The first time Luke found Gods, they were sitting in the last booth on the rightmost side of a little coffee shop on the corner of East 13th and Farthing Street. They were drinking something they called ‘Teas’, which Luke later came to understand meant it had a little bit of every flavor mixed in for effect. They wore a wide-brimmed white hat with a narrow black band, and spoke with two voices that swam and danced with each other through every word. Gods was, so much as Luke could tell, endlessly patient and curious in all things; listening to the pleas and stories from those on the other end of the table with a kind but marginally amused expression, as if the sum of human experience was to them a novel thing.
On the second occasion, only a few short days after Luke’s first visit to the cafe, he found Gods sitting in the same worn window-booth watching the city through the polished glass. Luke assumed the same seat at the countertop a short distance away and settled in to watch the great inhuman from the corner of his eye. No more than five minutes later, a gaunt woman with a face so expressionless that it seemed to have been sculpted from raw adamant assumed the seat opposite the deity. Two of Gods’ eyes flicked down to meet hers, and the strangest thing happened. Luke almost couldn’t bring himself to believe the warm smile which crept across her face as she folded away her glasses and fell into a comfortable conversation. Luke wondered how many such conversations Gods had had.
Luke returned to the cafe several times in the next weeks, each time finding a strange new face at the far end of Gods’ booth. The third time he went, a young woman wearing an I Believe t-shirt joined Gods at the table; the fourth, a logger who seemed even in the pristine atmosphere of the café to exude a fine dust whenever he moved. Sometimes Luke saw familiar faces. Mostly they were new. Gods greeted them all with the same gentle familiarity, and all left looking a little more whole than when they entered. After his fifth ‘coincidental’ venture to the cafe in so many days, Luke had to acknowledge he was becoming a little obsessed. He could barely get it off his mind. Here he was, living his petty little life on a petty little planet that wouldn’t warrant an addendum at the end of the Guide to the Galaxy while the almighty master of the universe reclined on a vintage 70’s dining booth drinking tea the color of the midnight sky. It was bullshit.
Maggie, the chipper barista who manned the little café every other afternoon, eyed Luke bemusedly as she refilled his coffee.
“You know, you can’t stalk them forever.”
“No, I know, I’m just… working out how to go about it.”
“Of course. First impressions are key, after all.”
She spoke over her shoulder as she steamed milk into a mug, evidently unimpressed with the godhead sitting a few tables down. Luke thought with a little more of his raw charisma, he could entice some information out of her.
“So, I, uh. I don’t mean to be rude.” He made an odd little gesture halfway between pointing at the booth and turning up his palm questioningly, settling on something nearly the Y shape of a paper-football goal. “But you don’t seem very bothered that God himself is sitting in your booth over there!”
“Gods? Oh, don’t worry. They asked me first. They don’t seem to do much, and they tip very well!”
“But,” Luke scrabbled for the words to make her understand, “doesn’t he make you feel small?”
Maggie snorted.
“I’m satisfied with my little room in the tower! But I can tell you aren’t. You really should talk to them.”
“I know.”
“But?”
“But I’m Afraid!” Luke gasped, slapping the counter to feel a little less powerless for one fleeting moment. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“Try ‘hello’. They’re not expecting anyone today.” She paused, quirked her head a little to the side and squeezed his arm for a moment. “No, that’s not quite right. I think they’re expecting you.”
Luke returned the gesture with a genuine, if admittedly unsure, smile of his own. He got up. He went over. He sat down.
Gods nodded politely when Luke slid into the other side of the booth, but said nothing. Luke, unwilling to humiliate himself by speaking first, kept petulantly silent. His eyes flicked back and forth across the alien architecture of their many faces as he decided which one to settle on. For that one fleeting moment, he stared defiantly across at Gods and-
“Do you want me to apologize to you?”
Luke blinked.
“What?”
“Well, you’re clearly very angry with me.”
“You say it like I don’t have very good reasons to be angry with you. Angry-” Luke threw his hands up in frustration and saw they were shaking. “Angry doesn’t begin to cover it.”
Gods set their cup down on the table, steepling the fingers on two hands and leaning forward to study him. Eyes the color of eggshells studied the lines of his face with such familiarity that Luke’s skin crawled. Worst of all was the warm and utterly benevolent expression that Gods still wore.
