“Don’t feel bad,” said God. “It wouldn’t have worked out the way you expected anyway.”
“What do you mean?” He didn’t answer. “You mean I didn’t have a choice after all?”
“You’re kind of stuck on that choice thing, aren’t you.” He took a lighter out of a back pocket. “Hey, let’s go bowling.”
“I don’t want to go bowling.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. I turned my head to look. It was the mail carrier coming back out of the building. He stopped beside us, looked at the mail in his hand, then looked up.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re in 6163, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
He pulled a bundle out of the stack of mail. “Here.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” He walked off.
God was lighting his cigarette, not looking at me. I looked down at the papers in my hand. Bills. Sale fliers. A bright green one, jutting out uneven from the stack, caught my eye. I could just make out the top line:
Happy Luck Chinese Buffet
I pulled out the flier and something else came with it. Paper-clipped to the green flier was a small beige rectangle, one edge ragged. It was the sort of coupon that comes in books, the ones that promise hundreds of dollars in savings but you never use them, they just sit in your junk drawer until the next fundraiser comes around. Tropicana Lanes, it read. Two bowl for the price of one. I looked up and saw the mail carrier’s back as he disappeared into the next building.
“We don’t need to go bowling if you don’t want,” said God. “Let’s go to Steak ‘n’ Shake instead. I could stand a bacon cheeseburger.”
“Oh, right. And you’ll smoke while you eat, and nobody will stop you because you’re God. And then you’ll make me pay for it. The hell with that.”
“Heh,” said God. “I’m kind of a bastard, aren’t I?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, God, you kind of are.”
We were both silent a moment. I looked down again at the flier in my hand: All you can eat, one low price!
“No Steak-n-Shake,” I said finally. “Chinese.”
God laughed.