“So you want to be a dad for the holiday gifts?”

“Well, not just the holiday gifts,” Brad said. “There’s lots of reasons to get married. Like, maybe I could marry a nice, God-fearing woman and get into heaven on her frequent-flier miles, y’know?”

“You really think there’s any chance you’ll land a nice, God-fearing woman?”

“Nah. Not without some sorta epiphany-type conversion on my part,” Brad said. “But a dude can dream. Maybe I can get a God-fearing mail-order bride. Or do you call ‘em wed-by-web now? Seems like mail-order is kinda outdated, or should be.”

“They probably need to establish rules on buzzwords and how they evolve,” Marion said. “I’ve never understood why some get modernized and others don’t.”

“We could do it like how Sweden, or the Netherlands, or one of those places does names,” Brad said. “Establish an official, government-sanctioned list. Only allow use of properly vetted buzzwords. That’d stop those jackasses who try to use ‘internet’ as a verb, assuming they can read.

“But, look, we’re getting away from the important thing. See, the important thing is, before I die, I hope to get some of my body baptized, like, just my head, so that maybe, in the afterlife, I can just be a flying head. That’d be cool.”

“You’d be sort of dependent on the whole wings thing,” Marion said. “If it turns out angels have to walk, you’d be in serious trouble.”

“But I always thought wings were, like, part and parcel with angelhood? That’d totally spoil my plans, if I had to be stuck-where-I-was head-dude for all eternity. Maybe I’ll do my head and one hand, and I can be like a Mr. Potato Head where you stick the hand on the bottom instead of sticking out of the side. Sorta pull myself along by the fingers. I’d still be the talk of the town, but I wouldn’t be so, y’know, doomed to an eternity of unmoving boredom.”

“I don’t know if anyone who has been ordained would be willing to only baptize part of you, anyway,” Marion said. “Sounds blasphemous.”

“I know, that’s why I’ll have to find a minister with a sense of humor,” Brad said. “Bound to be one around somewhere. Plus, if I make it to, say, a deathbed, then they’ll put up with a lot of nuttiness on my part to make me happy. Guess I should scout around for a wacky church before I hit the deathbed stage, though. Don’t think the Christ on Call dude is gonna hook me up there at the hospital. He’ll be way too vanilla church for my ideas.”

“Yes. Vanilla church. What with trying to give peace to the dying. Console the living. Very dull stuff.”

“Exactly,” Brad said. “Dude like that, he isn’t gonna think wide-open religion, y’know?”

“I don’t think that’s what most of his supplicants look for,” Marion said.

“Man. Bustin’ loose with the two-dollar word and everything,” Brad said. “Good word, though. Meaty. Sounds like what it is. Sometimes English just nails it, y’know?”

“And other times it doesn’t.”

“Yeah, man. Kumquat. Or maybe delve. I dig that kumquat is, like, a noun, and nouns get imported from all sorts of goofy places. But delve? Sounds like something kinky elves do behind closed doors. I’m sure there’s other, sillier words, but delve seems silly enough for now. Words never show up when I want them to, anyhow. I’ll think of a thousand way-dumber things the moment I set foot in the hall. My mind is a perverse place, yo.”

“I’ve noticed,” Marion said. She seemed vaguely amused as she said it, so Brad took her comment as a form of flirtation. Why not? Failure was just a success waiting to be looked at with enough unbridled optimism.

“Hey, like yours isn’t,” Brad said. “I’m just honest about my perversions. I say what everyone else is thinking.”

“The limb you’re on is getting skinny,” Marion said. “Assuming it hasn’t already snapped away from the tree altogether.”

“More bruising,” Brad said. “Life likes to do that to me. You’d think I’d grow thicker skin. Mostly I think God is tenderizing me for the bar-b-que. So I guess you can see where I figure on ending up.”

“Wow. That’s one way of looking at hell. Not sure if it’s one I would’ve chosen,” Marion said. “You’re really dead-set on blaspheming every way you can, aren’t you?”

