Augie's

I ran into this guy sitting on a stool at the bar in Augie's, on Broadway. He was a pretty ordinary looking guy, I guess. What drew my attention was the jacket; it was black, but it looked like it had...well, stars in it. Whenever he shifted his position, these little points of light would shift also-not enough to remain still, but enough to be disconcerting. I signaled for another tequila sunrise (look, it's not your drink, okay?) and maneuvered onto the stool next to him.

He turned his head to nod at me as I sat down and placed my glass on the bartop. I smiled at him, and turned to smile briefly at the tender as she swept my glass away to the end of the bar and her dispensers. The man with the jacket turned his attention back to the bar, where I noticed he was tracing patterns on the finish with the condensation from his glass. I couldn't tell what he was drinking. The jacket, on closer examination, was even more maddening-it looked like it could simply be a very rich velour-type fabric, but the points were still there, if fuzzier. And they still shifted to compensate for his motions.

I took my glass from the tender as she passed, and turned to him. "That's a heck of a jacket. What's it made of, if I'm not prying?"

He turned to me and grinned. "It's daegath fabric. It's made from a velour-type fabric with strings interwoven into it."

"Strings?" I was puzzled. I couldn't see any individual fibers in the jacket from where I sat, and told him so.

"No no. Not fiber strings, strings. Do you know any physics?" I admitted that I did not.

"Good." I thought he looked relieved. "Never mind. They're really only theoretical anyway."

"Theoretical? In your jacket?" I asked, beginning to realize how many drinks I'd had already. "How does one get a theoretical string into a jacket?"

"Easy." He grinned. "I'm God."

Oh boy. One of those. I surreptitiously tried to count the number of drink napkins beside him, and gave up when I realized that the server had been replacing them instead of leaving new ones. I turned a smile his way.

"God. Oh-kay. And how long have you been God?"

"Well, forever. I mean, as long as I can remember, and that pretty much covers everything, wouldn't you say?" He was still grinning, but in what I felt to be an innocuous fashion. No violence here. I hoped.

"Um, I guess it would. If you don't mind my asking, what are you-"

"- doing in a bar on the Upper West Side?" he finished for me. I nodded. "Well, the number of places I can hang out is getting more and more limited. Humans keep kicking me out of my favorite dives. I like Augie's. Its dark, and I haven't been kicked out of here yet."

"Oh, well," I said cheerfully, "don't worry. Gus over there"-I pointed- "he's the owner, and I know him. As long as you don't bug anyone, he won't bug you."

"No, not that way." He shook his head. "It's not so much being kicked out as being denied."

"Turned away?" I realized I was fuzzy on what he was saying. I decided it was becase I needed another drink, so I tapped the tender and pointed to the J&B on the wall behind her. She nodded and took my glass.

"Nope, not turned away." He turned to face me. "See, the only reason I can get away with stuff, like Creation, is that no-one has defined it to be impossible when I do it. As soon as someone defines something to be impossible, I can't do it anymore, at least if their proof doesn't have any real holes in it. You guys were my big mistake! I mean, I had everything made. I controlled everything, man. And then I got cocky. I said, well, Earth is neat and all, but it's kinda boring. I mean, if an elephant runs up against a cat, I know how each of them is going to react. What's the fun watching that? So I figured, what the heck, I'll try to create intelligence. And after a number of drinks and a bunch of, um, recreational substances, I had you guys. And that was fun for a while! I mean, I could watch humanity unfold, develop society and everything, and once in a while personally nudge things in different directions.

But after a while, you got too cocky. You started saying that stuff was impossible, because science couldn't explain it. Mostly it started out with people denying the Bible, or the Koran, or some such 'holy writing'. That was okay by me; I certainly didn't write them, and what did I care if someone disproved them? I hung out with some really weird people back then, and some of them went off and wrote that stuff to get people to give them money. And girls. Some of them were real good at it, too. Anyhow, back to the subject. You want another drink?" I nodded, somewhat lost and feeling no pain. I figured what the heck, this guy was at least interestingly crazy. That's better than staring at the back of the bar for forty-five minutes. He looked at my glass, which by this time was only half full of J&B, and indicated to the tender that the next was on him. Turning back, he settled comfortably on his stool.

"The problem came when you folks began to try and define your universe. I tried to stop it, of course, but I was too late. Every time someone came up with evidence that Creation was impossible, I lost a little bit of control. When people started trying to prove that spontaneous creation of matter or energy was impossible, I was in trouble. In my view, thermodynamics suck. I remember when the law of conservation of energy was propounded, I spent a week freezing because I couldn't understand why I couldn't create any heat. When you began to understand how your solar system was put together I had to actually define environments on some of the outer planets before I lost control completely - I couldn't just live in a plastic dimension off Earth and shape it to my current needs anymore.

I'm not saying I think this a bad thing, of course-technology is great. I have some amazing stereo systems, and I love your music. TV is mostly trash, but it can be useful. It's much easier to appear on someone's TV set than with the usual fanfare of trumpets, glaring light, rah-rah, etc. And people think it's incredible anyway-all you have to do is reach off the screen once and they're in just as much awe, because they know that TV pictures can't do that. And before you say it, I'm not a TV picture, therefore I can do it. And until someone actually proves that God can't reach off a TV set, I can go on doing it. Since very few people attempt to prove anything directly related to me with any measure of accuracy anymore, I'm pretty safe. It's just my methods that are in jeopardy. Are you getting all this, or should we have some more drinks?"

