And how had he known her name?
She thought about him as she fed and watered Isambard and moved on to the capybaras. They looked up as she entered their enclosure. Her favourite, a young male about the size of a sheep, trotted over and pressed his large blunt nose against her thigh.
‘Hello, big boy,’ she said, stroking the stiff coat. The raked half-closed eyes were sensual with drowsiness. Leaning almost all of his weight against her now, the gigantic rodent growled. ‘Get off,’ she said. ‘I’ll fetch some hay.’
Lucy pushed him and the animal teetered a few steps on incongruously slender legs. As she turned to go, the capy trotted after her, whining and pawing as she hauled half a bale of hay down into the enclosure and shook out the sections in a heap. Three non-dominant boars lay together in the outdoor mud pool, noses and ears sticking out as they wallowed, half-asleep, their backs breaching the surface like hairy submarines. They didn’t seem to notice her, but they did notice food.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said, backing away quickly as they clambered out of the pool and galloped towards her – muddy, food-seeking missiles. When fresh grass was hard to come by, the keepers added fruit, vegetables and a few scoops of grain to their diet, but supplies were short this week. There should still be apples and carrots, though. She held the enclosure gate shut with one foot and leaned over to open the apple store, scooping a dozen into her bucket. Hauling herself upright again, she released the gate just long enough to shift the bucket into both hands, gasping as the scraggly rump of one of the young boars flashed past her at a gallop.
‘No!’ she shouted, slamming the gate. ‘Stop!’
The capy disappeared off towards the east gate of the zoo. Lucy clasped one hand over her mouth and cast about in dismay. Allowing an animal to escape was the most capital of crimes. What if someone found out before she could get him back? What if Luke found out and she lost her job?
Oh God, oh God, oh God. There was no way she could risk chasing around the perimeter of the zoo. Someone would see her and wonder what had happened. And she’d never catch him on her own anyway.
Lucy took a deep breath. OK. Something would occur to her. Maybe he’d come back of his own volition when he got hungry. Maybe some member of the public would capture him. She felt a terrible wave of despair. Poor thing had lived all of his short life in captivity; he wouldn’t have a clue how to forage for food. And what if a dog found him? He may weigh as much as a grown man, Lucy thought, but he’s still a rodent. Oh, Lord help me, she thought. Help me find him before someone else does.
That night, Lucy climbed into bed, too agitated to sleep. She thought of talking to God, her God – a benign, all-seeing sort of deity who didn’t get too involved with the day-to-day running of life, but who (she imagined) liked to be kept informed – a sort of thoughtful, philosophy professor of a god, passing his days in contemplation of the moral complexities of good and evil.
‘O dear Lord, what a day I’ve had,’ she said to her idea of God. ‘I’ve met a man and may have lost my job too. Actually, he’s more of a boy. A boy-man. And an animal escaped. A capybara. Which is not good. But I’d quite like it if something more came of the meeting. With the person.’ She broke off. ‘Something meaningful. That isn’t just a bit of fun, if you get my drift.’ Here she paused, wanting to be precise. ‘It would be so nice not to have to be alone all the time. And although we were only together for a few minutes, I felt something, a connection. I’m not talking about sex, exactly, it was more like … wham! Lightning.’ She paused again. ‘Not that no one’s ever been interested in me before, and I do appreciate looking nice and all, but sometimes I get fed up with it – people just thinking, Woo hoo, she’s hot.’
Perhaps, she thought, it would be best if she didn’t go into the whole thing about leering boys with the Holy Father. ‘I hope you don’t mind my pointing out that it does put people off sometimes. Not that I’m complaining.’ Was she? ‘It’s just that people seem not to see me sometimes. See me, that is, the real me.’
She lay silent for a few minutes. ‘It’s such a mess inside my head. I can’t stop thinking about him. What if I never see him again? What if I never meet anyone I love?’ She sighed. ‘Or who loves me? And what about the capybara? That’s such a disaster.’