“Pretty much,” Brad said. “I mean, I won’t do any of the really gay stuff, like reciting Bible passages backwards or worshipping graven images. Coveting my neighbor’s goat, then slaughtering it on a dark shrine, then slathering my naked body with its fresh-spilt, dark-consecrated blood, probably while singing a tune by the Monkees.”

“Why the Monkees?”

“I dunno, man. It just feels right. I mean, you could see it, yeah? ‘Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees, people say we worship the Dark Lord … but we’re too busy dancing around in goat’s blood, to put any sacrificial flint knives dowwww-wwwn.’ Maybe not perfectly catchy, but I think it works.”

“Really, Brad, I’ve never given goat sacrifice much thought.”

“See, that’s where you went wrong,” Brad said. “Just because you don’t plan on doing a thing doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be thought about. The world would be a much better place if more people spent more time thinking about things they’d never do, rather than obsessing so much about the things they’ve already done. Be a more creative place. Probably happier. Way, way more interesting, for sure. We’d all have something new to talk about. Gotta spend those daily fifteen thousand somehow.”

“Words?” Marion asked.

“Yeah. Heard somewhere, think it was maybe on NPR, about this study, showed that everyone talked about the same amount every day. Like everyone sorta had a speech budget, and if they hadn’t spent it, they felt talkative. Dunno if I agree with it, though. Most days, I don’t think I spend mine. And while I know I’m weird, I don’t think I’m thatweird.”

“You don’t seem to have any problem making a conversation,” Marion said. “Even if you go off on some odd tangents here and there.”

“With some people, sure,” Brad said. “But overall, I prefer being a hermit. Only like talking to certain folks, y’know? And if they’re not around, it isn’t like words start bubbling up out of me, like sulfur from a fumarole, which is what you’d expect if that study was right. Always sorta thought the perfect job for me would be some kind of deep-space voyage where they needed an astronaut to be alone for a year, because that wouldn’t drive me nuts. Would most people, but I think I could handle it, provided I had at least a little room to move around, anyhow. I could see getting a little stir-crazy if the capsule was too small. Those walls would probably start to close in eventually. Claustrophobia, and all that.”

“I don’t think you’re necessarily on the right career path for astronaut,” Marion said.

“Well, yeah, there is that. I’d need NASA to have, like, open tryouts. Probably drop the athletic portion of the tests. Maybe institute some kinda jumbo-sized space suit. I don’t see why you hafta be able to run on a treadmill to hang out in an orbiter, anyhow. It’s not like the thing is pedal-powered. They should do the g-test dealie, and that’s it. Maybe test to see if you like astronaut ice cream, which I do. See if you can work the zero-g toilet. Y’know, the important stuff.”

“You don’t think that’d make all the double-PhD guys with 2,000 flight hours a little angry?”

“Sure, they might get kinda testy,” Brad said. “They’re overachievers. Why wouldn’t they get testy? Testy, combative, and competitive is sorta in their blood. But that doesn’t mean they should have a monopoly on space, man. Monopolies are bad. I’m an old-fashioned socialist that way. Free market only works when it’s open to competition. Heck, maybe we need to break up NASA. Make, like, four or five smaller space agencies that all compete with each other. See which one can launch the most dudes into space. Dudettes, too, of course. Cut back on the way-
obsessive safety stuff. You don’t see anyone grounding cars each time some jackass wraps himself around a tree, so why ground the shuttle every time a little hiccup blows it up in mid-flight? There’s safe, and then there’s silly. Anything which uses rocket fuel for gas is gonna explode periodically. It’s the nature of the beast.”

“If I was an astronaut, I don’t think I’d want you as my safety director,” Marion said. “They know what they do is risky. The idea is, they still want the best shot possible of coming home in one piece. You seem a little blasé about the whole thing.”

