How Robert Found God
At Angelo's Pizza Palace
By
Mario V. Farina
Copyright 2016 Mario V. Farina
All Rights Reserved
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[email protected] I'm Grace O'Dershowitz," the woman declared. 'I'm God."
The remark took me completely by surprise. I didn't know whether to smile or make a clumsy retort. What was I doing here, anyway? Curiosity? The day has started like any other day. Well, not quite!
I had peeled off the yellow sticky that had been attached to my copy of "Strunk's Elements of Style" and stared at the words: "Robert, you'll find God at 305 Kosciusko Street." During the morning I thought about the message as I taught three English classes at Pratt Institute. My curiosity had been aroused. I decided to walk to the address during the lunchtime break.
As I strode through the large mahogany door of the school, I wondered who had placed the message on the book and why. It was warm for April. The blue woolen jacket that I wore, provided an amount of comfort that balanced the chill of the air with the warmth of the sun. It had been years since I had taken a noontime excursion. At sixty, I tended to leave a more sedentary life that was good for me.
Soon, I found myself on Steuben Street, amidst the roar of the street-and-people traffic that is Brooklyn. Then, I was on Classon Avenue. I had been moving briskly, but began to slow down by the time I reached Taafle Place, and later, Kent Avenue. A few more streets and I arrived at Kosciusko Street, which had been named for a famous Brooklyn general. I was not acquainted with the street and had some difficulty finding the address. It turned out that 305 was a tailor shop. There was a man's tuxedo in the show window and a rack with several women's evening dresses. It was dark inside, but as I peered through the door's small, dingy window, I could make out a counter and some tables. A sign on the door read, "Open, Walk-in." Which is what I did.
It was a small room. There was a stand on the left with some men's and women's clothing, a counter directly in front, and, at the right, a small dressing room with a curtain over the opening. Behind the counter was a door partially hidden by a clothes tree that held some men's jackets. There was a bell on the counter.
Before I had a chance to press the plunger, the door opened, and a woman emerged from the murkiness. She peered at me from behind the counter. "Hello, Professor Stanton," she said. "I've been expecting you."
I scrutinized the woman. She was of average height, had hazel eyes, wore black horn-rimmed glasses, She was trim but not slim. From the few gray strands in her blond and auburn hair, I estimated her age to be in the early forties. She wore a shapeless black blouse over a blue skirt. Her lipstick had been carefully applied. There were tiny blue earrings on her ears.
"I received a message saying that I would find God here," I began. "I'm not sure why I've come."
The woman's brown eyes, which seem to grow larger through the thin lenses, twinkled as she smiled. "You have found God," she said. Did you notice the sign above the entrance?"
"No," I responded, puzzled.
"It reads Lord and Tailor," she said smiling. I noticed that she had a slight gap between her upper two front teeth. "I love puns," she continued. "I just couldn't resist this one."
"Was it you who wrote the message?" I asked. "Surely, you had a better reason for bringing me here then to tell me a joke!"
The woman's face took on a somber demeanor. "Would you follow me, please," she said. She opened the small door at the side of the counter. This enabled me to follow as she led the way to the rear of the room. There was a short, dark hallway and another door at the end. She opened this and a shaft of light illuminated the hallway with a brilliance exceeding that of daylight. Instinctively, I shielded my eyes as we walked and entered another room that was several times the size of the tailor shop.
I soon became accustomed to the extreme brightness and caught sight of a long table crammed with equipment that resembled items found inside a missile launch control room. There were huge display screens, cables, switches, and gauges of various kinds. In the air, were indistinct sounds that seemed to emanate from unknown sources, eerie whines, shrieks, moans, musical tones, and murmurs. It seemed that samples of all the sounds heard on earth had been mingled to form a single cacophony that permeated the entire room.
"This is my lab," I don't spend a lot of time here. There is a more quiet room next door. Follow me."
She brought me into a smaller room and closed the door behind us. The heavy door effectively closed off the din from the lab. There was a table and with an Apple laptop on it, a bun, and a coffee cup partially filled. On a ledge behind the table, was a small statuette of Buddha. "Let's sit here," she said and drew another chair close to the one that was already there.
The screen was small but there were many smaller images on it, views of storms, battlefields, and other scenes of violence. There was a short period of silence as I stared at the electronic images realizing that these were real time events that I was witnessing. That is when this woman made the statement that has startled me. "I'm Grace O'Dershowitz," the woman declared, "I'm God."
I did not respond, for the full impact of her statement did not immediately register. Finally, when the words, "I'm God," had reverberated in my brain several times, I reacted with a gasp. I stared at the woman, my mind not comprehending.
"You're G-God? Y-you'll have to admit," I stammered, "that you've made an audacious, if not blasphemous statement. Why should I believe you?" There, I had voiced what needed to be said, but in my heart, I knew that what this person claimed was true.
"I brought you here to introduce myself," she said. "First, I'll have to convince you that what I'm saying is true" that you are not dreaming or hallucinating. Much as I hate to do this, I'll have to perform some cheap parlor miracles."
Without a moment the preparation, and without any apparent passage of time, I found myself alone at the apex of the tower atop the Empire State Building. I looked down one thousand feet and my legs turned to shards of ice as terror struck my being. Then, I felt myself falling forward as my body left the dubious safety of the pinnacle.
"My God!" I screamed as I plummeted downward.
"You called?" The woman was speaking though I could not see her. Vehicles and people on the street rapidly became larger. An instant before impact, I found myself in a vast black emptiness. In the distance I could see widely scattered points of light. Then, the scene changed. I was sitting at the left of Grace O'Dershowitz, whom I now believed with all my heart, was God.
"No more," I managed to cry out. "What's happening to me? Am I losing my mind?"
"No, nothing like that, Robert. I simply needed to get your attention," she responded. "Let's chat for a while. It's seldom that I have a conversation with a living creature. I prefer humans to the beings of other worlds. Take the ones from Alpha Centauri, for example. They have evolved more than you, but are less inhibited. They give me a headache sometimes."
""But why me? I haven't been religious. I haven't even been a believer."
"That's no problem," said God, "as you will see. But first, I'm hungry. Do you feel like pizza?"
"God eats pizza?" I marveled mentally. "Oh, sure," she responded audibly. "I know it isn't good for me, but I enjoy it. Let's take
a walk. I know a great little Italian restaurant not far from here."
She led as we made our way back to the shop, then into the thundering clamor of automobile traffic. It wasn't possible to converse while we walked along the streets bustling with people, cars, buses and taxicabs, amidst the babble of voices, shrills of sirens, racket of jackhammers, screeches of tires, and blare of horns. I wouldn't have been able to do so, anyhow, since my brain had encased itself within a ceramic shell so that it could contemplate the occurrences of the last half-hour without interference from the real world.
"Watch where the hell you're going, you idiots," yelled a brawny taxi driver through the open window of a yellow cab. God and I had barely escaped with our lives as we crossed against the light on Pulaski Street.
Finally, we came to a small restaurant snuggled between two brownstones on Main Street. "This is it, Angelo's Pizza Palace," she announced, as she stood aside so that I could open the door. A man, who I took to be Angelo, approached and greeted us. He was short, pudgy, and wore a huge black mustache, which contrasted sharply with his naked head. Smiling expansively, he exclaimed, "Oh, Misses Grace. How nice to see you. Your table, she's justa now be empty. Follow me please."
"Nice to see you, too, Angelo," said Grace. "Just couldn't resist the thought of your excellent pizza for even one