What in God's Name: A Novel

by Simon Rich

  “Man,” Eliza said. “That was hard to watch.”

  Craig nodded. “Did you see how much he was sweating?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  Craig hit the pause button and zoomed in on Sam’s oil-drenched forehead.

  “And this is at night,” Craig marveled. “He’s sweating like this at night.”

  “What the hell was that Brian Eno thing about?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Craig closed the clip and opened one from twenty minutes earlier. Sam was sitting in the gyro stand across the street from Irving Plaza, scrutinizing a listing in the Village Voice.

  “It looks like he’s reading the same article over and over again,” Eliza said.

  “He is.”

  Craig paused the clip, adjusted the angle, and zoomed in on the newspaper.

  The Fuzz rocks Irving Plaza Sunday with a sound reminiscent of early Brian Eno.

  Eliza cringed. “So he was just repeating what the paper said?”

  Craig nodded. “He’s never heard a single Brian Eno song. I checked his entire Life History.”

  “Wow.” She closed her eyes. “Remember when he said ‘sayonara’?”

  Craig shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  He scrolled down to the humans’ next meeting.

  “I haven’t watched the third one yet. Maybe it goes better?”

  “When’s it from?”

  “Two years later—spring of 2010.”

  She covered her eyes. “I’m afraid to watch.”

  “We’ve got to.”

  He clicked on the link, and the clip began to roll.

  EARTH—APRIL 3, 2010

  “Hey,” Laura said. “You’re in Linguistics Twelve, right?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Are those responses due today?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. “Um…thanks!”

  Eliza threw her hands up in frustration.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  Craig shrugged. “I guess they’re both shy.”

  She shook her head in disgust. “She came right up to him, initiated a conversation, and he didn’t even say a word.”

  “He was panicking. See? Look at all that sweat.”

  He paused the clip and zoomed in tight on Sam’s glistening neck.

  “I wonder if he has a medical condition,” Craig mused. “Like a gland thing.”

  “Does she even know his name at this point?” Eliza wondered.

  “Probably not.”

  “So how do they fall in love? When does it happen?”

  “Not in 2010. That’s their last meeting for the entire year.”

  He scrolled down to the next link.

  “Hey, this is interesting,” she said. “This next clip’s four hours long.”

  She clicked on the link, and the Bobst Library appeared on the screen. Someone had called in a bomb threat, and students were idling outside, talking, laughing, thankful for the break.

  From a bird’s-eye angle you could see that Sam’s hair had started thinning. Laura’s posture, always bad, had stooped markedly since the year before. They were getting older.

  Even though they were standing right next to each other, it took them three whole minutes to achieve eye contact and another four to speak to each other.

  The Angels watched patiently as the humans began to make small talk.

  “Do you know Max?” Laura tried. “I think he was in your dorm.”

  Sam squinted. “Max Feldman?”

  Laura shook her head. “Max Padrick.”

  “Oh. No, I don’t think I know him.”

  Eliza groaned.

  “This conversation is so boring.”

  “We could watch it in fast-forward?” Craig suggested.

  Eliza nodded, and he clicked the ×50 icon.

  The humans chattered rapidly while the crowd thinned around them. Eventually, Sam and Laura were the only ones left on the steps. Their eye contact remained glancing, but their expressions grew brighter, their hand gestures more animated.

  Craig hit play at the twenty-minute mark and found that their conversation had shifted from mutual acquaintances to reality television.

  “They’re making progress.”

  Eliza shrugged. “Barely.”

  Craig hit ×1,000, and the humans scurried up Broadway, darting into a nearby diner. The first laugh occurred just after the one-hour mark, followed by two more in quick succession. Sam and Laura stayed in their booth for hours, drinking iced coffee, the only stationary figures in a blur of whirling activity.

