Darling Clementine by Andrew Klavan

you’re next?”
    â€œDid he mention God?”
    â€œYeah, he said, ‘God, they fired me from that shoe store.’”
    â€œMarcodel?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œDid he have a name for his rifle?”
    â€œSpot, I think. Samantha …” He took me by the shoulders in witty-but-earnest Arthurian fashion. “It’s him. We got him. It’s just a guy.”
    But I did not feel safe until the next morning, in the basement of St. Sebastian’s, when the phone rang and I picked up to hear a long silence. I knew that silence right off: it was God, at last.
    â€œSamantha,” he said tentatively.
    And I started scolding him. “God! Where have you been? Do you know how worried I was?”
    And he started whining. “I had to go to the hospital. I got hit by a rock.”
    â€œOh, God,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
    â€œThese guys, they threw a rock at me and it hit me and I had to have stitches.”
    â€œAww,” I said.
    There was a silence. I was so happy and relieved to hear from him, I had to keep myself from talking. Then he said: “I missed you, Samantha.”
    â€œI missed you, too, God.”
    His voice brightened. “I got a job, though.”
    â€œDid you? That’s wonderful! Doing what?”
    â€œHurling fireballs at the angels of Olagon.”
    â€œHey, there’s a growing field.”
    I heard his breathing for a long moment. “They called me a pansy,” he said then.
    â€œThe punks who threw the rock.”
    â€œYeah. They were leaning against a car, and they started saying things. They called me a pussy. They said I walked funny.”
    â€œI’m sorry that happened,” I said.
    â€œSo I shouted, ‘Rauss, Scheisskopf!’ And they threw the rock.”
    I wanted to say something, though I had nothing to say. Sometimes, with God, I found myself falling in love with the tenderness and authority in my own voice, and hoping he would say something with which I could sympathize.
    â€œThat’s German,” he said.
    â€œI’m sorry to hear that,” I said, then slapped myself on the forehead for an idiot.
    â€œI knew a German lady once. She taught me.”
    â€œOh?” said I, casually gagging with excitement.
    â€œShe taught me songs, and how to do a somersault. I can do a somersault. She built blocks with me. I think—” He stopped. I held my breath. He held his breath. Then we held each other’s breath—the silence seemed to go on that long. “I think, maybe, she taught me how to use the potty, I’m not sure. I don’t remember. She went away when I was three or so. She married a guy.”
    I thought of Bert then, as it happens. Little Bert smiling, crying, talking, laughing, loving with his whole body, investing his whole body in those portions of the world he loves. What, then, if that body were stripped away from him? I thought of Michael, wrestling his way into me, tearing aside my maidenhead like a curtain. What then if behind the curtain was just a darkness in the shape of a human, a holy emptiness into which life could be tossed like a coin into a wishing well, and yet find no flesh, no hand to hand you back the wish. And then again—then again, if we were to reach into that hole, that absence, if we were to grasp some old humanity by the lapels and haul it back into being, what cancers, also, what sufferings, shames and pains would we haul back with it. It is easier, I think, to sing the praises of the flesh into that eternal nothing, to sing and raise our virginity like a policeman’s hand. Oh, my cunt, my forgotten orchid, it is easier, far easier to mourn you, far easier, still, never to remember …
    These thoughts were interrupted by a tiny voice over the phone, a little voice singing as if in the distance, hollow over the phone as if it were at the bottom of a well.
    â€œDeutschland, Deutschland, über alles. Uuuuber