It was raining so hard that Noah’s whiskey tasted like downspout water. Nina was watching from the window, dressed in her Saturday night fuck me first and love me later slinky black dress. She watched him standing outside The Soviet Union bar in the parking lot, under an umbrella, with red neon lights blaring like an angry army. Noah had been waiting nearly an hour for God to come with the weed. As usual, he didn’t show. God is the local weed dealer. Nina motioned from the window, making the telephone sign with her hand, for him to come in and call God, again. Noah threw back his whiskey and went inside.
“Typical repulsive God, to not show up. And you standing out there like some moronic believer. You screwed up by giving him the cash first.” she was irritated and pacing.
Noah dialed God’s number and got his message service: Hi, this is God. What I can create for you?
“Where in the fuck are you?” he grumbled into the phone. Then hung up.
Across the bar, Nina was warming up to a local lumberjack with a purple patch over his right eye. His left eye zeroed in on Noah for a few seconds. Then the jack bought Nina a whiskey. She threw it back, and whispered in his ear. He looked at Noah again, sat up straight and strong, and belly laughed out loud. Nina kissed him on the cheek and walked back to Noah.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here” she growled. They left The Soviet Union and headed for a party hosted by friends, Cairo and Jen.
The storm was pelting the windshield, like somebody spitting in their faces. It was dark and eerie and the headlights dripped in the rain. They should’ve been at the party two hours ago. It was already 1:30am. Nina was rifling through her knockoff designer bag manically looking for a joint that may be there somewhere. Her cheap perfume turned Noah’s stomach and made him nauseous. He cracked the window. The cold air settled his nerves. The curvy roads were testing his motion sickness, which was elevated by Nina’s dirt-cheap toilet water. She found the joint, lit it, gave it a puff and passed it over to Noah. Suddenly, it stopped raining and the hour was getting later.
Nina met Noah while she was working at a dive bar in Highland Park, Los Angeles. She was the night bartender. Standing a statuesque five-feet nine inches, to his five-feet eight inches, she had been pursuing a modeling career. She’s lean and leggy with long, dark hair, threatening curves, and an attitude that says: Fuck you! She’s of Armenian and Spanish descent. Hot blooded and perpetually livid. She had just fallen out of a two-year marriage. Compounded with a stalled modeling life, and at twenty-nine, she was looking to leave L.A. to start over, to find herself, to find anything.
Noah was working retail at a cheap shoe store near the bar. One afternoon Nina came into the shop, and it was love at first shoe fitting. Several months into their relationship, Noah got a call from a bank saying that his recently deceased uncle, whom he really didn’t know, had left him a sizeable amount of money and a small, mortgage-free cabin in Northern California. They left their dead-end jobs and headed north to the redwoods, rain, and cold.
It was 2:00am when they arrived at the party. The house was lit up with multicolored lights, and it was loud with spirited music. Noah saw Cairo through the window dancing to some tribal beats. There were people everywhere. Nina flew out of the car, squatted behind the open door and pissed. She stood up, pulled her form-fitting dress back into place, and shouted, “Fucking relief!”
In spiked heels, she stumbled along the dirt path heading to the house, looking like the woman who fell to earth. On the way there some raggedy, middle-aged dude was eyeing her with the blood-hunger of a hawk. He had a sloppy grin, greasy short hair, and was wearing a childish-looking tie-dye tee shirt.
“What are you looking at, moron?!” Nina shouted, “Go and jackoff somewhere and get over it.’’ She went into the party.
Noah sat in the car for a few minutes taking in the cold air. He was still woozy from the half-hour of country curves. Then, in the orange bug light of the rear porch, he saw God standing there in a cloud of smoke hitting a bong with two other familiar faces.
A skinny, old geezer, with long white hair, long white beard––God stands about four-feet five inches and strikes you as being a troll. Not a grand wizard, but an enervating troll. He has a hundred and two stories and none of them interesting. Born and raised in the Humbolt area, God is the creator of all things weed––one cannot find weed without believing in God. He was talking to two local Mexican potheads named Gabriel and Jesus. The scene resembled a religious experience with God preaching a sermon while waving the bong around, like an aspergillum, as if blessing the other two. As always, God was rambling on and on while Gabriel and Jesus’ heads were bobbing and wobbling in obligatory responses. Just as Noah was ready to step into the light, to make himself known, Nina stormed out of the back door, like a gorgeous hurricane, with a whiskey in one hand and a joint in the other. Towering over God and spitting profanities; she looked like a wild cat with rabies that had cornered a terrified rodent. The two Mexicans disappeared as quickly as smoke hitting a fan.
