On the Etiquette of Godsclubs (pt. 2)

Part II of a short story I'm currently polishing up. Be sure to check out Part I too if it piques your interest. Hope you enjoy it! :)

Over eight months later, I ran into God again. The sun had just set and I was watching the waves lick the cooling sands of Copacabana beach, much drunker than I’d wanted to be at that point. I’d recently discovered caipirinhas to be my one true kryptonite, as their sweetness masks just how strong real cachaça, Brazil’s national spirit, can be.

After I’d woken up alone in that hotel room, the memories I’d managed to piece together of my first run-in with God in London had soon began to fade, and by the time I landed in Rio I’d managed to convince myself the things he’d shown me had been no more than a drunkard’s dreams.

I was sitting alone at a bar on the trendy Copacabana promenade. The place, according to every TripAdvisor review out there, was a total tourist trap, but I’d spent the whole afternoon reading at the beach and my legs were cramped, so I didn’t feel like walking far. Besides, I still had plenty of cash to spare until my next payment came. The beauty of being born into money, my friends.

“Still wandering the globe, I see,” said a tall young man, taking a seat next to me. He had the most golden, enviable tan I’ve ever seen. His smile was wide and white and perfect.

“Sorry"have we met before?” I asked, my speech slightly slurred. I didn’t really like the way the guy’s eyes, greenish blue and tinged with gold, seemed to see right into my bones, like a pair of living X-ray scanners.

“Oh. So you really don’t remember me? That’s not possible,” he sighed, sounding disappointed. His English was heavily accented, full of Brazilian spice and music. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he whispered, and for a second his face changed and I saw a nebula of freckles and a single yellowed tooth.  

“Holy f**k,” I cried. The other gringos across the bar laughed at my sudden outburst. “It’s you! Oh my Go�"”

“Shhh,” God put a finger to my lips. “I know who I am, I don’t need you to tell me that. Don’t they teach you Icelandic kids what secret means? Damn, Freaky, my friend. That’s really uncool.”

“I thought I’d dreamed you,” was all I could say. I hated myself for sounding so stupid, but shock and cachaça make for one killer cocktail.

“I think the other way around is way more likely, don’t you?” God laughed"the very same laugh I’d heard back in London. He turned on his stool to look at the city behind us. “Tell me. Do you like it here?”

“I do. I like it a lot,” I said. “Matter of fact, I was supposed to be in Bolivia by now, but I’ve been here for nearly a month. Guess I still haven’t had enough of this,” I toyed with the glass in my hand, making little boozy whirlpools full of sugar and lime.

“I like it here too,” God said. He sounded pleased with my answer, though I couldn’t possibly understand why. “For now, anyway. There’s still music here"lots of it, in fact"but who knows how long it’ll last? It’s bound to run out eventually, the way people are wasting it. I’ll be sad when it does.”

I finished my drink. The last sip was much sweeter than the rest"if it was because I hadn’t stirred the sugar properly or because of the strange way God’s words echoed in my head, I couldn’t tell.

“Will you take me there again?” I asked, pathetically pleading.

“Take you where?”

“Come on, don’t screw with me. You know where. The place behind the veil. Where the real things are"the stuff you showed me that night.”

“Why would I?” God laughed. “Who’s to say you could handle it again?”

“Please,” I begged. “I have to see.”

God looked at me for a long time. Suddenly, without a word, he left a single blue bill on the counter"a hundred Brazilian reais, way more than enough to cover for my drinks"and walked away.

“Wait!” I cried after him.

“What are you just sitting there for?” he cried back, already crossing the avenue. “Hurry up, or you’ll miss it!”

And so I got up and ran after him, and this time he showed me the sea, the real sea below the world, full of life and madness, and there was drinking and singing and dancing and more drinking, and at some point I ate something meaty and raw which filled my mouth with light and turned my teeth into pure gold slabs, and I put my ears to the ground and I heard the music he talked about so much and it was beautiful, and then I found myself in a secret alleyway f*****g a faceless stranger with great silky wings, and eventually I looked up and saw the other moon, the real master of the tides, hovering shyly around the sky like a fat firefly, and God told me the name of that moon, and He told me how it had engraved in its heart the names of all things its moonlit glare had ever seen die.

I woke up at the beach again. The sun was nearly rising. My right eye was black and swollen, and there was a behemoth of a policeman kicking my feet to wake me up, snarling at me in angry Portuguese. I had no idea how I’d got there, or what the hell had happened to my eye. God was nowhere to be seen.

Later that day, back at the hotel, I found a business card in my pocket. It was black and shiny with gold letters on a starkly simple typeface. There were no names or phone numbers or Twitter accounts, only a single Switzerland address. I stared at it for a full fifteen minutes.

Then I tore it up and flushed it down the toilet.