it bad luck? A rule that no one told me about? That page of the existence manual you forgot to read? Some awkwardness or laziness in me? Will I ever find out?

All you can do: stay cool. Stay cool and wait for the opportunity.

Action is only speeded-up waiting. All you can do is wait.

The Hierophant calls. His mother’s worsening. There’s nothing much he can do: in fact, apart from hand-holding there’s nothing he can do. “She had an infection and they thought she was a goner.”

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He hasn’t reached the stage of saying “it would have been better for her”. What people generally mean is it would be better for them. Sometimes it would be better, but pretend, pretend.

That’s the problem with being decent. It ruins you. More than drugs. Walking away is the universal panacea.

The next call is from South Beach Police Station. Mrs Shepherd, our flower-gatherer, is in custody on theft charges.

I’m really perplexed, but they won’t go into details over the phone.

Before I leave, Mrs Blatt from next door arrives with a basket of marrows. She has some place out of town, apparently a secret marrow farm. It’s very kind of her, but at Sixto’s we’ve already been eating nothing but marrows for a week, and even though I’m fond of marrows, a man can only take so much marrow. Her charity hits the bin.

I phone Dishonest Dave for advice. “I’ll meet you at the station,” he insists.

Outside the police station, I wait for Dishonest Dave. From across the street I hear the rhythms of preaching. I approach the strains of damnation and brimstoning issued by a top spitfire:

“The burning never stops burning. God wants winners not sinners.”

I make a note to steal the line, but it’s only when I turn the corner and lock on to the source that I see it’s not a flesh-and-blood preacher, but a tape coming from a boombox, with the impassive figure of the Prophet, gas-masked, standing next to it as custodian. Generally, the street-corner evangelists are either on the way up or down, either working up a routine or plain insane. It’s rather lazy to hand a tape out.