I started, then grinned sheepishly and held up my glass. He toasted me in return, and we swigged deep. Replacing his glass, he continued. "So, anyhow, there you go. I have places I can't go, because someone has recently explained to himself that it's impossible for me to be there. Strong belief affects me too, you see, but temporarily, whereas scientific proof is more permanent. I spend a good deal of my time trying to find loopholes in scientific theory by going back to a hypothesis or assumption used in a proof and simply declaring that it isn't always true, or isn't true, or that it can have other cases. Scientists keep following me around figuratively, and revising their ideas based on the loopholes I create. So, as long as I keep modifying, your understanding of the universe will keep changing. Who knows, if you guys have a really good decade, you might find the loopholes in relativity and special relativ-oops. Never mind. I just worked those out anyhow, no reason I should give you a head start.

"Luckily you folks don't often use the loopholes to try and close me out, disproving God is passé these days. Usually you just try and find a way to use them yourselves."

He stopped talking, and absently traced something on the bar. I couldn't see what he was writing, but they looked somewhat like equations. I took a drink and looked at him again, and put my glass down in surprise. The lights had changed in the bar, to accommodate the jazz quartet setting up in the corner, and his jacket was much fuzzier than it had been, and looked almost like normal velour. He followed my glance down and grinned ruefully.

"Somewhere," he said grandly, indicating the World Outside the Bar with a sweep of his drink, "strings have fallen into scientific disfavor, and evidence has been brought to light showing that they don't exist. Or maybe a few hundred thousand people have decided that they can't. Maybe there's a TV program on about them. I don't know. In any case," he finished, hunching over the bar again, "I shall have to redesign my jacket."

"Um," I said intelligently, "Where are you when you're not in bars? Up the street? I mean at Columbia?"

"No," he frowned at me, "I told you. Various spots on the outer planets. Other places. There's a nice summer spot on Phobos, if you don't mind taking care of the occasional intrusion."

"Oh." I decided not to argue, and turned to my drink yet again. He continued talking speculatively.

"I like this place. I like it a lot. No-one bothers me, no-one gets drunk enough to start mouthing off about God, at least not often. You might see me in here again."

I finished my drink before replying, "I hope so. This place can be somewhat boring if you're here alone."

He nodded agreement, and signaled for another. "Remember what I told you. It's religions that actually cause the most trouble. Many of them claim to know exactly what I want or what I say, and all they usually do is start some kind of war or oppression or prejudice, and then large numbers of people renounce me and I lose a little bit. Even when it's not my fault. Do they think I have the time or patience to personally oversee everything that happens? Good grief. Their own fellow men cause most of the problems."

"What about natural disasters?" I asked. "We don't cause those."

"No," he said, turning to me with a slightly evil grin, "but I don't always wake up on the right side of the bed. Besides, they help to some degree to keep the population down, and make war a little less likely. I have my personal reasons, also. Who'd have thought they'd blow two chances at it? I should've guessed. Damn." He had started talking to his glass again.

"Who?"

"San Fr- nobody. Anyhow. Remember. I'm me. The Church ain't me. You ain't me. You'll probably have an easier time of it when you keep that in mind."

"I will." It seemed safer to agree with him. "Have another drink."

"Don't mind if I do." He took the offered Scotch and tossed it back. I turned back to my drink, and shook my head.

"I don't believe this. I can't be talking to God in my local bar." I turned to grin at him-

And his stool was empty. On the bar was a stack of bills and an envelope. I looked around hurriedly, but there was no sign of him, and the door was ten feet away through a crowd. I picked up the envelope and the bills, paid our tabs, and pushed my way out of Augie's into the night and the nearest park bench, where I sat and opened the envelope.

There were two things inside. The second one I saw was a note. It read;

-I told you what happens when you say stuff like that. Don't worry, I should be able to make it back in a week or so. Be pleased to buy you a drink when I see you. In the meantime, the pile on the bar should buy a number of them.

It was signed, -G.

I turned my gaze back to the first item in the envelope. It was a picture. When I looked closer, I saw that it was a picture of myself on a park bench looking at- a picture. With an envelope and a note in my hands.

Carefully, I put the picture and the note back in the envelope, and looked in the direction of the point of view in the photograph. There was nothing there, of course.

Yes sir, I think I'll be pleased to take a drink in Augie's again next Saturday.

 An earlier work. Have you been there? It's a real spot, on Broadway between 105 and 106th streets in Manhattan. I recommend it highly. Gus runs a mellow shop. It's also the only bar I've ever been in where people can sit at the front window table and play Boppin' Robots while swigging, and they have classic Star Trek on the old, beat up black-and-white TV at the end of the bar while a fiercely competitive chess match goes on, with spectators, two tables away and the combo on that night is playing slightly drunk improv heartfelt jazz, with two Columbia students and an old black bluesman and two neighborhood regulars up there with instruments.

-The Custodian