How Like A God Read online

  Ketchup

  Danny at the coffee machine Slowly, he added:

  Julianne’s bus driver

  But before this morning, there had been no weirdnesses. Vague memories of the comic books of his boyhood came to him, of unlikely accidents involving meteors or lightning bolts. “Was it my Wheaties this morning?” he asked out loud. But he couldn’t remember anything special. His routine yesterday and last night—in fact, for the entire past year—was set in concrete. Having twins did that for you. He and Julianne hadn’t even gone out to a movie since Before Children.

  But a search for a cause was time-wasting. Instead, what should he do about this? Rob got up and took the elevator upstairs to the reference room. The librarian showed him the directories for doctors and medical specialties.

  The thickness of the books was disheartening, and he moved over to the more popularized medical books on the nonfiction shelves. A fast skim through indexes and tables of contents showed him this was hopeless too. Nobody seemed to have his disease, if it was a disease. If he wanted a medical opinion he’d have to consult a doctor in person, and would Chasbro’s health insurance cover such a speculative visit? “Holy mackerel, Chasbro!” Rob

  exclaimed. He should be at the office!

  Dashing out of the library and up the street to his car, Rob realized he had made a default decision. This wasn’t an important or interesting ailment. It was just a weirdness. He was going to ignore it and carry on with regular life. Eventually, like a cold sore, it would go away by itself.

  There was no time to ponder matters further. Rob stepped into the office and was instantly collared by Lori. “Danny needs you!” she exclaimed. “The customer doesn’t like the way the GUI is laid out—can you fold in these changes right away?”

  “I’m on it,” Rob said, and dove for his cubicle. Graphical Unit Interface was always a royal pain in the neck. He spent the next two hours moving multicolored widgets around on the screen. Danny phoned in twice with yet more alterations. His opinion of the customer was sulphurous.

  “Everybody’s a critic,” he groused. “Everybody! Now they want the menu at the top of the screen, not the bottom. They don’t know squat about what’s under the hood, noooo! But everybody’s got an opinion about the user interface!”

  Rob was stuck at the computer until past six. He did phone Julianne, but she didn’t have the car and therefore couldn’t pick up the twins. Rob picked them up himself very late, which made Miss Linda positively icy.

  When he pulled up in their driveway Julianne stood in the doorway, frantic.

  “I told you I was running late,” he protested.

  She ignored him, seizing a twin instead. “How’s Mommy’s big boy, then?” she cooed to Davey. “And Mommy’s darling Angel?” With a tot in each arm she marched up the walk and into the house, leaving Rob to bring in the diaper bags.

  She was deliberately making her peeve quite clear. Rob was resigned. Juggling twins plus a two-career lifestyle took incredible drive and organization, and it was mostly Julianne who kept those particular balls in the air. Rob’s sphere was more traditionally male: car maintenance, home repair and improvement, the lawn—all the Harry Homeowner stuff. There was no point in complaining about occasionally getting caught in the machinery. Julianne never stayed in a snit for long. Over the years Rob had learned that reconciliation was lots of fun. Besides, getting steamed about things might lead to weirdness. Much better to pick up the ball and run.

  He grabbed the phone off its hook and punched one of the preprogrammed buttons. While it rang he began emptying the diaper bags, sorting out the empty bottles and dirty clothes. “Hello, China Garden? I’d like a delivery: two egg rolls, one shrimp lo-mein, no MSG …”

  A tumultuous meal and the kids’ bedtime routine gave them no time to work it out. The twins insisted, as they always did, on hearing their favorite story, “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” After a hundred readings Rob had honed his dramatic technique finely. He made his voice go deep and gluey for the troll’s words, “Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” And when he bleated the reply, “It’s only meeee, the tiiiniest Billy Goat Gruff,” Davey giggled and Angela crowed in delight.

  After the story and the final kisses, Rob came into the undersized master bedroom and pushed the lock button on the doorknob. Julianne lay on her side under the king-sized duvet, pretending to be asleep. But he saw the smile dimpling the corner of her mouth.