“Please go on, then. I promise there will be time to say your piece.”
“What are you even doing here? Sitting in this coffee shop, day after day, running an impromptu clinic out of a booth. What’s it all for?”
“I’m very fond of their cup of Teas, for one.” They gestured with their chipped ceramic mug. “It’s a warm, well-lighted place, and it has a goodly clientele.”
“But what about your visitors? Are they angels? Demons? Is… is this some kind of divine meeting-ground?”
Gods arched an eyebrow and made a funny sound with their voices; like a light giggle over a deep belly laugh. Without breaking eye contact, Gods reached out with two hands and picked up a clump of sugar packets from the end of the table. They meticulously opened each one and poured the contents into a little pile as they considered their response.
“They’re just people, Luke. Just like you. A little happier right now, perhaps, but just people. Usually, they need something they think only I can provide, so I try to help them.”
“So, what? You grant wishes? You’re moonlighting as a genie now?”
“Nothing so grand. Mostly I just listen. Sometimes when they need advice, I give them that as well. What most people want, most anyone else could give.”
Luke shook his head and wondered if he was having a psychic break. He considered it for a moment, but dismissed the idea. As inconceivably strange as the last week had been, nothing felt as acutely real as the time he’d spent at the fringes of the cafe, trying to glimpse the deity out of the corner of his eye. A dark pressure was building behind his temples, and he rubbed them to relieve the mounting strain.
“And that’s really all you do? No magic for the poor little humans slumming it down here?”
“I also volunteer at the food pantry down the street.”
Just for a moment, the briefest fraction of a second, Luke considered leaping across the table and burying his fist in one of the deity’s faces. He wondered if he could do it before being smote.
“I’m not trying to insult you, Luke. That was my honest answer. I can’t do things the way you think I can.”
“What’s that even supposed to mean? You are literally GOD! The creator of the universe. My creator. I’d almost given up believing you existed and then,” he threw one hand up. “There you were. So now I get to ask, why the fuck did you make me this way?
“What you really want to know, I think,” Gods held some of their hands up in a don’t shoot the messenger type gesture. “Is why you feel powerless to change who you are.”
“How could I be anything else? You made me to suffer. Why would you make a person so wrong?”
“I probably wouldn’t have made you so moody!” A knowing smile curled onto Gods’ face, as if they’d just remembered something very funny. Luke hated the smile. It made him feel like the child he hadn’t been in many years.
“I’m sorry, is something here funny? Is my life really that funny to you?
Luke felt his heart thundering hard in his chest and wondered if he was going to die, or wake from a dream to find himself a different person, or to learn that he was never anything at all. He wondered if Gods might simply unmake him in rebuke for his harsh words, dismissing him as one might discard a broken toy or bland magazine. Fear threatened to creep in from the edges of his mind and overtake him but his simple desire to be heard, to stay what he’d come to say, staved it off. He wondered what Gods could possibly say to all those people to make them leave feeling so happy and gratified and not so scared at all with the world, when all he could do was sit at the counter and wonder where everything went so wrong. He felt like the only one looking through the facade, and that bothered him so much it made his skin crawl.
Luke didn’t even try to hide the tears that rolled down his cheeks, letting them spatter the countertop until his vision blurred and he had to wipe his face with one sleeve. His efforts did little more than smear dirt and crumbs onto his cheeks.
“Why don’t they get that you did all this? You put them here, and whatever little games they come to you to solve, you chained them to in the first place. Why doesn’t it matter that you take their dreams, and their families, and their hopes, and there will never be a single thing they can do about it?
The world spun and the Formica floors swam in his peripheral vision, thundering against the pounding drums in Luke’s head. He wanted them to stop. He wanted the tables to stop swaying and the ground to stop shaking under his trembling hands, and he wanted so badly to vomit and purge himself of the dizzying sickness that was turning his guts inside out.
“What kind of cruel joke is it to let a broken thing know how broken and unwanted it is? Did I do something wrong in a past life to deserve to be so alone?
