Modern Gods. Nick Laird

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       CHAPTER 2

      The moment the students filed out of the classroom, Liz felt humiliated. She could never entirely shake the suspicion that they had been laughing at her moments before she entered, and then at best they seemed indifferent and at worst contemptuous through the long three hours that followed. The ideal of teaching was surely to produce something like a gravitational effect when one walked into the room. She’d certainly had dons like that: dry, thickly draped women with hair in retentive buns; or Professor Paulson himself, who would walk up the lecture hall to a silence that gathered and gathered until only the sound of his footsteps ascending to the podium were heard. But lately Liz found herself forced to the conclusion that she was of a different stripe, the kind of teacher who talks fast because she’s not entirely sure of her facts, directs questions to the logorrheics to waste time, and forgets her grading, or forgets to do it, and whose lesson plan is three lines long and most weeks consists of reading out chapters of her own far-from-finished book. She couldn’t get her act together. Although the classroom engendered panic, it was never quite enough to spur her into useful action. Now she closed the door behind the last shuffling backpack, fell into one of their empty seats, and at once opened her Gmail, looking for relief, distraction, and read: LIZ: URGENT DISASTER which seemed an accurate if brutal definition.

      Liz, darling, it’s Margo—

      It’s been so long! Too long!

      I still think back to the Myth project with such affection and such pride and I’ve been hoping to work with you again for the longest time. I heard you were teaching in America so I hope this e-mail finds you happy and well and ensconced in life stateside. But not *too* happy and not *too* well! Because I need your help!

      A somebody called Charlotte Taylor-Anderson had been lined up to present The Latest of the Gods—a documentary about a religious movement in New Ulster, an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea, for The State of Grace, a special season on religion the BBC were doing—but this Taylor-Anderson had just broken her back on an artificial ski slope in Perthshire. Margo had an experienced cameraman lined up who’d done an Attenborough series, the permits were in place, but she lacked a presenter. They were meant to shoot next week. Would Liz consider stepping in?

      Several PDFs were attached, including a newspaper clipping from the Sydney Morning Herald, “A New God in New Ulster,” written by Stan Merriman. Liz skimmed the article. A cargo cult prophet named Belef had started a movement called the Story, which merged some of the local religions with Christianity, and threw in a bit of political independence. The missionaries were all stirred up. The most surprising thing seemed to be that Belef was a woman.

      Could she do this? She’d have to go back to the apartment and get hiking gear and waterproofs, more contact lenses, a couple of books—maybe William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, and there was that Peter Lawrence one on cargo cults. She opened Google Earth and called up New Ulster. Curved like a scimitar. Entirely green. A chaos of peaks and valleys. When she tried to zoom in, none of it, not an inch, appeared to be mapped.

      The excitement propelled her effortlessly along, all the way home, until she reached the front door of her own studio. She knocked, got no answer, and began to look for her keys. She jiggled away the loyalty key rings for various pharmacies, opened the door, and look, there was a man she didn’t know standing in her kitchenette. He wore a green T-shirt that had the words “Some Crappy Band” printed on it, purple underpants, and one red sock—the other foot was bare and long toed and dirty looking. Clearly not a burglar. It occurred to Liz that she had for once occasioned something like a sudden atmospheric change—her presence used up all available oxygen. Atlantic, her useless dog, butted at her shins and whined. Joel was also standing—also wearing a T-shirt and pants—on the far side of the bed, breathless, saying, “Liz, hi, I didn’t—this is Jeff.”

      “Okay.”

      Liz said it very slowly, testing the weight of the word on the room. Nobody replied. Joel was for some reason on the verge of smirking. She turned towards Some Crappy Band.

      “Hello.”

      “How’s it going?”

      The man in the kitchenette spoke with no embarrassment or shame. Really quite cheerful, considering the situation he now found himself in. There was some disjunct going on here. Tall and freckled and milky-skinned with light brown eyes, somehow even more Joel’s opposite than she was, gender aside. A farm boy with that fleshy softness. Innocent as butter. And a dark wet coin on the front of his purple briefs.

      Joel said, “Weren’t you going straight to Newark?”

      There was no need to answer this, but she found herself doing so: “I got an e-mail. I’ve been asked to present a TV show … in Papua New Guinea.”

      Joel was nodding foolishly.

      “Amazing,” he whispered across the bed.

      Atlantic butted and pawed at Liz’s knees.

      The man said, “A TV show? Cool. Very cool. And very cool of you to let Joel crash here.”

      “Oh. Well. I am nothing if not cool.”

      What was she saying? She felt her fury being ousted by some kind of ironic pose. And there was an inconvenient pressing in her bladder that was now a matter of some urgency. In her tiny bathroom, only a rattan door separated her from the rest of the studio, she turned on the tap to camouflage the sound of her ablutions. But now she couldn’t hear them. Were they whispering? She stopped the tap, and waited. Nothing. She turned it on again.

      Crap Band. She’d seen him before, at the SoulCycle class a few weeks ago. He’d worn a green, deep-cut sleeveless vest and sat on the other side of Joel. When Joel dropped his water bottle Crap Band picked it up. It was Liz’s first time and she had not returned. But Joel now went every other day to hear Madison shout, “The body does what the mind tells it”—which had never been Liz’s experience. She sat on the toilet and gripped the edge of the basin in front, pissed while staring dumbly at her hands, the way Atlantic pissed, as if it were happening to somebody else. Like the end of this relationship. Apparently unfolding right now, though it somehow felt like it was happening to somebody else.

      She’d first met Joel in the lobby of the Standard hotel. A young Asian man sat eating by himself nearby, facing a wall. He wore a black tie and a white shirt, and she’d realized he worked here and was on his break. Widely spaced eyes and a tiny bud-mouth, grinning intensely at her. Then he was not there—then materialized again from behind a very tall black woman in a silver lamé body suit. He was coming towards her, weaving between tables. Shorter than she might reasonably have hoped for but proportionate. Ran a hand through his fringe and squared his shoulders, which endeared. She’d studied the melt of ice in her glass and swirled the blunted cubes around with the straw. Here, here he was. The most marvelous cheekbones and thin mocking eyes.

      “You’ve really got to stop staring at me,” he had said.

      All delightful. But beginnings always are. They tell you nothing. It’s the end of the affair that brings the real information.

      Washing СКАЧАТЬ