  Kneeling by the bed he bent and kissed that dimple, tracing the line of her upper lip with the tip of his tongue. Her mouth quivered under his as she giggled. She raised the covers and slid an arm out to circle his neck.

  Under the edge of the duvet she was naked. Her creamy-pale breasts in their post-pregnancy state sagged charmingly slightly sideways across her chest. “Rise and shine, sleepy,” he said a little breathlessly.

  If his family was the center of Rob’s life, then the white-hot molten core of it was here, in bed with Julianne. Plunging into that sweetness refreshed and renewed him like nothing else. The tensions of the day burned off in her embrace, and he touched an exquisite reality that didn’t exist in other areas of his life. After five years of marriage he knew her body well, all the hot buttons and favorite places. And her orgasm always drove him wild, right over the edge.

  Afterwards she rested on his chest to catch her breath. He lay beneath her with his eyes closed, savoring the lassitude and occasionally running a hand down her sweaty back and firm buttocks. This was the best time to talk, about the past, the future, or just nothing in particular at all.

  “… if you get a raise,” she was saying drowsily into his neck. “And I talk Debra into bumping me up one grade. It’ll be three hundred dollars extra every month once we pay off the van. If we save that, put it into a money market or something, in a couple years we’d have some real money. That’s my idea—buy a bigger house. With more bedrooms, and a bigger yard for the kids.”

  “Sure, Jul,” Rob yawned. “A raise. Your wish is my command.”

  She laughed, knowing as well as he did that she was daydreaming. He could feel her rib cage expand under his palms as she sighed contentedly. “I love you, hon. You put up with a real pushy dame.”

  “There are compensations.” He squeezed her butt gently as she rolled off him. It was only at times like this that Rob could say, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you and the kids.”

  “Me too,” she murmured, already more than half asleep. An unwelcome little flashbulb pop of weirdness showed him that she hadn’t really heard his avowal. But words weren’t important. Enacting this love, in bed and out,

  was enough: bringing home the bacon, as well as sex.

  They both liked to keep in contact during sleep—nothing grabby, but maybe her hand on his flank, or his foot against her leg. As she settled against him, Rob thought sleepily about doing something with the weirdness for Jul. For instance, could he use it to convince the head of the department to give him that raise? Probably it wouldn’t fly—salary review took place only in September, and Chasbro had no procedure for midcourse corrections. Was there any way he could use it to pick a winning Lotto number? Or influence Ed McMahon? Jul was right—it would be so nice to have some money for a change! Take a vacation, buy a bigger house … Holding her, he slipped into sleep, skipping like a stone over the sunny wavetops of materialistic dreams.

  CHAPTER 2

  Julianne got the car the next day. On the way to dropping him at the office she said, “Is that a new tie?”

  Rob looked down at the beige silk necktie against his white shirt front. “I think your brother Ike gave it to me a few Christmases ago.”

  “Maybe it’s the way you parted your hair. Something different, anyway.”

  Rob glanced at her, but Julianne was giving most of her attention to the road. In the back Angela murmured, “Troll, troll, troll,” as she pretended to read her favorite book, and Davey sucked on a bottle. “I haven’t changed anything,” Rob said as casually as he c
ould. He had looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror this morning to shave. As he recalled, he looked just like usual: tall but not really good-looking, his thick light brown hair not yet due for a trim, his gray-blue eyes surrounded by fair-skinned and slightly doughy flesh. As bland as supermarket white bread. But he never did pay much attention to how he looked. It was Julianne who had a sharp eye for appearances—as part of her job. She had revamped his entire wardrobe after they married, for instance, ruthlessly tossing out the polyester neckties and shirts with overly-long collar points.

  “What sort of different?” he asked, and was immediately sorry he had. What if some sign of the weirdness was becoming visible?

  But Julianne was no longer listening. A green sports-utility van cut in too close in front, and Julianne as usual got ticked. “Bastard,” she muttered between clenched teeth, and gunned the engine to bring the van right up behind the other vehicle.

  “You’re going to clip him!” Rob exclaimed, instinctively flinging one hand back to shield the twins.

  “Gimme a break. When have I ever made contact?”