“We waited a fucking hour for you, you pile of geezer crap. Where the fuck is our weed!?” Nina was, and to not be redundant, livid.
“And you’re gonna’ cut us a sweet, fucking deal for wasting our precious time and …”
The two of them noticed Noah at the same second. Nina threw back the whiskey and stomped into the house. God was shaking like he was about to piss his jeans, but he composed himself, as quickly as a cat falling and landing lightly on its feet.
“Dude, brah, you gotta keep that pit bull on a short leash, and let me tell ya what happened. I––I was gonna …’’
Stopping God in midsentence, Noah wasn’t up for one of his epic dull stories, nor his excuses. God handed him the bong. He refused.
“Listen, God, it’s hard for me to believe in you when, for the third time, you’ve screwed up and left me short.”
God hit the bong and his face disappeared in a cloud. When Noah could see his eyes again, he said,
“I wanna believe in you, but with all of the misery and frustration you’ve created, especially short-changing me an eighth the last time––ya dig what I’m sayin’?’’ “So, here’s the deal. You’re gonna give me the weed and half of my dough back. You’re gonna take the loss for my frustration and time wasted, or I whistle for Nina, and she’ll jerk you upside down hanging you by your feet until every bud and buck falls from your pockets. What’ll be?”
God looked down for a few seconds, then looked up, “Dude, brah, I can’t do that. Ya’all have to learn to play my game, by my rules. When I contradict myself, ya’all have to still believe in me, otherwise, ya’all can go to hell.’’
Noah knelt down so that he was looking the little man square in the eyes. God stepped back a bit and was shivering. Noah could see Nina through the window shooting back another whiskey and chomping on the bit, while anxiously watching. He motioned for her to come out to the porch.
Nina opened the back door so hard that it banged the wall, knocking out the porch light, and the porch itself shook, like tectonic plates had slipped. God was now in the dark, and the inside light behind Nina displayed a startling silhouette. She looked like one of the Apocalyptic Horsemen. God was whimpering, and this time he pissed his jeans. Nina grabbed him by the collar and slammed him to the floor and sat on him.
“Listen, you grubby creep, reach into those grimy pockets and give us our goods or I’m gonna squat and piss on your face.”
Noah backed up, smirking at the scene unfolding before him and thinking, God deserved this a long time ago and not just from us.
“Listen to her, God, she’s got evil in her head and she’s burning with temper.”
Just as he finished the sentence, Nina pulled up her slinky dress, pulled her silk panties aside and squatted over God’s face. “Ok, ok, ok!’’ he screamed.
Noah motioned for Nina to stop and let him up. The dwarf got up, beaten and humiliated.
“You freaks are out of your screwy gourds, and further more …’’
Nina grabbed him by the collar again and shouted, “Only when a swindler like you rips us off!”
She let him go with a shove. The turd fell hard against the wall, and breathing heavily he reached into his pocket and handed Noah a wade of hundreds; he opened a backpack and gave Noah a quarter-pound. Then, without a word, he hobbled along the dark path and disappeared, like Gollum crawling under a bridge.
Noah looked inside the house and saw Cairo and Jen undulating to trance rhythms. The crowd had thinned out. He suggested that they go in and mingle with their friends.
“Naw, I’m too horny for a dull, socializing nightcap. It’s 2:45. Let’s go home and fuck ‘til the sun rises.” They got into the car and Nina lit a joint, hitting it strong and deep. Noah backed up into the darkness and they drove off.
A minute down the dirt road they came upon God standing there with his head hanging low, like a broken garden gnome. Nina rolled down the window and yelled,
“Fuck you, God. I never believed in you!’’, while she reached for Noah’s crotch.
This long night of anger and frustration came to a glorious ending. And, to make life more interesting, Nina and Noah had decided that it was time to buy their own Humbolt pot farm and to run that duplicitous God out of business.
DAH is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best Of The Net nominee,
and the author of nine books of poetry. DAH lives in Berkeley, California,
where he is working on his tenth poetry collection, while simultaneously
working on his first collection of short fiction.
