What in God's Name: A Novel

by Simon Rich

  Eliza watched as the night janitor put on his coat and lumbered out of the office. It was seven in the morning. She’d spent all night on a father-son fishing trip in Arkansas, trying in vain to hook them some bass. She’d scrutinized the chapter on Current Manipulation, but most of it had gone right over her head.

  How did Craig make the job look so easy? She knew it was inappropriate, but she’d peeked at his computer after he’d gone home. He’d already completed several miracles this week, and all of them were pretty cool.

  In Portugal he broke a Ben and Jerry’s freezer, compelling the manager to give away his melting ice cream for free.

  In Melbourne he rigged an old man’s iPod to play the Beatles’ song “Birthday” over and over again until he remembered to buy his wife a gift.

  In Oxford he anticipated that an elderly professor was about to refer to his only black student, Charles, as “Jamal.” He quickly short-circuited the fire alarm, emptying the classroom just in time.

  He loosened a piñata for a puny third-grader in Puebla, shocking the boy’s peers and transforming him into a cult hero.

  He made thirteen shooting stars, eleven rainbows, and a hundred and forty breezes.

  And she couldn’t even hook a single fish.

  She squinted at her pasty reflection in the computer monitor. She had to pace herself. She was less than a week into the job, and she already resembled that pathetic cliché—the scraggly, burnt-out Angel. She leaned back in her chair, and her spine cracked audibly, a series of disturbing pops. She would give the miracle one more try and then she’d give up on it.

  “Come on, you stupid fish…”

  She paused. Something was wrong.

  “What the fuck?”

  Her computer started to beep as a line of text flashed nightmarishly on the screen.

  Unnatural Currents Detected.

  Code Black.

  She checked Craig’s cubicle, but he hadn’t shown up yet. No one had; she was the only person on the floor. She rummaged through her desk, knocking over several half-filled coffee cups before she found the manual. It was an enormous book, the size of a hatbox, with tiny type and pages so thin they were translucent.

  “Code Black, Code Black…”

  It took her five minutes to find it and another ten to accept the reality of the situation.

  Code Black: Possible tsunami.

  Potential loss of life.

  Warn God.

  She scanned the office one more time, but it was still completely empty. She thought about waiting for Craig to arrive, but the code kept flashing insistently, the beeping getting faster with every passing second.

  Eventually, she stood up and sprinted toward the elevators.

  “You can’t see him right now,” Vince said, kicking his feet onto his desk. “He’s busy.”

  “But I have a Code Black. A possible tsunami!”

  “You can make an appointment,” Vince suggested. “But there’s a two-month wait.”

  “I can’t wait two months!”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, honey.”

  Eliza’s vision was blurry from exhaustion, but she thought she could detect a smirk on the Archangel’s face.

  “Fuck this,” she muttered.

  Vince laughed incredulously as Eliza shoved open the brass door.

  “Page! Where are you going?”

  “I’m an Angel,” she corrected. “And I’m going to talk to God.”

  God liked eggs in the morning. It didn’t really matter which kind. Poached, fried, scrambled. Sometimes he had them bring him what he called a bird’s nest: a piece of toast with an egg stuck in the middle.

  He removed the silver dome with a flourish. Scrambled. Perfect.

  God looked at his watch and smiled proudly. This was the third morning in a row he’d gotten to work on time. If he did two more, he’d tie his record. He flipped on the television and switched it to NASCAR.

  A reporter was interviewing Trevor Bayne about his recent winning streak.

  “I just want to thank God,” he was saying. “I wouldn’t be where I am without him.”

  God shook his head and laughed. He loved that Bayne guy.

  He was almost finished with his eggs when the race began. He grabbed the remote and cranked up the volume.

  “Come on, Bayne,” he said, shaking salt onto his eggs. “Focus.”

  There was a soft knock on his door. He’d asked for Tabasco. Maybe this was it?

