Accidental God 4.0 -- Section 08

[Not really the end of the section, but I figured I should post it anyway.]

My uncle once looked at my sketches of the other gods. He was in town for a visit, something he hardly ever does. He loves my mother, but after a few decades of life they've realized that they have very little to say to each other. I sometimes imagine they're like those Chinese lions that stand guard outside of temples and palaces: they agree with most things, and even work well together, but there isn't much to talk about.
    "Not bad," he said. His name is Blayne, with a funny kind of spelling that isn't anywhere in our family history or anyplace. He's just a random Blayne, as he likes to call himself. "Which one is this? The one with the hotdog stand."
    "Standing Appointment."
    "He looks nice."
    "He is. He's always there."
    "At his hotdog stand?"
    "Yep. Twenty-four-seven, three-hundred-sixty-five, except on leap years."
    "What does he do on a leap year?"
    "Runs his hotdog stand. It's just that he's there three-hundred-sixty-six on those years."
    "Of course."
    We were in my small apartment, two blocks over from my temple. I had considered getting a place somewhere else, but in the end couldn't decide why I would want to. Being a god came with a certain amount of income, but not so much that a bigger place was really an option. I suppose I could have kept on with my part time work at Thai For First, one of the better restaurants in the area, but I got the impression that was frowned upon. Specifically, the government officials that gave me my introductory packet of information had asked me about my work, and then frowned. It didn't particularly make sense to me, considering what other gods in this town do for a living, but apparently 'waiter' is not considered appropriate work.
    Which is why a god who runs a hotdog stand is, all things considered, a little surprising.
    "He's a very thoughtful man," I said, talking with my uncle, sitting on my fifteen-year-old couch. "He gives out hotdogs and kind words."
    "How does he manage to be there all year long?"
    "Best I can figure, that's the miracle he performs. Never leaves."
    "Not even to...you know."
    "Not even that."
    "Wow. Takes all sorts, I guess."
    He flipped through a few more pages. "Who's this?"
    "Bagel Girl."
    "That's the name of a goddess? Sounds a bit prosaic."
    "I've always thought her name was a little unusual."
    "Does she sell bagels?"
    "Yup."
    "I suppose gods aren't always that creative with the nick names they hand out. Doesn't your friend Tumble Dry run a laundromat?"
    "Two."
    "That's nice. Miraculous cleansings, I suppose."
    "Makes your whites whiter. Absolutely."
    My uncle nodded, his face straight. That's something I like about my uncle: no matter how funny something is, I've never seen him laugh. That somehow makes everything funnier. He is the world's straight man, and he'll stay deadpan until he's dead.
    Uncle Blayne flipped through a few more pages, then back to Bagel Girl. "You've got a lot of detail on this one. She seems almost alive."
    I leaned over and looked at it more closely. He was right. I did have a lot of detail on Bagel Girl. She had become a goddess somewhere in her mid-twenties, like me, and her hair was all kinds of blonde. I mean that literally, every flavor of blonde from sawdust to straw to flax, though I'm not sure I've ever seen flax, so that one could be wrong. It had been sunny in her bagel shop that day, and I was trying to catch the way the light tangled up in her hair.
    "I guess I just got lost in her hair," I said.
    My uncle's eyebrows went up.
    "Stop it," I said. "I didn't mean it that way."
    "Oh," he said.
    "Cut it out. I really didn't."
    "I understand."
    "There's someone else, anyway."
    He flipped over toward the back of the book and help up a picture at me. "Her?"
I looked at the picture. It was Midnight Jane on one of her angry days.
    "She just gets that way sometimes," I said. "She's got a really good way with teenagers, though. She's like a mamma bear with her cubs, or an avenging angel."
    "Or an avenging bear with wings."
    "I don't feel like you're getting the point."
    He shrugged and turned the book back, flipping over to Bagel Girl.
    "Don't you need to go somewhere?" I asked.
    "Not any time soon."
    We sat longer, me stumbling around in my thoughts about what, exactly, Midnight Jane meant to me, and why my pictures of her were so much less detailed than my picture of Bagel Girl.

    I didn't go straight home after practice, like I expected I would. Instead I found myself walking over to Midnight Jane's temple. I could feel the pulse of the bass in my chest before I could hear the music. It battered me, but I pushed through it. There was a trickle of people out on the dark streets, all of us in coats against the chill, not so cold that I missed my scarf but cold enough that I walked faster and noticed I needed to use the bathroom. It's a funny thing, but whenever I'm really cold, I always have to use the bathroom. Not sure which is cause and which is effect, but there it is.
    There is no sign outside Midnight Jane's temple, just a black front with a single neon stripe across it, slightly crimped in the middle, like the glass blower had hiccuped half-way through his work. The bouncer, Misty, saw me, smiled, and let me in. Misty was one part gorilla, two parts bigger gorilla, but she carried herself with the grace of a much smaller monkey, which was enough to keep the worse elements from bothering Midnight Jane's club--as if the fact it was MIDNIGHT JANE'S club wasn't enough for most people, or at least the smarter ones. I slipped past the line of waiting teenagers and paused inside the door, letting my eyes adjust as much as they ever did to the dark and strobing lights, a sugary seizure-confetti.
    The club was full, as it always is, and I realized I didn’t want to be there. It was a bad habit, like scratching at scabs on my face, which I only ever managed to stop by virtue of the fact that I don't get scabs anymore. One of the strangenesses of being a god is the little things that simply disappear out of your life: acne, bruises, bad haircuts. I'm serious about that last one, but I don't understand it. Why would being divine naturally give a body good hair? Even Midnight Jane's muddy color job didn't make her hair look BAD. It still fell around her face in attractive waves, almost hiding her eyes but not quite. I've tried to butcher my own hair, cutting it away with my kitchen scissors, just to see if it would work, but I ended up with an attractively disheveled look that pulled a compliment out of my mother. Apparently I had finally made a positive fashion decision.
    But my haircut was not on my mind, at least not anymore than a haircut is always on a person's mind in a technical, geographical sense. I was trying to find Midnight Jane, and I knew exactly why, and I didn't like the reason. It was just another of my attempts to get her to see me, the way the Titanic just wanted to get the attention of that iceberg.
    Kids--and no, I don't know when college students became "kids" to me and not "potential dates"--bounced off each other in a jumble of glowing beverages, glowing neon lights, and glowing faces (and that last one was both metaphorical and physical due to some kind of face paint). Last time I'd been in Midnight Jane's club the theme had been 'FIRE,' and I do mean that with all capitol letters, but with all the fire there had been no smoke. This time the theme seemed to be 'NEON,' and everyone moved in glowing squiggles through the darkness. I found myself pressed and jostled and bumped, surprised at all the business in the middle of the week. It was time to find Midnight Jane and get out of there.
    But she wasn't going to go with me. No, she'd stay at her temple all night, because that was who she was. It had taken me a while to figure that out, what exactly she was, I mean, but I had gotten there. At least a little. Midnight Jane wasn't someone who talked about herself much, so it wasn't from her that I'd started to learn her history.
    Mostly it was from the kids I met at her temple. It's not that any of them knew her better than I did--at least, I hoped they didn't--but it was the kind of kids they were. There was one girl who had been on the street for three months, she told me, before she found her way to Midnight Jane's. The girl told me, while drinking something I was pretty sure wasn't legal for her, all about the best dumpsters for finding food that was mostly good, not too old, and not too fatty. It surprised me, seeing this slender girl talk about watching her weight as she brushed back frizzy hair from her face, but I suppose even homelessness doesn't change some things.
    Then there was the boys, older and younger, one blonde, one brunette, who needed a place to wait while their father sobered up. "He's got big hands," one of the boys had said.
    Then there were the rooms in the back, behind some pretty thick walls that only barely held back the bass, where single mothers could settle in with their kids for a night or a month or a year. There were the rooms upstairs for kids who needed to come down off something nasty and then get help for the time it took them to really get clean, get sober, get ready to go out into the world again. They serve alcohol at Midnight Jane's club, but never to the people that really can't handle it, and nothing harder ever makes it through the doors. Dealers don't even come close. They don't dare.
    Midnight Jane never told me what her life was like before she became a goddess, but, like I said, the kind of kids that make their way to her temple tell a pretty clear story. That's why I say she's a kind woman.
    A kind woman I couldn't find. Where was she? I pushed through the crowd, moving toward the upper level where she'd sometimes hang out with the kids. I caught sight of her chief acolyte, Big Larry, and he nodded his white-guy afro at me, jerking his head toward some tables close to the bar. I guess she wasn't upstairs then. I scanned the various glowing patrons, trying to figure out which was Midnight Jane with her muddy hair, and that's when I realized I'd been looking for the wrong thing entirely. Midnight Jane's hair wasn't muddy at all.
    What I had taken for a bad dye job was, in the dark of the club, brilliant. Literally. It glowed with a jagged weave of blues, greens, yellows, oranges. Her stylist hadn't messed up at all. We just hadn't had seen what the style was really intended for. Somehow she must have felt her eyes on me, because she turned, caught my eye, and smiled.
    I half waved and started to make my way towards her, when someone bumped into me, spilling something onto my shirt.
    "Terribly sorry," said the man.
    "Don't worry about it," I said, but he had already moved on, and I was looking for Midnight Jane again, but I'd somehow been turned around. She was back over...there. I stepped out again to go talk to her, because something was growing in my mind that I wanted to say to her. It was a small plant, a small thought, and I've never been good with plants so I couldn't tell if the idea was a rose or a dandelion, but I was ready to try it.
    If I could just get to her. Someone else bumped into me, a woman, and the bumping wasn't entirely unpleasant, but it was a bit rough and I lost my direction again. Where was Midnight Jane? The bar was over that way, so her table was--no, she wasn't there anymore. Where had she gone? Aha, there was her hair, talking to someone over by speakers, though I don't know how they could possibly hear each other. I started off that direction, then someone collided with me again, a man this time, and when I regained my balance I had, once again, entirely lost sight of Midnight Jane. What was with this? And why was that man dressed in a suit?
    The woman bumped into me again, spinning me around entirely, and she was easily in her late thirties, unusual for this club, and also dressed in a kind of suit, though a bit more stylish than the suit the man was wearing.
    "I don't believe it," I said out loud, and no one heard me, which was good, I suppose, because I actually did believe it. Mr. Obscure Pike was striking again.

Accidental God 4.0 -- Section 07

[Here's summore.]