Gods shook their head slowly and cast all their eyes down at their hands . They sighed, their twin voices harmonizing into a single long seraphic tone. Luke felt his ragged breathing begin to slow as the sound rolled over him. Slowly, incrementally, his vision cleared until the kaleidoscope of lights he’d seen through his tears resolved back into the familiar walls. Having nothing more to say, Luke fell silent, feeling very alone in a room full of people.
Still humming, Gods began meticulously picking grains of sugar from the little pile and spreading them about the table. The act was so surreal that Luke’s exhausted mind couldn’t help but settle down to watch. After an indeterminate amount of time, Gods placed the last grain of sugar on the counter and glanced up. They slipped the white felt hat from their head and leaned in conspiratorially, careful not to disturb a single grain.
“Would you like to know a secret?”
Luke nodded, his eyes never lifting from the table. Gods held the hat up beside their faces as if to hide their conversation from prying eyes.
“I’m just the catalyst.”
Then, Gods pushed over their mug of Teas. Impossible waves of dark liquid the color of the midnight sky splashed out over the table in a wide arc, swallowing the sugar and cascading down onto the booth. The light dimmed around him and as the sugar dissolved the growing pool took on a strange depth and suddenly they were both falling, plunging downward through the floor into a vast expanse of space filled with constellations Luke had never seen before. Deeper still they went, rocketing through stellar gas clouds and spiraling past alien planets as the tiny pinprick of light that had been the café far above faded into nothing and Luke could only scream.
The scream was silent, of course, robbed of all sound by the vacuum, but when he finally closed his mouth, he realized he was not dead and that helped a little. When he had regained the slightest fraction of his nerve, he looked around to find Gods standing (really standing on the void as if it were as solid as the café floor) beside him.
You’re an asshole, Luke thought.
Gods shrugged noncommittally.
You can still hear me?
“Sure.”
I thought you didn’t use magic during your meetings.
“This is about as much as I can do. It’s all in your head, really. Stagecraft.”
Luke sniffed, as if that was the least strange thing he’d heard all day. With a little effort, he angled himself toward Gods and flapped his arms ineffectually as if he could swim across the void toward his interlocutor.
“What did you mean when you said you were just a catalyst?”
“I made the rules! I got the ball rolling. Forged the sun and set the elements spinning to their work,” They waved dismissively. “But that’s about it. I can’t just wave my hands and make all the pain go away.”
For the first time, Gods’ cheerful countenance softened, and Luke thought they looked very sad.
“The truth is, I’m bound entirely to my own rules. In all creation, I may actually be the one thing that can’t change. I was young, when I started things. I guess you’d call it youthful hubris. The things you’ve done, to each other and yourselves; I doubt I could have ever planned for that.”
“I… see.” Luke thought, although he did not.
“I don’t want you to suffer. If it’s any consolation at all, I really am sorry about your family, but life won’t wait for you to save yourself. Even I can’t make it do that.”
“Who can?”Luke’s eyes were pleading for an answer he’d already come to understand. “Who’s in control?”
Gods just shook their head.
“Is that supposed to comfort me?”
“It’s supposed to let you know that you’re not alone. That knowledge is something I can actually offer you. I hope it’s enough.”
“It isn’t. But maybe it’s a start.”
The stars melted away coalesced into the familiar fluorescent lights and faux 1970’s interior of Marguille’s Café. A small puddle of tea had clumped the sugar in the center of the table together. Gods smoothed the lapels of their already immaculate jacket.
“How am I supposed to go on, knowing that there’s really no one in control. Not even you?”
“How did you get on so far?”
“Not… very well. If I’m being honest.”
“I can’t give you back what the world took from you.”
“I get that now. Enough to hate you a little less, at least.”
“I’m full of actual advice, you know. If you ever want it. I’m not as good with the whole existential thing.”
It was finally Luke’s turn to laugh, madly and without reservation. He needed to go home. Some warm food and a hot shower would be one step in the right direction, and it would give him something to do while he considered everything that had occurred. It felt like so much had changed, but nothing seemed quite different yet. He wondered when or if that sensation would ever go away. There was just one last nagging thought in the very back of his mind. Silly probably. Irrelevant.
“One last question?”
Gods nodded, arching a few eyebrows.
“What the Hell is Teas?”