It was a photograph of the earth taken from high in space. Before either of us could say anything, there was noise. A hum, a kind of distant rumbling. The table and the room faded, disappeared, and I knew I was suddenly in space looking down on earth.
It was immense and took up my whole vision. The blue of the seas and white of the clouds, the brown land and curves of the continents this close, from this vantage point, were transcendent. For the first time I understood the wonder of astronauts, the love of people who spent their lives studying the heavens.
When that first miracle passed, I was able to listen, and realized the noise I had heard at the beginning was the sound of the earth from very far away. No, that was not completely true. Much of the sound came from the murmur of airplane engines as they cut their arcs and passages across the skies. Thousands of airplanes moving here and there filled with people and cargo, hope and destinations. Stately and slow, they went from day to night and back, secure in their act. The sound grew and I heard the voices from within, the conversations of people five miles above this earth. Engines and their voices, the keening of air across the metal bodies, the excitement of arrival, the warmth of expectation. These small lights against the black sky, moving across the night, emerging silver and fragile yet whole again into the light of day. The earth crisscrossed in every direction by planes. I saw it all from such a distance that it enabled me to understand.
For perhaps God was this, the earth and the lines of azimuth and the lines of planes and the lines of talk and the lines of everything crossing from one end to the other, forever.
“You kept your little house so clean and orderly, Arlen. Down on your knees scrubbing away at the floors, everything perfect. But in the end all you’ve got are chaos and connections you don’t understand. There is no order, even with Him; only takeoffs and landings.”
This time I was not surprised to be back. Rather than look at Him, I reached across the table and picked up the fork the waiter had brought for His meal.
“Did it help, Finky? Did it help to see God?”
Silence.
I didn’t look up. I put the fork flat on the table and moved it back and forth. I put my finger on top of the stem and moved it on and off.
“I have to go soon and meet Ms. Marhoun. Are there any more questions or requests? How about some more God?”
When my finger was on top, it blocked the light from the bar. When it was off, the old fork shone dully.
“Hmm? Nobody has any profundities?”
Shine. No shine. On and off.
He must have been looking at what I was doing because, when he spoke again, his voice was irritated. “What are you doing? Remember your mother telling you not to play with the silverware?”
“Winning.”
“What?”
On and off. Light and no light. “I’m winning, Leland. I’ve won.”
“Really? What are you winning, Alien?” His voice was amused.
“This.” I held it up and, still not looking at him, turned the fork in the air so that the light went across it at every angle. Then I looked. He was sitting with his arms folded over his chest, smiling.
“Hit me, sweetie. I’m ready for your revelation. This time you’ll get your Oscar. Roll ‘em.”
I would not look at Wyatt because I was scared that if his face said anything wrong it would throw me, and I couldn’t have that happen now.
“I figured it out. I don’t know when, but I figured it out. It may have been what Uschi was doing in the hospital with the little windmill. Or Wyatt’s story about his father or even… or even because of what I felt for you before. It wasn’t the earth; it wasn’t seeing the earth, although that helped.
“Leland, you’re so wrong. And that’s what’s pathetic about you, power and all.
“Are you the Devil? Or only Death? Or something else? I don’t care. No matter what you are, you’re jealous. You’re jealous of every human being who has ever lived on earth. Know why? Because you’ve got limits and we don’t. With all the power you have and all the fear you put in us, there’s really only one thing you can do and that’s to scare us. You have your infinity of ways to do it, but that’s all. I remember reading that Lucifer fell from Heaven not because he challenged God, but because God told him to worship man and he wouldn’t. I know why He told you to worship us. Because we have the capacity to create and forget.”
“Oh, honey, I’m very creative.”
“Yes, but in only one thing, which has a lot of variations. If we make pictures or bake cakes or fall in love, we can do the same things you do—use them to create chaos and sadness. Look what you did to me and Emmy.
“But you’re limited, Leland, and that’s the whole point. Just when you’ve taken everything in the world away from someone like Uschi, there she is in bed playing with light and totally absorbed in it. If you had come into the room at that moment, she wouldn’t have recognized you. And you know that’s the truth. You don’t know what it is to be absorbed. You can kill her but you can never know the feeling of loss she had in that light. It’s beyond you. That’s why God, whatever He is, wanted you to worship us. But you didn’t understand. Just by something as little as moving a finger back and forth like this.” I moved my finger on the fork. “You hate us so much because there really are times when we completely forget you. Forget the pain and the loss…
“The traits we love best in others are the things that make us forget you: they make us laugh, they make love to us, they bear our children, they make us feel important and immortal. That’s all eternity is—the moments when we’re alone with our joy in life and you’re forgotten.
“But we always exist for you. We’re the only things that exist for you, and you hate us for it. You hate us more because we can make you go away with things as small as a silver windmill or a perfect memory, a really good hump or a meal under a tree on a checkered tablecloth. You win, yes, but we’re always on your mind. You’re not always on ours. Even when you’re only this far away, we can still play with light and forget, and you hate that.”
One breath. For one breath I saw in his eyes that it was the truth.
“Fuck you, movie star.” He scraped his chair back, stood up, and left.
I put my hands on my cheeks. Hot cheeks, cold hands. I looked at the table and saw the fork. I wanted to touch it but didn’t dare.
“Do you think that’s true, Arlen? It’s as simple as that?”
I looked at Wyatt. His face was full of hope.
“Yes, I think so. That’s not to say He won’t always try to make it harder. But we got Him this time, didn’t we?”
Both of us burst out laughing.
“What happens now?”
I kept laughing. “I don’t know. We keep asking each other that question. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know, Wyatt. We go on trying to forget him and get lost in our lives. Or what’s left of them.”
He straightened up. “I want to go home now. I want to talk to Jesse and Sophie about this and then I want to go home.”
“May I come with you?”
“To Los Angeles? You want to come with me?”
“I’ll cook you soups and hold your hand. And I want to see Rose. Maybe that’s what I’ve been meant to do all along—take care of the people I love.”
He reached across that scarred, tired table and took my hand. His was so warm and mine was so cold. We could help each other now and perhaps, when we were very lucky, forget him for a while.
“I’ll cook you soups and hold your hand.”
“Amen.”