    I climbed off the bus near the Eternal Rest right about the same time that Tumble Dry was walking up with one of his sons. Tumble Dry, with his architectural nose and long limbs, looks to be in his early forties, but with the eyebrows of a much older man. His son, standing next to him and laughing, had less grandiose facial features, was equally long, and looked to be in his late forties. This was something I still hadn't wrapped my head around as a god. I'd only been divine for three years, so life hadn't had much time to catch up to me, look at me in pity, and pass me by. At least that's how Tumble Dry had described it one night, drunk on melancholy.
    "Life does pity us, Bradley," he said. "Nothing on this earth was meant to stand still. Life, death, the eternal cycle. It's how things should be, but we've stepped on some cosmic spill of laundry detergent and slipped right out of the natural way of things, like a hamster falling out of his wheel. You ever seen that?"
    "Laundry detergent in a hamster wheel?" I asked.
    He waved his hand. "Never mind. My point is, we're the wax apples in an entire bushel of real fruit. When the rest of the fruit is gone, eaten and enjoyed, we'll be beautiful and pathetic and alone."
    It was a very depressing conversation, but I found out later from Midnight Jane that Tumble Dry's youngest child had just turned thirty-five, the age the god had been when his wife had given birth for the last time. It made me curious what age his wife was, but some things Tumble Dry keeps private. I've never seen her, not even in photographs.
    But at the Eternal Rest, outside on the sidewalk, the long god looked cheerful enough, and his son was telling a story with broad gestures of his hands. I started to eaves drop as I got closer.
    "Then the entire troop of Girl Scouts surrounds the angel, and you can tell the guy is late for work, but he just CAN'T say 'no' to them, and they've got sixteen cases of cookies left to sell, and the panic starts to spread across his face. I wanted to save the guy, somehow give him a way to escape, but then I thought to myself, 'What would my dad do?'"
    Tumble Dry snorted, wrinkling up his prodigious nose and doubling over. "You let him suffer!" he wheezed.
    "All sixteen," said his son. "The poor angel bought all sixteen cases before they let him escape. I'd never seen a more determined or ruthless group of thirteen-year-olds in my life. Women like that are going to be running this country in twenty years."
    "And we'll be better for it," said Tumble Dry. He looked over and noticed me. "Bradley! You remember my son? This is Mark."
    Mark held out his hand, I took it and shook it. "Of course I remember Mark, though I admit, I'd forgotten your name."
    Mark shrugged it off, his grip firm. "Just remember who my dad is, and I'll be happy."
    "Please," said Tumble Dry. "Don't be too proud of me. Just wait and see how badly I lose in the Divine Tourney."
    "I don't see how you can lose," said Mark. "Dad set up a ping pong table in all three of his Temple Laundromats, and he'll play with anyone who shows half a interest. It's a bit pathetic how competitive my father is."
    "You're one to talk," said the father in question. "How's your internet business doing, by the way?"
    "Number one in Wisconsin. And Illinois."
    Tumble Dry looked at me blandly.
    "I'm staying out of this conversation," I said. "I'm not number one at anything."
    "No!" said Tumble Dry, sharply. "You are the number one ping pong player in the Eternal Rest. You are the god of ping pong!"
    I started to open my mouth to say that I was anything BUT the god of ping pong, but Tumble Dry cut me off.
    "Attitude! Winning starts in the head, Bradley. If you're not confident in your skills, how can you expect to bring those skills out to the table. You are a powerhouse! You will dominate! You are a god!"
    "Everyone else is a god, too."
    "Stop it!"
    "And weren't you just saying YOU were going to lose?"
    "Ah, that may be true, but I also have a keen awareness of reality, and I know one thing absolutely: you, Bradley, are much better than I am. You're carrying my hopes on this one, friend, and you will be BRILLIANT."
    Mark put his hand on his dad's shoulder. "Sorry for cutting in, but Mom is expecting me. We're putting up that new curtain rod."
    Tumble Dry smacked his forehead. "I completely forgot. That was my job."
    Mark smiled at me, still talking to his father. "Yes, it was, but Mom hasn't been married to you this long without knowing how you get when there's a competition ahead. Go, practice, and I'll take care of the curtain rod."
    "I could send one of my angels to do it, if you don't have time, with your business and your kids. Mithraelind probably isn't too busy--"
    "Dad, I want to do this. I haven't had much time with Mom recently. It's good for me to take a break."
    Tumble Dry held his breath, then nodded. "You're right. It's sometimes good to take a break. I think I'll do that, too." He looked down at his watch. "Mind if we do a shorter practice tonight, Bradley?"
    I glanced at Mark, who winked at me. "Sure," I said, "we can cut this one shorter."

    Mad Hatter Barnes isn't the only superlative staff member at the Eternal Rest. Graceless Grace is perhaps the best chef in the greater Northern Lights environs, and the Angry Triplets, who aren't actually related, are one of the more astonishing cleaning crews ever assembled by man or god--and those are simply the only staff that are coming to mind at the moment. There are several more, and I have no idea who is in charge of hiring for the club, but I expect it is a demon. It would take that kind of devious mind to whisk these people away from whatever fabulously paying job they previously worked, cooking for princes or waiting on marquises. (I failed to mention previously that one of my aspirations as a child was to be a marquis. I'm still not entirely certain what they are, but whatever it is, that's what I wanted to be.)
    Double Take French--yes, that is her complete name, and I have absolutely no idea why--had set up a practice area for competitors--multiple practice areas, actually. The staff of the Eternal Rest has learned from numerous years of Divine Tourneys that gods are somewhat competitive--something that anyone could learn who had the slightest bit of knowledge about the Trojan War, Ragnarok, or the Philatelic Crusades (and yes, that war WAS about stamp collecting, though I understand it is a slight misnomer, since Philately is the STUDY of stamps, not the actual collection)--but I'm getting away from the point. Competitive gods do not like to be observed during their training, so Double Take French had divided one of the larger basement rooms into eight separate ping pong training areas. The temporary walls between sections were thick enough and carpeted enough to be mostly soundproof, and the sign up sheet for the areas was kept by the team of Matthews that run the front desk. (Matthew the Red, Tiny Matthew, Remainder Table Matthew, and Ugly Matthew, if you were wondering.)
    I had planned on being content with just a few spare games to get ready, playing with my dad a time or two, and then diving in. I recognize that I do have some skill with a ping pong paddle--not a phrase that anyone with the slightest shred of cool has ever used at a party--but I've never felt any real need to win against the elder gods, or even any optimism. The elder gods are GODS, the genuine kind of god that did all the stuff I read about in D'Aulaires' History of Europe for Children.
    Tumble Dry, of course, had other ideas.
    "Again," he said, "but faster."
    "I've already done the serve twenty-seven times. I'm not sure it's going to GET any faster."
    In fact, I had done that serve--Water Leaking Through a Narrow Crevasse--closer to forty times, but I didn't want to sound like a whiner. Unfortunately, Tumble Dry had a point. It wasn't sliding off my paddle like it usually did, and the serve that he normally had a nearly impossible time returning was snapping back across the net at me at insulting speeds.
    Tumble Dry tossed his paddle down onto the table. "What is it?" he asked. "You are not yourself tonight."
    "Maybe I'm just tired. We have been at this for almost three hours. Shouldn't I be resting before the Tourney?"
    "Nonsense. You've been putting in this many hours training for almost a month. Your arm is fine and you'll be fine. This is hardly a warmup for you. What is the matter? Get it out of your brain. You can't afford any distractions tomorrow."
    I thought about telling him. I really did. Tumble Dry has a way of leaping at problems, grabbing them in his jaws like an alligator snatching a poodle, then shaking it around until pink fur is flying everywhere and all the problems have gone away. It was appealing, the thought of sicking him on Mr. Obscure Pike and letting someone with more experience clear the path for me. I opened my mouth to strip away all my troubles and run through the world of the Divine Tourney naked and carefree--or something like that--when my cell phone rang.
    "I know that music," said Tumble Dry.
    I nodded. "Yeah, it's my mother. You mind if I get this?"
    "Of course I mind, but I know you will anyway."
    I shrugged, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and flipped it open. Due to budget constraints, I was one of the few people in Northern Lights with a cell phone that pretty much was just a cell phone.
    "Hi, Mom," I said.
    "About tomorrow," she said, skipping over greetings entirely. "You are still competing?"
    "Yes."
    "Fine. I'm bringing someone along that I'd like you to meet."
    "What?" I said, with the usual kind of lightning thought and witty dialogue I am only capable of with my mother.
    "I'm bringing someone to watch you compete that I would like you to meet. She is a lovely girl, highly educated, and the daughter of a good friend of mine. After you have played in your first match, you can treat us to dinner in the club, though if you can't afford it I suppose I can get you some money before tomorrow night. I think it will give a better impression if she sees that you are the one paying, and not your mother, don't you? In fact, it would be best if you could put it 'on your tab,' if you can run a tab at that club. Do you need me to send you money?"
    "I have enough money for dinner here, Mom. That's not the problem."
    "Oh?" she said, and there was weight to that single syllable, like an inverted iceberg, tip down. "Does that mean that there is some problem with my suggestion?"
    My mother calls them suggestions, but they're suggestions in the same way that a chef suggests things to a head of cabbage with his knife. I could feel my life plans in threat of being hacked into pieces, but I suppose I couldn't blame my mother for trying. Her perspective was that I wasn't getting any younger--not that I was getting any older, either--and she wanted me to find someone nice to spend the next few decades of my life with. She couldn't have known that I already had someone in mind because of the very simple reason that I hadn't told her. The thought of Midnight Jane and my mother in the same room made the lizard part of my brain start to twitch, anxious to find some narrow crack to slip through into darkness.
    "There aren't enough tickets," I said, settling onto the most cowardly way of avoiding the issue that I could find.
    "Of course there are," said my mother. "I found another. That was your only objection? Excellent. Then I plan on seeing you tomorrow for your first match. It was at six, correct?"
    I nodded, realized I was on the phone, and told her out loud that she was correct.
    "See you then, Bradley, and I do hope you win. It always does look better to a girl when a prospective suitor wins, but I suppose you could always be a gracious loser. Good night, Bradley."
    "Good night, Mom." I closed my phone and looked at Tumble Dry.
    "It's not my place to say anything," he said.
    "But you're going to anyway."
    "I'm going to anyway. You need some boundaries with your mother. I have no idea what that conversation was about, but you were on the run before you even answered the phone."
    "Blind date tomorrow," I said. "Apparently she's a very nice girl."
    "And your mother doesn't know that you have a...thing...for someone else?" Tumble Dry, with the eye of a father who has married off multiple sons, had recognized my interest in Midnight Jane almost before I had, and he'd been, well, not exactly supportive, but he hadn't tried to interfere. He'd let me do my own thing. Or rather, NOT do my own thing, with all the progress I'd been making.
    "She has no idea. I'm not that crazy. Midnight Jane is--"
    "Mean," filled in Tumble Dry, "but in a nice way."
    "She's not exactly mean. She's just--"
    "Goth," inserted Tumble Dry again.
    "She's not exactly Goth, either. Well, at least not this week. Have you said anything to her about the color of her hair?"
    Tumble Dry pulled back. "Oh no! I learned long ago not to comment on any woman's appearance other than to say 'you look great' and 'did you get a hair cut?'--and I only use the second one sparingly. But either way, mean or Goth or both, it shouldn't be your mother's business whether you are interested in Midnight Jane or not. It's up to you now. You're twenty-seven."
    "She's my mom."
    "You're a god."
    "She's the mayor of a city lousy with gods. Besides, you know what the elder gods say: divinity isn't what it used to be."
    Tumble Dry laughed. "Either way, this blind date isn't a good thing. You need to be able to concentrate on tomorrow night. No way of putting it off?"
    I grimaced and shook my head. "It would be more stressful if I tried to fight it. I'll just go with the flow, like a paper ship in a gutter."
    "Nice image," said Tumble Dry, then he froze. "Hang on. How long did you say we'd been practicing tonight?"
    I checked my watch again. "Almost three hours."
    He muttered something under his breath--I assumed it was something pungent from his childhood, like 'golly gosh gee whiz!'--and started packing away his paddle and ping pong balls. "I said I was going to cut it short tonight. I'm never going to catch up with all the evenings I owe my wife even if she lives to one-hundred-fifty."
    "She's not nearly that old, is she?"
    He shook his head. "Not even close. You'll have to meet her some time."
    "She coming tomorrow night?"
    "I don't think so."
    That was all he said. I had picked up the impression, somewhere during the last three years, that Mrs. Dry wasn't comfortable around gods. I hoped that didn't extend to her own husband--he had been a reasonably normal man before his divinity, after all--but it was another of the questions I never dared to ask.
    "Thanks for the practice, Bradley," said Tumble Dry, reaching out to shake hands. "You'll be great tomorrow. Just be sure to get whatever it is off your chest that's on it. You need to play with a clear mind."
    "Sure."
    Then he was out the door and gone. I packed my paddle into its cloth carrying bag and made my way to the club's locker room. Not many people were around--I nodded at Marilyn Swing and a god whose name I had forgotten twice--and made my way to my locker. I may have given the wrong impression by calling this a 'locker room.' While it's true that each of us had our own individual space with a door that could be closed and locked, each 'locker' was large enough to hold a tall, muscular god inside with room left enough for two significant pieces of sporting equipment, such as a lacrosse stick and a polo pony. That's a slight exaggeration, but think hardwood walk-in closet more than locker, and you have the right idea.
    I pulled open my locker door and stared.
    "Really?" I said out loud. "Shaving cream?"
    I said 'shaving cream' because that's exactly what my entire walk-in closet was filled with: masculine scented foam. Parts of the mass were collapsing under its own weight back into a bluish gel, but overall the foam was holding up remarkably well. I decided that Mr. Pike was correct: his team was, in fact, excellent. Creating such a stable pile of foam must have required a real--if terribly misapplied--amount of skill.
    And I was certain it was Mr. Pike. There, perched on the front of the pile like a sort of masthead on a ship of sea foam, was his card.
    I sighed, closed the door, and left to go home without a shower.

