Bible Stories for Adults by James Morrow Page B

condos—merited the very comeuppance he received. Hear My tale. Decide for yourself. I shall say this. As divine retributions go, it was surely My most creative work since the locusts, lice, flies, murrain, blood, boils, dead children, hail, frogs, and darkness. And here’s the kicker, people: I did it with language alone.
    As I said, I must choose My words carefully.
    We all must.
    Listen.
    Â 
    Like so many things in Michael Prete’s safe, comfortable, and unenviable life, this began with the telephone. A crank call, he naturally assumed. Not that he was an atheist, nor even an agnostic. He attended Mass regularly. He voted for Republicans. But when a person rings you up claiming to be God Almighty, you are not automatically inclined to believe him.
    There were ambiguities, though. For one thing, the call had come through on the private phone in Michael’s bedroom and not on the corporation line in his study. (How could a common lunatic have acquired those seven heavily guarded digits?) For another, the caller was claiming to be the very same anonymous eccentric who, back in ’83, had agreed to pay out twelve thousand dollars, twelve times a year, for the privilege of occupying the Nimrod Tower penthouse. The man had actually raised the rent on himself: an additional thousand a month, provided he could move in immediately, even though the Tower atrium was still festooned with scaffolding and cloaked in plywood panels.
    â€œCome to the penthouse,” the mystery voice told Michael upon identifying himself as the Lord God of Hosts, the King of the Universe, the Architect of Reality, the Supreme Being, and so on. “Nine P.M. sharp.” The voice was high, brittle, and cosmopolitan, suffused with the accentless accent of the excessively educated. “We must talk, you and I.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œYour boss,” the voice replied. “You know more about Daniel Nimrod than does anyone else on the planet, including that overdressed mistress of his. There’s quite a lot at stake here: the destiny of the earth, the future of humankind, things like that. Bring a calendar.”
    â€œIf you’re really who you say you are,” ventured Michael, intent on catching the crank in a manifest lapse of logic, “why are you living in Nimrod Tower?”
    â€œYou think God Almighty should be living in a lousy Holiday Inn? What kind of jerk do you think I am? Nine P.M. sharp. So long.”
    Michael slipped into the green velvet suit he’d recently purchased at Napoleon’s, snatched up his Spanish-leather valise from Loewe’s, and descended fifteen floors to street level. Within seconds a Yellow Cab, dome lit, came rattling down Lexington Avenue, pushing through the squalls of snow. (Every year at this time, the same idea haunted Michael: I deserve my own chauffeur—I’ve earned it.) He flagged down the taxi and climbed into the cozy interior, its seats redolent of oiled leather and surreptitious sex. “Nimrod Tower,” he told the driver, a Rastafarian with a knitted cap and gold tooth. “Fifth Avenue and—”
    â€œI
know
where it is, mon—why else you fine folks be paying me, if not to know? Why else you be giving me such a fat and juicy tip on top?”
    They crossed Madison, swung left onto Fifth. February already, but the city still seemed Christmasy: the red and green of the traffic lights, the swirling snow. At Fifty-sixth the Jamaican pulled over. “Door to door, eh, mon?” he said cheerfully, musically. Michael paid the $9.50 on the meter, adding a generous three-dollar gratuity.
    He recognized the security force immediately, Manuel and George, the former a tall, spindly, grim Puerto Rican who spoke no English, the latter a self-confident and raffish African-American, both wearing the gaudy crimson tunics Mrs. Nimrod had imported from Baghdad. By day the Tower’s guards functioned mainly as treats for the