Afterparty Part 23

"I'm not a good enough judge of food to disagree with the scores."

Dr. Gloria was waiting for us at a street corner, looking happy after a couple hours of sightseeing. "Have you noticed how clean the city is?" she asked me.

It was true. The sidewalks were swept, and I didn't spot a single homeless person on the three-block walk to the restaurant. Was it just Rovil's neighborhood, or the entire city? Times Square had already been Disneyfied by the time I first visited as a teenager, back in the 2000s. Perhaps they'd been pus.h.i.+ng the circle of cleanliness wider and wider, an event horizon of money that made ordinary reality disappear. The economic collapse that had knocked my father out of the workforce for half a decade was long forgotten. The new boom had made Manhattan into an island of millionaires.

My mood improved as soon as we walked into the restaurant. The dining room was crowded and noisy. I got the hostess to seat us at a sheltered spot in the corner where we could talk more easily. We sat at a low table on padded stools, and soon I was scooping piles of unidentified vegetables and beans onto the wide, floppy Egyptian bread. I said to Rovil, "Do you want me to rate it dish by dish, or only when we're done?"

"When we're done is fine," he said.

A while later I asked him, "How'd you do it, Rovil? The car, the job, the apartment..."

"I try to work hard."

"Do your bosses know about your condition?"

"I told them it was a bicycle accident."

I laughed. "Not the bruises. I meant your other condition."

"Oh! Yes, of course." He looked embarra.s.sed. "But not exactly. They think I am cured."

"But you're not, are you?" Ollie asked.

"Oh no," he said, not taking offense.

"Because I don't see your eyes jumping around," she said.

"Pardon?"

"When Lyda talks to her angel, she can't help but look at it," Ollie said.

Rovil glanced at me, surprised.

Dr. Gloria said, "I hadn't noticed that."

"See?" Ollie said to me. "You just did it." To Rovil she said, "But you, you're steady, all the time. You're not distracted by it?"

"Ah," Rovil said. He wiped his mouth and sat back. "My G.o.d and I have ... I guess you would call it an agreement. It was important to me that no one suspect that I was different. People would not understand. So, my G.o.d stays out of sight unless I desire him to appear."

"I wish mine would do that," I said.

"Ahem," Dr. Gloria said.

Rovil smiled. "I feel Ganesh with me all the time. But only rarely does he speak in words."

"Again, jealous."

Ollie said to Rovil, "It doesn't bother you that he came to you only after you overdosed on a drug?"

"It's a fair question," Rovil said. "I of course understand your skepticism. It's logical to think that I'm experiencing a hallucination. But the overdose awakened me; it didn't put me to sleep. I believe that this sensitivity to the G.o.dhead, this facility, exists in all humans, but we cannot access it on demand. The higher power is waiting there for us to reach out to it. The drug simply tore down all those defenses, all the walls that kept G.o.d out."

"But your G.o.d has an elephant head," Ollie said. "Hers is an angel. Gilbert sees some kind of organic, plant-like structure, and Edo-"

"I need to stop being impressed every time you know something about my life that I haven't told you," I said to Ollie.

"The trial was covered in the news," she said. "The transcripts are all online. I read them the day you came to the hospital." She shrugged. "Don't take it personally. I did a backgrounder on everyone back then." Then meaning in the hospital, when she was off the meds, paranoid and determined enough to run a search despite being allowed no access to pens or the internet. She said, "From what I read, all of you were exposed to the drug, but you all had different experiences."

"It's true," Rovil said. "G.o.d appears differently for each believer. He-or She, this higher power-takes whatever form that the believer can understand. It's always been this way, which I admit has caused some problems. Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists-they perceive Him differently, but it's all the same G.o.d."

"Amen," the doctor said.

"The Divine a.s.shole hypothesis," I said. "G.o.d's f.u.c.king with us, putting on masks, changing His name, hiding dinosaur bones in rocks-just to test our faith."

Rovil laughed. "You are as profane as always. Our misunderstanding of G.o.d is not His fault. Our job is to seek Him out."