  “Come on in,” he called out cheerfully.

  A young woman he’d never seen before came into the room. She was very attractive, he noticed, but haggard-looking. Her bright blue eyes were barely visible beneath drooping lids. And her long, thin body was stooped like an old man’s. God shook his head. He could never understand it when a pretty young woman worked hard.

  “You bring the Tabasco?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Tabasco?”

  “No…uh…I’m here to tell you about a Code Black? The computer said I should warn you.”

  God nodded. Bayne’s lead had shrunk by more than half. How had that happened?

  “I’m sorry for interrupting,” Eliza said. “But it said there was a potential loss of life.”

  God motioned for her to take a seat and turned up the volume on his television.

  “You like racing?” he asked. “This is a big one—Bayne’s going for his second straight win at Daytona.”

  Eliza nodded awkwardly. “If you’re not too busy,” she said, “I think you should take a look at the tsunami. It seems like a pretty urgent situation.”

  “Move, Bayne! Finish strong! I’m sorry, what?”

  “It seems like an urgent situation.”

  God nodded. “You’re right. I’ll intervene.”

  Eliza exhaled with relief. “Thank you.”

  God opened his e-mail account and tapped out a message to Vince, typing with two outstretched index fingers. Then he leaned back in his chair, grabbed the remote, and turned up the television as loud as it would go.

  “Bayne and Collins are neck and neck!” the announcer shouted. “Collins is making a push…a big push! He’s three lengths ahead…he should win this one easily and…oh, no! He’s down! His car has flipped end over end! He’s escaped the wreckage, but he’s on fire…wow…he really seems to be in a lot of pain. Looks like Trevor Bayne is the winner. Although I’m sure he didn’t want to win like this.”

  God chuckled.

  “Sir,” Eliza said. “When you said you were going to intervene…were you talking about the car race or the tsunami?”

  God made eye contact with her for the first time. “What tsunami?”

  Something on the TV caught his eye. “Hey—they’re interviewing Bayne!”

  The racer lifted a trophy over his head and leaned toward a cluster of microphones. “I just want to thank God for this victory,” he began. “I couldn’t have done it without him.”

  God clapped his hands. “Did you hear that? Did you hear what he just said?”

  Eliza forced a smile. “Yeah. Neat.”

  “Man…I love that Bayne guy.”

  God turned off the television.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry. Where’s the earthquake?”

  “It’s a tsunami. And I’m not sure where it is—it just said ‘possible.’ It came in this morning, around seven?”

  God stroked his chin. “Probably too late to stop it. I tell you what: I’ll inform my prophet.”

  He turned the television back on and flipped to a new channel. A wiry man in rags stood by the side of a highway, holding a cardboard sign.

  Eliza squinted incredulously at the screen. “That’s your prophet?”

  God nodded. “I’ll tell him to warn the people with a sign. Something blunt, like ‘The End Is Near.’”

  Eliza stared at the screen. The filthy man waved at her.

  “God,” she whispered, “with all due respect…couldn’t you have picked a better prophe
t?”

  God shrugged. “What’s wrong with Raoul?”

  “I just feel like if you sent your messages through a scientist, say, or a president, more people would pay attention.”

  “I’ve been giving Raoul the straight dope since he was seventeen. If the humans don’t want to listen to him, that’s their problem.”

  The telephone rang and God scooped up the receiver.

  “Yeah, three o’clock’s good. Let’s just play nine this time, though. My back’s killing me.”

  Raoul winked at Eliza. “Hey, pretty lady,” he said.

  She turned away from the screen.

  “Don’t worry about the tsunami,” God told her, holding his palm over the phone. “I’ve got everything taken care of.”

  Eliza nodded wearily and shuffled across the carpet. She was almost out the door when she spotted something odd. In the corner of God’s office was a giant stack of papers, a towering column that was nearly as tall as she was. She squinted at the heap and noticed that the pages had a familiar red tint. It was a pile of prayers—all 7s.