  Eventually the humans darted outside, zigzagging aimlessly until they reached a bench by the Hudson River. A hundred cars a minute whizzed by them on the West Side Highway, an electric blur of red and yellow streaks. Gradually, the humans started to inch toward each other on the bench. In real time, the shift was imperceptible—too gradual for Sam and Laura to be aware of it. But watching in fast-forward, the Angels could make out their progress. By the three-hour-and-forty-one-minute mark, their knees were practically touching.

  Suddenly, though, there was a dramatic shift in body language. Sam retreated to the far end of the bench, like a losing prizefighter at the bell—his eyes downcast, his shoulders drooping.

  “What was that?” Eliza asked.

  “Not sure.”

  Craig rewound the clip a bit and then hit play so they could figure out what happened.

  EARTH—MARCH 23, 2011

  Sam and Laura sat on the bench, their eyes locked.

  “I don’t get Kerouac either,” Laura said. “I mean, I know he’s supposed to be smart and everything, but I just get bored reading it.”

  “I feel the same way!” Sam said. “You know, I’ve never told that to anyone.”

  “Me neither! I’ve always just pretended to like him because—”

  “You were afraid of what they’d say.”

  “Exactly! Oh my God, if Cliff ever heard me bad-mouthing Kerouac…”

  “Who’s Cliff?”

  “Um…he’s…my…boyfriend.”

  “Whoa.”

  “That sucks.”

  Craig paced around the cubicle, clenching his fists in outrage.

  “She waited four hours to tell him she had a boyfriend? That’s inexcusable.”

  “What about him? He waited four hours to ask.”

  Craig shook his head. “The blame’s on her. No question. Because that—” He pointed at the screen. “That was bullshit.”

  He sat back down and rewound the clip. “Let’s watch it in slow motion.”

  Eliza covered her eyes. “I can’t—it’s worse than when Lincoln gets shot.”

  Craig ignored her and played Laura’s confession at one-tenth speed. Her voice rumbled out of the computer speaker, slow and deep.

  “Um…”

  Her pupils shifted back and forth.

  “He’s…”

  She tilted her head downward.

  “My…”

  Craig shifted the angle on the clip so they could watch Sam’s reaction.

  “Boy…friend.”

  Craig hit freeze-frame. For a split second, Sam’s face was a mask of horror. His eyebrows were ruffled, his cheeks were pale, and his lips were twisted into a nightmarish grimace. He looked devastated, like a jubilant mouse that glances up from found cheese and encounters a swinging death blade.

  Over the course of the next two seconds, Sam gradually regained his composure. His eyebrows unwrinkled, his lips unfrowned. And three seconds after the blow, he even made a pathetic attempt to smile. Craig hit pause and zoomed in on Sam’s contorted lips.

  “Look at that,” Eliza whispered. “He looks like a seizure victim.”

  “Let’s turn it off,” Craig said. “I can’t watch it anymore.”

  He closed the window, and they sat for a moment in silence.

  “Huh,” Craig said. “That was March 23, 2011.”

  “So that’s the date…?”
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  Craig nodded. “That’s when their prayers came in.”

  There were eleven more meetings between Sam and Laura, ranging in length from two to twenty-three minutes.

  “Do we need to watch them all?” Eliza asked.

  Craig nodded and dutifully scrolled through the clips. They were painful to witness. The encounters always started positively—a chance meeting, a joyous hug, an animated discussion of recent television. But Sam always killed the momentum by asking Laura about her boyfriend.

  “How’s Cliff?” he’d blurt out, an extremely forced smile on his face.

  “He’s good!” she’d answer awkwardly.

  And talk would quickly cease.

  “Who’s this Cliff guy?” Eliza asked.

  “Let’s check.”

  Craig popped up Laura’s Romantic History—it was brief—and quickly found the boyfriend: Cliff Davenport, an experimental painter at Columbia University.

  “Should we run ComCheck?” Eliza asked.

  “Why not?”

  Craig opened a window, entered the names, and waited for the results to tabulate.

