Towing Jehovah Read Online Free PDF Page B

Crescents of sweat marred the armpits of his black shirt, pasting the cotton to his skin. He scanned the names (Goldstein, Smith, Delgado, Spinelli, Chen: more New York pluralism, another intimation of the Kingdom), then pressed the button labeled VAN HORNE— 3 REAR.
    A metallic buzz jangled the lock. Thomas opened the door, ascended three flights of mildew-scented stairs, and found himself face to face with a tall, bearded, obliquely handsome man wearing nothing but a spotless white bath towel wrapped around his waist.
    He was dripping wet. A tattooed mermaid resembling Rita Hayworth decorated his left forearm.
    "The first thing you must tell me," said Anthony Van Horne, "is that I haven't gone crazy."
    "If you have," said the priest, "then I have too, and so has the Holy See." Van Horne disappeared into his apartment and returned gripping an object that disturbed Thomas as much for its chilling familiarity as for its eschatological resonances. Like members of some secret society engaged in an induction ritual, the two men held up their feathers, moving them in languid circles. For a brief moment, a deep and silent understanding flowed between Anthony Van Horne and Thomas Ockham, the only nonpsychotic individuals in New York City who'd ever conversed with angels.
    "Come in, Father Ockham."
    "Call me Thomas."
    "Wanna beer?"
    " Sure."
    It was not what Thomas expected. A captain's abode, he felt, should have a sense of the sea about it. Where were the giant conches from Bora Bora, the ceramic elephants from Sri Lanka, the tribal masks from New Guinea? With a half-dozen Sunkist orange crates serving as chairs and an AT&T cable spool in lieu of a coffee table, the place seemed more suited to an unemployed actor or a starving artist than to a sailor of fortune like Van Horne.
    "Old Milwaukee okay?" The captain sidled into his cramped kitchenette. "It's all I can afford."
    "Fine." Thomas lowered himself onto a Sunkist crate. "You Dutchmen have always been merchant mariners, haven't you— you and your fluytschips. This life is in your blood."
    "I don't believe in blood," said Van Horne, pulling two dewy brown bottles from his refrigerator.
    "But your father—he was also a sailor, right?"
    The captain laughed. "He was never anything else. He certainly wasn't a father, not much of a husband either, though I believe he thought he was both." Ambling back into the living room, he pressed an Old Milwaukee into Thomas's hand. "Dad's idea of a vacation was to desert his family and go slogging 'round the South Pacific in a tramp freighter, hoping to find an uncharted island. He never quite figured out the world's been mapped already, no terrae incognitas left."
    "And your mother—was she a dreamer too?"
    "Mom climbed mountains. I think she needed to get as far above sea level as possible. A dangerous business—much more dangerous than the Merchant Marine. When I was fifteen, she fell off Annapurna." The captain unhitched the bath towel and scratched his lean, drumtight abdomen. "Have we got a crew yet?"
    "Lord, I'm sorry." Even as the sympathy swelled up in Thomas, a sympathy as profound as any he'd ever known, he felt an odd sense of relief. Evidently they were living in a non-contingent universe, one requiring no ongoing input from the Divine. The Creator was gone, yet all His vital inventions— gravity, grace, love, pity—endured.
    "Tell me about the crew."
    Thomas twisted the lid off his beer, sealed his lips around the rim, and drank. "This morning I signed up that steward you wanted. Sam somebody."
    "Follingsbee. I'll never get over the irony—the sea cook who hates seafood. Doesn't matter. The man knows exactly what today's sailor wants. He can mimic it all: Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken . . ."
    "Buzzy Longchamps turned down the first mate's position."
    "Because he'd be working for me again?"
    "Because he'd be working on the Valparaíso again. Superstitious." Thomas set his