[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.
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Wow, what a downer. Nice job.
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