“We’re not here to fix the problems,” Uriel says. “We’re here to deliver the maximum amount of spiritual satisfaction in the shortest possible time period. That’s why we have the seven-minute target. A target you haven’t been meeting.”
“Look,” I say, “sometimes it just takes longer than seven minutes. Sometimes these people really, really need someone to talk to. I listen. Until they’re finished. It seems to make them feel better.”
“Yes, we’ve been noticing a lot of dead air on your side of the line,” says Uriel. His voice is milk trickling over smooth marble.
“How many of my calls have you been listening to?”
“Don’t get snippy. I checked the database. It’s easy enough to monitor the quality and content of the call load. It’s standard procedure. I can’t believe I’m telling you this again. You’re not a special case.
“We’re stretched thin,” says Uriel. “I don’t want to bump you down to maintenance, when we’re getting a higher call intake every day, but I will if I have to.”
The conversation is over. My hands shake as I return to my desk. It’s probably the coffee.
Why do we do this? Why do we keep on picking up the phone?
Because religion is a necessary drug. It takes the pain away, for a while. A little candle to nurse in the chest cavity against the darkness. Except some of them burn too fiercely, and it eats them from within.
Only love comes close. Only love.
I loved a mad nun once, in Castile. He had come to the convent the way he was born, with a woman’s body, until he was bricked up in the wall of a convent, where he starved away his female aspect in secret. The nuns never found out. Only I saw him as he truly was, as a man entire.
He never left that cell. He was there to burn hard in solitude. The nuns had a system for this, and left a small opening at the bottom of the wall where they could push in water, ink, and dry black bread, which my lover fed to the birds.
He prayed and fasted on his knees until the bricks sliced through to the raw bone. He shaved his head and covered the walls with poetry.
I was all over it.
He did not seem at all surprised to see me when I appeared in his cell. I took the form of a woman at first, but I soon realized my mistake, and put on a man’s skin, tanned deeply from the sun my lover had not seen for years. I held his birdlike head in my hands, feeling the contours of his skull. His mouth opened and I fed him crumbs of passion.
He drew me a hundred times over. He called me the body of Christ, but wouldn’t let me fuck him. Instead I pushed into him with my fingers, reached deep into his cunt and beckoned, beckoned, as if I could coax him out to walk with me through the wall and into the world of light.
I thought I could keep him alive with my love.
His flesh withered and clung to the bones, and eventually those gave out, too, and he wasted further until all that was left was the heart, beating wildly on the floor of the cell, and a voice raised in fervor. He craved that holy passion so hard that it cannibalized him.
Wants versus needs.
I walked out through the wall and mourned for a century. Then I went back to work.
When I return to the cubicle, Gremory is spinning around to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in his desk chair. He gives me a thumbs-up.
Ten minutes to go before the end of the shift. This is the time when you hope to—well, you just hope that nobody calls with a problem you might actually be able to solve. So of course the line flashes.
“Hello, you’ve come through to the heavenly host, how can I help you today?”
“I’m trying to find my way to heaven.”
I appreciate directness at the end of the day. There’s an answer for this in the manual, filed under “Convenient Fictions.”
“That’s great,” I say. “You’ve come to the right place. The path to heaven is hard, but it starts within all of us. May I take your name, sir?”
“Benjamin— Sorry, is this the right number?”
The client’s voice is young, male, run through with booze and the lightest scent of self-loathing.
“You did say you were interested in getting to heaven, sir?”
“Yes, that’s right. I’ve been looking for it for an hour now.”
“Well, it’s wonderful that you’re making an effort, sir. Unfortunately, it usually takes longer than an hour to find one’s way to heaven. Many people spend entire lifetimes and more in the search.”
“It says on Google Maps that it’s just off Charing Cross Road.”
“I assure you, sir,” I say, “heaven cannot be accessed from the Charing Cross Road. May I ask how you came to God in the first place?”
“I’m not religious. I’m looking for Heaven. I’ve got a sound test there in twenty minutes. Look, I’m sorry, I really think I’ve got the wrong number. Sorry for wasting your time.”
“No, wait,” I say, because a thought has occurred to me. “Let me put you on hold for a second.”
I slam on the mute button and whisper across the cubicle at Gremory, “Is there a bar or a club called Heaven somewhere in London?”
Grem nods. “Oh, another one of those. I’ve got the address written down somewhere.”
He slides a Post-it across the desk. I unmute the caller.
“Thank you for holding, sir. You want to turn off down Villiers Street, toward the river, and it’s under the arches on your right.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Dead air.
“Well, uh,” says Benjamin, “I’m having trouble with this song I’m writing. It’s about love. Love and death. And anger. Love and death and anger.”
I sit up straight in my chair.
“Would you like to talk about it?” I say. “We could talk about it for a while.”
“It’s just that I’m afraid all the time,” he says, and his voice has receded to a trembling note, a quaver. “I’m afraid of the songs. I’m afraid of the songs I could make, and I’m afraid of not making them. It’s stupid.”
A meaty thud. He’s smashed his head against something, on purpose.
“Don’t do that,” I say. “Please don’t do that. I can help.”
“Who are you?” asks Benjamin.
I can hear his heart, the broken-bird flutter of it. His breath on the line.
I have had so many names.
“I’m listening,” I say. “I’m listening.”
We’re not supposed to Worldwalk during the working week, so Gremory and I hang out on top of Centre Point, the dirty-white 1960s monstrosity that squats mantislike above Tottenham Court Road Tube Station.
“Best view in London,” says Gremory. “Mainly because it’s the only place you can’t see Centre Point. You want some of this?”
He’s sucking on a finger-joint stub of spliff, exhaling thick smoke that sweetens the traffic fumes rising from the street.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Seriously,” he says, “I’m not trying to pressure you, but I really think it’d be good for you to smoke this stuff occasionally. Chill you out a bit.”
“Really, I’m good with just coffee.” I love coffee. I particularly like it the way the fashion kids make it, in a goblet shaped like a breast with a picture of a heart frothed on top. I love all that stuff.
“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” says Gremory. He takes another deep draw and closes his eyes. “Of all the things I’m going to miss when they’re gone, I think a beer and a spliff round the back of a decent bar is right up there.”