The Living End (13 page)

They waited. They did not know what was going to happen. They consulted the religious among them but they didn’t know either.

Then God was there and, strangely, all could see Him. There was not a bad seat in the house. It was short and sweet.

“Because I never found My audience,” God said.

“Because I never found My audience.” He looked at the assembled dead, at the living billions anxious at ground zero.

“You gave me, some of you, your ooh’s and aah’s, the Jew’s hooray and Catholic’s Latin deference-all theology’s pious wow. But I never found My audience.” He looked at Mary, who had feared Him, victim to His blue ribbon force, distrustful still, savoring the ordinary who had been taken out of all that.

“I never found My audience. What had you,” He asked His audience, “to complain of? You had the respect of peers. You had peers.” He looked at Jesus.

“You were no audience. You had all the advantages. You were only God’s clone.” And at Joseph.

“You were a carpenter,” He said.

“You did things with your hands. Why didn’t you admire Me more?” At the damned.

“I gave you pain. Do you appreciate the miracle? To make it up out of thin air, deep, free-fall space, the gifted, driven atoms of remonstrance? Trickier than orange juice or the taste of Brie. Because I never found My audience,” said God and annihilated, Mother Mary and Christ and Lesefario and Flanoy and Quiz in their Y.M.C.A. sea front room in Piraeus and all Hell’s troubled sighed, everything.