Writ, wrote, have wrut.

There are 2,190 words written that are waiting to be posted...but the section simply isn't done yet. I hope to get to it tomorrow. Sorry for the delay.

Accidental God 4.0 -- Section 06

[This is fun. And writing it feels like a privilege. I think I'll do more.]

    I had gone the long way around and was waiting at the bus stop when an older man with a face like a baked, peeled sweet potato came and sat down next to me. He was wearing leather shoes, slacks, a tweed sports jacket with patches on the elbows, and his eyes peered out at me, dark and almost indistinguishable in his wrinkled, sunburnt face
    "You're Bradley Shupak," he said. "The newest god."
    I shook my head. "Not anymore. There's a newer guy, but I'm still number two. Do I know you?"
    The man smiled, an almost friendly smile. "Not likely. I'm not from around here and only flew in for work. I'm an entrepreneur."
    "What's your business?" I asked, glancing to see if the bus were on its way.
    "For now, Mr. Shupak, you are."
    That brought my head around. He was still smiling at me, almost friendly, but now it looked a little more 'almost' and a little less 'friendly.' "What do you mean?"
    He shifted on his part of the bench and got comfortable. "From what I understand, sir, you are considered a solid bet for the upcoming Divine Tourney."
    "Am I."
    "You are. I've never known much about gambling, but my employers have informed me that you are considered the favorite. In fact, there's quite a sum of money riding on your victory."
I considered standing up and leaving, feeling at the base of my spine that this conversation was starting a walk down a dark alley in a bad part of town--but one byproduct of immortality is that curiosity quickly starts to overcome any instincts a body has for self-preservation. I was sure I wasn't going to like whatever this red-faced man had to say...but I wanted to know what it would be. These are the feelings that train-wrecks make.
    "Do people bet on the Divine Tourneys?" I asked. "I guess it makes sense."
    "Absolutely, said the man. In fact, the competitions in Northern Lights are some of the more popular around the nation. They're even followed closely where I live."
    "Where's that?"
    "Not here."
    "Aha."
    We sat for a moment, and I checked for the bus out of reflex, then looked back at the man. He was sitting comfortably, like a bull settling into a field where he intends to remain for some time. In fact, he did look rather bullish. The tweed did a little to hide it, but as he adjusted his poster I could see the fabric stretch a little around arms that, on consideration, looked about as thick as my thighs.
    "Is there a reason you brought that up?" I asked.
    He nodded. "There is."
    "Are you going to share?"
    "My employers, in the interest of making themselves a modest but significant sum of money, had the idea of bribing you to lose."
    I pulled back. "I wouldn't do that!"
    "Do you mind if I ask why not?"
    "It's cheating."
    "How is it cheating to lose on purpose?" asked the man, squinting out through the cracks that held his eyes. "What if, for example, you were playing a friendly game with your sister. Tell me there are no circumstances you would learn on purpose--if, for example, she were having a bad day and you wanted to cheer her up. Is that cheating?"
    "That's different."
    "How? Isn't this simply a friendly game between the gods of the Eternal Rest? How could it possibly cheating to let a friend lose in a circumstance such as this."
    I had to think about that for a minute--I knew it was wrong, but I didn't have the exact words for it. I got it.
    "It became cheating the moment people started placing bets on the outcome. If it WERE just a game between friends, that would be one thing, but your employers have now made it a competition that people are counting on to be fair--to have our real effort as players. That's why it would be wrong."
    He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me. It was folded in half, but it only took me an instant to see that it was a check.
    "I don't want it."
    "Just look at it."
    "Still don't want it."
    "I'll open it for you, then."
    He did. I swallowed.
    "People are THAT certain that I'm going to win?"
    "There are some other competitors," said the man, still holding the check open in front of me, "but there are those out there who trust in your determination."
    I wasn't that determined, at least not that I knew, and that was quite a bit of money--but no. I wasn't going to take it. I took temptation by the ear and threw it right out in front of the oncoming bus. At least I would have, if the bus were anywhere close to arriving. Where was it? I had to get to practice with Tumble Dry. That moment was when I realized the money really wasn't a temptation. I was more worried about getting to my friend on time than I was about how much cash it was. Considering the state of my temple finances, that fact may have reflected negatively on my fiscal responsibility, but I decided not to care.
    "Put your check away," I said. "It's not worth that much to me, or any amount. I'm not throwing the match."
    He folded up the check and tucked it back into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket.     "That is exactly what I told my employers you would say."
    "Exactly?" I asked.
    "Pardon?"
    "You told them that I'd say, 'It's not worth that much to me, or any amount?' Those words exactly?"
    He blinked his narrow, dark eyes, which, in that red, wrinkled face, wasn't much of a movement at all. "I believe you're mocking me," he said.
    "What if I was? You just came here and insulted me by trying to bribe me to throw a sporting event. Excuse me if I'm a little upset about it."
    The man shrugged. "You can be offended, if you wish, but I'll remind you that I'm on your side. I told my employers that the money wouldn't interest you. You don't strike me as that kind of god. Take it as a compliment, Mr. Shupak."
    I closed one eye at him skeptically, then turned again to look for my bus. I wanted out of this conversation, but I wasn't going to run away, and my bus would have been the perfect excuse to depart in a courageous and manly manner. Except that it still wasn't there.
    "Now," continued the man, "we move on to the second part of our discussion. My employers didn't actually hire me for my skills in bribery."
    "That's good, because you're terrible at it."
    He shrugged, unconcerned. "I told them that as well, but when my employers are paying, I only sometimes correct their foolishness. The truly wealthy don't often like being told that they are wrong, and those who aspire to immense wealth like it even less. That, however, is beside the point. I was hired because I lead a very special team."
    "A team of bribers?"
    "No, sir. A team of hindrances."
    I blinked at him. "Come again?"
    "Ask yourself, Mr. Shupak, how do you threaten a god? With death? Useless. Torture? Perhaps temporarily effective, but ultimately very dangerous to the health of the torturer, and I take exceptional care of my health. One could threaten to ruin a god's reputation, but in the end, anyone divine can outlive and outlast all that. No, there are only two methods I have found effective in threatening the divine."
    My heart stopped and I felt the blood rush into my head, all at the same time. My vision narrowed, and all I could see was the man's red face down a tunnel of gray. "Don't threaten my family," I said through a jaw that was, to my surprise, clenched.
    The man was already waving his hands in the air. "No, no, of course not, Mr. Shupak. Threatening families is a bad business all around, though you are correct, that IS one of the two methods I was mentioning. It is, however, another method that I never use. A man must have standards, as you have so admirably demonstrated today, and that standard is one of mine. I may not be a good man, but as with almost all scoundrels, there are some depths I refuse to plumb. No, I will not threaten your family, Mr. Shupak. I give you my word."
    My heart was beating again, and the tunnel had cleared away in a static fuzz, but I was still shaking. "Is your word worth anything?" I asked.
    "Still so much anger, sir. I have told you that I am simply doing my job, haven't I? Please recall that I have your welfare very much at heart. It is critical to my employers that you do, in fact compete. If you don't play, there are no bets, and without the bets, no victory for those fortunate enough to rig the competition in their own favor. Trust me, sir, that I am very interested in your continued health and sporting prowess."
    "So if you won't hurt me, and you won't hurt my family, what can you possibly do to me?"
    He raised his eyebrows, and the cracks that held his eyes seemed to break open and widen. His eyes were dark within the wrinkles of his skin. "Aha. That, is the genius of my particular specialty. As I mentioned, I lead a team of hindrances. We will not injure you, Mr. Shupak, as it would be futile. We will not kill you or yours. We will not damage your temple, poison your goldfish, or even slander your reputation. Instead," and here, his eyes took on the same delight I've seen in little Erica's face when she is about ready to tear a page out of one of her mother's books, "we hinder you. Whatever you wish to do, we will make it awkward. Uncomfortable. Almost unbearable. We will be there wherever you turn, and inch by inch, moment by moment, we will frustrate and interfere until you have no choice but to give in to our demands." He leaned back into his chair and looked up into the sky, leaving me to stare at his profile. "Never so much that you strike back, but always enough to make your life a misery. A blow to the heart kills quickly, Mr. Shupak. We will kill you with ten-thousand paper-cuts."
    It is likely that most people have never been threatened with industrial-scale annoyance, and perhaps it was a reaction to the relief I felt after knowing he wasn't going to harm my family, but in spite of the slightly manic joy on his fact that reminded me of myself when I used to dress up as a mad scientist (don't ask), I still couldn't help myself: I laughed.
    The man took it in stride, hardly batting an eyelid. He simply waited patiently until I calmed down, then looked at his watch.
    "Where is your bus?" he asked.
    I blinked at him. He didn't mean what I thought he was implying, did he? I turned to check again, and around the corner came my bus, a solid fifteen minutes late.
    "You didn't," I said.
    "I have an excellent team," he said. "They are right on schedule."
    "On schedule? But you couldn't have known how long our conversation would take."
    The bus groaned and sighed to a stop in front of us, the doors opened, and out hopped a tall, smiling man who tipped his cap at the red faced man.
    "I'll head on to the next step then," he said.
    "Perfectly done, Mr. Twigs," said his boss. "Mr. Shupak and I had just finished."
    The tall man nodded and trotted off down the street.
    "I don't believe this," I said, standing. "I am not going to give in to threats of any kind, and I am not going to throw the match."
    "I wouldn't expect any less of your determined mind," said the man, looking at me with a mix of what looked like respect and pity. "But remember, when you've had enough, this check will still be waiting for you. You can consider it your consolation prize."
    I shook my head, turned away, and stepped toward the bus--then lurched, as something snagged my foot and almost sent me sprawling onto the concrete. I caught my balance and spun around to face the man.
    "That was juvenile!"
    "It's just part of my job, sir." He pulled his foot back and stood. "By the way, here is my card," he said, pulling his wallet out of his pocket and a card out of the wallet. "I look forward to our time together, Mr. Shupak."
    He left the card in my hand and walked away. I looked down at the print: Mr. Obscure Pike, it read, Professional Hindrance.

