Your weekly irregular dose of fabulous1 fiction
Week #24 - Amateur
Monday, 09 Jun 2008 00:38
In theory, week 24 marks the halfway point for FFF since the plan is to stop (or at least slow down) when NaNoWriMo kicks off next November. However, since I've been a slacker, the last story would be #46 or #47. But perhaps at some point I'll get caught up.
The idea for this one plunked into my head on the way to work one day, while reading Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody.
I've decided the priest in the story is the same one who got one line in the Bigfoot story. Maybe someday he'll get a starring role.
Amateur
Tamara Marquardson sat in the Second Cup on Portage Avenue reading a novel, Volkswagen Blues by Jacques Poulin . She was the sort of person who, when she read, became so engrossed in the words that it typically took a bomb blast to shake her out of her focus. Her mom would usually have to physically shake her when it was time for supper. The coffee she'd bought and sipped twice sat on her table, cold and neglected.
So even though she was sitting by the large bay window at the front of the store, and faced the street, she didn't notice the crowd of morning commuters walking on the sidewalk who, almost in unison, came to a sudden stop. Mouths were agape. Some of them pointed upwards and then they broke into a run toward Portage and Main. A moment later another group ran by, and then another. The blur of their motion didn't twig Tamara's peripheral vision in the slightest. Soon, the other patrons in the coffee shop, and one of the baristas ran out onto the street as well. The crowd that was gathering on the streets had expanded down to the Second Cup, two blocks west of Portage and Main so they didn't have to run very far.
Tamara was finally jolted out of her book when one of the customers banged into her chair in his haste to get out of the coffee shop. She looked up to cuss the the guy out, but saw the crowd gathering on the street. Wanting to know what was up, Tamara finished the paragraph she was on, and then packed up her things and then left the store to join the crowd.
"So I guess all I'm trying to say," God told the crowd, "is just be nice to each other."
God appeared on the gigantic television screen that had recently been installed on the Global office building at Portage and Main to play advertisements. Tamara and the others would eventually learn that God was simultaneously broadcasting from every television set, and every radio, on Earth. For the duration of His talk, or sermon as some would later refer to it, every video on Youtube was God of addressing humanity.
"I know this isn't My traditional way to appear. But this isn't about tradition. In fact, it's just the opposite."
For a brief moment, a flicker, when she'd stepped out the door onto the street, Tamara had thought it was a prank, a joke of some kind. But immediately after, she knew it was real. That He was real. Later on, people would try to describe what they saw, how He had appeared. But no one could put it into words. God had appeared to each individual as they needed Him to, a talk show pundit would offer as an explanation.
"So this is the thing. You've been doing the organized religion for a long time, but I wanted to let you know that it's okay if you don't. I mean, if you like going to church, feel free, but I'm not going to be upset with you if you don't. To emphasize My earlier point: just be nice to each other. That's it, that's all, really."
A murmur ran through the crowd as people absorbed God's message.
"Oh, I just wanted to mention one more thing before I go. I'm not going to tell you not to drive SUVs. You're not going to go to Hell if you do. There is no Hell, by the by. That'll be important to remember as well. But at your current rate of consumption, factoring in increased growth, you have just over fifteen years of oil left. I would guess -- and I'm pretty good at this sort of thing -- that the last of the extractable oil will be pumped out on August 17th, 2023. At 4:17, Greenwich Mean Time. So, you know, maybe keep that in mind. I guess that's it. But if you only take away one thing from our little talk it's: be nice to each other."
The television screen went blank.
Tamara knocked on the door to her brother's apartment. She liked to go over once or twice each week to cook supper for him; their mother would kill her if she let her brother get scurvy or something. She waited and listened. She could hear the sound of movement inside and a thump.
She knocked again, louder. "Vincent? Are you in there?"
"Oh, just a second."
The deadbolt was turned with a clunk and Vincent opened the door.
"Hey."
"Hey."
They looked at each other for a moment and then hugged.
"Crazy, huh?" Tamara said. "I don't even know what to think."
"Mom's called about two dozen times."
"I'm glad I don't have a cellphone."
Tamara stepped passed her brother into his apartment.
"What are you doing?"
There was a cardboard box and a stack of magazines on his coffee table.
"Hey, why don't you wait here while I tidy up."
She walked over to the table and turned to him, rolling her eyes. "Penthouse, Vincent?"
"I'm getting rid of them. I was just packing them up to bring down to the dumpster when you knocked," Vincent rubbed his chin, "Although with His talk about SUVs, maybe I should recycle them instead of just chucking them out."
He picked up the magazine at the top of the stack and thumbed through it; Tamara averted her eyes.
"This is glossy paper, though. Can you recycle glossy paper? Christ, I can never remember." He covered his mouth with his hand, eyes wide.
