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cooked in less than twenty minutes. [8] But I never knew that God had a wife.
    “Does He?” I asked Barry.
    “Does He what? Own a mobile phone?”
    “No. Does God really have a wife?”
    “Of course He does, chief. A wife and three kids.”
    “
Three
kids?”
    “Only one by marriage. The other two, well, you know the story.”
    “I don’t,” said I, because in truth, I didn’t.
    “Wake up, chief, you do know the story. Little baby, born in a manger, three wise camel jockeys coming over the desert, nice Christmas presents but a really rotten Easter.”
    “OK, yeah.” I dug into my desk drawer and brought out a bottle of Old Bedwetter Bluegrass Bourbon. The taste of the South that makes any day a Mardi Gras. I always like to take a slug of Old Bedwetter at times like these. It adds that certain something that you just don’t get from other sippin’ liquors. No siree. By golly.
    “Don’t start
that
!” said Barry.
    “Start what?” said I.
    “Endorsing products.”
    “Sssh,” said I. “I never was.”
    “You lying git.”
    “Barry,” I whispered. “There’s a fortune to be made by endorsing products. It’s a market that’s never been exploited by private eyes. I’m sitting on a gold mine here.”
    “I thought you were sitting on your piles. So where was I?”
    “You were telling me about God’s wife and His
three
kids.”
    “Oh yeah. Well, you know about Jesus. He’s pretty famous. But what you didn’t know was that he had a twin sister called Christene. But she got edited out of the New Testament because God gave Jesus overall artistic control and the full translation rights. Favourite son and all that, you know how it goes.”
    “Yeah, OK, Barry, I get the picture.”
    “But not the Big Picture, chief. Everyone knows that Mary was the mother of Jesus. Although they don’t know about Christene. But there’s not many who know that God already had a wife and just how peeved she was when she discovered that God was having a bit on the side and had got His girlfriend up the duff.”
    “Hoots a crimbo!” I clapped my hands right over my lug-holes. “Put a sock in it, Barry, that’s big time blasphemy.”
    “It’s no secret in Heaven, chief. But God eventually managed to smooth things over with His missus. He can be a real charmer when He wants to be. And one thing led to another and the other thing led to the bedroom and Colin was born.”
    “Colin?”
    “The third child of God. Born within wedlock this time. But he’s a bad lot, that Colin, chief. I hate to speak ill of the governor’s son, but that Colin. Phtah!”
    “Phtah?”
    “That was the sound of me spitting, chief.”
    “What? Inside my head? You …”
    “Don’t get yourself in a lather. It’s only a bit of vegetable phlegm. But anyhow, God’s gone missing and His wife is in a right state. She reckons He’s down on Earth again, getting up to hanky-panky. He has this thing about Jewish virgins, you see, and—”
    “Enough!” I gave my head a clout.
    “Ouch!” went Barry.
    And “Ouch!” I went too. “But turn it in, will ya? You’ll bring down the wrath of God on the both of us.”
    “I didn’t have you down as being pious, chief. I thought you always said you were an atheist.”
    “What? With
you
in my head?”
    “I thought your psychiatrist told you that I was a delusion and that you were suffering from multiple-personality disorder and that the voice you heard in your head had been caused by some tragedy that had happened in your youth, which, allied to your drink problem and your broken marriage and your need to reach out to your feminine side and—”
    “All right! All right! All right! I
do
believe in you. OK, I’ve said it now. Are you satisfied?”
    “Always a pleasure, ever a joy.”
    I took another slug of Old Bedwetter and lit up a Camel. I always smoke a Camel on occasions like this. The rich mellow taste of the fine Virginia tobacco gives me that special satisfaction which you just