Accidental God 4.0 -- Section 05

[Fourth writing day in a row with over 2,000 words. It's a bit tiring, and other things are falling to the side a little bit, so I don't know how much I'll be able to sustain this. Other demands may become too pressing for me to keep this pace, but it sure is fun.

[Once again, I really don't know how this is all going to end, but it's exciting for me to see the pieces start to show up that, I already know, will give me the answers I need at the end of the book. Spots of conversation, small objects, seemingly unimportant actions are poking out here and there, and I think, "I can use this! This is going to be useful."

[Writing really is a miracle. I hope this turns into a novel by the end, but right now I'm just excited to be spending time with these characters.]

    The room where I fail to dispense miracles has a pretty minimal decor. From what I've heard, under the last god to spend time here, it had been all candles and smoking incense and strange, vaguely African artwork. BB had taken all that down before I'd even arrived, and I appreciated his effort. Instead I sat down in all the modern luxury a bare-bones budget could buy, and smiled as my faithful came in one at a time.
    The Orange brothers asked for wealth, as usual, though one of them--could have been Larry, though I think it was Ted--asked for health for his goldfish. Apparently Little Magellan had been a bit wobbly in his swim the last week or so. I told either Ted or Larry that I'd do what I could, and he smiled and told me he knew I would.
    Tanice Menlow asked for help for her boy in school--not that Tanor was doing badly. In fact, he was doing great, but it was coming up on advanced placement testing season, and she wanted him at his best. I'd met Tanor, and he had shook my hand very politely, clearly uninterested in the fact that I was a god. I'd actually liked him even better for that. I pulled out my old phrase that I'd do what I could, and Tanice told me she knew I would.
    Cheryl Zerbeki asked for help with some embarrassingly personal feminine issues. I looked as serious as I could, blinked, and told her the usual.
    Then Janice Bronson came in with her boyfriend, and they sat down in the carpeted chairs across from me.
    "We're getting married," she told me, smiling over at the boyfriend.
    "That's wonderful!" I said, sitting up straighter. "When's the day?"
    "I don't know yet," said Janice. "Elvis here hasn't said 'yes' yet."
    I looked back and forth between the smiling couple. "So Elvis hasn't proposed?"
    "No," said the oldest of my faithful, "but I have. Seven times now!"
    Elvis looked at me, leaning forward a little. "I tell her it's the man who's supposed to do it, but Janice has all these modern ideas. There's no dealing with the woman." Then he turned and smiled at her, and it was clear to me at least that he intended to have that difficulty for as long as he possibly could.
    I cleared my throat. "You'll have to tell me when it's official. We'll have a party for you."
    "You'll do more than that," said Janice. "I want you to marry us."
    I pulled back in my chair. "Hang on, Janice. I haven't performed any miracles at ALL, let alone a wedding miracle. It's nice of you to think of me, but I think we should find you another temple. I'll talk to my friend, Midnight--" I stopped and thought of Midnight Jane's temple, then reconsidered. Tumble Dry? Another definite no. Bagel Girl was a possibility though. She did run a bagel shop, but her normal temple was a lovely place on Washington. "No, not her. But I have another friend, a goddess who's much more experienced than I am. Her temple has a good view out onto the Round Park, and she'll perform an excellent miracle for you."
    Janice looked out at me from her glasses and snorted. "No. It's you, Bradley. You're my god, and you'll be performing the wedding miracle."
    "But why?" I asked, sagging into my chair. "Why me, Janice? You were one of the first to seek me out, and you've been coming ever since, but I haven't done a single miracle for you. Not one! And there's no guarantee I can do this one either. Why don't you just find another god?"
She looked at me for a long time. Her hair had thinned on top, so she'd started wearing the most outrageous hats--purple with bright-green print flowers, magenta with polkadots, polkadots with magenta--but this hat was surprisingly demure: it was only red stripes across a black background. It made her look more serious than usual, and for once the smile on her face faded away and her hat and face matched. As that went through my head, she looked at me, and I looked back.
    Then she spoke.
    "Life isn't all about what we do for each other, Bradley. Sometimes it's simply about who we are, and that can be enough. You are my god, and you have been, ever since I saw you wandering around helplessly, trying to find this place. That's when I knew that you were the one god who was exactly right for me. I hadn't found one before, and I know I certainly won't live long enough to find another, so you're it." She scooted forward in her chair and pointed her finger at me. "And you're going to marry Elvis and me in a week."
    "That fast?"
    "I'm old, Bradley. I don't have any time to waste."
    Elvis straightened up. "A week, is it, Janice? I guess I'd better get around to proposing some time soon, hadn't I."
    "All you have to do is say 'yes,' Elvis. I've done enough proposing for both of us."
    He shook his head. "You know that's not how it's going to be. A man has a plan, and he's going to see it through. And I think we've taken up enough of this young god's time. Didn't you say he was set to be a ping pong champion this year?"
    Ping pong! I checked my watch--still plenty of time before my practice with Tumble Dry. One of the advantages of having so few faithful was that petitions never took very long. I looked back up at Janice.
    "That's happening this weekend, isn't it?" she asked.
    I nodded. "Starts tomorrow night, actually, then all Friday, and the championship match is on Saturday."
    "Will we be able to watch?"
    I opened my mouth, then closed it. "I have some guest passes, but I was going to give those to my parents and my sister's family. I hope you don't mind."
    Janice scooted forward in her chair and Elvis almost jumped to his feet to help her up. "No, I don't mind," she said as she stood. "You just be certain to win, all right? I've never quite liked the elder gods. Too snooty for my tastes. Give them a lickin'."
I stood up and saw them to the door. "Yes, ma'am," I said. "I'll lick them as best I can."

    BB was waiting for me in the main hall. "You going to go practice with Tumble Dry?"
I nodded. "He's the only god in the place willing to play with me who gives me a real run for my money."
    "I hear Western Moose is a solid player."
    "He definitely is, but he's off to speak at a convention of Eastern gods, so he's not competing this year."
    "Too bad!" said BB. "He'd be another solid entry for the new gods. Not that you need any more help. You're pretty much a lock for the championship, aren't you?"
    I turned my hands palms up. "Who knows? There are enough gods in this club that I haven't even met half of them. Could be a few real players out there, and I know there are plenty of fast learners. If there's anything I've figured out in the last three years, it's to never count out the elder gods."
    BB helped take off my robe and brushed away some imaginary lint. He looked thoughtful.
    "What's up, my Chief Acolyte?"
    He grimaced. "Bradley, I think I'd rather not be executed."
    "I don't want that, either, and you know I'll do my best. At this point, we haven't even admitted that you took anything, so we're okay for now, I think."
    "What if he calls up the Theological Crimes Division? They could be in here with a warrant in a heartbeat."
    "And if they are, we'll deal with it then. For now, just don't steal anything else." I spoke with all the confidence I didn't feel, and, to my surprise, BB looked calmer for it.
    "Thanks," he said. "Good luck with your practice. Also, watch out for Sage. I think her store's about to close."
    I winced and decided to take the long way around.

    Midnight Jane first noticed me when I was drawing. I had received my membership in the Eternal Rest and, after only a paltry three months, had worked up the courage to actually go there. I took one look at the front doors and almost turned around and left. The Eternal Rest has an old look to it, like someone had picked up a small piece of London, transported it across the ocean, and dropped it into the middle of a Midwestern city. It had the graceful gray stonework and arches, the weathered carvings of angels and demons, the warped glass panes that were the best they could manage four-hundred years ago. It was the total package on the outside, including the doors: a dark wood, deep brown to the point of being black, with iron bands and studs and doorknobs right in the center of the doors. It wasn't the kind of place that said 'come in.' It was more the sort of place that looked at your hair, glanced at your shoes, and dismissed you with a sniff.
    I, of course, was not going to be put off by any mere architecture, so I promptly walked right past and found a bench near the Round Park. I pulled out my sketch pad and tried to catch the image of three children at play. One had a laugh like a calling peacock, and I started drawing fanning tail-feathers out of his backside.
    "That's not terrible," Midnight Jane had said, leaning onto the back of the bench and looking over my shoulder. The first thing I noticed about her was her hair--black as her name. Then my eyes made their way to hers, and they were green, and I was in something that felt an awful lot like what I might, in some circumstances, have possibly described as love.
    "Um," I said wittily.
    "I noticed you looking at the Eternal Rest," she said, glancing between my picture and the playing children. "Is the one in the red shirt the peacock?" The kid laughed and Midnight Jane's mouth made a small 'o.'
    "Yeah," I said. "That's the peacock."
    She nodded and looked back at me. "Are you a god?"
    I hesitated, still wearing my divinity like my father's oversized bathrobe. "Yes," I said finally, "though I'm still new."
    Her eyebrows went up and she rolled her eyes--her striking eyes--just a little. "I have to tell you, that part was pretty obvious. They gave you your membership to the Rest? It came in the mail for me fifty years ago, and I almost threw it out."
    "Me, too!" I said, turning my body more to face her. "I thought it was a credit card ad. Since I became a god, it seems like I get five times as many."
    Midnight Jane nodded. "My Chief Acolyte keeps me on one of those 'no junk mail' lists. It's handy."
    "I'll have to look into that," I said.
    "You mean have your Chief Acolyte look into that?"
    I swallowed. "Yeah. That's what I meant. I'm still not used to this god stuff."
    She shrugged. "You'll get used to it. Just don't let it make you into a jerk, like me."
    "I'm sure you're not a jerk," I told her. "You seem nice."
    She smiled at me, and the bench tipped over sideways and dumped me flat on my back. It took me a moment to realize that I was actually still sitting in the exact position, looking at her eyes and feeling her smile batter at my heart.
    "I think you must be the nice one," she said, and she stood up and held out her hand. "I'm Midnight Jane."
    I stood up, shifted my sketchbook and pencils to my left, and shook with my right. "Bradley," I said.
    "It's nice to meet you, Bradley. Come back to the club with me."
    I walked with her, which, it turned out, wasn't going to be the last time I did what Midnight Jane told me to.

Accidental God 4.0 -- Section 04

[Still on target for my faster goal today, though I'm so tired it makes me want to go to bed then wake up, just so I can go to bed again. I don't know what energy I'll have for writing tomorrow, but I know I want to find out what happens next. This story is exciting for me, and we haven't even made it to the ping pong tournament yet!]

