GOOD AMERICANS GO TO PARIS WHEN THEY DIE Read Free

like
Woonsocket, Rhode Island and not Toronto or Melbourne or
London?”
    So murmur the envious hosts.
    How many times have I not heard that plaint? I could
say in answer to it that I have a weak spot in My vast heart for a
people with My Name ever on the ready on their lips, a pious people
that proclaim their trust in Me on their very currency. But I
choose not to justify Myself. I elect the people I like. My ways
are impenetrable. I thought everybody knew that. And,
parenthetically, let it be known that I hold in special abhorrence
people who strive to justify My ways to Man. The last individual
who tried that on a large scale was stricken blind for his
pains.
    I owe no explanations. It’s that way because
that’s the way it is. In other words, putting it in an even smaller
nutshell and to silence the blasphemous wailers once and for all:
that’s life and if you don’t like it, leave it.
    But if so you do, count not on awaking After
to the great good things in the Great Good Place unless it be that
you boast the right citizenship and have been a paragon of proper
behavior.
     
    Proper behavior? Proper behavior? What
manner of Abomination do Mine eyes now behold? Can such things
transpire in the sanctity of the Reception Department of the
Préfecture de Police?
    Why are the Newly Arrived shamelessly
bare?
    And there, O, to what hideous idol is yonder
kneeling naked daughter of Baal rendering deep homage, more than
lip service?
    The Cities of the Plain were smitten and
blasted for less grave transgressions. Still another unforgivable
confusion has been perpetrated by My servants. My Chief Steward,
Prefect d’Aubier de Hautecloque, must amend this and forthwith.
Laxity and slackness and negligence grow apace in the
Administration.
    I have long been discontented with Prefect d’Aubier
de Hautecloque’s management. He has already received warnings. No
one is indispensable in the Scheme of Things excepting, of course,
Myself, creator of that Scheme. Prefect d’Aubier de Hautecloque can
always be replaced by Sub-Prefect Antoine Marchini, able and
ambitious man. Perhaps overly ambitious? Give the matter
thought.
    But hold! What do Mine eyes now descry?
    O supreme abomination: My lower echelon
servant aloft on the ladder, what doeth he? In time past a
self-polluter of his ilk would have been broken with a rod of iron,
dashed in pieces like a potter’s vessel, reduced to ashes in the
twinkling of an eye. But, as already stated, I now command but a
tithe of My glorious old puissance. Still, at whatever cost, I
shall gird up My loins and commence generating chastising
power.
     
    Generating, generating.
    Generating, generating.
    Still generating.
     
    A fussily-dressed scented young man bearing
a pile of dossiers wanders into the vast bureaucratic room, which
he hardly sees. His vision is inward as he tries for the millionth
time to recall beloved faces and names out of the fog of memory. Of
course he can’t, not at his modest echelon.
    He halts and stares at the unusual spectacle
of statue-like Arrivals, unannounced and clearly erroneously
processed because stark naked. His white frozen melancholy features
almost achieve a gleeful expression. Prefect d’Aubier de
Hautecloque has slipped up again.
    There are two men, one disgustingly hairy like an
ape, the other better, fairly well equipped, but nothing
outstanding. There is a plain sad female with perceptible
breasts.
    The young man’s eyes shift from the depressing
sight. They widen and widen in his white mask-like face at what he
now beholds with beating heart: the most absolutely gorgeous man in
creation, monopolized – lucky she! – by a kneeling vulgar female
with big boobies. But here? Here? The most marvelous scandal is in
the making. Prefect d’Aubier de Hautecloque is going to be in for
it. Marvelous, marvelous, beyond words!
     
    Generating. Generating.
    Generating. Generating.
    Generating process now completed.
     
    Waxing wrathful I now summon My