Good to Be God by Tibor Fischer Read Free Book Online Page B

through all this? All this… and all this… all this… trampling?
    Unluckily for me, deep down, I’d like a world with a smattering of justice.
    In the bathroom mirror, I inspect my face. To regular observers of Tyndale Corbett there’s no doubt he’s cracking up. “Portrait of a man about to go pop” could be the caption. I plant myself on the toilet in an attempt to jettison the hopelessness.
    Napalm’s waiting for me in the kitchen. “How about some coffee? I do great waffles.” I have to laugh.
    41

    TIBOR FISCHER
    “Thanks. But I have a meeting.”
    I need to get plotting. A full stomach is the best start to plotting. I get in my car to locate an expensive breakfast. As I hit the ignition, a black youth, stripped to the waist, cycles past, handlebars unused, because he’s using his hands to snort something. I admire him because he’s having fun. The bike is so shoddy it couldn’t get stolen, and his trousers are rags, but he’s relaxed. It’s all about attitude. It really is. If you don’t care, you don’t care.
    On my way over to Ocean Drive, I again briefly consider suicide, but as I tuck into my eggs benedict in the sun, my spine reforms. I need to draw up a business plan for becoming God.
    How? How fast? How best? Should I concentrate exclusively on getting divine, or should I make some money? Even with a liberal application of frugality my funds won’t last more than a few months.
    I have to get on with it.
    At the table on my right a very ogleworthy woman gets up.
    She’s mid-thirties, a soupçon of time-inflicted sourness, but still confidently publicizing her breasts. She has the same travails as Napalm: doubt, betrayal, loneliness, dry skin. But she’s travelling first class. This is what is so unfair. She may die alone and miserable, but it’s unlikely. I’ve known some beautiful women who were unhappy, some inexplicably unhappy, but I haven’t known any who were alone or poor.
    Fumbling with her purse, she spills some coins which spiral all over the ground. I retrieve two quarters for her that have rolled to my feet. It’s a great opportunity for conversation. We could meet up somewhere for a drink or a meal, get to know each other, hit it off, tumble into bed; but then where would we be?
    Without paying, I smile and walk off.
    42

    GOOD TO BE GOD
    G
    Finding work isn’t so easy.
    Without a work permit, the choice isn’t so great. And even if I can get some fake ID, it always takes time to find a job. But I want to be doing something. I know how easy it is to drown in yourself.
    In a T-shirt shop selling rubbish to tourists, I almost get work, but the missing staff member turns up just as the cash register is being explained to me. After two days of tramping around. I find myself in a small shack on an unfashionable section of the beach, selling refreshments.
    I open up, feeling good. The weather is overcast and, for Miami, cool. I’m in charge of three tubs of ice cream, some water, coke and some burgers and buns. I have five dollars in change and was left by the owner, a Mr Ansari, to whom I gave a deposit of fifty dollars, with the injunction that if I cheated him he’d find me and kill me.
    There aren’t many people around. After forty minutes, a stubby woman with a five-year-old child turns up. That I only have three flavours galls her. She’s ugly, and I’ve noticed this with the ugly, because they’ve had so much shit, they tend to go to one extreme or the other; either they become very jolly, or they don’t.
    On top of that, there is nothing more ruthless than a mother with a small child. This is a working mother, on her day off, swindled by the weather. Exasperated about the lack of flavours.
    After consulting her kid, she asks for some pistachio.
    I reach for the new tub; opening a new tub is strangely pleasurable. I reach for the scoop, and then encounter a problem.
    The ice cream is hard, completely immune to the scoop. Even with straight-from-the-freezer tubs I