Lucy exhaled and shut her eyes. ‘I’m going to be in deep trouble if I don’t get him back. I can’t tell you how much I’d appreciate some help before anyone notices he’s gone.’ She screwed up her face, thinking hard, as if the choice had been put to her. ‘I mean, if I had to choose, the capybara’s probably more important in the short term and, really, I hate to be selfish, but in the long term?’ That face, those eyes.
‘Amen,’ she said quickly, and, embarrassed by the absurdity of her theological monologue, pulled the covers up over her head.
Even on her own she felt self-conscious talking to God. But it made her feel better to talk, the way some people wrote in a journal. She didn’t suppose God was listening to her, alone, and she wasn’t so deluded or selfish that she imagined other people hadn’t far bigger claims on God’s time. But she felt better knowing that something (besides humans) was there. Not that faith was exactly easy. There were so many complications involved in belief, so many abstractions. And faith was so difficult to maintain in the absence of … of anything besides faith.
He hadn’t even told her his surname. It was ludicrous to imagine anything other than a momentary spark between them. But … what did it mean that he seemed to know her, her name, even? And that whenever she closed her eyes she saw him? That face. She waited for the vision of him in her brain to fade, but waking and sleeping he was there. He haunted her.
Perhaps this was what love felt like. She could almost hear his voice whispering her name, feel his hands on her face, pulling her lips towards his. Her imagination conjured the caress of his hand on her hip and then … oh! The sensation so real!
Without sleep, tomorrow would be hopeless. Her job required so much attention to detail; she couldn’t afford mistakes. More mistakes. The capybara’s disappearing rump filled her head. Sleep! Lucy closed her eyes and tried to think of something nice, transporting herself to a warm beach on a summer’s day, with seagulls and waves and the sun flowing down. She relaxed each muscle one by one, starting with her toes and her feet and her ankles, letting the weight of her body sink into the soft place created by her mind; she could almost feel the trickling sand between her fingers. She sank lower and lower towards sleep; waves of drowsiness lulled her softly, like long strokes of a hand, slowly, lower and lower, two hands now, each cupping a buttock and then moving, edging carefully down between her …
Oh my giddy aunt, she thought, shooting upright in the dark. He’s here! I can actually feel his fingers! She flipped sideways off the bed in the dark, hauling the covers with her as she fell. Crouching, heart pounding, she flicked on the bedside lamp, fully expecting to see an intruder standing by the bed.
But there was nothing. Of course there was nothing. What would there be? Feeling foolish, Lucy switched off the light and crawled back into bed.
‘Jesus,’ she murmured. ‘What’s wrong with me? I’m going stark raving mad.’
Bob smiled at her, tenderly, from the dark.
16
Bob had recently taken to considering questions of great spiritual complexity. What was it that made one transcendently beautiful girl different from another? Why did he begin to ache with helpless need when a certain face combined with a certain outline? What message ran from his bollocks to his brain to say, ‘Yes! It is she!’
Even God couldn’t answer that one.
‘Eck?’ Eck peered at Bob’s breakfast. Bob might go hours and days without eating and then consume an entire week’s food at a single sitting. Now, he finished a dozen doughnuts, throwing the empty box to Eck.
There was so much to do. He needed to have sex with Lucy, get a replacement pet and find himself a mother who
lived much, much further away.
He sat for quite some time, wondering how he might make all of these things happen.
Mr B was the obvious answer, of course. He hated to admit it, but he depended on Mr B, who busied himself with the stuff that Bob found boring, the day-to-day banal stuff, the general running of the world. It was great to be able to delegate politics and social issues (humanity, in general) to someone who could be bothered to deal with it, while he exerted his energy in the appreciation of his more delightful creations.
This thought led him to wonder why he hadn’t made every woman on Earth in the image of Lucy, why he’d insisted on infinite variety. Perhaps it had been simple carelessness? Now that he thought about it, why hadn’t he specified that all women had skin as soft and smooth as warm almond oil? He hadn’t really considered it a priority at the time, and for a while the beasts of the field had taken up all his energy. Now, however, he realized how short-sighted he’d been. Had he really needed a beaver? A coelacanth? Wouldn’t a world full of Lucys have been so much pleasanter than hoverflies and worms?