“Nah, man, I’m just a realist,” Brad said. “Maybe I’m kinda Soviet in my attitude. More results-oriented. Gotta send some eggs to a fiery death if you wanna make an omelet. Not, like, on purpose … except for the dead dogs. But it’s kinda inevitable. You’re trying to do something great. Great things are often dangerous. You do them anyhow, because they’re great.”

“I’ll bet the ‘fiery death’ speech would go over great at an astronaut’s funeral,” Marion said. “Applause, acclamation, and you’d finally bring peace to the bereaved. Maybe you should be one of those, what’d you call it? Christ on Call? You seem to have a real aptitude for giving solace.”

“Okay, so maybe I was a little flippant,” Brad said. “Geez, man. Cut a guy some slack. I was just making a point, really. Not saying what I actually thought. Or, uh, not saying what I actually thought in a way that made me sound really good. How about that?”

“Fine, I surrender,” Marion said. “You’re no worse than the rest of us. You’re just more likely to speak honestly than most people. Sort of a hollow moral victory on your part, but I don’t think I feel like getting into too deep a debate of your moral qualms.”

“Qualms, there’s a good word,” Brad said. “I mean, I dunno if it sounds like what it is, but it’s a great word. Wonder where it comes from? Sounds Arabic, but that’s true of a lot of ‘Q’ words. Those Arabs sure dug on the Q, man – that and zero. Guess they were pissed off they missed out on ‘O’ and made up for it with his two buddies.”

“Brad, don’t take this the wrong way, but you spend too much time thinking about certain things.”

“I’m kinda OCD, yo,” Brad said. “Just the way I’m wired. I’m just glad I don’t, like, count things, or do the rocking back and forth deal. There but for the grace of God and stuff, y’know? I’m always kinda amazed at how many times I sorta dare the Almighty to hit the Smite button, the fact that I haven’t been zapped into some kinda persistent vegetative state by now. Or turned into one of those twizzle-stick dudes.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not. It’s way offensive,” Brad said. “I really need to edit myself, yo. But God knows what I mean, so that’s, like, 25,000 more frequent-flier miles I’ll need to get past the gates. Yay.”

“Why not try to be a better person?”

“Because, that’d be wussing out,” Brad said. “I take it as a matter of pride that I don’t knuckle under, simply because He’s omniscient and omnipotent. Plus, I dunno if I dig that, anyhow. I figure the omnipotence thing is possible, but I sorta doubt the omniscient part. If I were omnipotent, first thing I’d do is put in some selective memory elimination. Otherwise, that gig would suck. Pretty hard. But like I said, so long as you’re all-powerful, you could fix it. Just make it so you didn’t know everything you knew. That sorta existence would be tolerable, at least.

“But, main point is, I thumb my nose at the universe because I refuse to give in to fear. If I get punished, I get punished. I won’t pull my punches just for a little eternal bliss, or just to avoid a bit of damnation. I especially won’t just put on a happy face for the world. I mean, the Dude knows, right? So why lie to all my fellow condemned, when it’s what I think that’s gonna condemn me? If I’m going to hell anyhow, it may as well be for what I say, rather than what I held back.”

“Thinking better thoughts is beyond you?”

“I really don’t know,” Brad said. He looked up at Marion, realizing that he’d been staring at the exhausted carpet for a while now. He frowned. “I’ve tried, seriously, but I was raised a cynic. That’s hard to shake. And whatever the commandments might say, I personally figure cynicism is just as bad as any other of the popular sins. So I am, at heart, a lousy person, at least if I use any kind of absolute standard. I mean, I’m not as lousy as some people. I don’t torture puppies, or set babies on fire. But still, I’ve got room for a lifetime of improvement, and I don’t seem interested in making any, so I’m pretty much boned.”

“I have a feeling you try to do the right thing more often than you admit,” Marion said.

“Maybe,” Brad said. “Thing is, I always wonder at my own motivations. Do I do something nice just to be nice, or do I do it so people will think of me as a nice guy?”

