Flash Wednesday; Job in Flash Friday

He was propped up on motel pillows in Lincoln Nebraska, watching Telemundo with Serbian subtitles, drinking cough syrup and waiting for the cops to bust down the door. In the drawer of the night was a Gideon bible, the wrapper from a stick of wrigleys juicy fruit gum bookmarked the book of job.

Blame it on the cough syrup if you like, but one floor down and three rooms over God and The Adversary were playing gin rummy and chatting.

“So, God, who’s your best guy?” The Adversary said laying down a Queen of Spades.

God picked up the queen and laid down a deuce of hearts.

“Fuck you Lucy, I’m not falling for that. Who’s your worst guy?”

The Adversary drew from the deck and discarded another queen of spades.

“Well I Am (bic) I think that’s probably Larry Craft, he’s up in 201, poolside, drinking cough syrup and watching telemundo with Serbian subtitles.”

“In Lincoln Nebraska?” God said and laid down thirteen queens.

“Cheater.”

“I got em in the discard pile. So what makes him the shittiest? He a senator or something?”

“No. If I tell you are you going to pull that whole Prince-Of-Lies thing out of your ass, your omni, um, omni, ah, omni fat ass?”

“Christ you’re a sore loser. No, swear to god.”

“Ok. He was just born mean, I had nothing to do with that. He got caught for every violation he ever committed, I have a few cops on my payroll, but, even so, he was sort of beneath my attention. I popped him maybe once or twice. Didn’t matter, there is no deterrent. He choses every act. He’s not a sociopath, he doesn’t get any reward, he always gets punished, he’s not a degenerate gambler who thinks the odds get better. He just likes ripping at the moral fabric, the deed itself is his reward. All the free will in the world and he makes the morally bankrupt choice on his own, Every. Single. Time.”

God shuffles the deck, deals out seven each. He takes a diet pepsi out of the mini bar raises his eyebrows to the adversary who nods. God hands him a diet pepsi. They pause to open the can, hear the fssst, take a tentative sip and savor.

“Well, sure he’s bad,” God starts ordering his cards by suit and rank, “but who wouldn’t be if they never caught a break.”

“Not my doing.”

“Temptation is not your doing?”

“Well, sure, I guess, in a general way as part of your own plan, but I didn’t come up on a fiery chariot to put anything specifically in Larrys path.”

“But you didn’t take it out of his path either, and with all the rapists, murderers, dictators, mercenaries, talk show hosts and whatnot in the world, his name came to mind awfully damn quick.”

“Um, ok. So your point?”

“Well, what if we let him get away with something? Let him get a bit ahead, maybe get laid without paying for it, kept the cops off his back, make things comfortable for him, maybe he’d just relax into it, slack off, and sure maybe not become a good man, but I bet he’d stop being a bad one.”

“You’re playing Job with me? I invented that game.”

“Well then you should be good at it.”

“Good enough to know there’s no stake in this for either one of us. The deal with job was that I said he’d lose faith if you quit favoring him. I don’t think Larry has any faith in me. I mean if he gets away clean I don’t think he’s going to say ‘Sorry Satan, I’m just not that into you.’”

“Great then you should win this one.”

“ Wait a minute. You mean you could do that with anyone at any time?”

“Pretty much.”

“Wow. I bet you’d lose a lot of customers if they knew what an asshole you are.”

“Dude, I dealt you in. It’s right there in the bible. If that doesn’t make me an asshole I don’t know what would. Floods, famine, leaving the chosen people in bondage … it’s all right there.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not playing with Larry. He’s not mine. Well, ok, he is, but I didn’t chose him.”

A hearty Midwestern rain pelted the windows. Outside on the state highway a police cruiser splashed by the driveway of the motel. The radio squawked some numbers an address. The cruiser drove on.