THE DEEDS OF MERCY
An end of the world story...
i
“Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this,” BJ says with a laugh, holding his hands up in mock surrender as the lines around his dark eyes crumple up like a wad of used paper. “A Jew, a Rabbi, and a Priest, walk into a bar—”
“What? Not again? Is he really going to tell us the same fuckin’ joke again?” Moe asks Sid with a moan. “And how many times I gotta tell you, Beej?” he says, almost imploring. “A Rabbi is a fuckin’ Jew! Am I wrong, Sid?”
“Nope. You’re not wrong about that one,” Sid says with a slow shake of his head; he’s looking as distracted as he sounds. Sid’s the tallest of the three, and with his turban he looks even taller. He makes certain that his turban always matches his tie.
“From what I remember about yesterday—and it was yesterday we heard it, wasn’t it?” Moe asks.
“Yesterday,” Sid agrees, looking at the black numbers on the glossy white doors of the hallway they’re in.
“Just like the day before, the day before that, and, the day before that!” Moe adds for good measure. “Not exactly what they told me Eternity would be like,” Moe says, as he begins searching his pockets. “What about you? Is that what they told you when you signed up? Have you got it?”
“No, and I didn’t sign up,” Sid says, and shakes his head.
“You didn’t?” Moe is surprised by the answer; the God-watch is not the sort of thing you don’t volunteer for.
“What’s with you two? I can’t tell a simple fuckin’ joke without the two of you two veering off onto another tangent?” BJ says, shaking his head. He reaches into the satchel he’s carrying and finds an apple; he bites into it as if it’s a sin.
Moe laughs. “Your problem is that you don’t know how to tell a simple, fuckin’ joke—that, and the fact you only have the one joke you tell us—every fuckin’ day. Day in, and day out. The same joke. You can’t pass yourself off as the Son of God, if you don’t have a sense of humour, Beej. I mean, look at the platypus. It won’t be like it was the last time.”
“I’m not funny?” BJ asks in disbelief, ignoring everything Moe’s said.
“Is he funny?” Moe asks Sid.
Sid looks at BJ and affects a smile. “No. You’re not funny, BJ. Your name’s not even funny. You’ve had all the time in the universe—hell, you’ve had all of Infinity to pick a name—and you pick BJ?”
“But you always laugh at my jokes!” BJ says between bites of his apple. “You both do. Don’t deny it, I’ve heard you. Both of you,” he adds for good measure.
“Let’s call it professional courtesy, and leave it at that, OK? But there’s only so far you can go with that; your joke isn’t funny, Beej,” Moe says it with a shrug; but it’s something he feels compelled to tell him. “Even our laughter is forced. We do it to make you happy. We want you to be happy, Beej,” he adds with sincerity. “Passing your final test will make everyone happy.”
“Happy? Why? What do you care if I’m happy, or not? Do you think I care if I’m not happy?”
“Of course you do! That’s what you do, Beej,” Moe voices a sharp laugh that echoes off the high walls, sounding sterile and flat in the distance—except for the music he tells himself—and he wonders if the music’s in his head alone, or if anyone else can hear it.
The only other sounds he can hear besides the music in his head, are the soft footfalls of the three different pairs of shoes they’re wearing. Sid’s wearing oxfords. He’s dressed in a grey Savile Row Classic Fit Suit; Moe’s sporting Italian shoes and wearing Armani; while BJ, well, BJ being BJ, he’s wearing faded denim jeans, a tie-dyed tee shirt, sandals without socks, and a tallith—the shawl-like garment worn by Orthodox Jews. While Sid and Moe are more into discussing fashion as a statement of character rather than discussing the dusty philosophies and theosophies of the past, BJ’s more into getting back to Nature with his torn jeans, tie-dye tee-shirts, and purple lensed, wire framed glasses.
“Do you think I care?” BJ says to himself, but Sid and Moe are so close, they can’t help but overhear him. “So what are you two supposed to do, if I don’t care?” BJ asks, looking up at Sid.
“We should definitely postulate,” Sid smiles.
“Or at the very least, put forward,” Moe corrects him.
“We can suggest?” Sid smiles.
“Or propose?” Moe offers.
“And hypothesize! We can do a lot of hypothesizing,” Sid adds.
Moe counters with, “We might advance the status quo and then certain things could be taken for granted.”
“Such as?” BJ asks.
“Such as?” Moe asks. “Doesn’t matter. My money’s on you that you’ll do the right thing when the time comes. Good will out,” Moe adds, patting down his pockets as though he’s looking for a set of keys.
“Did you at least write the number down?” Sid asks, fingering the cuffs of his sleeves and trying to look patient.
“I know I did. It’s in my pocket. But I’ve got so many pockets I can’t remember which one I put it in,” Moe explains, and begins a more methodical search of his pockets until he finally pulls out a small slip of paper.
“What this mean is that you two have been lying to me,” BJ says through another bite of his apple.
“Define lying,” Sid says, trying to sound casual.
“Isn’t it just a case of semantics?” Moe asks, looking at the slip of paper in his hand, and then looking up at the numbers on the doors, checking them.
“Semantics?”
“Something you can hide behind?” Moe offers as he begins searching the numbers.
“What are you talking about?” BJ says with a shake of his head.
“Humour. It always comes back to humour,” Moe says over his shoulder.
“Do you have another name for it we don’t know about?” Sid asks BJ.
Sid has a habit of following Moe’s questions with one of his own, right on the heels of its predecessor usually, nipping hard at the heels. That’s how he likes it, he tells himself. The questions should be fast—hard and quick—sounding like a staccato drumbeat gone bad, and of course, making no sense.
“Why are we here, anyway?” BJ asks, looking at the sterile walls and florescent lights hidden in the crown moulding above. He looks at Moe reading the slip of paper and then looks at the endless hallway of sterile, white doors.
“We’re just doing what we were told,” Sid confesses. “And I wouldn’t call it lying. A person of my stature doesn’t lie...outright,” he adds with a grin.
“A person of your stature?” BJ says, sounding somewhat dubious.
Moe laughs. “None of that Enlightenment bullshit applies here, does it Beej? It’s not like looking for Nirvana, or all of those happy virgins everyone keeps telling me about; it doesn’t really apply, does it? Just another empty promise—”
“An empty what?” Sid asks, looking down his nose at Moe.
“Okay, wrong choice of words,” Moe admits with a shrug, looking up from the slip of paper. “I’m sorry,” he adds.
He looks at the nameplate on the wall and then turns to look at Sid, nodding.
“Look,” Sid says quickly. “You can’t let yourself believe everything He tells you is going to be true—anymore than we can stand listening to another rendition of the same joke. We do it, but we don’t know why. You tell yourself, it’s not like you have a fuckin’ choice, but you do. You always have a choice. You have to make up your own mind. And maybe, when he figures out his place in the grand scheme of things, he’ll thank us; then again, maybe he won’t. We’re just supposed to show him the fuckin’ way—listen to his fuckin’ joke, and maybe help him with the timing. But we can’t tell him which path to take. That’s up to him. All I know is that if we’ve done well by him, we might find Enlightenment when this is all done.”
“When what’s done?” BJ asks.
“This is the place,” Moe says suddenly, stopping at the door and checking the slip of paper again. He nods, and then stops before he pushes the door open.
“Now, he might be a little confused,” he says to BJ. He looks at Sid. “How’s my tie? Is it straight?”
“Your tie’s fine,” Sid says slowly, and reaches up self-consciously to touch his turban. He looks at BJ’s long hair, faded denims, open-toed sandals, and slowly shakes his head.