  “If you wouldn’t take your driving so personally—” They had this same pointless fight about every other month, every time Rob let Julianne’s pushy driving style get his goat. Now he made a deliberate effort to simmer down. Suppose—suppose he could fix Julianne’s little foible here? Transform her into a sensible, conservative driver? As the idea seized him his confidence rose, warm and heady. It could be done. He was sure he could do it. How funny! Yesterday it never would have occurred to him to do stuff to her—to fool her into believing he hadn’t been late, for instance. And fixing her style behind the wheel would be a good thing to do, he argued to himself. Julianne was a lousy driver. One of these days she’d piss off a crack dealer or a psycho, and get shot or something. Or she’d rear-end somebody, endangering the kids and incurring outrageously costly body-work on the van. He would be saving her from herself, really.

  He turned in his seat to try it. With a hand-over-hand motion Julianne cut the van hard right and jerked to a halt in front of the Chasbro building.

  “Here you are,” she said. “Have a nice day, hon.” She leaned over to give him a peck on the cheek.

  Flustered, Rob grabbed his briefcase. “Bye, Jul. Bye-bye, kids!” He flapped a hand vigorously at them through the window. Both twins stared at him but only Davey flapped a fist back. With a squeal of tires Julianne pulled away.

  Just as well, Rob reflected. To mess with her driving style while she was driving—wouldn’t that be as stupid as changing the oil in a moving car?

  Absorbed in his thoughts, Rob headed for the building entrance.

  “Spare change, mister?”

  Rob blinked. By the double doors slouched a homeless person, a heap of gray tatters with eyes. He or she—hard to say which—occasionally hung out here, until the building security people noticed. A plastic 7-Eleven cup sat on the pavement with a dime inside. Automatically Rob felt in his pants pocket for change.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute here.” Rob took his hand out. Now here was the perfect subject for a little experiment. Hardly anything that happened to this street person could make his situation much worse—when Rob concentrated he could tell that the beggar was male. He put his briefcase down and brought the weirdness to bear on him. It felt like reading a newspaper obituary, all the biographical data in chronological order. “You are Joe McNeal Moore,” Rob said. “You are fifty-seven years old, a veteran of the Korean War, former bartender, truck driver, janitor …”

  “What you say, man?” The homeless man scuttled back against the granite facade of the building. His watery brown eyes, bloodshot and rimmed with yellow matter, glanced frantically to either side. “Look, I ain’t got no money, okay?”

  “Alcohol,” Rob announced. “And borderline schizophrenia. Let me see …” It

  was like fixing one of Angela’s toys, a SpeakNSpell or the pull-toy shaped like a turtle. Unwind a tangle here, straighten out a bit there—his power encompassed Joe Moore completely. This was easy. “Okay. If you go to the homeless shelter, that Open Door Center over at Fairfax Circle, I bet you can get a shower and shave and some clothes. Here’s a couple bucks for the bus fare.” Rob held out the money with one hand, and pointed down the road with the other. The homeless man stared up at him for a minute, and then slowly took the dollars and tottered to his feet. Without a word or a look back he shuffled off towards the bus stop.

  Lori came up from the parking lot and said, “Morning, Rob. You give them money, they just drink it up.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Rob picked up his briefcase and politely held the big glass door for her. “You can always hope they’ll turn a corner and get better.”

  “Optimist,” Lori snorted.

  Now Rob knew what the Amazing Spider-Man felt like, in the comic books he had once loved. With great power comes great responsibility, he quoted to himself—wasn’t that Spider-Man’s motto? He could straighten out every steam-grate crazy in the greater Washington area if he wanted to. The power sang through his nerves, beat in his veins. And what other evils could he

  not battle? Was he going to have to wear a cape and spandex?

  With a laugh he tried to come down to earth. A brief fiddle with a schizo’s head, and he was ready to save the world. Surely it would be only sensible to see how Joe Moore turned out first. After lunch he borrowed a phone book from Lori and phoned the shelter. “I gave your center’s name to a homeless person this morning,” he said. “I was wondering if he got there okay. His name was Moore, Joe Moore. Kind of an older white guy.”

