The Complete Roderick

one of the stalls and sat down on the lid and asked for guidance.

It was a gamble, but then a Jansenist God might approve of that; had not Pascal proved that there was nothing to lose and everything to gain? The venue was strange, but then a Lutheran God was used to that; had not the first Lutheran also uncovered certain fundamental truths in a privy?

What Ben found was a paperback book on the floor. For a moment he simply stared at it, reading the title over and over: God is Good Business. A sign? No. A sign? No!

He could hardly call it a sign, with its gaudy yellow-and-black cover, its red sunburst proclaiming ‘18,000,000 copies sold!’ The back cover showed a grey portrait of the author, a smiling businessman with the unlikely name Goodall V. Wetts III.

Just say to yourself when you get up in the morning, ‘God WANTS me to win! God wants ME to win! God wants me to WIN — TODAY!’ With this simple formula plus the Ten Rules of Faith Dynamics, you—

Ben shut the book and put it back on the floor. But on second thoughts he picked it up again. Might be good for a laugh some time… you never knew.

And what greater test could God put him through, than asking him to abandon all pleasures of the intellect and accept — this?

Washing his hands again, Ben studied his face for changes. He was leaning forward, trying out a confident slow smile, when suddenly he realized he was not alone. A janitor stood leaning on a mop, watching him.

Jesus Christ! Ain’t enough you spend an hour in the john, you gotta spend another hour seein’ if your lipstick’s on straight. I gotta clean this joint, buster, howsabout fuckin’ off?’

‘Oh I… sorry…’

‘You will be sorry, if you write any more porno on my walls.’

Ben’s gaze flicked to the place whence the graffito had already been scrubbed.

‘Look I’m not responsible—’

‘You tellin’ me, anybody writes crap like that oughta see a shrink. You like fuckin’ clocks, do ya? Or just drawing dirty—’

Ben fled, his face burning, while the janitor shouted after him, ‘—pitchers of guys fuckin’ clocks, watches maybe, guys wid moustaches? Yeah? And what’s that mean, DALI LAID DIAL, what the fuck’s that m—?’

Sounds of pain, sounds of rain. O’Smith opened his eyes to the sight of two people in white, arguing.

‘…wasn’t on duty when he came in, doctor. So if you want to blame somebody…’

‘Not a question of blame, it’s just procedure, that’s all. We send all John Does to City…’

‘Yes but Nancy said…’

‘Not as if we’re not overcrowded as it is what with the flu epidemic… AH! HOW’S IT GOING, FELLA?’

O’Smith automatically reached out to shake his hand and found that he was not reaching after all. His right arm was missing.

‘Where’s my durn arm?’

‘Your ah, prosthesis, well we had a little problem there, the car pretty much wrecked it. But don’t worry, get you fixed up with a new one just as soon as—’

‘Where is it? Where’s my durn arm?’

‘Are you insured, sir?’ The nurse was shoving a form in front of his eyes, wasn’t that his arm she was holding it with? ‘If we could just have your name and policy number — God! Ow! Jesus!’

Someone shouted, crepe soles came flapping down the street, arms holding him, hands prying his jaws away from his own arm the nurse was wearing, what was a nurse doing inside this form anyways? Stabbed, he fell back, take it slow boy, wait your time, Brazos grinning at him as he heard some folks talking clear over in Galveston…

‘…gave him fifty ccs, doc, okay?’

‘Great, yeah, Nora, how’s that thumb?’

‘I’m… all right, doctor… guess it’s my own darn fault, mine and Nancy’s…’

Galveston, gal-with-a-vest-on, where was the durn armhole, he couldn’t get his arm through, what was that durn muzzle velocity…

‘Galveston,’ he said.

‘Better send this joker up to Section 23, right? Before he kills somebody, getting ’em all this week, you see the girl in B ward, the cast change? Hysterics, you’d think we were talking her leg off… said it took her ages to get all those names on the old one… Give him another fifty, Al, he’s still twitching. Talk about prosthesis overdependency, a paradox, Nora, a para…’

‘Oh you and your paradoxes! Dr Coppola, sometimes I think you read just a little bit too much…’

‘Like to keep up, right? Sure the admissions procedure is paradoxical but isn’t life itself?’

‘…’

‘…like in this Graham Greene yarn I’m reading… offers to sacrifice his own soul for the salvation of souls, but does that include his own or what?’

‘…always springing these egghead stories…’

‘…same with admissions… uninsured creep gets in we end up keeping him until he pays, only how can he pay if he can’t get out to work? Fairer not to let ’em in in the first pl…’

‘Have you looked at the corner patient, doctor? Nancy says either something’s wrong with the monitor or he has a temperature of 2 million…’

‘…try to get any maintenance done around here, might as well be asking for… yeah when I checked it read minus 3 million, B.P. 80 over zero…’

Fighting his way through Galveston one arm tied behind him, only it was somebody else’s arm, that old body in Florida reaching for his 12-gauge, Brazos looking surprised as the fully-automatic armhole opened up, bap you’re dead, bap you’re dead again…

They watched him sink into sleep and then made their way to Reception, where the pretty receptionist with all the hair was saying to a black doctor:

‘Sure, but I mean it don’t hardly seem fair, two doctors on the same ward with the same darn name almost!’

‘It’s easy, though, look: I’m Dr De’Ath, he’s Dr D’Eath. I’m black, he’s white. I specialize in epidemiology, he specializes in cardiology. I—’

‘Yeah I know but—’

‘Look: he’s building a robot to test artificial hearts, I don’t know one end of a soldering iron from the other, okay? So what’s the problem? What’s the big problem?’

Chief Dobbin opened the press conference by reading from a prepared statement that began: ‘I took one look and knew she was trouble with a capital T. This little lady happened to be very, very dead.’

A reporter in the back groaned and turned off his recorder. ‘Here we go, another literary treat.’

‘With a capital T,’ said his neighbour. ‘Ain’t we gonna get a look at the suspect?’ He cupped his hands and called, ‘SUSPECT!’

‘All in good time, boys. “I asked myself why? Why would any sane human being…’”

‘Probably be a chapter in his book,’ said the first reporter, punching buttons on his pocket reminder. ‘Never heard of a fucking deadline.’

His neighbour, who was older, stopped picking his teeth to say, ‘Deadline? I thought you was on the Caribou, since when they meet deadlines on that shit-sheet? You wait till you graduate and try meeting a real deadline on a real paper.’

The boy was silent for a moment, pretending to study his reminder while Dobbin droned on. ‘Okay,’ he whispered finally. ‘How about a little help from an expert then, okay? Like what angle you got on this?’

‘Angle? Sex, of course. It’s a natural here, this Fong guy is ethnic, a creepy scientist, what more do you want?’