Good to Be God by Tibor Fischer
Authors: Tibor Fischer
Tags: Religión, Fiction, Literary, General, Suspense, Social Science, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, True Crime, Criminology, Florida, Miami, Identity Theft, Impostors and Imposture, Christian Church, City churches - Florida - Miami, City churches
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He had also been taken aback when they stripped to keep their clothes clean.
“Man, I told them to put their clothes back on. I fucking begged them. But no, they were too worried about their clothes getting grungy. And you just don’t have any authority when you’re talking to fifteen-year-old breasts.”
77
TIBOR FISCHER
“Fifteen?”
Sixto inspects the ground. “Why did I do her a favour? Why did I want to help her out?”
I have visions of twenty topless fifteen-year-olds fighting over the right to clean the hob for a toot. The whole school rolling up.
It’s hard to be bitterly disappointed when you’re forty-something, because you have basically given up. But I do have that one-step-forwards, ten-steps-backwards sensation. I can’t conceive of any anger-diverting way of Sixto explaining to his girlfriend how her younger sister scouring his surfaces, coked-up and naked (and that’s how it will be in his girlfriend’s mind, it won’t be any use him highlighting the bikini bottoms as mitigation) was originally a disciplinary measure. We’re down for one of those five-hundred-year sentences in maximum security. This is what happens when you do favours.
Driving over to join the Hierophant, I consider how all these white-powder escapades could put an uncorrectable dent into my plans. I can’t believe we haven’t been arrested yet. It’s Friday afternoon. The cops will probably wait till Monday morning.
What can I do about it? Nothing.
I meet the Hierophant at the public swimming pool. The Hierophant did three tours of Vietnam (they wouldn’t let you do any more) and gets some military pension, so he could be taking it easy in a trailer somewhere less chic in Florida, hooking marlin and so on, but he ploughs most of his money into the church and has this part-time job at the pool working the ticket desk. His energy is remarkable, especially since I doubt the job pays enough to buy a newspaper.
Three rotund middle-aged ladies buy tickets. “Where are you from?” asks the Hierophant, because, naturally, they won’t be from Miami. “Toledo,” says one.
78
GOOD TO BE GOD
“Do you pray hard in Toledo?”
The Hierophant is wearing a T-shirt with the inscription
“Work Harder – Millions of People on Welfare Are Depending on You” and a baseball cap. Some wear a baseball cap because of fashion or because it is the badge of a certain group. The Hierophant wears it because it’s cheap, useful headgear.
A woman comes up, carrying one kid, with four others, two very young, in tow. She’s horribly poor. She has to spend the whole day counting her money and recalculating her purchasing possibilities.
“Hi,” she says. “Do you have a family rate?” Of course, there isn’t one. The misery is caked on her. Her husband died somewhere struggling to make money in some foreign shithole, no insurance, leaving her with the creases of widowhood.
They’ve driven for days to have a holiday, to stay on someone’s floor. That’s why there’s so much stuff about being kind to widows and orphans in scripture, because it’s so fucking awful.
You get a taste of how hard life can be, and you also know that an insight like that is of no benefit, it’s like stepping into a squishy turd. You just want to wipe it off.
The Hierophant lets them in for the price of two kids. I’m proud of him. No one has been done out of anything. It was a little wink of decency.
“Everyone has a breaking point,” says the Hierophant, “and everyone’s wrong about where it is.”
This is what’s funny; the characters who go on about caring for others are nearly always the most selfish. I had some dealings with the union reps at work and they were all, almost without exception, the most greedy, self-centred and vile types you were ever likely to come across. You should see their expenses. Beware talk of brotherhood and justice. Whereas those, like the Hierophant who 79
TIBOR FISCHER
trumpet the
“Man, I told them to put their clothes back on. I fucking begged them. But no, they were too worried about their clothes getting grungy. And you just don’t have any authority when you’re talking to fifteen-year-old breasts.”
77
TIBOR FISCHER
“Fifteen?”
Sixto inspects the ground. “Why did I do her a favour? Why did I want to help her out?”
I have visions of twenty topless fifteen-year-olds fighting over the right to clean the hob for a toot. The whole school rolling up.
It’s hard to be bitterly disappointed when you’re forty-something, because you have basically given up. But I do have that one-step-forwards, ten-steps-backwards sensation. I can’t conceive of any anger-diverting way of Sixto explaining to his girlfriend how her younger sister scouring his surfaces, coked-up and naked (and that’s how it will be in his girlfriend’s mind, it won’t be any use him highlighting the bikini bottoms as mitigation) was originally a disciplinary measure. We’re down for one of those five-hundred-year sentences in maximum security. This is what happens when you do favours.
Driving over to join the Hierophant, I consider how all these white-powder escapades could put an uncorrectable dent into my plans. I can’t believe we haven’t been arrested yet. It’s Friday afternoon. The cops will probably wait till Monday morning.
What can I do about it? Nothing.
I meet the Hierophant at the public swimming pool. The Hierophant did three tours of Vietnam (they wouldn’t let you do any more) and gets some military pension, so he could be taking it easy in a trailer somewhere less chic in Florida, hooking marlin and so on, but he ploughs most of his money into the church and has this part-time job at the pool working the ticket desk. His energy is remarkable, especially since I doubt the job pays enough to buy a newspaper.
Three rotund middle-aged ladies buy tickets. “Where are you from?” asks the Hierophant, because, naturally, they won’t be from Miami. “Toledo,” says one.
78
GOOD TO BE GOD
“Do you pray hard in Toledo?”
The Hierophant is wearing a T-shirt with the inscription
“Work Harder – Millions of People on Welfare Are Depending on You” and a baseball cap. Some wear a baseball cap because of fashion or because it is the badge of a certain group. The Hierophant wears it because it’s cheap, useful headgear.
A woman comes up, carrying one kid, with four others, two very young, in tow. She’s horribly poor. She has to spend the whole day counting her money and recalculating her purchasing possibilities.
“Hi,” she says. “Do you have a family rate?” Of course, there isn’t one. The misery is caked on her. Her husband died somewhere struggling to make money in some foreign shithole, no insurance, leaving her with the creases of widowhood.
They’ve driven for days to have a holiday, to stay on someone’s floor. That’s why there’s so much stuff about being kind to widows and orphans in scripture, because it’s so fucking awful.
You get a taste of how hard life can be, and you also know that an insight like that is of no benefit, it’s like stepping into a squishy turd. You just want to wipe it off.
The Hierophant lets them in for the price of two kids. I’m proud of him. No one has been done out of anything. It was a little wink of decency.
“Everyone has a breaking point,” says the Hierophant, “and everyone’s wrong about where it is.”
This is what’s funny; the characters who go on about caring for others are nearly always the most selfish. I had some dealings with the union reps at work and they were all, almost without exception, the most greedy, self-centred and vile types you were ever likely to come across. You should see their expenses. Beware talk of brotherhood and justice. Whereas those, like the Hierophant who 79
TIBOR FISCHER
trumpet the
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