There was nothing he could do about it now, but he’d definitely be more careful in his next job. When this planet shut down, they’d give him another, and next time he’d fill it with achingly gorgeous girls, all desperate to have sex with him. Where was the downside?
In the meantime, he needed to focus, sort out the practicalities. A serious move on Lucy was required, and soon. One, because he would go mad if he didn’t have sex with her. And two, because his loony mother was probably, right now, setting some insidious trap that would take nine hundred and ninety-nine per cent of his time and energy to evade.
He considered the options. Annunciation had been known to work. White robes, big wings, spooky lighting, golden halo. All he had to do was appear to the object of passion and make some sort of pronouncement. ‘You have been chosen by God.’ Full stop. Resist the temptation to elaborate. Such an approach was particularly effective with women inclined to the ecstatic – nuns, seers, religious martyrs – but in these secular times he wondered whether it might not lead to shock, violent rejection or arrest. Things were different back then. Once, he’d appeared to a particularly edible girl as a swan. He couldn’t remember why. Another time, as a bull. What a laugh. Good times!
Let’s face it, he’d eked some serious mileage out of the God thing. Getting that old guy to drag his son up a mountain? Cool! Smiting of the first born? Yes! Turning the errant into pillars of salt? Fun! Once upon a time it had been all burning bushes, plagues of frogs and partings of the seas, scaring the living daylights out of his creations by booming down in scary voices and handing stone tablets out of the sky. Now he was barely allowed to make a parking space become suddenly available.
It was all Mr B’s fault. The Crackdown, he called it. One joke too many. Just because of a few harmless pranks.
The guy had zero sense of humour.
So it was all rinky-dink stuff now, stuff that he could slip past B, who had taken to watching him like a hawk. Could life get any worse?
Bob ground his teeth. He’d have to be stealthy, devise a cunning plan. Adrenalin inspired a series of unworkably complex schemes. Mr B would be expecting something along his usual lines – a gigantic chimera or a dragon. So he’d confound him. Become a cat, a stray cat, a stray tomcat. Lucy would adopt him. And then, one night, while he lay on her knee rumbling with contentment, he’d lift her skirt with his paw …
Or he’d put Mr B off the scent. Transform himself into something small and innocuous. A spider. An ant. Eck! He’d disguise himself as Eck and steal away to seek his beloved. No one would ever suspect Eck of anything. Reaching Lucy, he would clamber up on to her lap and she would caress him gently, while his long sticky tongue explored her …
The thought depressed him. Who’d want to have sex with Eck anyway? Depressing little creature.
I know, thought Bob. I’ll invite her to dinner!
It was so straightforward. He snorted with contempt. Mr B would never think of a plan like that. He, however, was God, and God was perfectly capable of writing to his beloved, a simple note requesting her presence at a designated time and place. He thought for a moment. They could always meet at the zoo, at closing time. Easy as pie. They would meet at the exit to the zoo and they would have a meal, and then she would take him back to her apartment where they would gaze into each other’s eyes and hold hands and touch lips and possibly, with a little luck and a following wind, indulge in a few rounds of incredibly romantic rumpy pumpy ding dong merrily on high.
This was exactly the sort of situation Mr B should be working on day and night for him, facilitating. And he could do it too. Bob knew that it was easily within his capabilities. He’d know exactly what to write in a note that might be slipped into a mailbox or under a door, which door to slip it under, what paper to use, what tone to take. So why didn’t he? He did what Bob asked (reluctantly, and with a good deal of foot-dragging), but what good was that? Bob hated asking. Take the initiative, he wanted to shout. Think about what might make me happy for a change, then do it as a surprise. Asking all the time was such a pain.
Dear Lucy (read the note). He paused for a long moment. Dear Lucy. He tapped the pen on the table. Dear Lucy was a good clear start. Not Dearest Lucy. No, short was better. Short and to the point. Dear Lucy. He thought for a minute. Please meet me at the exit to the zoo at closing time next Tuesday. Yours sincerely, Bob.
