She smiled. 'You didn't strike me as the baggy-socks type. And I'm the one with the garters.' She pointed to the already-familiar bathroom. 'Would you like a shower?'
'I suppose I should, if we're calling on the country's top atheist.'
Theodore Golding lived in Hollywood near his Philosophical Forum on the Foundations of Theology. The Forum was located on Larchmont, right next to Thucydides, a bookstore that he also owned. He must have had money to situate his esoteric businesses near the Wilshire Country Club. I was determined not to be impressed.
Ann pulled the Porsche up to a modest house on the four hundred block of Van Ness.
'That's Golding's home. Feel well enough to go in?'
With a shower and a new set of threads, I was more than ready for anything. 'Bring him on. I think I can survive the experience.'
'He can help you understand god better than any preacher or shaman.'
'Certainly better than Father Beathan could.'
She smiled. 'Well, don't be too sure about
'
Golding answered the door himself. For a man my age, he had all the exuberance of a teenager in heat.
'You must be Ann Perrine,' he said, snapping his fingers and pointing at Blondie. The finger shifted to me. 'Because
don't look as if you'd sound as sexy on the phone.'
Deep blue eyes gazed sharply from beneath jet-framed glasses. The frames matched his longish hair. Dressed in a bright red silk kimono, he stood a few inches taller and about fifty pounds lighter than I did. His voice had the vague musical quality of impish good humor. I suppose he needed it in his business.
If a man could live in a library, he might live as Golding did. Bookshelves lined every available square foot of wall space. Locked glass cases thrust out to serve as room dividers. What framed artwork he owned hung perilously here and there in front of the shelves. To top it off, in the center of it all stood a computer table sporting a library console.
Golding glided between the cases and around stacks of books until he reached a break in the mess that I arbitrarily declared the living room.
He cleared off a heap of plaques from each of three folding chairs. 'I presume that this is your friend with the theological crisis?' He extended his hand as an afterthought.
I shook it. 'Dell Ammo.'
His grip was firm, pleasant.
'Good name,' he said. 'Spanish?'
'Just American.'
He sat, folded his hands over his slim torso and smiled. 'Ms. Perrine tells me that you're experiencing problems of a religious nature.'
I rubbed the bruise on the back of my skull and nodded. 'You might say that.'
'I must admit that I sometimes feel like a priest, the way that people come to me with problems of faith. Except, of course, that I try to steer the doubters away from God.'
'I, uh, don't exactly have a crisis of
, actually.' I tried to phrase things so that I didn't come off sounding like the consummate buffoon. 'I simply would like to know which definitions of God are false' 'They all are.'
'Yes,' I said hastily. 'But why?'
'Because God doesn't exist. It's just a concept that people have an uncommon affection for.'