  Compatibility Check

  Laura Potts/Cliff Davenport

  Score: 28

  Craig stared at the number in shock. With the exception of some prison relationships, it was the worst long-term pairing he’d ever seen. Laura and Cliff were incompatible on almost every level.

  They were repulsed by the smell of each other’s shampoo. They had completely different tastes in baby names. Laura was allergic to the only dish that Cliff knew how to cook. Their knuckles were positioned in such a way that it was uncomfortable for them to hold hands. Their families had never met, but if they did, they wouldn’t get along.

  Neither of them liked dark meat, so if they were to roast a chicken, half the carcass would be wasted. Their immune systems were structured in such a way that if one of them got sick, the other would automatically catch the illness. They had drastically different tastes in books and film and even people. They disagreed on how to pronounce “gyro.”

  There was only one positive aspect of their relationship: physical compatibility. Cliff and Laura scored a 97 on Sex—an extremely impressive statistic. They found each other’s pheromones intoxicating. Their genitals were proportioned and positioned to provide each other with maximum pleasure. Their orgasms were unusually intense and almost always simultaneous.

  “Are they still dating?” Eliza asked.

  “I’m afraid to find out.”

  Craig logged out of the Server and scanned Laura’s present-day apartment, a walk-up on Forsyth and Stanton.

  “I don’t see any evidence of a male presence,” he said, eyeing the pink bedspread. “Let me count the toothbrushes in the bathroom.”

  He zoomed in on the human’s sink. A lone yellow toothbrush lay behind the faucet.

  “That’s a good sign,” he said. “I’ll check her bureau for male underwear.”

  “There’s got to be a faster way to do this,” Eliza complained.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Can’t you just check Facebook?”

  Craig’s face reddened. “Good call.”

  He looked up Laura’s account and smiled with relief.

  Relationship Status: Single.

  “Great,” Eliza said. “She’s single. Try Sam.”

  Craig typed in the human’s name, but no profile came up.

  “Guess he doesn’t have an account.”

  “Geez. How antisocial can you get?”

  “Let’s watch him for a bit,” Craig suggested. “If he’s got a girlfriend, we’ll find out about it soon enough.”

  He opened Omnex, typed in “Sam Katz,” and hit enter. The computer located the human instantly, zooming in on the living room of his ground-floor apartment. Sam was sprawled on a futon, watching a show called Bizarre Bodies on Discovery Health.

  “He’s lost more hair,” Craig noted.

  “Yeah,” Eliza said. “And gained at least fifteen pounds.”

  A buzzer sounded in Sam’s apartment, and the human scrambled to his feet.

  “Someone’s coming,” Eliza said. “Maybe it’s a girlfriend.”

  “Maybe.”

  He turned up the volume, and the Angels anxiously leaned forward.

  EARTH—THIRTY DAYS UNTIL DOOMSDAY

  Sam Katz was about to open the door when he realized that he wasn’t wearing any pants. He stood in the hallway for a moment, weighing his options. There were pants in his bedroom, but that was far away—and the buzzer had already rung twice. What was ruder, answering the door in your underwear or making someone wait? He was about to make a mad dash to his bedroom when the buzzer rang a third time, a long, insistent drone. He reluctantly opened the door.

  A tall, mustachioed Indian man holding a red delivery bag stared down at him.

  “Hey, Raj,” Sam said, handing him a large clump of bills. “How’s it going?”

  “Where are your pants?” Raj demanded.

  Sam forced a smile. “Sorry, Raj—I just came out of the shower and I didn’t have time to put them on.”

  Raj folded his arms. “You did not just shower. You have not bathed all day. Admit this.”

  Sam chuckled evasively. “How’s everything? How’s Rubaina?”

  “Do not change subject.”

  Raj leaned forward and continued in a whisper. “We are worried about you, Sam. Not just me. Everyone at Bombay Palace is worried.”

  He held up his delivery bag. “It is too much food for one man. Chicken vindaloo, lamb tandoori, Grand Sultan appetizer platter, soup, naan, mango lassi…” Raj shook his head. “Is too much.”