     My temple, as I've mentioned, isn't a large one. Tumble Dry lucked out and was issued a more spacious temple in a more central part of town, but I don't think he's ever really used it. He already had his laundromats to fall back on, and his divine business and his business-business just sort of merged. I've thought about asking him if he felt like switching, but I never got up the courage for it. I could almost hear my mother telling me that there are some things I ought to do on my own--step up and be a man, Bradley.
    So I had never asked Tumble Dry, not because I didn't want to, but because, on the off chance that my mother found out about it, I didn't want to have to answer any of her questions. Also, I do have a little bit of pride in me, and I did want to find a new temple for myself, all on my own.
    I just didn't know how yet.
    BB led the way across the rather small gathering area--pews, not folding chairs like I'd heard of in some government issued temples--and through the back door into the office area. Some previous god had installed wood paneling over everything in the back area, an extravagance I hadn't been very well able to maintain. Everything need a good dusting and polish. (BB is excellent with people skills, but his disregard for the rules of property seems to extend to a general disregard for physical objects in general.) We had a few faithful volunteers that helped clean every other week, but it wasn't what you'd call a detailed job. It wouldn't have passed my mother's standards of cleanliness.
    "I put it in your office safe," said BB. "Figured you wouldn't want some casual visitor finding it and getting the wrong idea."
    "Like that my Chief Acolyte stole it?"
    "Yeah, something like that. Terrible the conclusions people will jump to."
    "Absolutely," I said, squeezing the back of my neck to try to beat back some of the tension that had been following me since my encounter with Forgotten Zed. "Does anyone know you have it here?"
    "The one gentleman I helped with it. He really was in bad shape. Cancer, from what he told me, and I believe him. I've never seen an old man look like that in real life. He should have been on top of a mountain in Tibet, dishing out advice, not dressed in a thousand-dollar suit."
I blinked. "How much?"
    BB waved his hand in the air. "Could have cost more. I'm not much up on the going rate for suits."
    "But he wouldn't go to one of the other gods? Why come here? I mean, I'm not exactly known for my miraculous healings." If I were going to be frank, I'd have to admit that I'm not known for any of my miracles. The entire 'miracle' thing has, for the most part, evaded me up until now. I've seen how other gods do it, but I haven't found my flow. Any flow. Flowless.
    BB opened the door to my private office and made way for me to step in. Again, not a very spacious office, and one of the first things I'd done as a god was have the massive wooden desk removed--with that dark-grained monstrosity inside, there had been room for me and another half a person. That might be an exaggeration, but I needed room to breathe. We walked around the new, more modest desk, and I bent down to enter the code into my safe.
    "I told the gentleman you weren't quite ready to start granting petitions, but he just sat down on a bench and stayed there. I thought he was going to cry, and I decided I had to do something. So I went over to talk to Upright Maddie."
    "Forgotten Zed's Chief Acolyte?"
    "Exactly. We went to school together."
    "You were friends?"
    "Who said that? No we just went to school together. She was back in Zed's storage area, and I went back there to find her, and I saw this thing just sitting around, and I could tell right away it had a bit of holy power to it, so I decided to not waste Upright Maddie's time--and here we are."
    I closed my eyes, wincing. "Just sitting around," I said.
    "Sure."
    "Was it sitting around inside anything? Like a box?" I looked up at BB. He shrugged.
    "Could have been."
    I sighed. Done was done. No way to change what had happened, though that was a nice thought. As far as I knew, though, not even the most experienced of the gods had ever managed time travel. Ah, well. Forward. I pushed the last button in the safe code and turned the handle, swinging the heavy door open.
    I looked at the artifact. I looked up at BB. I looked back at the artifact.
    "You could tell that was holy?"
    "Sure," said BB. "We acolytes get a sense for these things. What are you going to do with it?"
    I looked at it longer.
    "I have no idea," I said. "What is it?"
    BB tipped his head to the side, then crouched down next to me to get a better look. I watched as he squinted, then leaned back, then leaned forward again. "I think it's a rock."
    "Of course it's a rock. But it looks like it's been carved."
    "No, I think that's just its natural shape. An oblong...blobby...rock."
    I leaned in right next to it. "I'll give you the oblong, but I really do think it's been carved. What about those ridges under the bottom?"
    "Could be natural," said BB.
    While I'm willing to admit that nearly the full extent of my experience with rocks involves picking up flat ones to skip across Lake Minoa, I was pretty certain the shape I was looking at was NOT a product of the tumbling, smoothing, twisting forces of nature. What I wasn't certain about was why anyone would want to carve a rock into this eroded, vaguely equestrian shape.
    "What if it's a horse?" I asked.
    "I'd go with horse," said BB, standing up.
    I glanced at his face. "You don't really care, do you?"
    He grinned, completely unabashed. "Not a bit. What's the point? It healed a nice old man and, I might add, it's likely to give your little temple a bit of word-of-mouth advertising that we are sadly in need of."
    I stood up and swung the door of the safe closed, twisting the handle so it would lock again. "But then people are going to start expecting miracles from me, and you may have noticed that I'm a little short on those."
    BB sat down in my office chair and shrugged. "So just use Zed's blobby horse."
    I sat down on the edge of my desk, exasperated. I wondered if all this would have happened if I'd become a god when I was older. Would I still have been stuck with a kleptomaniacal Chief Acolyte about the same age as me?
    "You seem to have forgotten, BB, that this particular lump of rock is a good step towards getting you killed."
    He waved his hand in the air. "I don't think so. I bet this is about the ping pong tournament."
    "People keep saying that, but you didn't see his eyes. It's not just about the tournament."
    "It's the tournament."
    "It's not."
    "It is."
    "Stop that."
    "Either way," said BB, standing up, "It's time for you to hear petitions."
    Oh. I had forgotten about that. How could I have? It was the least favorite part of my day, and it had crept up on me like...like...like Sage Merlinus. "I hate petitions."
    "They're part of being a god. The people look forward to it."
    "But that's what I don't understand. My five faithful come in every week for petitions, and I haven't been able to grant a single one. Ever."
    "Six," said BB.
    "Six what?"
    "You have six faithful. Janice Bronson has a boyfriend now."
    "Well," I said. "Good for Janice. Isn't she eighty-three this year?"
    "And always the optimist."
    I sighed. Yes, she was always the optimist. They all were. "I don't even have an angel."
    "You could get one."
    "With what money?"
    "Take out a loan or something. Anyway, let's get you out there. You dressing up for today?"
    "Why? Will it make it easier to perform miracles?"
    "Come on, Bradley. You don't dress up for yourself. This is all about your faithful, if you remember."
    I rubbed at my face and pushed up off my desk. "I suppose I do. Let's go disappoint a few more people."

    It took just a few minutes before I was dressed in my godly robes, a class pair in blues and greens that BB had chosen out for me years before. When I'd first put them on, I'd felt truly godly. I'd waved my arms around like a TV weatherman, pushing clouds and continents before me. That was before I'd learned that pushing clouds around isn't as easy as it looks on TV. With all the godly power I'd managed to muster up, I might as well have climbed in a helicopter, flown up, and started blowing.
    I stood in front of my small congregation. BB was right: there were six people there today. Janice Bronson was small and round, waving at me from behind her oversized glasses, and next to her was a man just as wrinkled with a face so full of smile that I was sure he'd been practicing that look for at least eighty years. The Orange brothers were there--that was their name, not their color--along with Cheryl Zerbeki and Tanice Menlow, her white teeth smiling out of her dark black face. That was something about all of my faithful: that smile. It was like they were in on a joke that I simply didn't get.
    "Welcome," I said.
    "Thanks!" they all called back with enthusiasm.
    "How is everybody?"
    "Better and better!" they shouted. Apparently someone had coached the boyfriend, because he joined in without missing a beat. It was an old ritual, this little call back and forth between us. As much as I felt like a fraud, this made me a little bit happy. For what felt like the first time in days, I felt myself start to relax.
    "Give us some words of wisdom!" called out Janice.
    I laughed. "Wisdom? Janice, you've been alive three times as long as I have. What do I have to teach you?"
    "Just talk, son," she called back. "It's always good to hear words from your god."
    I took a deep breath. There it was again, that optimism. It was like a weight against the middle of my back, all their hope for when I'd really become a god. I almost would rather have gone to eat lunch with Forgotten Zed--but this WAS my temple, and I was going to try, as mixed up as I was.
    "My mother--you all know my mother’s gentle touch as mayor," there was laughter, "well, she once sat me down to learn piano. Some of you have heard me sing." Tanice hooted at that. "My piano playing was never much better, but my mother was determined. 'We are going to have a musician in this family,' she told me. I suggested that it should be my brother."
    "No you didn't," called one of the Orange brothers that might have been Larry and might have been Ted.
    "You're right, I didn't. But I'll tell you one thing: I learned some real lessons from my fights with my mother, day in and day out. You know what I learned more than anything else?"
Janice nodded from behind her glasses and her boyfriend looked at me expectantly. The Orange brothers, identical in their brown hair and glasses, leaned forward to listen. Cheryl Zerbeki cocked her oversized blonde perm to the side, and Tanice Menlow looked at me seriously.
"I learned to give up. I faced that challenge of the piano lessons, of daily practice, and I turned away. Slumped. Threw away the opportunity, and I've regretted it ever since."
    I took a deep breath and looked over at BB. His eyebrows were up, and I could tell he was wondering where this was going. I kept talking, hoping I’d get there quickly.
    "Since then I've grown a bit, changed a bit, forgotten all the piano I ever knew, and become a god. I didn't expect that last part, or ask for it, or know what to do with it when it came. I still don't know what to do with it, but I do know this: I'm not going to quit. I'm not going to give up, the way I gave up on piano lessons. You keep coming here, waiting for me to become a real god, and so I’ll tell you now that I will keep trying until I figure it out. You deserve that much from me, so I will give it to you." I looked around at their faces again. "I guess those are all the words of wisdom I have today, Janice. Will those do?"
    "Amen," she called back, and the others joined in. It made me feel a little better. Not much, but a bit.
    "I guess I'll hear your petitions over in the petition room," I said.
    "Needs a better name than that," called Tanice.
    "Then suggest a better one," said BB, stepping up next to our little altar. "Until then, petition room is all we've got. The Orange brothers have dental appointments this afternoon, so anyone mind if they go first? No? Okay then. Get in there, Bradley. There's a good god."
    My tiny congregation of the faithful laughed, and I laughed with them. Then I went into the petition room to fail them all for another week.

Accidental God 4.0 -- Section 03

[Stayed up a little too late to write this, but it was fun to meet Bradley's neighbor. It's hard to tell if she likes Bradley for himself, or just because he's a god.

[Being divine comes with its own problems.]