  Eliza suddenly felt dizzy. She slipped out the door, got into the elevator, and rode down to 17.

  When the doors slid open, she cringed at the burst of fluorescent light. The floor was packed with Angels now, shouting into their BlackBerrys, pounding on their keyboards, chugging coffee from thermoses.

  She went into her cubicle and noticed that her computer monitor was still flashing. The beeping had stopped, though.

  Someone had turned off the sound.

  “You went to God with a code?”

  Craig clasped his scalp in disbelief. “What were you thinking?”

  “I had to,” Eliza said. “The whole thing was my fault.”

  She covered her face with her hands. “I was messing with currents,” she said, her voice muffled by her fingers. “I screwed everything up.”

  “Don’t worry!” Craig said. “Stuff like that happens all the time. In my first year, when I was trying to figure out wind currents, I caused over a dozen tornadoes.”

  Eliza spread her fingers a bit, peeking at Craig through the gap.

  “Really?”

  Craig nodded firmly. “Really.”

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “There was nothing I could do. I just pressed F7.”

  “Did that stop the tornadoes?”

  Craig laughed. “No,” he said. “It stopped the beeping.”

  Eliza’s hands began to tremble slightly.

  “Are you all right?” Craig asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I spent years sorting those prayers. And he didn’t even read them. I mean, honestly, what kind of CEO is he? How incompetent can you get?”

  Craig craned his neck around to make sure no one had witnessed her outburst.

  “Look,” he said. “I know he isn’t much of a details guy. But you’ve got to give the man a little respect. I mean, this whole company was his idea. None of us would even be here without him. He deserves some credit.”

  “We have ten Angels working full-time on Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

  “Well, they’re a great band.” He ticked off their hits on his palm. “‘Free Bird,’ ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ ‘Simple Man’…those are all winners. Everyone can agree on those.”

  Eliza did not respond.

  “At least he told his prophet,” Craig offered. “That’s something, right?”

  “God’s prophet is a naked homeless person! Every time he delivers a message, the humans think he’s schizophrenic!”

  “Well, that’s not Raoul’s fault. You can’t put that on Raoul.”

  The blood drained from Eliza’s face. “I feel sick,” she murmured.

  She bolted to the bathroom, and Craig leapt spryly out of the way. He was in a good mood. He’d just received an e-mail from Angel Resources informing him that he’d clinched another Angel of the Month award. The prize was pretty good this time: a coupon for a medium pizza of his choice. There was some fine print on the back of the coupon: deep-dish pies cost extra, he couldn’t order more than three meat toppings, and the offer expired in fifteen days. Still, it was an excuse to ask Eliza to eat lunch with him.

  He pictured them sitting together in the commissary, feasting on a pie topped with up to three meats.

  “I can’t believe you just won this,” she’d say. “A whole pizza.”

  “There’s more where that came from,” he’d say. And things would progress from there somehow.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, Craig hopped out of his chair, determined to make his move. But her grim expression gave him pause. She looked exhausted and worn out. The last thing he wanted was to annoy her when she was already feeling down.

  Besides, it’s not like he had anything that special to offer her. It was just a medium pizza, barely enough for two people. And what if she wanted more than three meats? It would be mortifying if his coupon was rejected.

  “You know what?” Eliza told him. “I’m going to go back up there.”

  Craig squinted at her. “Did you forget something?”

  She bit into her thumbnail, gnawed on it briefly, and then tore off a giant sliver. Craig winced as she plucked the half-moon shard from her tongue and flicked it onto the floor. Some of her nails were so mangled, he noticed, they had started to bleed.

  “I’m going back up there,” she said, “and I’m going to tell him to read those prayers. I spent three years sorting them. He doesn’t have to answer them, but the least he can do is read them.”

  “Maybe you should go home? Get some sleep?”

  “I’m not tired,” she snapped, inserting a pinkie into her mouth.

