“I—I didn’t know that.”
“It’s not that noticeable. So where is she?”
“We had a disagreement.”
“So that’s good, right? No hallucinations?”
“Oh yeah, it’s great.”
She frowned. “You want her back.”
“She’s useful,” I said. “Sometimes.”
“What can an invisible, imaginary angel do for you?”
“You’d be surprised. Have you looked at the news yet?”
Ollie decided to overlook my blatant change of subject. “There’s nothing about a double murder,” she said. “I don’t think the bodies have been discovered.”
“Cool.” I stood up and grabbed my jacket. “Listen, I have to run an errand.”
“I was serious about the room service,” she said.
“You order without me. I’ve got to mail the sample to Rovil. I’ll be back in a half hour, hour at the latest.”
She regarded me silently. Something had closed down in her face.
I knew this would be a problem. Sex would mean more to her than it would to me. And as soon as I didn’t act as she expected, she would look for data to explain that—and we’d be off and running on the Paranoia Express.
I kissed her. “Croissants and a pot of hot coffee,” I said. “That’s all I want.”
* * *
I held the open FedEx envelope in one hand, and the sheet of rice paper in the other. I didn’t want to put the paper inside and send away my only connection to Numinous. But what choice did I have? I needed the verification Rovil could provide.
I called up his home address—his apartment building was called “The Ludlow,” which sounded tony—waved it onto the package’s smart label, then dropped the envelope into the FedEx box.
I walked for fifteen, twenty minutes, looking for a quiet place to sit down. Here in downtown the sidewalks were crowded with young people in an array of skin tones, wearing clothing I could no longer afford. Canada, unlike the United States, was still a predominately white nation, but not in Toronto. You could see the future here. This was the final century for my species, the Pale North American Red-Crested Bitch. Good riddance.
I found a tiny courtyard between two buildings that had the tidy, curated feel of a nationally mandated green space, and sat down on a marble bench. The cold stone immediately numbed my backside. On the next bench sat a homeless man, probably Caucasian, with wild gray hair and a face ruddy from long exposure to sun and wind and snow. He wore several layers of clothing and guarded a black garbage bag of belongings. He was talking to no one I could see, speaking in a low, angry voice. I figured I’d fit right in.
I waited until no one was passing by on the sidewalk, and then I said aloud, “I’m sorry.” When Dr. Gloria was being difficult, talking silently in my head was no good. She wanted audible respect. “Did you hear me?” I said, louder. “I’m sorry.”
The angel did not appear. I hugged myself, the wind tugging at my jacket, as the bench turned my ass into a frozen pork chop.
After a while I said, “I admit it. I’m using her. But I would say in my defense that she’s using me, too. She wanted out of that hospital. She wanted me to … want her.”
I kept my butt planted on the freezing bench. Trying to score points by enduring some discomfort. I said, “I promise that as soon as I can, I’ll get her back in the hospital. And if she won’t go, then we’ll figure out what dosage she should be on, and I’ll do it. I just need her sharp enough to help me.”
The homeless guy squinted at me. He’d stopped talking to himself. I ignored him.
“I need her right now, okay? You know how important this is. And I need your help, too.”
A minute passed. She refused to appear.
“Jesus Christ!” I said to the air. The man shook his bushy gray head at me, looked away. Everybody’s a critic.
After a while I reached into my boot and withdrew the green box cutter I’d borrowed from Ollie’s duffel bag. I turned it in my hands. “Please,” I said. “Don’t make me do this.”
Dr. G was an Old Testament girl. She knew the story of the binding of Isaac. Abraham climbed the mount with his son, making the kid carry the wood for his own sacrifice, all because his God demanded proof of obedience.
I slid open the catch on the box cutter. The blade, when it touched the skin of my inner arm, made a dimple, then summoned a dot of blood. There were other, older scars in the vicinity. I had done this before, and Dr. G knew I could do it again. She had to.
Abraham’s biggest problem was that God was omniscient. Yahweh couldn’t be bluffed. There was no way for Abraham to fake his way through the preparations for the sacrifice, counting on a holy interruption, because God could see into his heart each moment and know whether he was absolutely ready to kill his own son. I had the same problem. Dr. G lived in my head, and even when she wasn’t talking to me, she saw what I saw, heard what I heard. My mind was an open book.
“Hey now,” a voice said. It was the homeless man. He was hunched over, looking at me and the knife.
I breathed in. One, I thought. Two.
I opened my eyes. The man was still staring at me with frank interest. But he made no move to stop me. And neither did Dr. G.
I screamed, an extended, primal “Fu-u-u-ck!” I jumped up and threw the box cutter behind me.
“Hey now,” the man said again. “You can’t just leave that there. A little kid could pick that up.”
“And fuck you, too,” I said. “You were just going to sit there and watch me cut myself?” The bright plastic box cutter was easy to find. I closed the blade and put it in my pocket.
“What kind of sick god would let you murder your own child?” I asked him. “Not one worth worshiping, that’s what. It wasn’t God testing Abraham, it was Abe testing God. If God let him do that to Isaac, then fuck it, the holy covenant is null and void.”
The man did not quite nod.
“That’s right,” I said. “Ruminate on that.”
CHAPTER NINE
Later, I started referring to it as the Greenland Summit. I had called the meeting, and I was determined to forge a treaty, or perhaps “covenant” would be a better word, among three clinically insane people—me, Edo, and Rovil—and their gods. It was on a Sunday seven months after the party, on the day before Gil’s trial was finally to begin.
My situation dictated the meeting place. Greenland House was a private hospital in the suburbs of Chicago where I’d been staying since the night Mikala died. I chose to use the café. It was midafternoon, between meals, and I had the place to myself except for a nurse who hovered in the hallway. I took a table near the fireplace where I could watch the door. The décor was a cut above any medical building I’d ever been in, and the café was like an upscale restaurant. It had atmosphere. Edo was paying for it, of course.
They came in at the same time, as if they’d traveled together. Probably they had. Edo opened his arms, but I was not going to hug him. I stayed behind the table. Edo sat down awkwardly. Rovil, polite as ever, shook my hand before sitting. Dr. Gloria sat to my right. Edo and Rovil’s gods did not seem to require their own seats. Only my divine presence was a diva.
“Tell me how you’re doing,” Edo said.
“I’m fat, sad, and crazy. How ’bout you?”
He laughed, but it wasn’t the typical Edo guffaw that he once deployed like a weapon in negotiations. The laugh was a warm, commiserating chuckle. “Are they taking care of you and the—”
“They take care of everybody,” I said.
Edo seemed to take up less space than he used to. He was still a physically big man, a giant who overwhelmed the seat like a visiting parent squatting at an elementary school desk. But he was subdued, watchful.
Dr. Gloria said, “Ask them if they want something to drink.”
I ignored her. At that moment, I knew she was a hallucination manufactured by fast-growing neurons in my temporal lobe. Other times I was equally sure she was the manifestation of God on this plane, sent to guide me. When this happens to sane people, it’s called cognitive dissonance.