Read Online Bible Stories for Adults by James Morrow - Free Book Online Page A

really
God?
God Himself?”
    â€œEver since I can remember.”
    â€œThis is hard to take. You can understand that, right? Do You have any brandy, God, Sir?”
    The Almighty strolled to His mahogany bookshelves and took down two sparkling cognac glasses and a crystalline decanter containing a honey-colored liquid. “I want you to come clean about something. A confession, if you will. Given that you’re a practicing Catholic, perhaps I should summon a priest . . .”
    â€œDepends on the sin,” Michael mumbled, glumly pondering the possibility that he had lost his mind. “If it’s venial—”
    â€œYou hate Daniel Nimrod, don’t you?” God asked abruptly as He filled both glasses with brandy.
    Michael gasped so profoundly his clogged ears popped. “It’s not a bad situation, this life of mine. Really. Yes. I’ve got my own apartment on Lexington with a dishwasher and a rear-screen TV.”
    â€œHe makes you call him ‘sir.’”
    â€œHe doesn’t
make
me.”
    â€œHe sounds pompous.”
    Michael sipped cognac. “Anybody who’s achieved as much as Mr. Nimrod—a person like that has a right to be keen on himself, don’t You think?”
    â€œYou’re envious. Your insides are bright green, I can see them. He’s got his yacht and his concubines and his name in
Fortune
every month, and what have you got, Prete? You can’t even get a
date.
Never mind. We’ll change the subject. What can you tell me about Nimrod Gorge?”
    Michael knotted up; he sweated as if caught in the ersatz summer God had recently imposed on Manhattan. “I’m not free to discuss that particular project.”
    â€œAnd Nimrod Mountain—another secret? Your boss fancies seeing his name on things, doesn’t he? He’s a man who likes to leave his mark.” God sat down on His revolving piano stool and began pecking out “Chopsticks” with His index fingers. “I want to meet with him. Face to face. Here.”
    â€œHe’ll be back from Japan in two weeks.” I’ve gone insane, Michael decided, retrieving a cowhide-bound appointments book from his valise. Only certifiable schizophrenics showed meetings with God on their calendars. “How does Saint Patrick’s Day sound?” he asked, scanning March. “We can squeeze You in at ten.”
    â€œFine.”
    In the March 17 square Michael wrote,
10 A.M.
—
God.
“May I inquire as to the topic?”
    â€œLet me just say that if your boss doesn’t learn a bit of humility, a major and unprecedented disaster will befall him.”
    To Michael Prete, “Chopsticks” had never sounded so sinister.
    Â 
    God knows why Michael experienced no trouble convincing his boss that he had an appointment with Me.
    He experienced no trouble because being contacted by Yours Truly is a possibility that a man of Daniel Nimrod’s station never rules out entirely. Indeed, the first thing Michael’s boss wanted to know was why
God
was calling the shots—why couldn’t they meet at Sardi’s instead? Whereupon Michael attempted to explain how the skyscraper was intrinsically suitable to such a rendezvous: God might own the earth, the firmament, and the immediate cosmos, but Nimrod and Nimrod alone owned the Tower.
    Never underestimate the power of words. When I appointed Adam chief biologist in Eden—when I allowed him to call the tiger “tiger,” the cobra “cobra,” the scorpion “scorpion”—I was giving him a kind of dominion over them. For the tiger, cobra, and scorpion, meanwhile, Adam and his kind remained utterly incomprehensible, that is to say, nameless.
    Nimrod believed his secretary’s words. The meeting would occur when and where I wished.
    Â 
    Screw the Irish, thought Michael. Screw their crummy parade. Everywhere the chauffeur turned, a sawhorseshaped barrier