    My mother never had much use for sports, especially as they mixed with schooling.
    "What is the point of institutionalizing what is essentially tribal warfare as a part of our nation's educational system?" she asked on more than one occasion. I sometimes have thought she practices phrases like that so she can use them at appropriate times, but I've never been able to catch her at it. She must do it while she's in the shower, or in the deep of the night when the rest of the world is asleep. She had more to say about it than just that, though. "We're told that sports teach valuable skills, problem solving, determination, teamwork. Ninety percent of the time all I see is ego-building and a small course in hatred and hate speech. It appalls me that my tax dollars help pay for this."
    "Have hope for the other ten percent," said my father, smiling at me and winking. I wasn't sure what that wink was for, but it wasn't his way of telling me to go out for school sports. That wasn't going to happen, not in this lifetime.
    What my mother didn't know was that all through high school, for the forty-five minutes after class that she thought I spent walking home, I was actually part of one of the five Geek Clubs of my school. The top four were, of course, Math Club, Chess Club, Culinary Club for Men, and Technologists of the Future. Club number five was my club. It was my refuge, my home that was less stressful than home.
    "Why the Ping Pong Club?" my sister had asked me. "Has anyone in that club ever had a date?"
    "Of course," I said.
    "Who?"
    "Lots of guys."
    "Name one."
    "Brock."
    "Brock Madsen? That wasn't a date. That was a 'group activity.'"
    "Sure, but it was with one specific girl. Mostly."
    "Doesn't count," said my sister, walking away. "Call me up when you're old and lonely. I'll cry for you."
    My sister got nicer since then, and I wouldn't want to imply that ping pong is an inherently geeky sport. Quite the opposite, I'd say. Have you ever seen Lao Ping Pao Men Mei Long of the Chinese go at it? I'm sure I'm saying his name wrong, but that's not the point. The point is that, when he plays, the sun stops what it's doing to watch and the four winds hold their breath. His Swallow Stopping for a Drink at a Convenience Store is perhaps the most powerful and graceful maneuver ever performed in a professional sport. Ever.
    No, ping pong is classy. It was our club that was geeky.

    "You play ping pong?" asked Harold, his eyes filled with wonder. It was starting to get on my nerves. Everything was superlative for Harold, and he always had some comparison to tell you exactly how wonderful things were. "That's amazing!" he said. "I've always wanted to learn ping pong. It's like I walked out my door this morning and found a world filled with--"
    "Yeah, I play ping pong," I interrupted. "It's my favorite sport."
    "It's not really a sport," said Midnight Jane, "but it's cute that you think it is. But that aside, we need a plan to get back at Forgotten Zed. I'm sure it's not just him, though. I can guarantee that any dirty dealing has Slick L behind it as well, and he's not someone to mess with lightly."
    "What about Apples?" asked Tumble Dry. "She's not above a bit of dirty dealing and she's still upset about last year's competition."
    "But she won," I said. "By a lot. How could she be upset?"
    "Did you see her hair at the end?"
    "Not really," I said. Fact is, when Apples is in spandex, most guys aren't paying attention to her hair. I'd spent as much of the race embarrassed and looking away as I had cheering for Noodles, the only one of the younger gods with a real chance in the steeple chase.
    "Exactly," said Tumble Dry. "NO ONE noticed her hair, except for Apples. Her hair was, I quote, 'mussed,' and she's had it out for Noodles ever since. I'm pretty sure the New Year debacle was her fault."
    I blinked. "You mean when Noodles came into the room and--"
    "Exactly."
    "And then the EMT's had to--"
    "Yes."
    "That was Apples?"
    Tumble Dry shrugged and he took a drink of water. That was all Tumble Dry ever drank, and in the whole year I'd been a god, I'd never once seen Midnight Jane lift a glass to her lips, so I was once again stumped at how the root bear pitcher could be empty. Again.
    "Will I get to meet Apples?" asked Harold.
    "I wouldn't recommend it without a full suit of armor," said Tumble Dry.
    "Are the elder gods really all that bad?"
    "Yes," said Midnight Jane.
    "Not really," I said. "Well, some of them are, but not all of them. There's just a...difference between the old gods and the new gods, as best I can tell. The world used to be a different place, and any gods over a thousand keep expecting things to be that way. You know, with hordes of chanting worshipers, nations moving at their whim, storms and wrath and changing people into animals, all that stuff."
    Midnight Jane glared at nothing in particular. "They need to get their heads cleared out. This is the modern world. Gods aren't gods anymore, not how they used to be."
    Harold was nodding. "I get it. So there's a kind of rivalry between the old gods and the new gods."
    I shrugged. "Sort of. They're not all like that. Standing Appointment is a good guy. So is Bagel Girl."
    Midnight Jane snorted. "I don't trust her. She's TOO nice. It's like she's all desert and no meat."
    That's not exactly fair to Bagel Girl. She IS nice, and easy to talk to. In fact, morning bagels had been the only thing keeping me going for the first half year of my godhood--morning bagels and her advice. She didn't make a big deal out of it, but I'm not sure I would have made it without my morning. She’s wise AND kind, and I made a mental note to visit her, realizing how long it had been.
    I didn't say any of that out loud, though, and I felt ashamed, but Midnight Jane didn't like Bagel Girl, and when Midnight Jane started going off about the elder gods, it didn't do much good to get in her way. Last time I'd ended up with root beer all over me.
    She's so beautiful. I'm such an idiot.
    Harold was nodding again. "And so this rivalry plays out every year in some kind of competition. I'd heard about it, but I only moved here recently, so I haven't had a chance to see it. That's so exciting, it's as if--"
    "Exactly," I interrupted, "except there isn't any official competition between the elder and younger gods. It's more an unofficial thing. The elder gods just always end up on teams together."
    "And they always beat the younger gods," said Tumble Dry, glancing over at the wall where Fish Fry's picture hung, next to the plaque commemorating the god’s victory.
    "Could I participate?" asked Harold. "I could start practicing ping pong right away! I might not contribute much, but it would be a fun way to get to know the other gods."
    "Sure," I said, standing. "You do that." I'd gotten over the brutality of speaking to Forgotten Zed, and I was beginning to think I needed to see BB face to face. Maybe we could sneak the artifact, whatever it was, back into Zed's temple. Or maybe an abject, groveling apology that lasted the next twenty years would do it. Either way, I needed to get started immediately.
    "We're still practicing tonight?" asked Tumble Dry as I walked away. "Got to keep you in top form."
    I said something back. I assumed it was a 'yes,' but I couldn't remember. I kept seeing Forgotten Zed's eyes.
    And his beard. Honestly, it’s not the kind of beard you ever forget.


    My sister never took my divinity very seriously. When she got married, she asked for my blessing, then snorted for the rest of the night. (I didn't find it particularly funny. Maybe a little, but only a little.) Then, when her first child was born a rather precise thirty-eight weeks later, she asked me to be little Erica's godfather--followed, of course, by much hilarity. Then, when two years later, JoBeth was born, she used the same joke all over. Apparently, she will never get tired of it.
    Once, when Erica was still tiny and Clara and her husband had me over for dinner, she asked me what kind of god I'd be.
    "How do you mean?" I asked, though I knew what she meant.
    "Doesn't every god find a niche for themselves?"
    "I believe that's referred to as a 'naos,'" said her husband.
    "What is?"
    "A niche for the statue of a god to sit. It is called a naos. It's Greek."
    Clara and I looked at him--his name is Tom--and we stared.
    "Bradley," said my sister.
    "Yes, Clara?" said I.
    "I think my husband just made a joke."
    "Are you sure?"
    Tom smiled and stood up. "I'm going to wash the dishes. You two can stay in here and be witty."
    "It's what we do best, dear. Did you make any desert?"
    Tom ignored her and carried a pile of plates away into the kitchen. Clara watched him go, then grinned at me.
    "I got a good one."
    I nodded. "You did, I'll admit it. Better than either of your brothers." I was referring, of course, to myself and our younger brother, Peace in Troubles Mark Shupak, who was off at UCLA or USC--I could never remember which--studying physics with a minor in practical theology.
    "Darn right he's better than my brothers. Did you taste that lasagna?"
    "Of course I did. Five pieces worth. Have you ever considered cooking?"
    Clara cocked an eyebrow at me. "With Tom around? Of course not."
    "Good call." I folded my napkin in half, then in half again. "So...did he make desert?"
    "Something with pudding," said Clara. "I snitched."
    "How is it?"
    "Fabulous."
    I nodded and gave a contented sigh. "You got a good one."
    "I did. But Bradley."
    "Yes?"
    "My brothers aren't too bad, either."
    I looked at her and smiled, not entirely sure I deserved the compliment, but glad for my sister. It was one of those little moments that our family stumbles over every once in a while, but that we never talk about after. It's like a sunset that words would simply spoil. Or it's like walking outside without your pants on. Either way, you don't tend to bring it up again.
    Then Erica started kicking where we'd left her in the car seat on the dining room floor, and the moment was over. Clara picked her up and started nursing, something I'd grown accustomed to.
    "So what is it?" asked my sister after my niece was all arranged.
    "What is what?"
    "Your naos?"
    I picked up my napkin by one corner, shook it, and tossed it onto the table. "I have no idea."