  “Oh him,” the person on duty said. “He’s doing great— in with the jobs counsellor right now. Could I have him call you back?”

  “No, no, that’s okay. I’ll check back later.” Rob set the receiver back into place. If he really had done it, actually turned a street bum into a productive normal member of society, there was nothing he couldn’t accomplish. Suddenly he was sweating, sick with dread. He would have to do it, then: take apart and reassemble the head of every wino in D.C., on the East Coast, in the world.

  “No, I don’t,” he muttered, clutching his forehead. “Why do I have to? Just because I can? Who says?” How did really rich or really powerful people manage? Surely Malcolm Forbes had never felt impelled to feed every hungry person in America.

  Danny pounded a brisk tattoo on the cubicle wall as he approached the door

  opening. “You look like hell,” he remarked cheerfully. “If it’s the flu don’t share it, okay? There’s too much work to be done.” Leaning over Rob’s shoulder he clicked the mouse and called a new section of the computer program onto the screen.

  Rob watched it scroll by eagerly. “This is the medicine I need, pal.”

  “Attaboy, Bobster.” Danny double-clicked the mouse to highlight a section of code on the screen. “Lookit, I figure the error’s got to be about here.

  The subroutine works fine up to about there …”

  Good god, a burglar!” Julianne exclaimed as they turned onto their own street that evening. She stamped so hard on the brakes the van skidded a bit.

  Rob stared at the dark-clad figure fiddling with their living room window. “No it’s not,” he said with resignation. “It’s Angie.” His sister, for whom baby Angela had been named, ran a restaurant supply firm in Chicago, but came often to the D.C. area on business.

  “About time you came home,” she called, climbing out from behind the holly bush. “Look at what your jungle has done to my pantyhose!” Her dark hair straggled out of its French twist, and pine-bark mulch stuck to her skirt.

  “You can’t break in, Angie. I installed bolts on the windows last month. If you’d phoned, I could have left you a key.” Rob gave her a peck on the cheek and picked her garment bag up off the hose rack.

  “And how are my darling twinlets?” Angie demanded. “Look at what Aunty Angie’s brought you, Davey—a toy machine gun! And what’s in here for Angela, a
bongo drum!”

  Behind herJulianne made a horrified face. Rob shrugged— aunthood has its privileges. Angie had a gift for choosing noisy, inappropriate toys that the kids loved. “Come on in and have a beer,” he suggested. “When did you get in?”

  “Flew in on the red-eye this morning, did meeting all day, and now I’m a wreck.” Angie paused on the doormat, stuck a cigarette between her high-gloss lips, and flicked the lighter.

  “Oh no, Angie dear, not in the house,” Julianne wailed.

  Rob laid the bag on a chair and looked his sister in the eye. “You must quit, Angie,” he said firmly. “For your own health, not the kids or anybody else.” Come on, weirdness, kick in, he said to himself. To his relief Angie clicked the lighter shut and took the cigarette out of her mouth. She looked at it with a sort of surprise, as if she had forgotten how it got there.

  There couldn’t be anything at all wrong with getting Angie to lay off smoking for good. The entire family nagged her about it, and she had failed SmokEnders twice now. But Rob felt a twinge of guilt all the same. It came to him that he hadn’t truly grasped the magnitude of his fidget with Joe Moore’s head this morning. That had been a straightforward cure of a mental illness, inarguably a good deed. But smoking? That was a lot less clear-cut. This was his sister he was adjusting, a real person, not some anonymous recipient of casual charity. To hide his discomfort he said, “I’m starving. Let’s order pizza!”

  It was Friday, and Angie was in town only over Saturday. On Saturday morning there was no hope of extra sleep, since the twins knew nothing of weekends. But an extra adult on hand was always helpful. Angie played joyfully with the twins, bouncing balls, reading Barney books, pounding the bongo drum. This freed Rob up to run two loads of laundry, mend a window screen and mow the lawn, and Julianne to cook lasagne and vacuum. “I can’t stand you two,” Angela announced. “You’ve got to take a break! I know, let’s go out for lunch.”