  “It’s not—it’s not just for me,” Sam stammered. “I’m having a party…for friends.”

  Raj raised his eyebrows sarcastically. “Oh yes? Tell me then what are these friends’ names?”

  Sam averted his eyes. “Let’s see, uh, John…Paul…George…”

  Raj shook his head. “Those are Beatles. You are saying the names of famous Beatles.”

  Sam looked down at his feet. “It’s all for me,” he confessed.

  “Sam?” Raj asked gently. “How long now I know you?”

  Sam did the math in his head. He’d been ordering from Bombay Palace since freshman year of college.

  “About four years?” he guessed.

  “Four years,” Raj agreed. “And we are friends, yes? I give extra puri, deliver past ten?”

  Sam nodded. “Sure, Raj. We’re friends.”

  “Then here is my advice.”

  He leaned toward Sam, his eyes narrowing. “I think it is time you find a wife.”

  Sam laughed. “Raj, I’m only twenty-three.”

  “By that age I was married with two strong sons.”

  “I know, but things are different for me. I mean, your marriage with Rubaina was arranged.”

  “It is true,” Raj said. “I have been fortunate.”

  The two men stood for a moment in silence.

  “I include extra puri,” Raj said. “And the green sauce you love.”

  “Thanks, Raj. I appreciate it.”

  The men shook hands formally and Sam closed the door, clutching his grease-splotched bag. Lately he had begun to order food in such large quantities that restaurants packed multiple sets of cutlery, assuming his meal was for several people. But this time, when he dumped his dinner onto the counter, just a single plastic fork tumbled out. He searched for a knife and spoon—but there weren’t any. Evidently he was such an animal in the eyes of the Bombay Palace staff that they didn’t think him worthy of a complete set. The chef probably assumed that he sopped up the sauces with bread or just drank them out of the plastic containers like a beast.

  Sam reflected that he was in danger of going an entire day without wearing pants. He walked into his bedroom and picked up his rumpled corduroys. He could put them on for dinner, he supposed, but they were so tight and unpleasant to wear. He tossed them on the floor and shrugged. It’
s not like anyone was watching.

  “Well,” Eliza said. “I think we can assume he’s single.”

  “I think that’s a safe bet,” Craig said.

  “What’s he watching?”

  Craig zoomed in on Sam’s television. “Bizarre Bodies. It’s a show about humans with physical oddities.”

  “He couldn’t find anything better to watch?”

  “Well, there’s not much on. It’s the weekend. Most humans are out socializing.”

  Eliza shook her head in disgust. “When’s the last time he left the house?”

  Craig hit –×50, and they watched Sam’s weekend in rewind. He plucked pieces of tandoori out of his mouth, returned them to their containers, and quickly restuffed the delivery bag. He zipped over to the front door, handed the food to Raj, and took back his money.

  “Can you go faster?”

  Craig hit –×500, and the action sped up dramatically. Sam’s apartment brightened, darkened, and brightened again as the sun bobbed up and down outside his window. In his kitchen, a moldy baguette shed its greenish spots, regained its shape, and returned to an edible condition. But through it all Sam remained on his futon, as motionless as a corpse. With the exception of a single trip to a Rite-Aid, he hadn’t left the house in three days.

  “He’s only six blocks from Laura,” Craig said. “That’s less than half a mile.”

  “Why does that suddenly seem so far?”

  Craig fast-forwarded back to the present moment and hit play. On the screen, Sam dropped a piece of naan onto his filthy hardwood floor. He paused, looked out the window to make sure no one was watching, and then popped it into his mouth.

  “Ugh,” Eliza groaned. “What a mess.”

  “I think you’re being a little hard on him,” Craig said. “He’s obviously going through a rough time. But lots of people feel lost at that age. I mean, the guy’s only twenty-three years old.”

  “You know who else was twenty-three? Alexander the Great when he conquered the known world.”