“That’s an old argument,” Marion said, “and I believe the people who started it were basically evil at heart and didn’t want to feel bad about it. They saw that most of the people around them did nice things for each other, while they didn’t, so they decided that all those nice deeds must have had ulterior motives. It’s a great justification for being a nasty, self-centered person, if that’s what you’d like to be.”

“I don’t think I’m totally self-centered,” Brad said. “And I guess I can take some comfort in that I’m not such a cynic that I think everyone does nice things just for rewards. It’s just me I worry about. Like, do I avoid doing the wrong thing because I’m afraid I’ll get caught, or because I know the difference between right and wrong? It’s really hard for me to decide what I’d do if I had the opportunity to do something evil and knew I wouldn’t get caught. A while ago, I would. But I think maybe I’ve improved since then. I, like, might even be a better person than I was. Maybe. I kinda wonder.”

“You might have to get back to work, Brad,” Marion said. “It’s nearly lunchtime. People get annoyed if too many people see them sneaking out early for lunch. If you’re in here, they’ll see you, which means you’ll see them. They might hold it against you.”

It was nearly eleven. This extended lunch thing had long bothered Brad, who seldom left the office at all until he went home. Heck, he rarely left his own office, preferring to eat in it rather than go to the break room to eat.

“What’s the deal with that, anyway?” Brad asked. “The two-and-a-half-hour lunches, where they sign the book when they get back, saying they were gone for forty-five minutes? I mean, from the same people who show up at eight, sign in, then take off for an hour to go eat breakfast at McDonald’s? It’s like this place isn’t work – it’s just home base in some weird game of tag, and all they have to do is tap it every couple of hours to stay ‘live.’ Is that a black thing or something?”

Even as the words left his mouth, some desperate part of his brain was trying to leap out through his eyes, grab them from the air, and stuff them somewhere before Marion heard them.

She turned towards him. Her features were hard. He’d never seen her mad like this. It was about what he expected.

“A black thing?” Marion said. Brad stood up, hunched over, trying to somehow suck his entire body into his stomach. Some primal desire was kicking in, making him want to curl up into a giant, doughy ball on the floor of the reception area. “Have you lost your damn mind? Where do you get off talking to me like that?”

“I didn’t mean it, honest, man,” Brad mumbled, cheeks cherry red. “I don’t even know why I said it. I don’t know where those words came from. They weren’t mine, man. I wouldn’t ever do that.”

“You just did.”

“No, I mean, yeah, I know I did. But, I mean, I would never mean that. I’m not like that. I’ve got lots of flaws. Like, if I’d said something sexual to you, then that’d be a Freudian slip, you know? But not something racist. I’m not racist. I know I’m not. I’ve got lots and lots of flaws. I know that. And I know I’m not much of a person. But I don’t do racism. That’s one of the only things I don’t do. It’s one of the few things I’m proud of.”

“You need to leave, Brad. Now.”

Brad shuffled out, his head still buried beneath his shoulders, his whole head turning red now as blood rushed to his face and spread from there. Marion’s jaw was clenching as she turned to her computer and typed something with rapid, vicious keystrokes. Brad wondered briefly if there was some sort of discipline process in place to handle racist outbursts, and if so, what sorts of forms and/or HR department counseling he’d soon face.

Why couldn’t he have said something less inflammatory, like, “Would you like to see my penis? If I jump up and down, it looks sorta like a sea urchin during an earthquake.” Or he could’ve even said, “I’d really like to fondle your breasts. They’re perky as hell.” Anything but what he’d said. The only thing worse would’ve been to drop the N-word.

Somehow, he made it to the door and slunk on through it. He kept his head down and poured on the speed. He had to get away, far away, from Marion and the reception area. He couldn’t face her. He didn’t want her to have to face him, either. The less she saw him, the less she’d be reminded of what he’d just said.

Marion was now off-limits. Hell, he couldn’t even fantasize about her. He was so embarrassed, he couldn’t even face her in the privacy of his own brain.