"He's sure not making it easy," I said. "At this point there must be some evidence for the existence of G.o.d. But where's the proof?"

"This isn't about proof," he said. "It's about faith. Science and religion do not have anything to say-"

"Spare me the NOMA bulls.h.i.+t. G.o.d is a testable hypothesis."

He smiled. "You're quoting Victor Stenger."

Ollie frowned, not following us.

"A physicist," I said. "One of the old New Atheists, like Dawkins and Hitchens."

"They're in h.e.l.l now," Dr. Gloria said.

"And NOMA?" Ollie asked.

"Nonoverlapping magisteria," I said. "Stephen Jay Gould's phrase, which was just him trying to p.u.s.s.y out of the argument and declare a truce. But he was wrong. If G.o.d created the universe, then He ought to at least be detectable. Even if He's some deist G.o.d who set the clockwork in motion and then left the scene, never to interfere again, we ought to be able to see a few of His fingerprints on the Big Bang. But no, not even there. And don't get me started on the anthropic principle or Intelligent Design."

"I will not defend ID," Rovil said.

"How about prayer, then?"

"You want me to defend prayer?" he asked.

"You believe in it, don't you?"

"Of course. I commune with G.o.d every day, even if not in words. Don't you?"

"I'm talking intercessory prayer. People all over the world pray for G.o.d to heal their loved ones. They've been doing that for thousands of years-millions and millions of prayers. Surely one of them had to be answered in a verifiable way. Just give me one double-blind, placebo-controlled trial where those prayers healed a sick person, and we're done here."

"Please don't bring up amputees again," Dr. Gloria said.

"Oh, and amputees!" I said. "Why does G.o.d hate them? He's h.e.l.l on curing cancer, but if you happen to be a vet with your leg blown off, you're s.h.i.+t out of luck, no matter how hard you pray. How do people still believe in this s.h.i.+t?"

Rovil said, "You can't just dismiss-"

"Let me finish. The only thing that gives me hope is that the fundamentalists are on the ropes here. When I was a kid, they were this scary political force. Remember the Tea Party? Right-wing, Christian, and white. But then gays started marrying, minorities started outvoting them, the climate kept throwing hurricanes and floods at us. Their agenda fell apart, mostly because no young person could buy into their narrow-mindedness."

"There's still a right wing," Rovil said.

"But now they're way out on the fringe, and they've turned feral. They eat their young. Yeah, they're still vicious, but now they're a little ridiculous, like coyotes poaching the occasional poodle."

"You can be religious without being narrow-minded," Ollie said.

"The open-mindedness is almost worse," I said. "All this vague, wishy-washy spiritualism. People going to church just to feel better. You ask them what G.o.d they wors.h.i.+p and they don't even know. They're morons."

Rovil glanced at Ollie, then frowned. I followed his gaze. Ollie was staring at her hands, her lips tight.

"Oh, Lyda," Dr. G said. "Have you ever asked Ollie if she believes in G.o.d?"

f.u.c.k.

"I didn't mean you were a moron," I said.

She pushed back from the table, started to turn away, then said, "You don't have to be so ... so..." She raised a hand, then walked away, toward the restrooms.

I thought about following her, then decided to give her some s.p.a.ce. "Speaking of morons," I said.

Rovil nodded, not objecting.

I said, "I keep forgetting that people take this G.o.d stuff personally."

"This is why people don't like atheists," he said. He raised his bandaged hand to signal for the check. "The rudeness."

"It's the stress of being outnumbered even though we're right."

"That's what I don't understand," Rovil said. "You're not an atheist, though you pretend to be one. You know the truth as well as I do."

"Sorry, no."

"You're a smart gal," he said, failing to keep the smile from his face. "You've been trained as a scientist. Why do you ignore the evidence of your own experience?"

The Rat Boy, busting on me. I liked it.

"Because personal experience is the c.r.a.ppiest evidence of all, kid. If there's one thing I've learned, the brain is one lying son of a b.i.t.c.h."