    It's a short bus ride from the Eternal Rest to my temple. I've thought about buying a car, but public transportation in Northern Lights is pretty solid--got an award two years ago, if I remember correctly--and insurance rates for gods are abysmally high. That's probably the one place where a god doesn't get a little bit of a break. The way my friend, Jamal, explained it to me--he sells insurance for one of those big rock or handy insurance companies--is that gods have little incentive to drive safely. Then he went off into economics, which he studied in college, but what I could pull out of his explanation was this: if there is zero chance a car wreck will kill you, you might tend to forget your turn signal. I'd like to think that we gods are, as a body, better than that, but insurance rates tell a different stories, and to hear Jamal tell it, actuarial tables never lie.
    So I took the bus the few blocks over and up to where I could hop out and walk the two blocks mored to get to the Temple of Bradley. As far as government issue temples go, it was in decent repair. The fake-marble facade was clean, no graffiti, and the plinth across the pillars had a graceful arch to it. Was that a plinth? Could plinths have arches? What is the plural of 'plinth' anyway? Point is, I'm decently happy with the Temple of Bradley. It's not where I want to be in a hundred years, but every god has to start somewhere.
    The location, on the other hand, might leave a little to be desired. My rather narrow temple is wedged into a road so narrow it's more an older brother to an alley than it is an actual street. The government architects wedged it in between one store called 'Everything Hemp' and another store that's been out of business so long that no one I've talked to can remember what used to be there. I'd be willing to bet that the store was out of business before the building was even built--it was some primordial locus of business failure, and some local contractor simply built an empty shell around it.
    With that combination of neighbors and location, my temple gets a very small stream of passers-by, and an even smaller stream of visitors that actually step through the automatic doors and into the sporadically air-conditioned and heated interior.
    Sage Merlinus pushed open the door of her shop--yes, that is correct: she is the owner of 'Everything Hemp'--and leaned toward me, hanging onto the door behind her. A bell in the shape of a 'mystical goat head' swung from the door's handle, ringing with all the grace you'd expect from a goat head.
    "Bradley!" she called as I neared the front of her shop. She was smiling and swaying in a way that I might have found attractive, if the thought of dating a woman named 'Sage Merlinus' didn't make me want to grow a mustache and flee to be a prisoner in some oppressive communist country. "I'm glad you stopped by! Come in and have some coca tea."
    I blinked but kept walking, only slowing a little. "Coca tea?"
    "It's made from the leaves of the coca plant. Excellent health properties."
    "But isn't that...what they make cocaine from? That sounds dangerous."
    She shook her head and smiled at me indulgently. "They take the cocaine out, silly. It's the same stuff they use to make CocaCola, and you don't see people overdosing on Coke, do you?"
    I had to think about that one.
    "Even if you don't want tea, you should come in to look at the new carpets I got. Hand woven by the Sleeping Monks of the Deep Woods."
    At that point I made a nearly fatal error: I paused. It wasn't really a full stop, more of a hesitation, and I felt the mistake in my gut the moment my foot halted in its forward swing, but it was too late. The secret to getting past Everything Hemp is to stay in motion, walk with purpose, look like you have somewhere to be, and never, ever make eye contact. If you fail--break any of those rules--Sage Merlinus pounces.
    My foot paused. She pounced.
    "I have you interested now, don't I," she said, her arm slipping through mine. I hadn't noticed when she'd left the door and materialized next to me.
    "In what?" I said, swallowing. She was pressed slightly closer to my side that I was comfortable with. (I'm not exactly a touchy-feely kind of guy.)
    Sage grinned. "In the carpets, of course."
    I shook my head. "No, actually. Just in the monks."
    "Oh! The Sleeping Monks of the Deep Woods." She bounced up and down and, incidentally, against me. "It's the most amazing thing! They weave in their sleep, chanting hymns to the universe the entire time. There's an award winning indie documentary about them that's playing in the Black Box Theater, if you wanted to go see it. We could go together! It's right next to this art gallery that is having a show entirely of decomposing plant life juxtaposed with the crass eternity of manmade plastics. The show is titled--"
    "'Landfill,'" interrupted BB, grabbing hold of my other arm and pulling me into motion again. "Sorry for stealing him away, Miss Merlinus, but I need my boss."
    Sage tugged at my other arm for a moment, but then let me go. I think she finds my Chief Acolyte disturbing somehow, though I have no idea why, but I'm not about to argue with it. I shrugged at her, as if to say that I really wanted to stay and see the carpets woven by the Sleeping Monks, or even have some coca tea, but honestly, what can you do when your Chief Acolyte has you in his iron grip?
    "Another time," I said out loud.
    "I'll hold you to it," said Sage.
    BB pulled me up the two small steps--we also have a ramp, for handicapped visitors--and through the automatic doors that swished open and then closed behind us.
    "Why automatic doors?" I asked. "Shouldn't a temple have either open space or something more imposing? A portcullis, maybe."
    "Those are in castles," said BB, "and I think you're just in shock."
    "She almost had me this time, BB."
    "I could see that."
    "I'm not sure I ever would have escaped. Did you know that she actually believes in the Mystical Goat? It gives the Life Milk of the Universe, nurturing man's inner soul."
    "And it's head makes a lousy bell," said BB. "You need to be more careful getting here, boss. Maybe come around the other way."
    I shook my head. "Too long of a walk to get around. I'll just walk faster next time."
    "Are you sure it will be enough? She's tricky."
    I looked at BB. He was a little shorter than me, blonde hair, warm brown eyes, and a face that wasn't handsome--I can recognize handsome in a guy, even if I'd rather spend my time looking at a woman--but he had something about him that I mentioned before. 'Cute' was the closest term I'd come up with, but a better description might have been 'trustworthy.' BB had the kind of face that less scrupulous men had used to sell used cars and win the Presidency of the United States. He had that...SOMETHING.
    "She is tricky," I said. "I guess I'll just have to rely on you to get me out of trouble when I need it."
    "Don't I always?"
    That reminded my why I had come back to my temple in the first place. "No. No, you don't always get me out of trouble. Sometimes you get me one-hundred-percent into it. What, exactly, did you take from Forgotten Zed? The god practically smote me into ashes on the spot!"
    BB slapped me on the shoulder. "Come on, Bradley. He couldn't smite you into ashes. You've got more going for you in the god department than that! He could have singed you a bit, but give yourself some credit."
    "It's not me I'm worried about," I said, and I could hear my voice shaking. In spite of his penchant for casual theft, BB was a good guy. I didn't want anything bag happening to him, and I figured execution was a pretty bad thing. "Forgotten Zed wants to invoke the Laws of the Divine Brotherhood, or whatever they're called."
    BB's face went still. "He's not serious."
    I remembered Zed's eyes. "He's very serious about something, and he was talking about the laws at the time, so I'm not inclined to guess that he was referring to anything else."
    "But no one has been executed under the laws in over three-hundred years. They're completely outdated. Besides, I only borrowed the thing, and it's not one of Zed's major artifacts anyway. From what I could tell, he hadn't pulled the thing out of storage for millennia. You can't tell me that an artifact like that was created just to be left on a shelf. Miracles are to be shared, not stored away like last-year's Halloween candy. It gets stale and gross. Miracles should be fresh and alive."
    I rubbed at my face, finding that I was agreeing with BB, and distressed that he could make theft from one of the most powerful--and vengeful--of the elder gods seem so reasonable. "What did you take, BB?"
    "It's just a--never mind. Just come look at it."

Timing Issues

I need to go back and reread what I've written, but I'm pretty sure I said it's been about three years since Bradley's mother became mayor and a year since Bradley became a god. I think it needs to be longer than that, so, for now, we're putting it at five years as mayor, three years as a god. For a total of eight years. Except that those years were actually running concurrently. So it's really a total of five years.

That is all.

(I've also been having some thoughts about the nature of writing--my writing in particular--that I might share with you all sometime if I'm feeling particularly expansive or opinionated. The short summary, though, is that I'm shooting for 2,000 words a day, and trying to collect a double-portion of manna on Saturdays so I don't need to write on the Sabbath--which means 4,000 on Saturdays. Yeah, that means a total of 14,000 words each week.

(Your prayers would be much appreciated.)

Accidental God 4.0 -- Section 02

[I'm trying to write every day as an act of faith, walking out into the darkness and trusting God to lead things someplace worthwhile. It means I have only the vaguest of ideas where this story is going, but let's be honest: how is that any different from my writing before this?

[Also, writing is more fun again. I hope you enjoy discovering this section as much as I did.]

The first day of the second year of high school was the first day that I decided, without a doubt, that I was in love.
    "I am in love," I told my sister, Serenity Clara Shupak, who had just taken a bite of her peanut-butter and raspberry freezer jam sandwich.
    She looked at me.
    "Really," I said. "I am now in love. I saw her black hair, and now I am in love."
    Clara looked at me longer.
    "Stop that," I said.
    She sprayed sandwich all over my face and laughed until she cried. I decided that day to never forgive her.

    "I'm Midnight Jane," said the goddess with the muddy-rainbow hair. "This is Tumble Dry."
    "Yo," said Tumble Dry. He reached out his long, long arm and shook Harold’s much smaller hand.
    "Hi. I'm Harold, but I hope I won't be much longer. How do I get a new name? I think that sounds so awesome. Ever since I found out about, you know, my divinity, I've been looking forward to trading in Harold."
    "You don't like your name?" asked Tumble Dry.
    "Oh, I like it just fine. It's just that it's so hard to beat the romance of a name like 'Standing Appointment' or 'Fish Fry.'"
    "I don't like the name 'Fish Fry,'" said Tumble Dry, glaring off into the distance--not that there was much distance to glare into. The windows on the first floor of the Eternal Rest look out on a row of trees across the street, and that's about it. "'Fish Fry' rhymes with 'Tumble Dry,'" he explained when Harold's round face looked quizzical. "Whenever people talk about 'Fish Fry and Tumble Dry,' I feel like I'm part of some low-rent rap group."
    "Do people ever talk about 'Fish Fry and Tumble Dry?'" asked Midnight Jane, looking at him innocently.
    The god with the architectural nose crossed his arms and glared at her. "No," he admitted grudgingly.
    "Then shut up. You're just mad at Fish Fry because he beat you in the pie eating contest."
    She was probably right. Fish Fry is about five-seven, medium brown hair, medium waist, medium shoe size, medium everything except his mouth. His lips part and it looks like Tartarus has opened to inhale the dead of the world in one cataclysmic swallow. I had nightmares about it for a month after, and Tumble Dry had to swallow four pies and his pride that day. Midnight Jane had laughed at him for six hours straight. She may make my heart jump a beat or two, but she has a certain mean streak running through her. It's a slash of red through her midnight soul.
    She's so beautiful.
    "So do I get to pick my own name?" asked Harold.
    "I did," said Tumble Dry.
    "Really?" Harold looked excited, like a slightly overweight puppy discovering chocolate for the tenth time. "You thought up 'Tumble Dry?'"
    Midnight Jane laughed. "Not even close. He may have picked his own name, but the rest of the gods wadded up his idea, blew their noses on it, and threw it somewhere in the garden."
    Tumble Dry frowned and looked off into the distance again. "My name was better. It had class."
    "What was it?" asked Harold, looking hopeful.
    "It was--" Midnight Jane started to answer, but Tumble Dry cut her off with a glance.
    "No," he said.
    "But you're right, Tumble Dry, it was a good name."
    "It doesn't matter."
    "But Harold wants to know. Don't you want to know, Harold?"
    "Yes, very much. I think Tumble Dry is pretty great, so if the name you thought up is even better, well, that would be like having a two-scoop ice cream cone and finding out you actually have THREE scoops, and--"
    "It's not happening," said Tumble Dry, "and that's the end. And don't tell him when I've gone to the bathroom or something, either. It was a good name, let it rest in peace until we change things around here and a body can pick his own name. Or hers."
    Midnight Jane looked at him for a while, then shrugged. "Fine, I guess. Bradley, get us more root beer."
    I looked over at her, then at the empty pitcher that Mad Hatter Barnes had left full just three minutes before. Then I looked back at Midnight Jane. What could I do? I went off in search of the Mad Hatter.

    I have to tell you now about my Chief Acolyte, Rutherford B. Hayes Smithson. (You might think that 'Rutherford B. Hayes' would be enough of a name for any small child, but his parents had to add ‘Smithson’ on the end. Inevitable, I guess. I mean, that was their name.) Interestingly enough, no one in his family knows what the 'B' stands for--his parents never bothered to find out--so, that's his complete name. It's not 'Rutherford Barrett Hayes,' or 'Rutherford Bingham Hayes,' or 'Bartholomew,' or even 'Bradley.' Just 'B.'
    I bring up BB--yes, even my Chief Acolyte has a nick name, while I remain just 'Bradley'--I bring him up, because he has a rather fluid idea of property rights. Fluid like water and as broad-reaching as the Amazon. He simply doesn't comprehend the fact that, even if he needs something, he shouldn't just take it. Your car? He'll borrow it. Your books? They looked interesting. Your toothbrush? If the need is great. Your underwear? Not likely, but let's not rule out any possibilities here. I did mention that his concept of property rights was fluid, didn't I? Is there anything that is more liquid than water? That substance, whatever it is, is the firmness of his grasp of 'yours' and 'mine.'
    Fortunately, if there is a fortunately to this situation, BB also is one of the least selfish people I know. If he were going to borrow your underwear, it's more likely he would be borrowing it for a friend than for himself. While that thought is slightly disturbing, the principle behind it is solid: BB might be what some people would call a 'thief,' but he's the oft-portrayed-in-literature-but-never-actually-seen Thief with a Heart of Gold. He really, truly would give you the shirt off his back if you were in need.
    Or the shirt off some other guy's back. It's all the same to BB.