As an afterthought, he added, Remember me? I’m the guy who helped you walk the llama.
He read it to Eck, who confirmed it as a great literary masterpiece.
Bob sat back, delighted. What woman could resist an invitation from God written in so persuasive a manner? There was authority, majesty even, in the prose. Lucy couldn’t fail to notice.
The thought of seeing her again made him giddy. Was it possible that after all these years he had finally found a woman who would love him for his real true self? The him with emotions and feelings and needs beyond all that Supreme Ruler stuff? He licked the edge of the envelope, wrote ‘Lucy’ in big letters on the outside and gave it to Eck, who diligently padded off across town, slipped through the front gate of the zoo and under the door of the staff offices, placed it carefully inside Lucy’s locker, polished off the packet of custard creams and a jarful of instant coffee granules by the employee kettle and returned home.
So, that was that. Now it was dark. Nearly midnight. Bob threw himself down on his bed. If he went to bed now, he’d wake all refreshed and renewed, bright as a button in time to meet his beloved after work next Tuesday.
On a whim, he nipped out to check on her, proud of holding back the steamroller of his love. He’d show his mother and that annoying Mr B that he was perfectly capable of having a proper relationship with a human.
Hours later, the sensation of Lucy’s silky skin still lingered on his fingertips. How on earth was he supposed to sleep with so much anticipation churning in his brain, so much longing in his soul? Not to mention the terror of wondering whether his mother might suddenly ambush him again, demanding he accompany her to a game of tiddlywinks, at which he would lose his planet/sanity/the shirt off his back. He summoned Eck and put him on guard duty.
Bob tossed and turned for several long seconds before he slept. Eck stayed awake for the rest of the night, thinking about being dead.
17
Mr B received notice that his resignation had been received. Thank you for your correspondence, read the standardized letter. We accept your request for termination with regret, and shall respond to your application for a new job by the end of your notice period. Some bureaucrat had scribbled July 14th in the blank space below.
He stared at the bit of paper. Was that it? All the worry and careful planning, the excruciating care with which he’d made his decision, drafted and organized his thoughts … for a form letter? He would have experienced more outrage had he not been so relieved.
/> He rechecked the date on the form. The fourteenth of July. Less than six weeks. Not so long in the scheme of eternity.
Mr B dreamt of the planet he would go to next, a planet he could love, one that was orderly, sane and free of despair. But could he really leave? Could he simply fly off to some new challenge without a care in the world, shouting a last ‘So long, suckers!’ to all the oppressed species of Earth? Could he leave them to Bob with a clear conscience, with any sort of conscience at all? Had they even read his meticulous files, the catalogue of malpractice compiled across years of personal suffering? His letter had been a work of thorough documentation and well-reasoned pathos, driven by a keen (if he said so himself) intellectual rigour and a hopeful heart. Did anyone notice that Earth had been so mismanaged? Did anyone (but him) care? And what about his whales? Could he skip happily off without a backwards glance, leaving their fate to Bob?
He thought he probably could.
A glass of wine, a nice lunch of melted Gruyère on toast (the crusts for Eck), and he returned to work. There was a rhythm to the toil, a repetition that might have been soothing had the narrative not been so relentlessly grim: Babies and Battles, Brittle Bones and Baseball. (‘O merciful Lord in heaven, hear my prayer, let the opposing team contract a short-term, moderately debilitating illness that does not become evident until the seventh inning, O Lord, bad enough to allow us to win the game, the series and the championship without undue suspicion being cast in the matter of divine intervention, thank you very much, yours sincerely, etc., etc., amen.’)
The number of petitions loomed perilously close to infinite; the number of miracles Mr B could effect, pitifully low. His head hurt. Cancer. Concentration camps. Congo, Democratic Republic of, complete with exploitation by European settlers, relentless elimination of indigenous people, warlords and election irregularities, government corruption, famine, disease, ecological crises. And rape. Ninety-year-old women, one-month-old babies. Each day, a new crisis, a new massacre, a new threat of extinction, disease, internecine conflict, meteorological catastrophe.