When Ollie returned I tried to apologize, but she brushed it aside. Her face was composed. "Let's talk about how we're going to reach Edo," she said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The Peninsula Hotel spoke to me, and what it said was, Welcome to a 1920s Broadway musical. The bellhops wore white pillbox caps and crisp white uniforms with double-breasted bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. The doormen were dressed as generals of obscure European countries. The lobby, visible through the gla.s.s doors, resembled an itinerant worker's dream of Heaven. I hadn't even stepped inside, and I already knew that I would never be able to impersonate a plausible customer of the place.

"This is where Edo likes to stay?" I asked. The Edo I'd known disliked pretense, drank cheap American beer, and ate from street stalls. This didn't seem like his kind of place at all. Then again, the Edo I'd known didn't exist anymore.

We were in Rovil's car, across the street from the hotel. Vehicle access in this part of Manhattan was restricted, but Rovil had purchased the necessary permit. Ollie had sent me to the backseat and ordered me to slouch, staying out of sight of the windows-even though they were tinted almost black. As if that wasn't enough, she'd also insisted I wear the fedora we'd bought on the way down from Canada. Why? "Cameras," she said. The hat did not make me feel like a spy. It made me feel like a ridiculous person pretending to be a spy.

Ollie wore a knit cap and dark sungla.s.ses, and she'd done something weird to her face. Before we'd left Rovil's apartment she'd applied a strip of clear tape to each cheek, giving her an instant facelift. "f.u.c.ks with the facial recognition software," she said.

She was keyed up, intently watching the hotel entrance and the surrounding sidewalks. It was a beautiful day, cold but clear and sunny. Dr. Gloria was somewhere above us, flying with the city's red-tailed hawks or communing with urban deities-whatever it was that angels did on vacation. We shouldn't have long to wait. Edo and Eduard's jet had landed an hour ago, and we'd rolled up to the hotel ten minutes later. There was no way they could have beaten us here.

Rovil said, "I should be at work."

"Come on, we're on a stakeout," I said. "How often do you get to do a stakeout?"

Ollie said, "Here we go." A team of doormen and bellhops began to a.s.semble outside the hotel. They seemed to be under the command of a man in a dark suit who wore a proud, jet-black pompadour. A few seconds later, a pair of sleek black BMWs pulled up to the curb.

"Those are the hotel cars," Ollie said. "Keep your head down."

I ignored her and tried to get a glimpse of Edo. Four or five people exited the cars-none leaving by the doors facing the street-and were immediately surrounded by hotel staff, then ushered inside. It was over in seconds. I'd seen only the backs of the pa.s.sengers, but several of them were tall and blond and male. At least four Edo candidates.

I said, "Tell me one of those guys was Edo."

"I told you to keep your head down," Ollie said. "Edo was the one on the right. Eduard Jr. was to his left. The other three were a.s.sistants. Are you ready to go in?"

"What about cameras?" I asked.

"Just keep your hat on, and walk fast."

"There's no way I can pa.s.s for a customer," I said. "This dress is about two thousand dollars too cheap. And this haircut-"

"Your husband is the customer," Ollie said. "You're just the suburban housewife."

"That's s.e.xist," I said. "And how is it that my husband is so much younger than I am?"

"You put him through grad school," Ollie said.

"Thank you for that," Rovil said.

"You're welcome," I said. "But if you trade me for a trophy wife now that you're finally successful I'll cut off your b.a.l.l.s. And I'm keeping the house."

The plan was for Rovil and I to rent a room on the highest floor we could manage. Edo and company would be staying in the Peninsula Suite at the top of the building. Our room keys wouldn't convince the elevator to take us to that floor, but Ollie said staff badges could override that. Where, exactly, Ollie was going to get a staff badge she refused to say. She promised to meet us in our room, and then we'd zip up to chat with Edo.

"Let's give them a few more minutes to check in," Ollie said. "Then we can-oh s.h.i.+t."

The man in the black pompadour was walking across the street toward us. Ollie twisted around to look past me out the rear window and said, "Rovil. Drive. Now."