    My cell phone rang as we sat there around the table in the Eternal Rest.
    "Nice ring tone," said Midnight Jane. "That Brahms?"
    "Yeah," I said, not having any real idea if it were Brahms or not. Classical composers and I had met around the time I was two, hung out together until I was twelve, and then spent most of our time not talking after that. Out of the free ring tones on my phone, this was just the tone I disliked least. I suppose it really was good, though, if you liked arpeggios. "You mind if I get this?"
    "You ask that every time," said Tumble Dry. "Just answer it."
    I flipped my phone open. "This is Bradley."
    "Bradley, this is BB. We might have a problem."
    I pulled at my chin. Hearing from BB was never boring. Sometimes I really, really wanted to be bored. "What happened?" I stood up and walked away from the table as I talked. I had a feeling I didn't want to have to explain any of this to my friends. They're good people, but, well, they tend to laugh. Especially Midnight Jane.
    "I borrowed something," said my Chief Acolyte. "Not a big thing, but a thing. I don't think it will be a problem, though. It's only a minor holy artifact, anyway, and this guy wandered into our temple, really sick and all, and he doesn't trust the elder gods, so I helped him out."
    "What did you take, BB?"
    "Come on, Bradley. Don't talk like that. It's not like our temple is the most popular around. We don't have good music or good sermons, and the government stipend barely covers expenses, if that. We've got to do what we can to show the people around here that you're a nice guy, the kind of god you want to go to in distress--and let me tell you, a healing here or there is just the kind of good press a young god needs."
    I could feel a headache coming on, grinding through the brain behind my forehead and settling up against the inside of my skull, content to lurk there, painful and menacing. "You took something important, didn't you."
    "It was important to the guy I helped! He's been really sick for over a year now, but he was dressed all nice, so I figured he had some money to spare, and you do know we can do good things with spare money."
    I started to worry that I was asking the wrong question. If BB was going to this kind of effort to convince me that things were okay, that had to mean that things--things of all kinds and sorts and types--weren't okay at all.
    That's when I saw him advancing across the dining room of the Eternal Rest. Forgotten Zed is a solid six-foot-six with intent, packed with the kind of muscles that take over two-thousand years to develop...and then have run down a little bit, but nobody is going to tell that to Zed's face. Not me, at least. I don't say much of anything to Zed's face. I did, on one occasion, mutter something behind his back, but my heart wasn't in it. Maybe I'm intimidated by his facial hair--white and electric. I've never been able to grow facial hair more than a paltry sandpaper scruff, and Forgotten Zed's beard, like the rest of his body, is filled with dynamic energy.
    But not necessarily a surplus of coordination. He tripped over a chair as he advanced toward me, stumbling, stopping, and glaring at the offending piece of lumber. Then he snapped the back off and dropped it on the floor. It clattered there, then held still, afraid to attract any more attention from the outraged god.
    The next object of Forgotten Zed's attention was me.
    "Are you Bradley?" he called across the dining room, striding towards me again.
    "BB," I said, almost whispering through the phone, "did you steal from who I think you did?"
    "Who do you think I stole from?" asked my Acolyte. "Because I probably didn't. I wouldn't be that dumb. Why, is he there?"
    I closed my phone and tried to force my cheeks and lips into a friendly smile. After all, I'm a god, Forgotten Zed is a god, and that means we have lots in common. We probably use the same toilet paper. And we both like our lives without pain. Well, at least one of us does.
    "I ask you again, sir," said one of the oldest of the elder gods, "are you Bradley?"
    "I am," I squeaked, then cleared my throat. "I am," I tried again in a slightly less embarrassing register. "Can I help you with something?"
    Zed looked down at me from what seemed like a more lofty climb than the five inches difference in our height should have made possible. I didn't think I was slouching--was I? I straightened my back, looked in his eyes, but then slouched a little again, just to be safe. Or feel safer. I also broke eye contact, having read somewhere that eye contact only provokes savage beasts.
    "You can give me back what is mine," said Forgotten Zed.
    I swallowed. "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about," I said, "but I'm sure we can--"
    "And then you can have the acolyte who took it executed."
    I blinked. Time seemed to stretch, like a long pull of saltwater taffy. "Excuse me?"
    "You can have your kleptomaniacal acolyte executed as dictated under the Laws of the Divine Brotherhood, codified and ratified by the entire body of the divine in the year 427."
    "I don't think I've read it," I said, trying to stall for time as my mind raced to catch up with what Forgotten Zed had just said. Executed?
    "It doesn't matter if you've read it or not," said this imposing slab of divinity. "Part of the ratified treaty was that, in order to protect our civilization as we know it and prevent cataclysmic war between divine personages, the laws and strictures would apply to all gods, past and future."
    That didn't sound good. Had they mentioned these laws in the orientation packet the government had given me? It was ringing a bell, but there had been a lot of pages. Stalling still seemed like a good idea. "But isn't that rather sexist? You said it's called 'the Laws of the Divine Brotherhood.' Kind of unfair to women, it seems."
    Forgotten Zed glared from under white and bushy eyebrows. "The Laws were ratified by the United Divine Sisterhood in 632. It applies to all gods. Everywhere. Equally. And the law dictates that any holder of Great Office that is caught in the theft of artifacts of power, whether historical or newly shaped through the faith of worship, must be tried, speedily convicted, and put to death."
    "What if he's innocent?"
    "Your acolyte? I think not.”
    I blinked. He was almost certainly correct on that one. I tried another direction. "Are you sure it's the Great Office holder that needs to be executed?"
    His eyes narrowed. He said nothing.
    I swallowed and went on. "Because, the way you said it, it could have meant that the artifact of power needed to be executed. I've seen a couple of those things, and honestly, if they let themselves get stolen, I would say it probably was their own fault--"
    "Don't be fatuous," he interrupted, and he stared--glared, really, the way an avalanche glares its way down a mountain--and I decided not only to stop being fatuous right then, but to never be fatuous again. Ever. I also made a mental note to find out what 'fatuous' meant. "You know what your Chief Acolyte took, and you will get it back to me. Immediately. In fact, I'm almost ready to believe that you ordered the theft yourself." Forgotten Zed leaned down and in until his beard was almost tickling my chin, and I found myself leaning back and a little more back, my calves tense and burning. "And do you know what happens if I discover that you are the one behind this? Chains. Rocks. Eternally devoured by a great bird of prey."
    I tried to stop my mouth. I often do. My mother has said before that when the angels assembled my brain, they forgot to include any of the usual filters or safety features that keep the stupid words inside and let the smart words out. I expect she was correct.
    "I've read that story before," I said. "Didn't he escape?"
    Forgotten Zed didn't get mad. I had expected him to, but there was no thunder in his hair, no fire in his eyes. In fact, he just smiled. It was a friendly sort of smile, almost like we were on a picnic together, we were the oldest of pals, and he was only looming over and threatening me with immense pain the way the oldest of pals do.
    Then he turned and walked away.

    I remember reading the story of Prometheus as a child. It was a children’s book about celebrities of the Western Hemisphere, and it included a bit about 'Mister Pro' as his publicists call him now. He has a good life, from everything I can see. His marriage has lasted over five-hundred years, his children seem to actually have healthy lives in spite of all the family money, and the way he's posed in the pictures, you can tell that he's the sort of guy you'd like because he'd like you. He likes people. He likes life. He's happy.
    So between Forgotten Zed and Mister Pro, who has the last laugh?
    Of course, there's one number that always stood out to me from the Prometheus story: six-hundred-eighty-three. It's the number of years the god was chained to a rock. I did the math once. That means the guy had his liver eaten out 249,295 times.
    Between Forgotten Zed and Mister Pro, who has the last laugh?

    I walked the long way around the broken chair and joined my friends at the table again. Already some of the very discrete staff of the Eternal Rest were moving to clear away any signs of unpleasantness. Not that there were any, really. Everyone's friends here. I realized I was shaking, just a little.
    "What was that about?" asked Midnight Jane. "You look like you need a pair of clean underwear."
    "I do not," I said, then sat down and discretely checked under the table. Everything was dry--good to go. "And I honestly don't know what that was about." Actually, if I were being completely honest, I did know a little what that was all about, but I didn't need to tell Midnight Jane about it. She had a thing for fires, and for throwing fuel on them. Also, she didn't like Forgotten Zed.
    "Whatever it is you did," she said, "I applaud you. Anything that tweaks the nose of that bit of prehistoric rock is all right with me."
    "'Tweaks the nose?'" said Tumble Dry, snorting. "No one has tweaked anyone's nose for decades."
    Midnight Jane flicked a piece of ice at him. "It's not polite to point out a woman's age. Come on, Bradley. Tell us what it was about."
    "I admit that I'm interested, too," said Harold. "Forgotten Zed is like Mount Everest. I mean, I've always known he existed, but I've never expected to actually see him. This is remarkable!"
    I knew a bit about what Harold meant. Growing up in Northern Lights, I'd known that Zed was in the area, but I never thought I'd meet him. Or be threatened by him.
    I shrugged. "Something to do with BB, but I'm sure it was a misunderstanding."
    Midnight Jane hooted. "A misunderstanding? With BB? Not likely! What did he take this time? Old Zeddie's beard trimmer? His Angry Toga? Good for BB! I'll have to buy him lunch."
    I shifted in my chair. I wanted her to buy ME lunch, not my Chief Acolyte. Hang on. Switch that: I wanted to buy HER lunch. Then I remembered the dismal state of my temple finances and, in my head, switched things back. But either way, I didn't want her spending her time with BB. I know the guy isn't exactly a romantic sort, but he has a way of getting under your skin with how CUTE he is, and I didn't think Midnight Jane went in for 'cute,' but better safe than sorry.
    But that wasn't the point.
    "That's not the point," I said. "If BB DID steal something--and I'm not saying he did--then Forgotten Zed is threatening to execute him."
    "Under the Laws of the Divine Brotherhood?" asked Tumble Dry, leaning back long in his chair. "Those haven't been enforced for centuries. Not the truly draconic parts of them, anyway." He slapped the table and leaned forward. "I know what this is about."
    "You do?" I asked. I was certain I didn't.
    "The competition."
    Midnight Jane's eyes narrowed. "You don't think so, really."
    "I do," said Tumble Dry, leaning back in his chair again. "I do indeed. Forgotten Zed is worried, and he's decided to play dirty. Get Bradley off his game."
    Harold looked side to side, clearly delighted by all of this and not having any idea what was going on.
    Midnight Jane crossed her arms over her breasts. "That bas--"
    "Language, madame," said Mad Hatter Barnes, leaning in to replace the empty pitcher of root beer.
    She flicked her eyes up at him and grunted an apology. "That jerk. We finally get a competition where the elder gods DON'T have an edge of thousands of years of experience, and they immediately step in to start sabotaging our best player. I cry foul."
    "So this is all about some contest?" asked Harold.
    "Yes," said Tumble Dry.
    Midnight Jane nodded. "Definitely," she said with confidence. "They're trying to intimidate Bradley."
    I had looked into Forgotten Zed's eyes, and I wasn't so sure this was just about intimidating me. This was more than that, somehow. However, if it WAS about intimidating me, I knew one thing: it was working.