What in God's Name: A Novel by Simon Rich Page A

few from memory. There was the crow that landed on the archduke’s windowsill, cawing aggressively in his face. There was the black cat that wandered past his doorway when he was preparing to leave his house. There was his gate’s refusal to open. His car’s refusal to start. The chill in the air, the foreboding gray sky, the terrible howling of the wind.
    “You’d think he’d put two and two together,” Craig said. “And call in sick.”
    Eliza squinted at the computer. Sam was heading uptown on the F train, a package of cherry Pop-Tarts in his hands.
    “Even if he joins a gym,” she said, “it won’t really make much of a difference. I mean, we only have twenty-seven days to work with. It’s not enough time for him to get in shape.”
    Craig swiveled toward Eliza. “Are you sure it matters how he looks?” he said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Isn’t love about more than physical appearances? I mean, these people are made for each other—their souls are a perfect match. Isn’t that enough?”
    The Angels sat for a moment in silence.
    “He’s still got to lose weight,” Eliza said.
    “Yeah,” Craig murmured, sadly. “He looks like garbage.”
    He typed a new code into his computer.
    “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ve got a backup plan.”
     
    Craig, like most Angels, was a master of self-delusion.
    When he jammed a patrolman’s radar gun to protect people from speeding tickets, he ignored the cop’s quota and the grief he would get back at the station. When he helped a group of Boy Scouts start a campfire, he tried not to think about the carcinogenic properties of roasted marshmallows.
    Craig spent twenty minutes a day crashing old people’s computers to prevent them from sending their credit card numbers to Nigerian scam artists. But he never thought about the scam artists themselves and the money and joy he was costing them.
    He was ecstatic when he helped St. Mary’s School for the Blind win its first-ever middle school wrestling match. But the victory dealt a major psychological blow to their sighted opponents, one of whom had lost to a blind child in front of his parents. Was it still a miracle if someone had to suffer?
    Craig was usually able to justify his actions with a cost-benefit analysis. As long as a miracle’s “good” outweighed its “bad,” he considered himself in the right. Surgeons had to make incisions; firemen had to smash doors. It was all part of the game.
    Still, he was finding it difficult to justify a salmonella attack.
    “Okay,” he said, his fingers fluttering over his keyboard. “That’s the Bombay Palace freezer…and that’s the vat where they keep the green sauce. It’s already crawling with bacteria. All I have to do is knock out the freezer’s power supply. It’ll create enough warmth for the microbes to replicate and turn the sauce into poison.”
    He looked over at Eliza. “Are you absolutely sure that this is necessary?”
    She nodded. “It’s for the best.”
EARTH—TWENTY-FIVE DAYS UNTIL DOOMSDAY
    “This is first time all day you put on pants,” Raj said. “You were naked until the moment I arrive.”
    “That’s not true,” Sam lied.
    “Yes. You heard buzzer and put on pants, but before that you spend day naked. Admit this.”
    Sam looked down at his sockless feet.
    “Okay,” he admitted. “You’re right.”
    “You need to get out of slump,” Raj told him.
    “I know.”
    “Everything happens for a reason. If life is hard, you must take it by the horns.”
    “I know. Okay? I know!”
    Raj took a step back, surprised by Sam’s unusual eruption.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “It is because I care about you, that I say these things.”
    Sam sighed. “I know, Raj. I didn’t mean to yell.”
    They stood for a moment in silence.
    “I give extra puri,” Raj said. “And the green sauce you love.”
    “Thanks, Raj. You’re the best.”
    Sam tipped him generously and made his way back to the couch. It took him a few