  Craig felt a sudden bizarre urge to grab her hand so that she would stop biting her fingernails.

  “Wish me luck,” she said.

  There was nothing Craig could do. “Good luck,” he said miserably.

  God liked to drink beer out of a glass. He couldn’t put his finger on why. It’s not like the glass changed the way the beer tasted or made it any colder. There was just something classy about it, something dignified. It made you feel good about drinking beer, even if you were alone in your office and it was the middle of the workday.

  He topped off his drink and turned on his flat-screen TV. It felt like a good time to check in with his prophet. He found him by the side of a highway in Queens, waving a cardboard sign and wearing a suit made entirely of tinfoil.

  “Hey, Raoul,” God said. “How’s it hanging?”

  Raoul shrugged. “Low and lazy.”

  God laughed. “Cool outfit,” he said. “Is it all foil?”

  Raoul nodded. “It took six whole rolls. Everyone’s been calling me crazy. But I think they’re crazy.”

  God grinned. He loved Raoul’s attitude, the way he let things roll right off his back. He was glad he’d picked him to be this century’s prophet.

  “So what’s the word?” Raoul asked, taking out a fresh cardboard sign and a Sharpie.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s your message? For me to tell the other humans?”

  God looked down at his lap. He didn’t actually have a message for the humans right now. But he didn’t want to confess the truth—that he’d only phoned Raoul because he was lonely. He took a slow sip of beer, stalling.

  “‘The End Is Near,’ ” he said finally. “‘Repent.’ ”

  Raoul nodded. “I’ll write it on my sign.”

  “Great!” God said. “That’s great, Raoul. Take care.”

  He turned off the television and glanced at his watch. It was more than two hours until his afternoon meeting, and he had absolutely nothing to do. He picked up his Rubik’s Cube and fooled around with it for a bit. He was almost finished with the yellow side, but he couldn’t make any progress without messing up the red side. And he didn’t want to do that—the red side was the only one he’d finished. After a few frustrating minutes, he twisted the cube back the way it had been and tossed it
onto his desk.

  God reclined listlessly in his chair. He couldn’t admit it to anyone, but lately he’d been feeling pretty down on himself. His numbers had been slipping for years. Yes, over 80 percent of humans still believed in him. But in some East Coast cities, he barely had a majority. The Archangels told him it was nothing to worry about, that these things were “cyclical,” but how could he trust them? They were just a bunch of slick-talking yes-men.

  He knew it was unhealthy, but sometimes he looked himself up on the computer to see what people were saying about him. It was terrible for his self-esteem, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was like trying not to scratch a scab; you could only fight the urge for so long. Sooner or later you had to see what was going on beneath the surface.

  He turned on his computer, took a swig of beer, and typed his name into the search box: G…O…D.

  Within seconds, he was watching a conversation in a dirty college dormitory.

  “If there is a God,” a girl human was saying, “like, sitting up there and watching all this on some cloud? Then he’s an asshole.”

  A boy human nodded and handed her some marijuana, as if her comment was so clever it deserved a reward.

  God winced as the two humans laughed and then, inexplicably, began to make out. He knew they were young and immature and that he shouldn’t put any stock in their opinions. But he couldn’t help but feel hurt. An asshole? How could you say that about someone you’d never even met? The boy had oral herpes, and God thought about trying to spread it to the girl as a punishment. But he didn’t want to make the humans suffer. He just wanted them to like him.

  God double-clicked his mouse, closing the window. He wouldn’t do any more searches for the rest of the day, he told himself. After this last one.

  Someone was saying his name in Berlin, over and over again, with increasing volume. He clicked on the link with excitement—maybe it was one of those soapbox preachers, praising his name in front of a giant crowd!

  God leaned forward, an expectant smile on his face. But his grin quickly faded when the window finished loading: it was a businessman who’d walked into a puddle and was taking his name in vain.