"I don't think God cares if you read porn, Vincent. If He thought it was important, I'm sure He'd have said something."
Vincent shook his head. "I'm not going to take any chances, Tam. He's real. Like, really real. He's probably watching us right now."
The phone rang and they both jumped. Vincent picked up the portable handset, which was on the coffee table, beside the the stack of Penthouse magazines.
"Hi, mom. Tamara's here. Yes, you were right mom. I'm sure we both appreciate you making us go to church when we were little."
Tamara sprinkled food flakes into her fish tank, the dozen or so neon tetras that inhabited the tank raced to the surface for their supper.
"I dunno guys, what do you think of this outfit? Is my top too colourful? Maybe you're only supposed to wear earth tones to a prayer circle?"
She'd been invited by her supervisor; three or four of her coworkers were also going and it seemed like a bit of a career limiting move to stay home. She grabbed the sponge she used to remove slime from the tank and began to clean the glass on the inside. The tetras ignored her and concentrated on the flakes floating at the top of the tank.
"I should be more enthusiastic, shouldn't I? I mean, we know He exists now. It's a settled question. Except for those really diehard atheists who insist it was all a mass hallucination. But shouldn't everything be different? I don't know. It feels lame to go to the office every day and do the same old paperwork. Yeah, I know. It was always lame. But it feels extra pointless."
The fish were full or simply bored with eating and resumed their patrols around the tank. The remaining flakes began to drift slowly down, where Tamara's pleco would eventually clean them up.
"And I feel guilty for not wanting to go to Cynthia's prayer circle. Everyone's all into it, but God never told we had to pray and stuff."
She glanced at her dvd player and saw the time.
"Well I better get going," she tapped the glass of the tank and the tetras scattered in all directions. "Thanks for listening, guys."
Tamara was in a diner downtown. A few minutes earlier she'd been on her way home from the prayer session, but a sudden craving for poutine had overtaken her. She sat in a booth with her plate, trying to savour her food, but not be so slow as to let the gravy cool too much.
"Five," came a voice from behind her. "Can you believe it? Five people. And two of them were reporters wanting to ask me questions about how I was dealing with the crisis."
Tamara turned around, confused, to see who was talking and found a priest in the booth beside hers; he was talking on a cellphone.
"It's ridiculous. A crisis? How can it be a crisis if He shows up and talks to us all? If anything we should be smug that we were right all along after all. Well more or less. Yes, yes. The devil in the details. I get the joke. Anyway, listen, my coffee's getting cold, I going to go. Talk to you later Marty."
He snapped the phone shut, put it down on the table beside the salt and pepper shakers, and then tugged his white collar out and put it on the table, too, before unbuttoning the top collar of his shirt.
"I guess it's kind of a rough time for you guys, huh?"
The priest scratched the bridge of his nose and responded, "You wouldn't think it would be, would you?"
"I heard a bit about it on the news. Not many people coming out to church these days."
He smeared a french fry around in a pool of ketchup on his plate, but didn't eat it.
"The Church's official policy is that we still provide a necessary resource, to interpret His words. But people seem to be really taking His 'you don't need to go to church' statement to heart. They seemed to have a bit more trouble with 'thou shall not kill' and 'thou shall not steal' all this time, though."
Tamara patted the priest's arm. One of her previous jobs had been working in the classifieds department at the Free Press, before Craigslist had eliminated her position. Disintermediated, the career councillor had termed it. She knew what it was like to be the middle man who got cut out.
"Maybe it just means that God trusts us enough to let us decide things for ourselves, you know?"
"Well He could have given us a heads up or something," the priest heaved a sigh. "I'm sorry, I'm just not at my best right now."
"I'm sure things will work out in the end," Tamara told him.
She set the Jacques Poulin novel down on the table in the coffee shop. Tamara had stuffed the book into her bag that day, two weeks ago, and forgotten about it. But she'd taken the day off today and now that she was done the novel, she thought she would walk down to the Winnipeg Art Gallery. She didn't know what was showing, hadn't been there in years.
"I don't want to be one of those people," she'd told her brother on the phone the previous night, referring to people who couldn't stop talking about who their lives had changed, how they were doing things differently.
She didn't want to be one of them, but she had to admit things were a little different, now. She'd no longer feel guilty skipping going into work so she could finish a book.
Tamara got up and walked to the counter. "One more cup before I go, I think." She gave the barista a warm smile and a decent tip.
2 responses to "Week #24 - Amateur "
Erinn the Bold wrote:
Monday, 09 Jun 2008 09:51
I'm starting to feel guilty about not providing criticism and just saying I liked the story, but I really just liked the story. Any story that ends with a decent tip is okay by me.Diana wrote:
Monday, 09 Jun 2008 21:49
I liked the story, but I thought that it felt like you missed a section when you talked about going to prayer group and then skipped to the after. Maybe some awkward encounter.
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